Today's Notes 8/18/21: The Part Where Chrono Cross Address Everything Wrong With Chrono Trigger

Good morning everyone,

We begin with last night's stream of Chrono Cross where we continued on to the Dead Sea, and while the battle against the Highwayman was almost a cakewalk, the battle against Miguel was everything I was dreading because unlike nearly every other boss fight to that point, Miguel actually combos some abilities, such as using a Turn Black element followed by a powerful White Innate element to devastate my team. Now I did try to plan for the fight, building around Blue Innate Elements because he wouldn't be able to seal those and thus I could chip away at him with what ever elements I had on hand with the hope of maybe triggering Frog Prince (note: was not successful at that)

From there it was off to the 'Other World' to rescue Riddle at Viper Manor while recruiting Zoah, Karsh, Marcy, Viper, Fargo and of course Riddle herself. Since we went back to the 'Other World' I was able to have characters met their duplicates, Norris, FunGuy Van & Zappa in particular. The rescue of Riddle was pretty straight forward with various puzzles, good thing I had the strategy guide on hand otherwise I might have missed something.

Now since we dealt with the Dead Sea and Miguel, this means we should address the issue with Chrono Cross as a sequel to Chrono Trigger.  Let's keep in mind that I did not care for Chrono Trigger as a I feel it's an over bloated mess with all the time travel that feels off in terms of how it deals with the consequences of time travel, it's treated  as big happy go lucky adventure to save the world. Yeah but first rule of time travel is that when you change something in the past it does effect the future and that's barely addressed in Chrono Trigger. The entire concept of Chrono Cross is based around fighting fate and the consequences of doing one thing or another. 

We see that through out Chrono Cross with every character that has a duplicate where there are huge differences. Serge is a alive in one timeline, dead in the other, Van and his father are rich in one timeline and poor in the other, Fargo is a pirate ship captain in one timeline and a captain of a cruise ship in the other... and what lead to each of those fates (and those of others through out Chrono Cross) is the choice that were made. In Chrono Trigger, we never saw the results of all the tampering that was done, how lives were possibly ruined by Chrono, Lucca, Marle and the rest of the gang, it's more of just chasing down Lavos and stopping it no matter the cost, while in Chrono Cross we do see how certain choices and lead to a difference in how things play.

Hell a lot of this is really cover in Harle's dialog with Serge once he and Lynx exchange bodies, regarding who is to say one reality is better than another. 

I'm sure that probably pissed a lot of folks off.... and here's one more... Chrono Cross has better game play that Chrono Trigger... BITE ME!

Anyway, here's the list of clips from last night for you to enjoy!

• We Now Have The PS2 Metal Slug Anthology 
  
• Defeating The Highwayman!
• Free Fall.... Funny... Real Funny
• Nicely Done Irenes 
• It's all your fault! 
• Defeating Miguel!
• Van meets Van 
• Defeating the Roachster!
• Defeating Hell's Cook! 
• Of course it goes to Van! 
• Defeating Grobyc! 
• Defeating Guillot 
• Run Away! 
• Reflections... 
• What do you mean? 

Following the stream we raided SmoresDaFloof who was playing Final Fantasy XIV Online, they were one of the first people I came across when I started streaming (at the time they were using a different name) and they use to play a lot of Overwatch (they are why I got interested in that game). It is funny that when Smores saw what i was playing their reaction was of shock of wondering how I was playing Chrono Cross since it is a game of great significance to them Anyway you can check out SmoresDaFloof over on twitch.tv/smoresdafloof! 

Speaking of Overwatch, I had three consecutive games of Mayhem last night playing as D.va where I didn't die once... also managed to earn Play of the Game in all three matches.

We added a trio of games to the collection, Raging Loop and Root Letter, both for the PlayStation 4... these are both visual novels and I figure they were serve as great 'Saturday Night' games the way the Zero Escape trilogy did. Also tracked down the PlayStation 2 Metal Slug Anthology which collects the all 7 of the Metal Slug games... I believe there is a PS4 digital version, if there is, we might just stream that and leave the PS2 version permanently sealed.

And as I was writing this, today's mail arrived and we added Disney Pixar's Brave for the PlayStation 3,  Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse (also the for the PlayStation 3) and Family Guy: The Video Game for the PlayStation 2. Brave and Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse I have streamed before using the Steam versions, so the PS3 versions will allow us to go after the PlayStation achievements.

As I was organizing my shelves yesterday (finally), I found a copy of WWF Betrayal for the Gameboy Color. Released in August of 2001, it is a beat 'em up, where you are to rescue Stephanie McMahon at the request of Vince McMahon and in return he'll give you a WWF Championship opportunity... so you could say the Billion Dollar Princess is in another castle. The funny thing is that there was a story line in 1999 where Stephanie was kidnapped by the Ministry of Darkness and Vince begged Steve Austin to rescue her. in WWF Betrayal you play as either Austin, The Rock, The Undertaker (in the American Bad Ass gimmick) or Triple H, and depending on who you choose, the other three will serve as bosses for you to deal with. Anyway, I remember it being an okay little game that had limited replay value, but I do remember there being some actual story variance particularly if you play as Triple H since he's the only heel as an option to play as.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout lasted 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 455 kcal. The exercises for today were Weaving Combo #2, Straight Combo #1 and Beginner Combo #2. We're up to 96 out of 100 for the Karen's Best Friend achievement , proving my guess that we would knock it out by Thursday wrong, because of how Fitness Boxing 2 will alternate giving 2 and 3 points for a daily work out. So we'll knock it out on Friday.

For tonight's stream, Iceman said he won't be available, so we'll do some random gaming and just have a good time!

And on that note we'll see you later  around 6:30 PM Eastern over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!