Radical Dreamers is a role-playing game in which the player takes the role of Serge, a young adventurer, who is accompanied by Kid, a teen-aged thief, and Magil, a mysterious masked magician. The story involves the trio's attempt to steal the legendary Frozen Flame from the mansion of Lynx (Yamaneko in Japanese).
Gameplay consists of text-based scenarios presented to the player through the narration of Serge. The player must then choose from a list of possible actions. Depending on the selections made, the player may enter a new area, be presented with a new situation, or may have to choose again if the previous choice was incorrect. Combat is text-based as well, allowing the player to select from options such as "Fight", "Magic", "Run", etc.
Radical Dreamers is a gaiden, or side story, to the 1995 game Chrono Trigger. Elements of the game were also adapted and integrated into the 1999 PlayStation game Chrono Cross. The game ties up various loose ends from Chrono Trigger, and it introduces several new characters, objects, and locations that would later feature in Chrono Cross. Two of the main characters, Serge and Kid, return in Chrono Cross, for example. Some fans assert that Magil also returns in that game as Guile, but this point is contested.
As in other Chrono games, only one scenario is available on the first play-through. After finishing this (and obtaining one of three possible endings), six further scenarios (each with its own unique ending) are made available through the game's "New Game+" mode. It is largely through these later scenarios that the various plot threads from Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross are presented.
The music of Radical Dreamers was written by composer Yasunori Mitsuda, the same artist who scored the other Chrono games. In fact, a handful of themes from the game were directly adapted for Chrono Cross, such as the battle theme.
In April of 2003, a ROM hacker called NeoDemiforce released a patch that translates the game from Japanese to English. The patch works with the ROM image of the game used for playing console-based video games on personal computers through video game emulation.
See also: Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, and fan translation.