Set developed by cirellio, guide written by benit149

Hello, and welcome to my achievements guide for the SNES version of Chrono Trigger, one of the finest JRPGs ever released on the console. While there are only two truly missable achievements in the entire set, the routing for getting all of the various endings and miscellaneous objectives may seem a bit daunting to a newcomer. Hopefully this will help set you on an efficient path towards mastering this fantastic game.

Obviously, there will be heavy story spoilers involved due to many achievements requiring specific plot triggers. If you wish to enjoy the story, please stop reading here.

I won’t be going into detail about characters, gameplay mechanics or the story route since I believe there are tons of guides and videos that can cover that on my behalf. My goal is to focus on a sensible order for mastering this set, considering that the achievements themselves are not sorted in an intuitive manner. You will need to beat the game numerous times to see the huge number of endings available, which are accomplished according to what point in the story you go beat the final boss Lavos.

There are a couple of points you can use to jump straight to him without having to complete the entire story. The most obvious one is in End of Time by examining the shining bucket to the right of the Old Man. The other less obvious point is at the very beginning of New Game+. During the Millennial Fair, Crono and Marle can go into the right telepod instead of the left one as the story dictates to go to Lavos by themselves. There is one achievement where Crono must solo the final boss, which is done by waiting for Crono to be alone before getting into the left telepod as the story dictates, then getting on the right telepod instead of the left.

Without further ado, let’s get into this.

---

NEW GAME

This is going to be story heavy, so you’ll earn a lot of progression achievements automatically. First, have Crono speak to his mother downstairs to get his allowance for Don’t Spend it All in One Place. The Millennial Fair is the first sticking point because your actions determine the outcome of a trial not too long from here. In the meantime, you can get some basic achievements like Metal Joints, Gambler, Kanpai! and Ticket Hoarder for participating in the fair’s various minigames.

Running into Marle is when the trial’s outcome starts being determined. One achievement is Saint for getting a unanimous not guilty verdict, while the other is Sinner for getting a unanimous guilty verdict. You can get one in New Game, then save the other for New Game +. This is what you have to do for each one:

Saint

• bump into Marle
• talk to her first before picking up her pendant, then say yes when she asks to have it back
• say yes when she asks to join you
• after interacting with the old man weapon seller in the first screen, he will ask about buying the pendant off of you. Decline his offer
• do not eat the old man’s food (pink lunch package in the lower left area)
• save the little girl’s cat and bring it back to her WITHOUT having spoken to her first (apparently the juror attached to this action is glitched)
• do not move AT ALL while Marle is buying candy. Wait for her to say she’s done before proceeding. Take your hands off the controller if you need to
• during the trial, say that you were the one who initiated contact with Marle
• when the Chancellor asks if you had been tempted, say no multiple times

Sinner

• bump into Marle
• pick up the pendant, then talk to her
• try to sell the pendant at the fair to the weapon seller
• eat the old man’s food
• talk to the little girl, then don’t bring her cat to her
• move when Marle is buying candy
• during the trial, say that Marle was the one who initiated contact
• when the Chancellor asks if you had been tempted, say yes

Another achievement you can get this early is Crazy Cat Lady, where you need to win minigames in Norstein Bekkler’s tent to earn various prizes, ultimately earning cat food after exhausting the initial prizes. Play the 80 silver points minigame to first earn a cat, then cat food afterward. The goal is to amass enough cats in Crono’s house until a purple one shows up, netting the achievement. The trouble is that this task is mind-numbingly boring. The best place to amass silver points is the soda guzzling minigame using a turbo controller. If Crono is not in the party, Ayla can also play this minigame. Turn your emulator’s fast forward function to the fastest to save some time. You don’t want to fight Gato repeatedly so you can avoid potentially invalidating the Frog of War achievement, which I’ll explain shortly.

It thus becomes a tedious routine of going between the soda guzzling game and Bekkler’s tent to do the 80 silver points game. For this minigame, assign your rapid fire button to A, then just run back and forth between the packs to launch them at the kiwalas while paying attention to the hostage and raising their chain if needed. This setup makes it significantly easier than trying to do it yourself, especially since you need to play this game upwards of 50 times to earn enough cat food to lure so many cats. You have the option of checking your progress by going to Crono’s house and counting the number of cats plus checking how many ounces of cat food you have with the bucket in Crono’s room.

In my experience, I got 9 cats to appear before the purple one showed up as the 10th. Including the cat that already lives there, that’s 11 cats total. However, you never actually have to go to Crono’s house – the achievement will pop the moment the purple cat appears in his house, even if you’re not there. To save time, ignore Crono’s house and just get into the rhythm at the fair until you get the cheevo automatically. Get a movie or a TV show going on the side if it helps you pass the time. If this sounds too boring for you right now, you can save it for later.

Once you’re ready, follow Marle to 600 AD where she had been whisked off to. The first truly missable achievement starts to come into play here, which is Frog of War. A few hours from now, you will meet an NPC named Spekkio, and his form changes depending on what the party leader’s level is. This means that only Crono’s level determines what Spekkio will look like, and you need to keep him at level 9 or lower for him to appear as a frog. A normal playthrough tends to get Crono over level 10, which changes Spekkio to a kiwala. You don’t want that to happen. That’s why I suggested not fighting Gato if you’re going for Crazy Cat Lady.

In order to get this, you need to run away from every non-mandatory battle up until you reach a location called the End of Time later in the story. To run away in battle, press the L1 and R1 buttons simultaneously. If the characters can’t flee, a message will come up that says, “Can’t run away,” meaning it’s a mandatory battle. This tends to happen with story-critical fights and boss encounters. A later era, 2300 AD, has quite a few mandatory battles that Crono is forced into, which could get his level too high. To prevent this, have him killed off during a battle before the others defeat the enemies. Crono won’t get the experience, though he will revive with 1 HP after each fight. The other characters’ levels don’t matter here, so you can get them as strong as you want. Keep this achievement in the forefront of your mind as you proceed with the plot.

So, back to the current part of the story. In Manolia Cathedral, very shortly after Frog joins, go into the back of the cathedral and head all the way to the first left stairs, going into the room at the left that has three treasure chests. The drawer on the left has a Naga-ette Bromide, which will result in an ambush with three Naga-ettes at this point in the story. If you come back later, there will be no battle. Oddly enough, the bromide will not appear in your inventory, but you do have it. Later in the story after defeating Zombor and you’re able to cross the bridge south, go to the first town and look for a Residence with a glowing drawer occupied by an old man and his family. Examine the drawer several times, then try to leave and the old man will ask for the bromide in exchange for a Magic Tab. This nets you the … Do I Even WANT to Know? achievement. This is not missable, so you can do this whenever you want in case you forget.

The next thing to worry about is when Crono’s trial concludes. Regardless of the verdict, he will be thrown into prison and awaiting execution in three days. You have two ways of escaping; knocking the guards out yourself, or letting the three days pass by waiting in your cell and having Lucca rescue you. Do the latter to get Wait 3 Days. Also in the execution chamber is another man named Fritz affixed to a guillotine. Rescue him to get Fritzy!, and he’ll take off.

The story next takes you to 2300 AD, where you can do a minigame with a racer named Johnny. To get THE MAN achievement, you need to score 1700 WP or more during the racing minigame. In terms of skill, this is the most difficult one to get overall because Crono’s car needs to be in front of Johnny for them to bump into each other as many times as possible before Crono crosses the finish line first. If Johnny wins the race, you lose all of the points you earned. This video is a good demonstration of what you need to do to get this. You can wait until later to try this, but Crono must be in the party to drive the car. First off, go into the screen to the right of Johnny at the beginning of Lab 32 and go right, defeating some monsters along the way until you find a treasure chest that contains a Race Log. Return to Johnny and talk to him for an NPC named RX-XR to appear, giving you options for how you want to race Johnny. Select the second option to be able to rotate the camera. From there, it’s just trying again and again until you improve your skill enough to get this.

When you first reach the End of Time, you can quickly get one of the nonstandard bad endings by going into the bucket to the right of the old man. This brings you to the final battle with Lavos, which will utterly wipe your party out and lead to the ending, getting you But the Future Refused to Change… If Crono is level 9 or lower, you’ll also get to fight Frog Spekkio here for Frog of War. Once you defeat Spekkio, you’re free to level up, but only to level 35 for an upcoming challenge in 12,000 BC.

Continue the storyline where the Masamune needs to be repaired. Once you’re in 65,000,000 BC to find the Dreamstone, you’ll want to pay a visit to the Hunting Grounds and encounter a Nu in battle. Have Ayla use her Charm tech to steal a Mop from it. Hang on to this – it’ll be needed for a challenge later. You’ll eventually return to Melchior with the materials needed to repair the Masamune, which you return to Frog, and the party makes their way to Magus' castle. This is where the second remaining nonstandard bad ending occurs by losing to Magus to get A Black Wind Howls.

The next non-progression achievement will be Seek the Hidden Path when you reach a town called Enhasa in 12,000 BC. There are three books in both Enhasa and Kajar that need to be opened in a specific order – water, wind, and fire. Doing this in both towns opens secret passages that lead to treasure. Be sure to examine the Poyozo doll in Kajar’s secret room to get a Black Rock, then equip it on either Lucca, Marle or Magus for Dark Eternal. Also in Zeal Palace, you can scratch the back of the Nu walking back and forth on the small bridge there to unlock the Discovered Nu’s Scratch Point! achievement. You then have the option to go back to Kajar and scratch the Nu’s back in the library to receive a Magic Tab. You need to do these before the Zeal Kingdom falls into the ocean, or else you will have to start a New Game + run.

Next is Defiant, where you need to defeat the Golem that Dalton sics on the party. The story allows you to lose to him, but you can’t do that here. He’s susceptible to Lucca’s Hypno-Wave, and is weak to magic. Have Crono, Lucca and Marle as your team for this battle and heal quickly when he attacks. Frog can replace Marle if you want AoE healing instead of single-target.

The second truly missable achievement occurs on Mt. Woe, which is The Battle Atop Mt. Woe. You need to defeat Giga Gaia without using Techs that target more than one enemy, and your party’s level must be 35 or lower. Bring Crono, Ayla and Frog, and be sure Crono and Ayla can do Volt Bite and Frog can use Heal. Target the left arm with Volt Bite until it goes down, then just target Giga Gaia himself. You don’t need to target the right arm whatsoever. Once Giga Gaia is dead, you’re finally free to level up your characters as much as you want. Carry on with the story from here.

Your party will eventually wind up on the Blackbird, where your chosen three members need to recover their weapons and the Epoch from Dalton. Having Ayla chosen prior to this section is ideal since she doesn’t need weapons to fight battles, whereas the others do. On the Blackbird’s wing, you will fight the Golem Boss, but he doesn’t actually attack due to being terrified of heights and will eventually run away. You actually want to defeat him for Before Escape, and you have a limited amount of time to do this.

Next on the agenda are The Shadow Fades Into Dust and The Shadow Mage. This is the choice to either fight or recruit Magus. Don’t bring Frog in your party, or else this will result in an automatic one-on-one duel between them. Fight and defeat Magus first for The Shadow Fades Into Dust, then reset the game and choose to recruit him for The Shadow Mage. Continue the game with him in the party.

Now that the Epoch can freely travel through time, you want to work on opening the special sealed chests for Fireproof, Waterproof, Lightningproof and Shadowproof. All of these are chests that can be ‘upgraded’ by first interacting with them in 600 AD and refusing to open them, then traveling to 1000 AD and opening the same chests then. The White Mail and Black Mail are both found in the Mayor’s house in Porre, the Blue Mail is in Truce Inn, and the Red Mail is in Guardia Castle. Once you open the chests in 1000 AD, you can go back to 600 AD to open those chests, which contain their elemental Vest equivalents.

This part of the story is when you can do various side quests, one of which is using the Chrono Trigger to get Crono back. Don’t do this yet. You want to hang on to this until you finish all of the other side quests to become strong enough to fight Lavos without Crono. This will get you the ending for A Glimmer of Hope. Once you watch the entire ending until the words The End appear, New Game + will be unlocked and you can reset the game. Now you can get Crono back. Follow some steps prior to going to Death Peak in 2300 AD, or else you won’t be able to traverse the mountain. Make sure you bring either Marle or Lucca to Death Peak prior to using the Chrono Trigger. This will initiate a special cutscene that gets you The Chrono Trigger. If neither of the girls are in the party, this scene will not play out.

As far as side quests go, a couple of them will offer you choices about which pieces of gear you want as the reward. Since you can replay the game as many times as you want, there’s no need to stress out about these choices. You can easily look up what the side quests are to get those achievements, so I won’t detail many of them here.

One side quest you do want to be wary of is for the Sun Stone. To get Solar Eclipse, you need to use Poyozo Dance at least once and not have any fire-resistant gear equipped. Poyozo Dance is a Triple Tech involving Marle, Lucca and Ayla, but you first need to find the White Rock and equip it before you can perform the Tech. The White Rock is an accessory found in the Black Omen in the room where Tera Mutant is fought fairly late into the dungeon. This also gets you the Poyozo Dance achievement once one of them equips it. You are able to complete Black Omen and defeat Zeal without needing to fight Lavos’ final two forms to beat the game, but you will need to fight Lavos’ form where he cycles between the game’s various boss fights.

Once you have the White Rock equipped, go to the Sun Keep in 2300 AD and fight Son of Sun, using Poyozo Dance at least once. This will punish you with a lot of fire-elemental counterattacks, but you can heal up after the barrage and fight it the standard way afterward. If you don’t get the achievement after that, someone may have fire-resistant armor equipped, which invalidates it.

Another note about Black Omen is that you ideally want to traverse it multiple times - first in 1000 AD, again in 600 AD, and one more time in 12,000 BC. The dungeon is not available in either 65,000,000 BC or 2300 AD. It must be done in that specific order as well. While the chests will remain opened, you can fight the monsters again for some levels, as well as steal some really good gear from Zeal each time.

There are other colored rocks that unlock Triple Techs as well. I already outlined the Black Rock for Dark Eternal earlier. For Omega Flare, go to Giant’s Claw in 600 AD, find Toma’s skeleton and open the mouth. After you fall down, head to the bottom of the room and flip the switch. Go down the ladder to pick up the Blue Rock. Equip it on either Lucca, Robo or Magus.

For Grand Dream (known as Master Mune in other versions), have Frog as the party leader and go to Denadoro Mountain in 600 AD. Go to the screen where the Free Lancers are throwing rocks at your party. Frog will catch the stone, which is the Gold Rock. Equip it on either Marle, Frog or Robo.

For Spin Strike, speak to the Nu in Laruba Ruins after defeating Azala in Tyrano Lair. It will give you a Silver Rock, which Ayla, Frog or Robo can equip.

One thing you cannot carry over in New Game + is money, so be sure to save 1,000,000 gold before beating the game to get Aristocrat. You should be able to reach this during the grind to reach level 99, which you need to do for fighting Spekkio in his strongest form to get Master of War. There are several grinding spots you can look up. The one I used was in Death Peak in 2300 AD, in the screen with the rushing line of monsters. Whichever grinding point you use, it will take even longer to complete than Crazy Cat Lady, so have a movie or TV show ready for this. If you deal 9999 damage in a single attack, you’ll also get True Power. Ayla is able to do a max damage critical attack on her own with enough levels, so have her in your party during the grinding session. The party I used against Spekkio was Crono, Ayla and Lucca for their Triple Tech.

Once you’re sure you’ve done everything you can in this playthrough, go defeat Lavos for To Far Away Times. If you do that amount of grinding, you should be strong enough to do Toxic Avenger as well. Remember the Mop you stole in 65,000,000 BC? This is where it comes into play. You need to defeat Lavos with a regular Attack having the Mop equipped on Crono. It must actually be a normal attack with the Attack command, not a Tech. Use a calculator and keep track of the Right Pod’s 30,000 HP until it’s low enough for Crono to kill. At level 99, Crono was doing around 285-290 damage with a normal attack, and around 500 damage with a critical.

That should be everything you can do in New Game. Now it’s time to move on to New Game +, which also gets you Best Invention EVER for starting an NG+ run.

---

NEW GAME +

To unlock New Game +, defeat Lavos by either using the bucket at the End of Time, using the Epoch to warp to 1999 AD, or going through all of Black Omen and defeating Zeal plus Lavos' multi-boss phase. Watch the ending and all of the credits in full until the words The End appear. Reset the game, then try to either load a file or start a New Game. A second option called New Game + will appear on the right. In NG+, you’ll be able to carry over everything except for money and story items including the Masamune, as well as Ozzie, Flea and Slash’s gear you acquire from them. Your characters will be in their default gear, so be sure to re-equip them with the better gear you inherit.

The purpose of this is to challenge Lavos at different points in the story, as well as do any achievements you might’ve missed out on in your New Game run. If you did Saint or Sinner during the previous playthrough’s trial, do the other one here. Any equipment you didn’t choose during the side quests can also be acquired here.

This is what you need to do to get all of the various endings or do specific challenges. I’ll list the endings in an order that lets you progress the story a little at a time to get each one, allowing you to reset when you get each achievement.

• Meet the Dream Team!: defeat Lavos with only Crono and Marle at the Millennial Fair in NG+, or with your party while in the Ocean Palace. To reach Lavos with just Crono and Marle, go into the right telepod instead of the left one at the Millennial Fair as the story dictates. You’ll notice a small shining light in the right telepod indicating the portal to Lavos
• No Need For Friends: defeat Lavos with only Crono. Do the same as the above, but wait for Crono to be alone before he has to go in the left telepod to advance the story. Go in the right one instead. The ending itself is the same development team one as before
• The Green Wedding: defeat Lavos after rescuing Marle and bringing her back to 1000 AD, but before going to the castle to be put on trial. Once again, use the right telepod to reach Lavos
• Good Night: defeat Lavos during your first visit to the End of Time
• Tata the Hero: defeat Lavos after the story event called Legendary Hero in 600 AD, but before acquiring the Hero’s Badge from Tata. There is some confusion about the timeframe for this ending, so one suggestion I saw was to fight Lavos after defeating Zombor on the bridge. I did that myself, and while the achievement will not immediately appear during the scene with Robo and Atropos, it will in the Middle Ages with Tata shortly after
• What Could Have Been: defeat Lavos after getting the Hero’s Medal from Tata, but before the Gate Key is stolen the day after Ayla’s party
• Through the Ages: defeat Lavos after getting the stolen Gate Key in 65,000,000 BC, but before Frog rejoins the party
• Hero of Time: defeat Lavos after bringing the repaired Masamune to Frog and watching him destroy the rock blocking the entrance to Magic Cave, but before defeating Magus
• Bow Down to Your Lizard Masters!: defeat Lavos after beating Magus in 600 AD but before defeating Azala and Black Tyrano. Go to the Gate in Mystic Mountain to return to End of Time
• What the Prophet Seeks: defeat Lavos after beating Azala and Black Tyrano, but before venturing into Ocean Palace
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: defeat Lavos after seeing the scene of Schala using her pendant to open the sealed door, but before powering up Marle’s pendant. The window for this ending is incredibly short, so watch out! Backtrack all the way to the Gate and return to End of Time after seeing the scene with Schala
• Before Tragedy: this involves defeating Lavos in Ocean Palace during the story when it is normally a forced loss that results in Crono’s plot-related death. You could do this in New Game, but the amount of grinding needed to survive Lavos’ initial AoE assault would be too excessive at that point in the story. You will wind up in the developer’s room once more

---

That should be everything you need to know to unlock all of Chrono Trigger’s achievements in a sensible and… um… chronological order. This game has a lot of little secrets and easter eggs that might be overwhelming at first glance, but with this guide and all of the opportunities you have to do NG+, you’ll whittle the set down bit by bit. Hopefully this helps you out, and happy cheevo hunting!

• Benit149, July 2025