[Classic] Manhogan Chrono Trigger: Apparently Shin Hasn't Played Chrono Trigger Either

I hate myself and have no real plans for at least the next two days so I figured I would give this a go. I haven't run an emulator in probably literally at least 10 years, what's an easy one that:

-Doesn't run like shit
-Supports 360 analog sticks

I had previously bookmarked a Retroarch thread that got made on GAF recently since apparently a lot of people are saying that's the new end-all emulator and it supports a lot of custom shit. I finally got it set up and picture quality wise it beats out the other emulators I tried below, but I get occasional audio static/distorations that I can't figure out, and I also can't get it to recognize my 360 analog sticks in-game (in settings it's fine).

I tried bsnes and I have no audio problems and it would take my stick settings fine, but it doesn't look nearly as good as retroarch and was having some slowdown issues. I tried zsnes (which was literally the only one out there when I was doing this back in like 1999) but it kinda looks like shit and I couldn't get it to recognize my analog sticks either, which to clarify I like using for field movement, especially since the 360 dpad sucks ass.

From the little I have played messing around the difficulty seems kinda hilarious. Gato only gives you one silver point now (wat) and the only reason he didn't wipe me on two occasions was because Marle was too far away for him to counter-attack, and this was after Crono was killed almost immediately. Good times. Going to grind for a bit to get the better gear down in Porre. If I can figure this bullshit out.

Edit: Hmmm, I may have gotten my audio issue fixed, switching to one of the five SNES cores I thought I had already tried (but apparently not) seems to have done it. Would still like to get the analog working but I can deal with that if need be. Retroarch is pretty clearly a fantastic option, but goddamn is it not user friendly at all. Apparently once you get all the crazy setup stuff done it's great for playing hooked up to TV's and whatnot, but fuck man.

Edit 2: Was mistaken on Gato, he gives you 15 silver points but only 10 xp and ONE Tech Point, so he's not worth it. Even after gaining a couple of levels and getting some better gear he is still god-tier, you're way better off just doing battles in the forest.

Edit 3: Played for about an hour, got to 600 AD and picked up Lucca before stopping for the night. I grinded to level 5 which gave me enough money to pick up the Steel Saber (800), Bronze Helm (200) and Bronze Mail (520?) in Porre for Crono. I had also already picked up the Bronze Helm and Karate Gi for Marle before remembering that'd be largely useless since you don't get her back for a while anyway. Getting Crono up to 5 and that gear seems to have really helped the initial hump, when you first get dumped in 600 AD and you just have Crono I breezed through all of those battles mostly one-shotting enemies.

I'm not sure how much time I can put into this on a daily basis, but I'll try to play at least a bit each day, I actually did start this because I felt bad for Hyde :lol. Also I just last week had gone back to the DS version to wrap up the endings and arena items and some other miscellaneous bullshit I hadn't done initially to get the 100% on the game, so this gives me a decent excuse to do a clean playthrough anyway. Time permitting I would probably be down for a FF6 one later, that's still my favorite game and I haven't played it in a few years, do you have the link for the difficulty patch you're talking about on that one?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

It's been forever, but I thought that the Black Omen stayed static across all time periods?

Also the FF6 run should happen, we should just plan it for maybe towards the end of the year to let people wrap up other stuff first, and people might also have potential downtime at school/work/whatever.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Wrapped up the first trip to 600 AD, With everyone at level 7/8 Yakra was still a bitch and a half, lost Lucca near the end but just barely pulled it off. So far this is running a pretty fine line between being hard and just stupid grindy, we'll see how it continues to pan out.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

IIRC even if you do everything perfectly there's always one guilty, I could be wrong on that though. Also good call on waiting for Lucca to bail you out, I probably would have totally forgotten about that. I did remember the Lode Sword being in that dungeon though so I didn't buy it.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I'll have to double check, I thought you had to answer "I started it" or something along those lines, otherwise if you deny it he says that you bumped into her on purpose. It's been forever since I would have ever looked into it though, especially since it kinda doesn't matter much either way beyond getting more mid-tonics in your care package which in a normal playthrough is irrelevant.

Taking Hyde's advice I cleared the prison with minimal issues except for the boss who in typical fashion I just barely beat, and that included using all ~15 or so of my mid-tonics and several regular tonics. In the first ruins in 2300 I found that Marle's Provoke is a lifesaver; it seems to always work and lasts a long time (forever?) so it's great for stopping the jester-looking enemies from doing the group heal all the time while you deal with everyone else, etc. Lucca's Hypnowave seems pretty hit or miss on working so I stopped bothering with trying that.

I did just get my first game over in the Sewers; I don't normally bother in a regular playthrough because it's not necessary, but for some reason I could have sworn that you could make it through the enemies in there okay at this point in the game. So my thought was run in there and get some stuff since IIRC there's a Lightning Sword and maybe one or two other things in there, but you can't avoid either encounter from the entrance and the enemies were doing like twice the HP of any of my characters per hit. Not sure if I'm remembering wrong, if he buffed this zone specifically to avoid what I was trying to do, or maybe if I'm remembering right but I was just running away from battles to avoid the deaths and get to chests.

So in any case that was a no-go, was hoping to get that sword and whatever else in there before fighting the boss in the food stores so we'll see what happens.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Spekkio is God Tier now.

Also the game is too clever to let me get better gear early on; I went to pre-historic times first but they won't let you trade for items yet, and there's a good armor at the Dactyl Nest but you have to fight at least one battle that's impossible at this point (and you can't run away).

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?