Chrono+Trigger

=Background Information:=

Chrono Trigger was developed by Square for the Super Nintendo released in 1995, and was ported for the Sony PlayStation with a ported version of Final Fantasy IV, under the name Final Fantasy Chronicles. It was also ported to the Nintendo DS in 2008. A port is basically adapting software, so it can be used for a different environment (in this case console). The port has added a few animated scenes when playing the game.

Chrono Trigger is a turn-based role playing game set in a fantasy world that resembles earth, consisting cities, mountains, oceans, dungeons and forests. The game is based around time traveling to different eras in time to investigate and save the world from the apocalyptic future. An alien parasite in 1999 AD, known as Lavos, will emerge from the ground and destroys the world by firing his explosive spikes to everywhere on earth, making food and resources scarce. The civilization of that era is technologically advanced, explaining that there is a machine that can instantly restore energy to people, but cannot remove people's hunger. To prevent these events from happening the group of heroes will have to travel through time, to find a way to defeat Lavos before it destroys the world in the future.

=Gender Depiction:= The team of playable characters includes four males and three female, while one out of the four males is an optional character. While the cast of characters might seem a little unusual there is some generic themes such as Marle is a Princess, Lucca the intelligent inventor, and Ayla the cave women. The males includes Chrono, Robo, Frog and Magus. Chrono is just an teenage boy, who somehow have the ability to save the world. Robo is a robot, and he can be classified as a male, because in the game it shows that he has a girlfriend, that just looks like a pink version of him with a bow. Here is a video. Robots are genderless, but this will be a special case. Frog, who's real name is Glenn, is a knight that was turned into a frog-like human by Magus. Magus is the fiend lord who started a war with the humans with his army of fiends in the Middle Ages 600 AD. We can see from additional character art, because it is hard see the features of the in game sprites, that the man are muscular and they do look physically strong. Here is a video of Frog cutting a mountain in half to get to the top and progress with the story, showing how physically strong the males are. For the females we see that most of them are fully dressed and are not physically strong. Marle uses a crossbow to fight and Lucca uses a gun, which does not seem as physically strong characters compared to more physical weapons. We do see that the only scantily clad character Ayla, is a cave women, and by that nature she is more physically strong and she uses her fist to fight. Although Ayla might knowledge, due to the fact she is a cave women and speak in the stereotypic cave women speech, this game does not show that women are not as smart as men. She is the village chief, and everyone else in her era of 65,000,000 BC do speak really much like her. She is the only female that is a cave women in the story, so her lack of knowledge would stand out more, but everyone else in that period speak around the same.



The damsel in distress occurs within a few time in the game. The first time happens in the beginning of the game after we meet Marle, and she gets sucked into a time portal to the past 400 years ago. This have lead people to think she was the Queen of that era, which was coincidentally kidnapped, so the search party for her was called off. Chrono finds Marle, but she magically disappears, because of how they are affectiong the past, so Chrono goes on the hunt to find the real Queen. From that event shows two cases of a damsel in distress.

One interesting character that was not censored in this game was the character called Flea. He is an early transvestite in video games who dresses like a women, but is really a man. He is a mini-boss, so fighting him is essential to the storyline. (Here is a video from his battle) From his speech he says that "power is beautiful, and I got the power" shows that men should be overpowering, but saying that he will show the group a good time could refer to something about sex. While he is not strong physically, he can use magic well to have power like a man. Him dressing like a girl makes him seem a little gender confused, providing a unique character that is different from the stereotypical man.