Radical Dreamers

What is the Satellaview System?
The Satellaview System, also called BS-X, is an add-on for the Japanese Super Famicom system (Super Nintendo in America) released in 1995. It plugged into the SF and linked to a satellite that would broadcast games. The games were downloaded and saved to a special cartridge which could then be played just like normal. The Satellaview System also offered things like game news, cheats etc. The only problem was, it was very expensive, going for the equivelent of $150 plus a membership fee. By then, gamers were saving for the Playstation, and few actually bought the system. It was never released in America, and it died out pretty quickly in Japan. About 40 games were made for it, and only by a few companies. One of those companies, however, happened to be Squaresoft. They released about 4 games for it, and one of them was Radical Dreamers. None of their games received any notice, and until Chrono Cross, Radical Dreamers was forgotten completely. For a complete list of games (and some ROMs) for the Satellaview, check this place out (you'll have to do a search). Everything that starts with BS-X is a Satellaview rom.

Is there a ROM for Radical Dreamers?
I don't know how they did it, but somehow someone must've found a Satellaview cartridge with Radical Dreamers on it, and they produced a ROM. Since the Sattelaview cartrigde ran in a SF/SNES, it could be emulated the same way as well. The ROM used to be pretty rare to find, but with all the new interest generated, it's quite easy to find. I have it on my site with a couple indirect mirrors. (meaning you'll have to find the rom on the page.)

Is it possible to play the game through?
Yes! If you haven't see the home page, go there and read it!

How does Radical Dreamers relate to CT and CC?
Radical Dreamers is supposed to have been a sequel based off of a sub-plot of Chrono Trigger. Chrono Cross isn't a sequel to Radical Dreamers, but rather it is a newer, longer, somewhat different version of it. The main characters in Radical Dreamers are Serge, Kid, and Lynx, and the initial objective is to steal the frozen flame from Snakebone (ie Viper) Manor. Sound familiar, CC fans?

Is anyone trying to translate this game?
See the home page. It's all there in it's black and white glory. There is a patch out.

What is the gameplay like?
Like I said, this is a text based RPG. It's hard to describe, but the player actually makes choices one by one to decide where and what the characters will do. It's kind of like the old "choose your own adventure books". Even the battles are based off of choices, and have no HP or MP or any of that. The characters literally state whether or not they're hurt or in good health, and you continue based on that.

What about the music?
The music in Chrono Cross is very closely based off of Radical Dreamers. Many of the themes are excactly alike, with the only difference being the synthesizer. The music was composed by Yasunori Mitsuda, the same person who did the music of Chrono Trigger, Xenogears and Chrono Cross. If you like game music, there isn't a published CD of the soundtrack, since there are only 16 short tracks and this game was never popular, but I have the SPC files on this site.

SPC files?
Well, emulators like ZSNES and Snes9x emulate .smc files into games, right? Well, .spc files are isolated music files from the .smc files, and they can be emulated by certain programs. It's technically just like MIDI, and the files are just the same size. The files sound exactly like they do in the game, and no large files are required! All 13 tracks of Radical Dreamers zipped are compressed into a file 173 kb in size. Cool, huh? Almost every game for the SNES has a full set of .spc files for it. You can find them here. They don't have the Radical Dreamers set at that site, but you can find the set in my files section. If you need an emulator to play .spc files, so to this site and download a SPC plugin for Winamp. Also, most .spc files are zipped with a special compression called RAR, so you may need to check out a RAR decompresor.

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