My stance on Chrono Trigger is unpopular. It’s a wonderful, amazing, and nigh untouchable game critically, but there was always one thing about it that bothered me; Crono. Crono is a silent protagonist, but not just any silent protagonist, he is one of the least influential silent protagonists I have ever played in the game. In most games, the plot lives and dies with the titular or main character, but Chrono Trigger *SPOILERS* can actively be played without Crono at a certain point in the game. Not only that, but he is only part of the quest by accident to begin with. Upon bumping into Marle, he accompanies her around a fair she was already going to explore regardless. Imagine if you will a slight re-write of the story in which Crono doesn’t attend the Millennium Fair, and instead the story is about a blossoming friendship between the two leading ladies, Lucca and Marle.

I am sure this has been postulated as a fanfic of either the lemon or lime variety, but taken a bit more seriously, if you really think about it, there is nothing Crono does that has any real bearing on the story. Even his biggest contribution, sacrificing himself for his friends, can be waved away with a bit of imagination. Let’s start at the beginning, for example. So let’s say Marle steps into the teleporter and is zapped away, leaving behind the pedant, but instead of immediately following her like Crono, Lucca rushes back to her lab, creates the gate key, and then makes her way into the past. Remember, although Crono jumps in right after Marle, he doesn’t end up finding her right away. He only finds Marle just before Lucca rushes in to explain the time travel phenomenon that causes Marle to disappear. This is a reoccurring event throughout the game, Lucca lays something out to our team, Marle (or whomever might be in your party) then posits a solution to which Crono can only ultimately reply in the affirmative.

I am not here to actually rewrite the story. At least, not yet. The purpose here is to imagine a slightly modified game starring a crew of characters lead by two female protagonists as they become close friends and save the world from a monster that spans most of known history. What kind of reception would it have had in 1995 on its release? And how would it be heralded today? When Metroid reveals that Samus was a woman the entire time, it made a huge impact in the children playing it. Boys everywhere just assumed you were just a man inside a suit. This is one of the longest lasting impressions in gaming and one of the few games led by a female, especially one in which (for the better part of her entire catalog) does all her own work and answers only to herself.

“But what about the romance between Crono and Marle”, you say? To that I say, “What romance?” It’s flimsy and antiquated at best. It’s less than half of boy meets girl adventure tale where neither party acknowledges their feelings until, willed by the stale storytelling gods, it’s all wrapped up for you. There are no stakes in their relationship. The relationship between Lucca and Robo has more breadth. A real test would have been to create a story of two girls taking the reigns for their kingdom and making history work for them. What’s more is that is pretty much the story as it is since Crono mostly walks around and hits things with his sword.

Ultimately, I think the SNES generation, and the 90’s in general, could have used a game as solid as this one to back a narrative that serves more than just boyish, sword swinging wish fulfillment. Crono’s gender is so unnecessary, just as much as he himself is to the story, that it should have been a swappable gender character, all politics aside. Or in the case I am making, removed entirely. The landscape of gaming would have been irreversibly changed in a much bigger way. Chrono Trigger was and is a great game, but im afraid thats really its only legacy, which is more than fine of course, it’s extraordinary. But I can’t help but wonder how much further it could have gone, even with this simple, minor change.