Square was known as an RPG powerhouse even back in the ’90s, which made its dip into the world of fighting games with the PS1 title Tobal No. 1 a bit of a curiosity. It turns out, however, that Tobal was originally meant to be an action adaptation of the beloved JRPG classic Chrono Trigger.
Development of Tobal No. 1 was led at Square collaborator Dream Factory by Virtua Fighter designer Seiichi Ishii, who wanted to work with Dragon Ball creator Akira Toryiama. “This was around the time that Trunks appeared in Dragon Ball Z and I wanted to have a character like that in the game,” Ishii says in a recent interview with 4Gamer (translated by Automaton West).
Toriyama had previously worked with Square to design the characters for Chrono Trigger, and Ishii says “at first, we were going to do a fighting game using characters from Chrono Trigger. But as we were making the prototype, Toriyama came along and said, ‘I’ll draw some new characters.'” And so, Tobal No. 1 became an original fighter with a roster of all-new characters designed by Toriyama.
Tobal No. 1 ended up being the first game Square published on the PS1, and was famously bundled with a demo disc for the hotly anticipated Final Fantasy 7. Whether early purchasers bought Tobal for the fighting action or the early look at FF7, it reviewed well, offering 60 FPS action at a time when that was unusual for 3D games. Dream Factory would go on to make a sequel released only in Japan, and another Square-published curiosity in the early PS2 game The Bouncer.
While Chrono Trigger has always enjoyed a much, much greater reputation than Tobal – there’s a reason it still tops lists of the best JRPGs to this day – it has sadly also slipped into the ether of Square history. It got a somewhat controversial sequel in 1999’s Chrono Cross, but since then Square has been oddly reluctant to revisit the game, outside numerous ports and remasters of varying qualities.
Where would Tobal No. 1 rank among the best fighting games if you could play as Frog?
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