just words

I've been playing Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamer Edition recently, and I'm convinced Square-Enix hates this game, and I'm prepared to prove it.

Yes, I know that Square-Enix isn't a singular person, it's a collective of individuals structured into a corporate hierarchy, but if we look at that collective’s aggregate decisions regarding not only Chrono Cross but all of its classic JRPGs, a trend emerges, and that trend points to only one thing, that they hate all their classic games, especially the ones they've remastered or rereleased in the past ten years, including Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX, SaGa Frontier 1 and 2, Chrono Cross, and many others. And if Square-Enix doesn’t hate these games, then, at the very least, they think these games are ugly, mechanically bad, and that they’re only good for quick cash-grab nostalgia baiting.

For the purposes of proving my point, I’ll be focusing mostly on Chrono Cross here, specifically the Radical Dreamers Edition, which they should have called The Radical Garbage Edition, because it's a dumpster fire full of all the trends that lead me to believe that Square-Enix does indeed hate their classic games.

Let's start with the graphics, and before you get all “butttt graphics don't matter,” let me just start by saying that, yes, I agree, graphics don't matter, but aesthetics matter a whole helluva lot, and the remastered aesthetics of Chrono Cross are an affront to the original game, bordering on total abomination. The only thing quote-unquote “wrong” with Chrono Cross’ original graphics is that they’re presented in 240p and the pre-rendered hand-drawn backgrounds were created with CRT televisions in mind, so they don’t translate well to modern monitors, but the seaside town of Arni Village, with its raised platforms, reed-woven huts, thatch roofs, racks of fish, flapping burgundy fabrics, and that endless blue just off in the distance with those big pillowy clouds just above it, is just as beautiful now as it was in 1999, yet, for some ungodly reason, Square-Enix decided to run it, and every other pre-rendered background, through an AI model, to “upscale” the visuals, which resulted in some seriously uncanny eldritch version of Arni Village wherein if you focus on anything for more than a few seconds, you start to notice how everything seems to meld together in this weird squirrely way, as if the painter never lifted his brush from the canvas, and then you start to notice how the designs on those flapping fabrics seem less like designs and more like strange squiggly lines that twist and turn in these nonsensical patterns that give you a headache if you stare at them too long, as if a robot on LSD were handed a paintbrush and told to just go fucking wild, in fact that's exactly what happened, some low-paid intern at Square-Enix was tasked to just drag-drop .pngs into ChatGPT or whatever using a really basic prompt like, “please upscale this image and make sure it looks as if it were hand-painted to fit with the original aesthetic of Chrono Cross, also make it seem as not-AI-generated as possible,” and they didn’t even bother to touch up any of the obvious jank after the fact, which is especially apparent in the city of Termina, where gigantic posters of pop stars with mangled AI faces are all over the place. It’s a fucking mess. It’s also lazy and greedy and obvious as hell, to the point that I’m convinced that only a company that hates beauty itself would do this to Chrono Cross. It’s just flat-out disrespectful.

Thankfully, Square-Enix didn’t fuck with the music though, which is not only some of the most beautiful video game music ever written, it’s quite possibly up there as some of the most beautiful music ever written period, just listen to "Guldove (Another World)" if you don’t believe me, it somehow captures wistful nostalgia even hearing it for the first time. Yasunori Mitsuda was really on a whole ‘nother level when he composed the soundtrack for Chrono Cross, as if there were a muse held prisoner in his basement circa 1998. The music is also part of the reason I love the game so much, and why I'm so offended that Square-Enix basically butchered my boy.

Now I want to tell you about the "enhanced combat features that make battles easier,” as is how it’s described on the back of the Radical Dreamers Edition case, which comes with nothing but the game cartridge, no manual or insert of any kind, and these “enhancements” are really nothing more than glorified emulator features, like four-times speed, and cheat codes, like auto-battle and making your characters invincible and turning off the battles entirely, which are less "enhanced combat features” and more tacit admittances on Square-Enix’s part that they think the original game’s combat is so shit that, instead of improving it in any way, they just opted to remove it entirely. It’s also telling of what Square-Enix executives must think of the modern gamer. I can only imagine the words uttered in that boardroom meeting or Zoom call, “Today’s gamer demographic exhibits significantly reduced tolerance for the traditional pacing of turn-based combat as presented in Chrono Cross, and the element-grid system presents a level of cognitive load that may be perceived as overly complex for broad-market audiences to fully engage with. Flagship franchises such as God of War and Call of Duty have fundamentally reshaped user expectations, cultivating a preference for high-intensity, immediate-feedback gameplay loops, and in alignment with these evolving market trends, I propose we implement a four-times speed toggle to accommodate those seeking accelerated excitement levels, and considering the element system requires a degree of critical thinking and tactical planning, behaviors that data suggest contemporary players are less inclined to engage with, we should also introduce an invincibility mode, as this will mitigate frustration and reduce the likelihood of negative emotional outbursts, including, for example, hardware damage incidents stemming from thrown controllers, because of course we don’t want any lawsuits on our hands, and I also propose that we offer the option to bypass encounters entirely, supplemented by an automated battle feature, which aligns with the up-to-date consumer behavioral data we have collected, which tells us that modern gamers overwhelmingly prioritize streamlined experiences and instant gratification, and in short, today’s gamers don’t want to work for the win, they simply want the win, so we will give them the win, and they will like it, and Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition will make us millions.” And there was probably one old-guard guy in that meeting that was like, “But isn’t the unique combat part of what makes Chrono Cross so special? And if we removed the combat, or trivialized it, wouldn’t the game end up just being walking from screen to screen talking to people? Wouldn’t that be a little boring?” And that person was probably fired.

Granted, all these “enhanced combat features that make battles easier” are optional, which is good, but the fact they exist at all just goes to show that the modern corporate entity known as Square-Enix hates the original game’s design philosophy. And they didn’t just do this to Chrono Cross, they did this to every single remastered classic game released thus far. Take the latest rerelease of Final Fantasy VII, for example, which includes a button that simply makes all your characters max level. At that point, what’s the point of combat to begin with? Isn’t leveling up and that progressively-becoming-stronger feeling part of the draw of these classic JRPGs to begin with? And Final Fantasy VII now includes a four-times speed option as well, so you can just zip right through every screen, without ever stopping to smell the roses, or whatever it is they say. At that point, what’s the point of the whole adventure to begin with? Aren’t the beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds meant to be experienced, absorbed, and appreciated? And does not trudging these beautiful pre-rendered depths assist in this whole experienced-absorbed-appreciated process? And does not allowing the player to zoom through every screen disrespect both the effort and artistic merit of the game?

What really annoys me is that, when you talk about all this stuff online, on forums or whatever, people defend it, and sometimes they get pretty heated. They say stuff like, quote, “As an adult with a job and responsibilities I appreciate the inclusion of these features. Anyone who thinks it's cheating has too much time on their hands,” and “Personally speaking 3x speed made playing the game way less tedious than it would have been otherwise. Just cause random encounters are soooooo slow,” and “I'm out here to have fun playing games. If it feels like a chore, I'm not going to bother. I don't have time for it anymore. If other people prefer to play it that way, all the power to them. I'm just glad there's options.” But all of these people are missing the point, too focused on speeding through life. It’s a video game, for god’s sake, it’s not a race to the finish, part of the whole experience is sitting there taking it all in, and if they’re focused on just completing the game for the sake of being able to say they completed it or whatever, I truly wonder how much they appreciate anything in their lives, since it seems like they just want to get stuff done as quickly as possible. And if the game is “tedious,” as one of these users claims, maybe they just don’t like JRPGs to begin with, and if so, why not just go do something they actually enjoy? Does speeding up the tediousness really make the game less tedious, or does it just make the tedium faster? Are we tricking ourselves here? And if they have very little time because of adult responsibilities and kids and whatnot, then perhaps their priorities are fucked up to begin with? Perhaps they should consider a different hobby? Because, once they complete Final Fantasy or Chrono Cross or whatever, at four-times speed with max level and the battles turned off, they’re just going to start playing another game that takes up their time, so the whole thing seems less about appreciating the individual game for what it is and more so about getting as many completed games under their belt as possible, which really just highlights how sick and twisted our modern sensibilities are, how everything is egotistical, feel-good bullshit, like, “yeah, I’ve beaten that game, and that game, and that game,” just to say they did it, in their insular little online bubbles, like this is some sort of grand accomplishment or something, when really it’s just fucking video games. The whole thing highlights the “gotta go fast” ethos of our modern society, as if we have this serious cosmic FOMO that, if we don’t complete every game ever in the shortest amount of time possible, then we’re not keeping up with the Joneses and somehow we’re less cultured, worse people because of it, and it makes me sad, it really does, because, when we’re moving so fast, we never stop to appreciate the beauty of things, thus we end up trivializing the world around us, turning it into some sick speedrun where glitching through life’s walls is not only encouraged but celebrated with upvotes and vacuous pats on the back.

Anyway. That’s my rant. That’s why Square-Enix hates their classic games, because their classic games, like Chrono Cross, demand to be taken seriously as an art form, they demand the player’s time and attention, they force the player to appreciate their beauty, and that’s why Square-Enix hates them, because, to them, time is money, and if you’re spending time on Chrono Cross, that’s money you’re not spending on their other stuff, and that makes line go down, which demands serious questions from their executive board, and they can’t have that, they can’t have that at all.

And frankly, we’re enabling it.

Arcades are like children, you just hate to see them die.

I live in this little crime-ridden port town that once had a prosperous, populated mall, back in the early 2000s, before online shopping really took off. Back then, you’d go to the mall on the weekends or whatever, and there’d be at least a hundred people there at any given time, snot-nosed kids running around all wild with ice cream cones, escaping from the little play area with the jungle gym above the massive skylights, parents off shopping at Belk or Bath & Body Works or American Eagle or whatever, and teenagers, some dressed in all black with fishnets and Converse and those baggy Tripp pants with all the belts, others in name-brand polos and designer jeans and the newest Jordans or whatever, both groups rebelling in their own ways, all congregating in their little corners of the food court, snickering and scowling at each other, like some sort of prelude to a teenage suburban war or something.

And there I was, sixteen, clumsy, and shy, at the FYE with my mom, buying CDs. I remember I bought some of my favorite CDs from that place, like The Smiths’ Louder Than Bombs, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge by My Chemical Romance, all sorts of Prince records, Bowie, The Cure, Radiohead’s OK Computer. That stuff saved my life. And when I was done, my mom would go shopping by herself, over at the Belk or the Bath & Body Works or the American Eagle or whatever, and I would wander off to the arcade, which was right next to the food court, and I’d spend the next hour, with my mom’s spare credit card, just playing all sorts of arcade games. I was a huge Tekken fan, even competed in a tournament for Tekken 4 one time, Jin and Lee were my favorite characters of course, and I’d even play Dance Dance Revolution a good bit, with some anime-obsessed girls who seemed to just be there all the fucking time, no matter what time of day you showed up, and I liked DDR so much that I bought the PlayStation 2 version and the pad accessory, and I would play it upstairs in my room, and sometimes my mom would play it when I was at school, for exercise I guess, and I knew this because of the in-game records and whatnot, but she would never bring it up, and I figured there was a reason for that, so I never brought it up either, so I guess it was something we shared in silence, which was cool, and I thank the arcade for that, not only for introducing me to Dance Dance Revolution, but also for enabling me to spend time with other kids with similar interests who just knew how to have fun.

But when I go to the mall now, as an adult, there are like ten people in there at any given moment, tops, that’s including myself, a single security guard, and like eight cashiers, and the most exciting thing going on is the black mold growing on the cheap ceiling paneling, which I swear you can watch grow in real time if you’re paying close enough attention, and the old play area is now just an enclosed pen with that weird soft pebbly flooring because all the kid gymnasium stuff broke and they obviously didn't have enough money to replace it, so whenever there are kids in there, which is almost never, they're miserably trying to climb over the walls, begging to be let out, and the skylight now shines this sickly green hue over everything because of all the algae growing on it, like nature is trying to reclaim the whole godforsaken building, and there’s only like two restaurants in the food court now, and all the name-brand stores are gone, replaced by places like “Asian Body Rub” and “Touch of Wireless,” although Belk is still there, attracting approximately one demographic, sixty-to-eighty-year-old grandmas, which, at this point, are probably the only people keeping the mall alive, and by “alive,” I mean like oxygen, feeding tube, urinary catheter, you know, the works, serious life support, because I’ve literally never seen anyone buy anything from anywhere other than Belk, and even the other business owners seem to know this, the old Indian guy with the beard who owns Touch of Wireless just sits in his kiosk all day looking at his phone, he doesn’t even try to wave me down like he used to, because he sees the writing on the wall, he knows the mall is dying, that it’s on serious life support. And honestly, someone just needs to put the place out of its misery at this point, because it’s just sad now, it's just a reminder that everything fades and nothing lasts forever.

And we all know why this is happening. It’s simple, really. It's the internet. Nobody wants to purchase stuff from malls anymore, nobody wants to exert the energy, they’d rather just buy everything online, get it shipped directly to their homes with Prime shipping or whatever, and I’m not above this, I do this too, so I’m not like casting judgment here, this is just what’s happening, these are the facts, we’ve exchanged a community experience for convenience, anyone would do it, if given the opportunity, as evidenced by the mall itself, and it wouldn’t really bother me so much, normally, but today, when I went to the mall, with my son, to let him run around the wide corridors, get some energy out, because we can’t really go outside, on account of it being like six million degrees out, I walked by a certain empty retail space, all locked away behind a security grille, and I was overcome with this certain feeling of loss that I can’t quite put into words, so instead I’ll just describe what I saw.

There, behind the security grille, in the darkness of the unused retail space, there were about twenty arcade cabinets, randomly spread across the room, their once-colorful screens now pitch black, their power cords all twisted like rat kings on the floor, some of the cabinets were turned on their sides, face down, others stood with their guts ripped out, wiring harnesses and coin mechanisms spilling out all over the floor, and in the back of the room, there was a single flickering bulb, casting a light just bright enough for me to make out two distinct machines in the very back, so I narrowed my eyes, and that’s when I saw them, that’s when I saw Tekken 4 and Dance Dance Revolution, and I swear, for a moment there, I saw those anime girls, dancing on the pad, having the time of their lives, and I wanted to go join them, I really did.

But then my son pulled on my pant leg and said, “I wanna go home,” so we went home.

I quit smoking back in November 2023.

I had been smoking since I was like seventeen or something. I remember I would sneak out of the house and go into the garage to smoke, and one time my mom caught me, and she actually cried. It was the first time I had seen her cry. She was always a stoic, almost emotionless woman, so seeing her cry was actually a profound moment, but I guess it wasn’t profound enough for me to quit smoking. Go figure. I remember, back then, wondering why, why she cried, why was smoking such a big deal, but now, as a parent of two kids myself, I think I know why. If I had caught my son smoking, maybe I would cry too, not because of the smoking, per se, but because of the symbolic nature of the whole thing, like a stark image of my son growing up in real time, innocence lost in the here and now, or whatever. Growing up is such a tragedy that, when you see it happening before your eyes like that, it’s hard not to want to bawl your brains out, but of course, when you’re young, you don’t think about that stuff, that’s the paradox of youth, right there.

Anyway, like I was saying, I quit smoking back in November 2024. By that time, I had gone up to like a pack a day. My brand was Marlboro Lights. I loved smoking, especially the first cigarette of the day, or after a long day of work or societal obligation or whatever, that sort of body-melting feeling after the first drag, that heady pressure like the brain is being enveloped in the best kind of storm cloud, the kind just off in the distance with heat lightning and low rumbling and all that stuff, and especially that sensation of smoke traveling its way down the trachea, subsumed by the lungs, then exhaling the leftover smoke like some sort of high-fantasy dragon. I can’t think of much else like it, to tell you the truth.

So you might be wondering, then, why I quit smoking. You might have already assumed a typical answer to that question, something health-related, like I was running out of breath or my blood pressure was high or I had developed a bad cough or I wanted to ensure that I lived long enough to see my kids become happy, flourishing adults or something like that. But, honestly, none of those reasons were why I quit smoking. I’m not that farsighted or selfless, I’m really not. I quit smoking because, when I sat down to read or write or play a video game or whatever, there was always this nagging thought in the back of my head to go smoke a cigarette. It was disrupting my focus, especially on things that I enjoyed doing. Back then I was smoking a cigarette every hour or so, and immediately after smoking, the timer for the next cigarette would start running down in my head, and I was very aware of it. I’d be playing like Final Fantasy XI or something, an online MMORPG, and I’d be thinking something like, “I’m going to smoke a cigarette in 32 minutes, which should be after about ten more Goblin Ambushers,” and I’d think like that about every activity I was doing, as if cigarettes were some sort of mythical demon, stalking me at all times, seducing me, beyond my control, like some sort of Nicotinic Lamia or Siren or Succubus or whatever. So, yeah, that’s why I quit, because it was consuming my brain. I was thinking about it all the time. Smoking had become my focal point, more important than all other things, sucking everything else in, like some sort of supermassive black hole around which all thoughts swirled. Oh, and because it was expensive as hell.

So, what’s the point of all this?

Well, I started smoking again, a few weeks ago. Actually, earlier than that. I had been smoking on and off at social events, especially work events, bumming cigarettes from people here and there, telling myself that I was now only a social smoker and that I could moderate it and all that stuff, but after a while, that morphed into wanting a cigarette at home, so now, as of just a few weeks ago, I’m smoking at home.

Well, kind of.

You see, my wife doesn’t know I started smoking again. I bought a pack of Lucky Strikes and I hid them in my office, and now, when I go on my daily bike ride, I take my Luckies out with me, stop at the neighborhood pond, the one with all the turtles and ducks and geese, and I spark up, watching those little turtle heads poke up and drift along the surface of the water, and all the ducks come up to me, expecting bread, because everyone around here feeds them, and all the geese that hiss at me because they’re total assholes, and I inhale and exhale like a modern-day dragon, and the whole hiding-it-from-my-wife thing adds an element of excitement to the whole thing too, as if I’m seventeen again, hiding it from my mother. Maybe this is my version of a mid-life crisis, but I would argue that I have one of those every week, so this isn't really anything new.

For now, smoking out there, on that pond, with those torpid turtles and those demanding ducks and those grouchy geese, is almost a zen-like experience, in a way, with how tranquil and melty and heady it is. I even saw a great blue heron one time. Next time, I'll try to take a picture, and post it.

I know I shouldn’t smoke. It’s stupid. I know I’m burning the child inside, making my mother cry, but I’m thirty-four years old and, if I want to burn a little part of myself sometimes, shouldn’t I have the right to do that? And I enjoy it, so shouldn’t I be allowed to do the stuff I enjoy, sometimes? That might sound a little hedonistic, but is it really so different from any other self-gratifying thing we do, like sit around playing video games instead of doing housework, or lazily watching TV all night? And before you say something like, “you’re just making excuses,” let me assure you that I know damn well that I’m just making excuses. You don’t have to tell me.

Anyway, I’m going to go play some SaGa Frontier II, then I’m going to read a chapter or two of Moby Dick, then I’m going to maybe work on the novel I’ve been stewing on.

But first, before all that, I’m going on a bike ride.