... More work goes into videogame soundtracks than many people realize -- there's original music composed for most of them, and even if much of it sounds similar, still someone had to go to the trouble of figuring it out, writing it down, and then turning it into actual music for the game. These days, the latter part often involves throwing a lot of money at an orchestra to play the music and record it. In the days of Chrono Trigger, when you were limited to a maximum of 4 megabytes of storage for the WHOLE GAME, you had to have experts with MIDI synthesizers try to make it sound like music. Most such music sounds clearly electronic and weak. Chrono Trigger's original soundtrack, while still MIDI, managed to rise above the MIDI and aspire to, if not reach, the heights of symphonic music. You could at least imagine what this amazingly well-composed and arranged music WOULD sound like if a real orchestra got involved. In the Final Fantasy Chronicles reissue of Chrono Trigger, that finally comes true; and the result is everything we could have hoped for. The sweeping, dramatic opening of Crono's adventures, the lush romantic Marle's theme, Schala's sad chimes, all of these are multiplied and elevated by their opportunity to be played as they should have been. The only (very slight) disappointment, for me, was Magus' Theme ("Dance with Death"); in a sense I feel their interpretation of the theme emphasized the "dance" more than "death", so to speak. Even this isn't a bad track -- it's a good one -- just not quite as emphatically, hammeringly dramatic as I would have preferred it to be interpreted. Unfortunately, not all of the orchestral tracks made it to this CD. (I'll try to find out which one does have them all). Only the last three were orchestrated. The rest is a distillation of the three-CD original soundtrack -- the best tracks, overall, from those three. There are a couple that I like which are missing, but overall whoever chose these had good jugement. If you don't have the original, but like the music, go get this one. Now! Click that link! GO!
Chrono Trigger has one of the greatest soundtracks of video game history. This CD has all the main tracks that you need to hear from the game. They all sound great and keep the Super Nintendo memories intact! You will enjoy this soundtrack no matter what kind of gamer you are.