Joystiq

While, for the most part, Chrono Trigger on the DS looks just like Chrono Trigger on the SNES, some liberties have been taken to make the use of the new, screenier hardware. I snapped this control scheme diagram from the Chrono Trigger demo station, figuring there may be someone out there interested in how it would play on the DS.

Oh, and I played it. The big revelation here is the touchscreen movement. The touchscreen (which displays an automap of the room you're in) basically acts as a big analog stick: hold the stylus toward the right of the screen and Crono moves right; hold it farther toward the edge and Crono moves faster. Tap, or run into something, to make Crono interact.

It's awesome if you want to have a really hard time performing basic movement operations in Chrono Trigger. But the traditional button controls remain more than adequate. It doesn't really mar the fact that it's OMG CHRONO TRIGGER. And battling on the touchscreen is perfectly fine -- you just touch buttons on a menu.

In other Chrono news, an SE rep told me that the translation (yes, it was the English version!) was new! And according to a statement given to Spencer Yip, the single-screen version just as it appeared on the SNES will be added to the cart before release.