In the 90s, Square released two genre-defining role-playing games for the Super Nintendo: Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger. But what if I told you that the prestigious studio didn’t just make two games of such quality? There is a third. Enter Live A Live.
Never heard of it? Well, that’s not all that surprising – Live A Live is a 1994 release that actually only released in Japan. It wasn’t from a famous franchise, didn’t even sell all that well even in Japan, and doesn’t have the art of Dragon Ball’s Akira Toriyama. So it just went sort of largely forgotten for years, except by the most despicable and dedicated of JRPG nerds.
Those nerds – including Undertale creator Toby Fox – did a good job of keeping Live A Live in the public consciousness over the years. Its status as a quiet cult classic appears to have helped Square Enix remember its existence. And so now, almost thirty years later, the game is making a return on Switch with a lavish Nintendo-published remake in the HD-2D style popularized by Octopath Traveler and Triangle Strategy. It’s just the latest release in what is proving to be something of a new RPG golden age for Nintendo.
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