I’ve played a lot of video games to completion over the years. I tend to finish these games once and then move on, periodically poking back in for a few minutes here and there. However, there have been a few games I’ve played through, start to finish, more than once. Metroid Prime, for example, I’ve played to completion four times. The SNES RPG Chrono Trigger, however, stands alone as a game I have played through at least a half dozen times. Three of those times were end on end. This game was that good.

With Chrono Trigger confirmed for Nintendo DS this November in North America, there’s a great deal of excitement floating around. There are all kinds of questions as well regarding additional material that’s being added for the port, but without a doubt, the game is going to sell very well. This feature will focus on some of the more obscure aspects of the game in great detail. That means this will serve as your spoiler alert. If you’ve never played Chrono Trigger and you don’t want to have the game’s various twists and turns ruined for you, stop reading now and ignore all of these from now on. Prepare yourself, for I am about to reminisce.

Today, I’ll talk about the robot in the game.

Generally, he’s referred to as Robo. He first appears as a broken Prometheus robot when Chrono and company travel to 2300 AD. Lucca uses her skill with machines (circa 1300 years before, but who’s counting?) to repair the robot, who when asked, calls himself R-66Y, but suggests you can call him Robo. I named him R-66Y, just to be an ass. He joins the team and becomes an invaluable tool with the ability to analyze enemies for weaknesses as well as a strong physical fighter. He is one of the few characters in the game who never gains the ability to use magic.

Robo’s tragic situation as part of a robotic force that’s supposed to “recycle” humans rather than aiding them comes to the fore when an encounter with the rest of his batch leaves him in a severely damaged state. He is rejected by his robotic girlfriend because of his failure to act against the humans (it’s even cheesier than it sounds). Fortunately, our heroes manage to fight off the attacking robots and repair Robo once more. With nothing to return to, he heads off to serve his new group of friends.

One of the more interesting things that happens with Robo in his adventure is when he volunteers to be left in the distant past of 600 AD in order to keep an important forest from dying off. A quick skip four centuries ahead finds the forest flourishing and Robo broken once again, but of course, it’s nothing a tune-up doesn’t fix. For the rest of the game, every time your return to 600 AD, you can see Robo with a plow attached to him, tilling the earth for the forest. The idea of him ceaselessly toiling to keep that forest from dying out for hundreds of years really stuck with me while playing the game, especially when finding his motionless form propped against a wall and adorned with flowers and other honorary symbols. Futurama fans may remember a similar sensation from the “Roswell that Ends Well” episode where Bender’s head is dropped accidentally in a desert in the year 2000 and then recovered in 3000.

The character of Robo as an infinitely self-sacrificing being is remarkable. As a robot, he doesn’t exactly “die” in any sense the other characters might, but he’s clearly self aware. It makes him a pretty compelling playable character in the game. With or without his disco-ball laser attack.

Image source: Creative Uncut