Radical Dreamers
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| Radical Dreamers | |
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| Developer(s) | Square Co., Ltd. |
| Publisher(s) | Square Co., Ltd. |
| Release date(s) | 1996 (JP) (Exact date unknown) |
| Genre | Adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Rating(s) | |
| Platform(s) | Satellaview |
Radical Dreamers is a video game produced by Squaresoft. The game was released in Japan in 1996 through the Satellaview add-on for the Nintendo Super Famicom.
Radical Dreamers is a role-playing game in which the player takes the role of Serge, a young adventurer, who is accompanied by Kid, a teen-aged thief, and Magil, a mysterious masked magician. The story involves the trio's attempt to steal the legendary Frozen Flame from the mansion of Lynx (Yamaneko in Japanese).
Gameplay consists of text-based scenarios presented to the player through the narration of Serge. The player must then choose from a list of possible actions. Depending on the selections made, the player may enter a new area, be presented with a new situation, or may have to choose again if the previous choice was incorrect. Combat is text-based as well, allowing the player to select from options such as "Fight," "Magic," "Run," and often more complex situational commands like "Run my knife into the goblin's chest!" or "Quickly slash at its hand!"
Radical Dreamers is a gaiden, or side story, to the 1995 game Chrono Trigger. Elements of the game were also adapted and integrated into the 1999 PlayStation game Chrono Cross. The game ties up various loose ends from Chrono Trigger, and it introduces several new characters, objects, and locations that would later feature in Chrono Cross (though not in identical contexts). The main characters, Serge, Kid, and Magus/Magil/Guile (in some capacity), return in Chrono Cross, for example.
As in other Chrono games, only one scenario is available on the first play-through. After finishing this (and obtaining one of three possible endings), six further scenarios (each with its own unique ending) are made available through the game's "New Game+" mode. It is largely through these later scenarios that the various plot threads from Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross are presented.
The music of Radical Dreamers was written by composer Yasunori Mitsuda, the same artist who scored the other Chrono games. In fact, a handful of themes from the game were directly adapted for Chrono Cross, such as the battle theme. The works of Radical Dreamers indirectly incorporated to other Chrono Cross songs are Far Promise ~ Dream Shore (On the Beach of Dreams ~ Another World, The Dream that Time Dreams), and Epilogue ~ Dream Shore (Jellyfish Sea). Other musical ideas and progressions are probably found elsewhere in Cross's repertoire.
In April of 2003, the ROM hacking group Demiforce released a patch that translates the game from Japanese to English. The patch works with the ROM image of the game used for playing console-based video games on personal computers through video game emulation. The ability to save games was not enabled, however, and some minor typos were left in; these have been remedied by the efforts of Radical R, who released a follow-up patch on June 22, 2004. The patch is stand-alone.
External links
- GameFAQs Radical Dreamers Board (http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/gentopic.php?board=28941)
- Demiforce Homepage (http://demiforce.parodius.com)
- Chrono Compendium, a Chrono Series Wiki hosting Radical R's patch (http://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Patches_(Radical_Dreamers))