a-ri-ga-to-u.
idk what the rest of it says

i know she's thanking me for returning her cat to her 'cos that's what i did

already a bit more of a grind, had to return to the inn after nearly dying in guardia forest. And that's -after- dying once there already.

and yes i did get the power tab. i know this game really well

thought it was gonna be a no-item run of Chrono Trigger but actually the important stuff is still clear.

might have a -little- trouble with equipment but it shouldn't be too bad. Just no wrath band, or whatever it's called in the snes version (been playin' the ds version)

hey, y'know what? Chrono Trigger DS is worse than Chrono Trigger SNES, gonna put that out there.

There are maybe two bonus things that're actually worth it,

one is an animated thing that i reckon was in the PS1 port as well,

and the other is the new ending but even -that's- actually badly written. idk if the Japanese version is but the English one definitely is.

New ending's seemingly supposed to connect it better to Chrono Cross but it actually doesn't. Trigger and Cross are already as connected as they need to be imo.

What's worthwhile about Trigger DS's new ending is the concept of one of the characters ending up in a certain state.

Which could potentially mean that the Chrono -Cross- character who we've all been saying was originally supposed to be this -Trigger- character, could definitely -actually- be this character.

That's interesting for the story going forward, if we ever get a forward.

Chrono Trigger DS's translation throughout the game is fine. Matter of opinion but imo it's not as good as Woolsey's 1995 one.

And as for the -rest- of the bonus stuff? Actually boring as fuck.

the Dimensional Vortices just power up three of the characters. They don't add anything else.

There is a new village where you have to go back and forth between two time periods, helping out different villagers with their individual problems,

and it's like Square decided "hey let's make a sidequest that's -all backtracking-". It's so boring!

You're just running around the same areas, up and down the same mountain, over and over and over.

Like i know we're literally running errands for these villagers but if it was supposed to feel like just busywork, just doing chores, then mission accomplished.

Whole pace of the game just grinds to a halt.

Nothing else in the game is like this and it's -so- obvious that it's a new thing. Felt like i was playing a romhack. And i've played better actual romhacks!

The concept of that village is actually pretty interesting and cool, but oh god they did such a bad job.

It's the biggest new thing as far as i can tell and it's just not fun at all.

Haven't done the arena thing. idk if i will, doesn't seem relevant to the story in the slightest, or fun. S'pose i ought to try it.

Anyway. Back to my non-japanese-speaker japanese run.
Jag talar inte nihon desu.

oh, the other thing the DS version has over SNES is there's a map on the bottom screen, which really helps for finding different islands when you're flying around near the end. That's good.

~i know this game really well news~
i have two fave level grind spots, one is the right passage in Magus's Castle, with all the monsters disguised as people,

and the other is one room in the big robot factory at the end of the game where you go with Robo. Room with three robots.

oh shit.
one of these is "go with the frog", the other is "refuse".

idk if it actually let's you not go with frog but i've savestated just incase

i picked the top one and now he's on my team, so, okay

this's why i thought it'd be a no-item run

yeah i'm returning to the inn a -lot- more than in the english version. Which is; ever. Never have to do that in english. Done it maybe three or four times now.

still not a hard game. just have to not try to muscle through a whole place in one go.

the elemental techs have stars in their names so that's p helpful.

also obv there's a border between regular techs and dual techs so, when i start getting luminaire and stuff i'll know which ones those are

eyyy, level grind time. gonna get these friendos up to level 40, which they ~do not need to be at this point~

oh yeah - something you can't do on the DS version? Press Y to change characters. You have to tap the icon on the touch screen, or go in the menu.

What does Y do instead then? What have they assigned to Y, instead of changing characters?
Nothing. Button dun't do anything.

's the point o' that?

tfw you know "no", that sickly e in the middle, means "of", so all you know is that this is "something Of something".

i'm p sure this save is called The Time Egg in english so this is probably Egg Of Time i bet

full disclosure, i'm getting through this so quick 'cos i'm using the emulator's fast forward, it'd be ludicrous to get this far - incl. that much level grinding - in just 6 hours

luckily all that level grinding means that -whatever- Bekkler asks for the doll - i don't always do the minigame good - i can afford it

see i know that L and R are left and right hands,
but Y and A are laugh and shocked face and i can't remember which one's which.

So i'm prob'ly gonna be shelling out 60,000G for this thing. Which is maybe half of the cash i've got, maybe less

worse still, i happened to be using the character who laughs by -stifling- a laugh, so i couldn't actually tell that i'd pressed the right button and pressed the -other- button right afterwards, ending the game on the second move.

iss all affordable for the level grinder tho

level grind spot numero two-no.

let's get up to level 70 or maybe 80, idk, i've got a lot of youtube videos to get through

oh wait, oops, i forgot to take frog to see spekkio. Better do that now

you meet spekkio and he's all like "you meet anyone else, bring 'em to me and i'll teach 'em magic! :D", and there's literally one other character in the game he can actually do that for

i really like the part of the sunstone sidequest where you're like "oh yeah, you won't give me the thing? Well i'm gonna change your great great great grandparents' whole upbringing" like it's nothing

i mean it's turning a selfish rich person into a generous (but still inexplicably rich) person so it's cool but, we are just doing it 'cos we want a specific thing he has

just opened the wrath band chest and tried to remember the symbols even if i can't read them.
p sure this says maybe "de ke do no u gu wa"?? Been a month or two since i last did duolingo.

Anyway it also says "4/5" and the English wrath band description says 80% chance of counter

the thing the hand's pointing to that is.

and at the very least I'm p sure i got the consonants right, if maybe not the vowels.

Crono's counterin' now so it is the wrath band

the yakra chancellor has a habit of leaving the room via one exit, then showing up in the next scene somewhere he couldn't have got to via that exit.

happens twice iirc, wonder if it was intentional

i am of course going for the prism helms rather than the prism dress, this is a first playthrough. More status immunity y'know

i don't usually talk about games this way y'know, all "i know exactly what i'm doing tactically and i know where some helpful items are", it's only Chrono Trigger i know this well.

'd be cool to know Cross this well too

i'm p sure i could get through japanese Chrono Cross too, it's just idk where all the cool stuff is.

oh.
i assumed there'd be numbers.

well, both helms and dress are useful. iirc the helms are the top one

welp, helms were the bottom one.

so one of my ladies is gonna have a pretty useful dress

the sand dude in the desert is the fiddliest boss and i don't like him

code in the flashback seems to be the same however it seems like, where you press A to examine the thing to initiate the code-putting-in sequence,

sometimes pressing A as part of the code makes it examine the thing again.

I failed twice and only did it the third time when doing it fast.

Don't have to do that in the english version i think.

two far away times

so there, there's my no-words run of Chrono Trigger! :D
i did it, i thought i could!

think i maybe stood up once in the past 10 hours...

gettin' japanese Chrono Cross now
(will do smth else today y'know)

okay, well,

this feels like an interesting sort of concept;

i can shout one of two things here, and i don't know what either of them are but i know that they're different things.

imagine having two potential sentences in your brain, and you're going to shout one of them, but you don't know what either of them mean.

It's a language you don't know. And yet, in this moment, you know exactly how to speak these two sentences, and that you have a real need to.

oh god... oh god i just realised i'm gonna have to navigate using key items a large number of times throughout this https://twitter.com/ClaireSiegely/status/1299826586137526274

well the big rooster thingus pecked the crap out of us.

it fuckin decked us - 'cos of it pecked us

anyway this is good 'cos i pressed X when naming Kid hoping that'd go to confirm but it just deleted the first letter of her name, reducing her to probably " ido", so, do-over on that

just enough recognisable stuff in the element allocation menu that i know what it all is and does, cool. was sorta worried about that

doin' the DS one now and, since last i tweeted on this thread, i've learned enough katakana to read a bunch of this.

e.g. the item i have highlighted is "shierutaa", shelter.

oh wait no that's a small "e", oops.

It's small so it combines with the previous letter, so it's actually "sherutaa"

which is still shelter 'cos it's just spelling the english word phonetically

just did some more lessions and tried to figure out what the "downwards smiley face" katakana is and i reckon it means the -next- letter has a long consonant.

i.e., Lucca's name here is literally "Lukka"

holy shit it's pronounced Eyla!??

fuck i've been getting it wrong all this time

eyyyyla

she just calls him "Cro" (pronounced 'croh') in this haha

and nah i didn't accidentally delete the "no" when naming him. Ayla's dialogue removes the "no".

idk if it's like that in the SNES one as well

holy fuck it's not "A-za-la" it's "a-ZAA-la"

this whole "play it in japanese" stuff actually started 'cos i didn't know how to pronounce "Schala" and ended up finding out that that character's called "Sara" in Japanese,

so it's gotta be a "sh" and not a "sk" i bet.

well, y'know... "Sa[the japanese consonant sound that equates to both L and R]a"

why Woolsey translated it to "Schala" i don't know but it's a cool looking name, lot cooler than Sara

nearly typed "Whoolsey" there hahaha

didn't get a screenshot in time but,
the scene where Crono's dreaming about Marle trying to wake him up, and then they wake up in Ayla's hut?

in English it ends with Marle shouting "Crono! Crono! Crono!" a whole lot.

in Japanese? "Cro! Cro! Cro!"

Ayla's voice translated by his dreaming brain into Marle, slowly turning back into Ayla as he wakes up.

Completely not there in the English version 'cos Ayla doesn't shorten his name. Just looks like he's dreaming about Marle trying to wake him up.

idk what it is but Magus and Queen Zeal have the same second letter in their name in this, super curious about it

been pronouncing Ayla "eyla" in my head for a few hours now and it feels the same as trying to say transmisic instead of transphobic;

probably more technically correct but it just feels forced and like it's not gonna catch on at -all-

is it ever going to feel natural? Who knows

it's like the two guys from 101 Dalmations going "eether" "either", one of the two bits i remember from that film

four of the characters in Chrono Trigger are healers, though Ayla's not great at it.

Marle is v good at healing single characters (you literally don't even need Cure 2, her original Cure is always enough),

Robo and Frog are good at healing the whole party.

respect to Chrono Trigger for making their "pure physical power" character a woman btw as well.

We still don't have a lot of those. They had that figured out in 1995.

Chrono Trigger is very much a game where "woman" isn't a modifier, "man" isn't the default.

Wide range of women, no such thing as "this character is the girl one".

in fact if you don't count Crono - and why would you count a silent protagonist as much - the main cast are an even split between the two cis genders

i like Chrono Trigger

okay comparing the SNES one with the DS one,
looks like there -are- numbers, just i didn't know they were numbers

went with the helmets this time, or (what seems to be) "metto3"

once again, i'm finding it hard to put in the code properly in Lucca's flashback.

Wondering if it might be more 'cos i've got the sound off than any difference between Japanese and English versions

The code is different!!!! :O

okay so, i've been trying to avoid spoilers during this thread for the most part. And i'm gonna continue.

The thing that's going on here is;

in the English version, the code has the letters L and R in, and you have to press those buttons.

in Japanese? They're both Ls

didn't actually read the bit where you find out what the code is, nor could i have actually -read- it.

Wondering how they make the distinction. How do the Japanese kids of 1995 know to press L and not R?

playin' more Chrono Cross and uh,
the character i have highlighted here is called Guile in english.

in japanese he's called アルフ, "Arufu", which could maybe translate to Alf, maybe Aloof if you wanna be cool

Serge at the top is セルジュ, "Seruju".
Kid in the middle is キッド, "Kiddo" (pronounced "Kiddoh").

v v curious how what amounts to Alf turned into Guile.

can't seem to find a japanese Radical Dreamers rom that actually works...

i can find a few posts online of people having trouble getting it working, and the solution people find is always "download and apply the English patch, then it works".

what if i don't want the English patch.

seems like it doesn't work 'cos it was a Satellaview game,

and somehow the people who did the English patch managed to make it run like a normal SNES game rather than like a broadcast

in my search for a working japanese Radical Dreamers rom, i found a beautiful old website called Chrono Series Database that apparently is from the year 2000.

It has Winamp skins!!

the latest news post is from July this year and includes

"This site was always a labor of love for Io and I, and though these days it remains up through a mix of stubbornness, nostalgia, and desire to have a time capsule of early 2000s internet,

it makes us feel good that we can still reach Chrono fans to this day."

I love this so much

click "click to see" on the Guardia Forest one here, it's gorgeous!
i might start using winamp again
https://csd.varlew.net/ct/ctskins 

the Chrono Cross skins don't have anything as good as that, but a couple of them are alright
https://csd.varlew.net/cc/ccskins 

god i love when i come across these old websites.
I say this all the time but; i really fucking miss early 2000s internet so fucking much

example of Richard Honeywood's good work on the Chrono Cross translation;

there is a dog enemy that's called "Dogii" in the Japanese version. In English that enemy is called "HotDoggity"

welp, finally got to a part in japanese Chrono Cross where i don't know what to do.

it's when you first get to Termina in Home. I've talked to everyone and idk what else there is.

gonna get there in english to find out

okay there's a well you have to go down that i thought was unimportant.

also another big name change; Norris is called Ishito in this

Harle is called Tsukuyomi, which i bet is japanese for some sort of clown word

Irenes is spelled イレーネス, which personally i'd prob'ly translate to Elainess.

...or at least i would, if characters could have more than 6 letters. Okay Honeywood you win this round

Elenes would prob'ly be valid actually, though people'd prob'ly read it as "ellenous".

i mean her sister's called Zelbess (which is exactly as it sounds; ゼルベス), it'd make sense for her name to also end in "ess"

Nikki's japanese name is スラッシュ, "Surasshu", which uh... i think he's called Slash??

'course they had to give him a different name, there's already a character in the english version called Slash, japanese version being ソイソー ("Soisohh"), named after Soy Sauce.

wonder where "Nikki" came from in particular though

he is a guitarist - hence Slash - so maybe Nikki comes from Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx?

i don't know shit about Motley Crue i just looked up music people called Nikki on wikipedia

no spoilers but there's a bit in Chrono Cross where there's a bell with a name and - if i understood it right - it seems to have a different name in Japanese than in English???

And the name it has in the Japanese version makes a lot more sense continuity-wise

it's a small thing and doesn't really matter but just, odd decision from Richard Honeywood there.

okay can confirm that Wazuki and Miguel's names are Wazuki and Miguel.

ワヅキ and ミゲル, Wazuki and "Migeru"

Porre (a place) seems to be called Palepoli/Parepori, パレポリ. Wonder what went into that name change

idk if i'm reading it right, 'could be that just ポリ (Pori) is the place.

At a bit where a character is called something like "Porre General" and there's some hiragana after the katakana,

i assume the hiragana is "general" but maybe not all the katakana is the place name

i like how much the characters in this say "おい" (oi) and it seems to actually mean like in English when we go like "oi you!"

there's a character called リデル who's called Riddel in english, prob'ly it was supposed to be Lidl i bet. so,
got that one wrong, Honeywood

Karsh's attack "AxialAxe" is called Aura Axe in this, オーラアクス ("oora akusu").

Karsh himself is called Kaashu, カーシュ

that is to say, he's called Karsh. that's just how it's spelled.

the Deluge attack element is called フラッド and idk what that is, "Furaddo"? Fraddo? Fladdo?

prob'ly like how helmets are always メット, "metto", it's prob'ly a japanese word or smth

oi oi!

オイオイ サブロイス!

oh my god of course フラッド ("furaddo") is Flood, silly me https://twitter.com/crossslide/status/1308471384134225920

oh it's just savaloy?

ages ago i saw someone on here say "oi oi savaloy" and it's been in my head ever since.

オイオイ サブロイ!

oh no...

this hasn't actually been a problem, for i've paid enough attention to which hiragana/katakana i recognise in the things i need to use.

but oh god it'd be a problem if i didn't know any https://twitter.com/ClaireSiegely/status/1304041140371550213

and even right now, the item i need is one i got -ages- ago, but it has a specific character name in it, so I know I'm looking for a "ピパ"

that character - or i s'pose that species - is called ピパピパ in this, "Pipapipa", which Honeywood translated to "Beeba".

okay so, got stuck again in japanese, catching up in english as before, and uh,

the thing i said about the bell? Completely untrue. It has that name in English as well, i just misremembered.

the attack ForeverZero is called ゼロエターナル (zeroetaanaru) in japanese, Zero Eternal, which i think is a lot cooler

"le grille"?? What the hell is -that-??

Luminaire? That's シャイニング (shainingu), Shining.

which makes me wonder if it's that in Chrono Trigger too, i don't remember if i saw, maybe i even said it earlier in this thread idk