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Chrono Cross, 300+ backgrounds, enjoy

DJIzana

Member
Incredible how much creativity, effort and detail went into the design of Chrono Cross. Seeing these 300 backgrounds by themselves makes me realize how much work went into making a coherent and cohesive game. If only Square would go back to their PSX era RPG's and learn that being beautiful is not about how realistic the graphics are but about artistic vision and talent. I would argue a game like FF7 has more artistic vision than FF15.

I wonder if there is a similar background pack for FF7.

Well said, dude. I couldn't agree more. I mean... not to bash XV or anything but like, easily Chrono Cross has a better artistic vision. There's so much variation for environments too.

Then again, it was a lot easier back then to design that kind of thing than it is now. Could you imagine trying to recreate Chrono Cross like how they're recreating FFVIIR with a 3D engine like that?

I'm not sure it'd live up but yeah... this game could at least use some kind of HD remaster.
 

pottuvoi

Banned
I'd love for someone to make a full length RPG using backgrounds in this art style but with today's technology. It'd probably be really expensive, though
If they could still be combination of 3D and painting each scene from set camera paths, I'm sure it would be cheaper than trying to create one continuous world or trying to make coherent cityscapes from one piece.

Would be interesting project to try paint these backgrounds in Dreams and create camera paths which jump from screen to screen.
 

Falk

that puzzling face
Speaking of pre-rendered backgrounds, I felt FFX was a pretty good compromise. Polygonal but with specifically framed camera angles in most cases, and pre-rendered backgrounds where called for.

There really only was one game with that particular style of framing it probably could have been brought to much greater heights with a few iterations.
 

jetsetrez

Member
I had mixed feelings on Chrono Cross back in the day, but the other day I got really nostalgic for it when I saw the cover, and remembered the great music and some of the nice art/backgrounds.
 

Neiteio

Member
Don't know anything about Chrono Cross, but the backgrounds are breathtaking. I just went through all of them, and each one evoked strong feelings in me.

Food for the imagination. :)
 

fortunato

Banned
The best part about FFVIII was the FMV-to-prerendered transitions. I think there was even a few gameplay sequences that had FMV directly playing in the background.

This was also present in FFVII (the opening!). Also Parasite Eve 2 has some (e.g., when Aya arrived at the Akropolis Tower).
 

Rei_Toei

Fclvat sbe Pnanqn, ru?
Thanks for sharing. It was a beautiful game and seeing the village instantly pops the music of the place in my head. Good memories.
 

Dark_castle

Junior Member
I always felt Chrono Cross was hamstrung by it's connection to Chrono Trigger. Treat the game as it's own entity and you have one of the best JRPG's the Playstation has to offer.

These images are like a visual representation of Square at the peak of their most creative and prolific era.

Nah, CC would completely fall apart if you take out its connections to CT, because the entire timeline and events that exists in CC wouldn't happen due to things that happened in CT.
 

iMerc

Member
even though i live in PAL land, i modded my psx solely so i could buy Chrono Cross from the states & play it on my machine.
to this day i still have this game. case, manual & discs in near-perfect condition, because that's how you treat amazing games. :)
for me the OST is the best i've eve heard in an rpg ever.
I also have Baten Kaitos for the gcn, in fact one of the main reasons i bought that game was because it looked so much like CC.

out of curiosity, does anyone know which key-essential individuals from the dev team would need to be brought back together to make a 'chrono break' even remotely possible?
 

TheContact

Member
Love chrono cross. Beat the game so many times. And yes i like it better than CT and yes it is a true sequel. /flame shield
Game is beautiful looking
 

MMarston

Was getting caught part of your plan?
By the way


ObMu2SZ.png




^Fuck this room.
 
This is wonderful. Crazy how much love went into the art. Seeing it makes me wish we could get another game with a crazy budget on painted backrounds
 
I always felt Chrono Cross was hamstrung by it's connection to Chrono Trigger. Treat the game as it's own entity and you have one of the best JRPG's the Playstation has to offer.

These images are like a visual representation of Square at the peak of their most creative and prolific era.

Nah its connection with CT supported all of its best moments, aka the only parts of the game with solid context to its events.

The game's actual weakness that people are too reductive to explain properly isn't about it "taking a shit on your favorite CT characters", it's that it has simply not very good pacing. In FF games you always anticipate the next event, they are thrilling to play. In CC, outside of a few events everything feels random and aimless. The first few hours(Viper Manor) are fine, they set the tone on the world's mysteries and such. Sadly the game always feels the same despite it's variety, twists and alternate world mechanic, besides the Dead Sea part. There is no proper balance of harmonies and dissonances, the game may be beautiful and dreamlike but it always got this feeling to it, which makes it feel monotonous. The alternate world not being different enough doesn't help it, same with most of the character quests being very barebones, it needed more of quests like Skelly's. It's basically a PS1 JRPG for better or worse: great art/music, ambitious story, novel mechanics but with an implementation that makes it not as solid as a package than some of the SNES classics.
 
I love that as time passes, more and more people realize Chrono Cross is a masterpiece. Hopefully one day haters will admit that it was a better game than Chrono Trigger all along.

I would be interested in seeing more sequels like Chrono Cross that seem only vaguely attached to the previous entry at first, but in reality everything is connected.

Only ones I can think of are Mother 3 and Doom 2016. Would definitely love to see more.

Thanks, looking for the library with the crashed Epoch right now.

*Neo Epoch. It actually looks fairly different (Belthasar explains why he built a second time machine -- a single-seater -- near the end of the game).

5Y8AHc3.png


out of curiosity, does anyone know which key-essential individuals from the dev team would need to be brought back together to make a 'chrono break' even remotely possible?

The only essential ones are the scenario writer Masato Kato and the composer Yasunori Mitsuda, really. Yasuyuki Honne (the art director for these backgrounds, who was also an artist on Chrono Trigger) would be great too but he isn't a freelancer unlike Kato and Mitsuda.

By the way


ObMu2SZ.png




^Fuck this room.

You can actually win easily by cheating (
by pausing the game before mashing the button)
).
 

EmSeta

Member
One of the most beautiful experiences in gaming ever, both in visuals and sound. Needs a remaster badly though, the battle system is so slow and clunky it’s unbearable (even if the ideas are pretty good).
 

Psxphile

Member
Strange to see a new thread about this, these bg rips have existed and out there on the web for years at this point. Still, seeing people reminisce about Chrono Cross and the era of top-tier 2D backgrounds is always a good excuse for a thread.

One of my faves:

RQHk5SL.png
 

Raging Spaniard

If they are Dutch, upright and breathing they are more racist than your favorite player
Strange to see a new thread about this, these bg rips have existed and out there on the web for years at this point. Still, seeing people reminisce about Chrono Cross and the era of top-tier 2D backgrounds is always a good excuse for a thread.

One of my faves:

RQHk5SL.png

For me personally its nice because these are things I can use for inspiration and reference in my day job, so it was cool to come across a comprehensive resource.

These things are also cyclical, not everyone finds out about things as soon as everyone else does, thats why you see a new 2D backgrounds thread in GAF every 2 years or so :p
 
Strange to see a new thread about this, these bg rips have existed and out there on the web for years at this point. Still, seeing people reminisce about Chrono Cross and the era of top-tier 2D backgrounds is always a good excuse for a thread.

One of my faves:

RQHk5SL.png

Fun fact:

According to the game's artbook, the floating, fiery sphere burning in the background in this scene isn't the sun:


It's the Frozen Flame.
 

hateradio

The Most Dangerous Yes Man
Strange to see a new thread about this, these bg rips have existed and out there on the web for years at this point. Still, seeing people reminisce about Chrono Cross and the era of top-tier 2D backgrounds is always a good excuse for a thread.

One of my faves:

https://i.imgur.com/RQHk5SL.png
I remember ripping some of these images and the FMVs with PSMplay or something like that, years ago.

It's nice to look back at these things though.
 

juanhito29

Neo Member
Hello !
like you i'm a huge fan of chrono cross and i'm sad to see that the link to download all of the backgrounds is dead.
Could someone be kind and put it online again PLEASE !!
 

Dacon

Banned
Man I played the holy shit out of Chrono Cross back in the day, mostly motivated by the music and the backgrounds.

The game was gorgeous and I could listen to those tracks forever.
 

wipeout364

Member
I know a lot of people don’t like this game but something about it just clicked with me at the time. I loved everything about it. One of my favorite RPG’s of all time. Those screens on the first page really show how beautiful the game could be and so exotic at times.
 

KiteGr

Member
Nice to see that a game we'll never gona get is still good.
I've totally regretted not pirating stuff back in the day!
FUCK Region Coding!
 
Hello !
like you i'm a huge fan of chrono cross and i'm sad to see that the link to download all of the backgrounds is dead.
Could someone be kind and put it online again PLEASE !!

Hey I remember downloading the backgrounds a couple of years ago. I checked my computer and I found the rar file! I'll try uploading it on either Dropbox or Google Drive.
 
Love these backgrounds and thank you ValiantTraveler ValiantTraveler for reupload, I'm thinking about doing tattoo with one of these because Chrono Cross is for me best game of all time (love everything about it) and I'm replaying it on yearly basis (now too, arrived at terra tower). Maybe i'm triggered but it kinda bugs me when people go out their way to say like OP in this thread "Not my favourite game by any stretch!11" it's like what's the point? lmao
 

Pagusas

Elden Member
I wish Square would stop trying to make remakes and overcomplicate things and instead just go back and hire some badass artist to remake all the backgrounds at like 8k, and remake the character models and CG sequences. Leave the rest alone. That should be a fraction of the cost of the remake and we’d all buy it in droves.
 
I wish Square would stop trying to make remakes and overcomplicate things and instead just go back and hire some badass artist to remake all the backgrounds at like 8k, and remake the character models and CG sequences. Leave the rest alone. That should be a fraction of the cost of the remake and we’d all buy it in droves.
This. Honestly I don't want Chrono Cross remake because I know they'd fuck it up one way or another. I've stated many times just like you all they would need to do is upres backgrounds, upgrade character models, arenas and vfx. One would think it's easiest way to do remakes from classic jRPGs but seeing how they are treating FF7 I don't have any hope lol
 
Don't really care for the gameplay in Cross, but the enviroments were amazing. Chronopolis was the best, that place that looked like it was frozen in time with waves of water stuck in place? very mysterious and dreamlike with it's atmosphere and music. My fave types of places in rpgs.

Final Fantasy XIII had a place that was similar in the form of Lake bresha and it's ruins. water waves and fire turned to crystal amidst ancient ruins and eerie yet relaxing background music. Too bad the rest of FFXIII did not carry the same feel afterwords.
 

Holgren

Member
Chrono Cross is one of the few games that evoke strong emotions from me. The game will always hold a special place in my heart, and as such, be remembered as one of the best I played.
 

juanhito29

Neo Member
ValiantTraveler ValiantTraveler THANKS YOU SO MUCH !!!!!!!!!!
I was so desperate.. didn't find them anymore but, yes , it's all there !!
Unfortunately, the game isn' as simple as a background and character in polygon above....
I wanted to put these beautiful picture in a ESRGAN and step up the beauty of it all but it is not as easy...
But i get them and i really thanks you from the bottom of my heart of gamer !!!
 
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