Time Travel

The Six Eras

Chrono Trigger unfolds across six distinct time periods, each with its own civilisation, conflicts, and musical identity. The genius of the game’s design is that every era is causally connected: actions in one period ripple forward and backward through time, making the player genuinely responsible for the shape of history. Hover over each era card to open a time gate and explore what waits within.

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65,000,000 BC — Prehistoric

Primordial Earth

A world of dense jungles, erupting volcanoes, and warring species. Ayla, chieftain of the Ioka tribe, rules through strength alone. The Reptites — intelligent lizard-beings — contest human dominance. This era ends with the arrival of Lavos, the alien parasite that falls from space and buries itself in the planet’s core, beginning a 65-million-year feeding cycle.

Key Music Ayla’s Theme — percussive, primal, built on tribal drumming. Burn! Bobonga! — the feast dance rhythm. Lavos’s Theme — first heard at the moment of impact.
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12,000 BC — Antiquity

The Kingdom of Zeal

An advanced magical civilisation floating on islands above a frozen Earth. Queen Zeal rules a kingdom powered by Lavos energy. Her daughter Schala is compassionate and magically gifted; her son Janus is the child who will grow into Magus. This era contains the game’s most devastating moments, including Crono’s death at the Ocean Palace and the destruction of the floating islands.

Key Music Schala’s Theme — wistful, cyclically structured, never fully resolving. Corridors of Time — hypnotic ambient loop. Undersea Palace — tense and descending.
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600 AD — Middle Ages

The War of Guardia

A world at war. The Kingdom of Guardia battles Magus and his Mystic army. Frog — the cursed knight Glenn, transformed by Magus — guards the Masamune sword and seeks vengeance for his fallen mentor Cyrus. This era feels closest to classical fantasy: knights, castles, magic swords, an evil wizard. It provides Frog’s backstory and sets up one of the game’s most memorable optional sequences: the duel with Magus.

Key Music Frog’s Theme — a heroic brass march with genuine sweep. Magus’s Theme — dark, organ-led, Baroque. A Knight’s Vow — grief-carrying theme at Cyrus’s grave.
Chrono Trigger battle screenshot, 1000 AD Present era

1000 AD — Present

The Millennial Fair

The game’s starting point and the era the party returns to most frequently. The Millennial Fair celebrates 1000 years of Guardia — it is here that Crono meets Marle and the adventure begins when Lucca’s teleporter malfunctions. The Present represents civilised baseline reality, the anchor against which all other eras are measured. Crono’s trial for “kidnapping” Princess Nadia takes place here.

Key Music Chrono Trigger (Main Theme) — the optimistic title fanfare. Guardia Millennial Fair — joyful and bustling. A Kingdom’s Trial — tense courtroom drama.
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2300 AD — Future

The Ruined World

A dead planet. The aftermath of Lavos’s emergence on 1999 AD’s Day of Lavos. Humanity has been reduced to scavenging survivors hiding in sealed domes. Robots patrol the wastelands. The few humans alive have largely given up hope. The Future is the game’s darkest era and provides the party with its core motivation: this is what the world becomes if Lavos is not stopped.

Key Music The Day of Lavos — overwhelming wall of sound at planetary scale. Ruined World — desolate, sparse, empty. People Without Hope — quiet defeated sadness.
The Epoch time machine, used to travel between eras

∞ — End of Time

Outside Chronology

A metaphysical location outside normal time — a small platform in darkness where Gaspar, the Guru of Time, dispenses wisdom and waits. The End of Time is reached whenever three or more party members pass through a time gate simultaneously; it serves as the hub connecting all periods. Spekkio, the Master of War, teaches magic here. After acquiring the Epoch, the party stores it at the End of Time for instant era travel.

Key Music At the End of Time — mysterious floating arpeggios, peaceful. Spekkio’s theme changes with the party’s level, reflecting his shapeshifting nature.
Connections

How the Eras Link

The brilliance of Chrono Trigger’s design is that the six eras are not separate stories but a single causal chain. Every major event reverberates across time:

Lavos falls in 65,000,000 BC and begins feeding on the planet’s energy. The Kingdom of Zeal (12,000 BC) taps that energy for power, accelerating Lavos’s growth. The war of 600 AD is fought partly because of forces set in motion in Antiquity. The Present (1000 AD) carries the echoes of every preceding era in its culture and geography. The Future (2300 AD) shows what happens when nothing is done. The End of Time stands outside all of it, watching.

This interconnection means that the player’s actions in one era have visible consequences in others. It is not a metaphor — it is mechanics. The game’s thirteen endings are different precisely because the party can intervene at different points in the causal chain, each intervention changing what the world becomes.

I’ve always believed that a game’s story should feel like it was made for you specifically. The thirteen endings were our way of making that literal.

— Yuji Horii