I don’t think you’ll be missing anything at all by using an emulator. https://edgeemu.net was the gold standard for rom repositories back in the day, and I’m pleased to see it’s still up and kicking!

Any way you can play it is the best way.

I personally love the SNES version, many people say the DS version is the definitive, though I dislike the anime cutscenes from the PS1 it includes, the new translation, and the additions they made are awful.

I’ve heard the PC version has been fixed and is a great way to play it now, as well.

I played it on my phone (SNES version), but I didn’t finish it because of a combination of a frustrating boss fight and crappy phone controls.

I’ll probably pick it up on Steam and give it another try, preferably on my Steam Deck.

I beat it on a windows ME emulator my first time, probably 23 years ago or something. Was enjoyable with an ancient crappy controller. Znes blew my mind!

Beat it earlier this year (and several times in between ) on retroarch on a hacked switch and it was excellent! Especially with the 8bitdo controllers.

Haven’t tried DS but PS1 load times annoyed me.

Played it on the Wii virtual console and the classic controller was okay.

Basically any way you can play it, it’s awesome.

I’ve played a couple of different versions, but honestly the original snes on an emulator is the version I always reach for now.

I feel like other versions have different set ups or change the way the game looks or feels. but the snes version is consistent and reliable.

Don’t be like me and buy it on every conceivable platform. lol XD only to find that the snes emulator is the best.

Any version aside from the the PSX version (as part of the Final Fantasy Chronicles package) is fine to play. That one has loading pauses, doesn’t make for an optimal experience.

I’ve also had a few people from the EU tell me the original English script for the game was a bit too “American-ized” for their tastes, in case that’s a potential issue. The DS and later versions all have the revised script.

Chrono Trigger is one of those games that has had little modification through all its iterations. There aren’t crazy differences or additions in any releases as far as I know, so it really comes down to ease of access and stability/smoothness of the game. So really minor differences.

I don’t know how different the translations or scripts are though.

That said I played it on release on the SNES so my nostalgia glasses are super rose tinted.

Isn’t there a patch that improves the translation?

Just get the original ROM. The only thing that won’t be true to the actual cart is the old man predicting the races will almost never be right instead of being right every time.

If you want it to look like it’s on an old CRT, turn on the “scan lines” option in the emulator.

One i don’t see mentioned here is the PS3 digital download of the PS1 version. You can emulate it on RPSC3.

There’s no benefit to doing so that I’m aware of, and in fact it’s less convenient and probably less efficient than just using a PS1 emulator. But you can do it!