Squaresoft: Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger and the Golden Age of the JRPG

For a stretch of the 1990s, no studio told stories in games like Squaresoft. Founded in 1986, Square turned the Japanese role-playing game into a medium for genuine emotion and spectacle, anchored by Final Fantasy, a series that reinvented itself with every entry while always chasing the same thing: a story that could make you cry, a world you never wanted to leave, and a Nobuo Uematsu score you would hum for decades. Then it made Chrono Trigger, which many still call the finest JRPG ever, and a run of experimental classics no other studio would attempt.

This is the studio's golden age: the Final Fantasy saga, Chrono Trigger, the strange and beautiful experiments, and the music that tied it all together. Here is the map.

The golden age of the JRPG

Square's magic was consistency of ambition. Every Final Fantasy threw out the last game's systems and built new ones, so the series never stood still, yet each entry aimed for the same emotional heights. Around that flagship, Square built an astonishing run of role-playing games, from the time-travelling Chrono Trigger to the strange, philosophical Xenogears and the jewel-like Vagrant Story. And through all of it ran Nobuo Uematsu's music, some of the most beloved ever written for the medium.