Chrono Cross (Square Millennium Collection)

Mitsuda's score on a shelf is the dream, and the Chrono Cross Square Millennium Collection makes it real. Squaresoft's Japan-only Millennium Collection reissue of Chrono Cross arrived in 2000 with a Character Day calendar and a Starky minifigure tucked alongside the disc, the kind of premium PS1 reissue that defines the late Squaresoft era.

Chrono Cross was the sequel that wasn't a sequel, the dreamy mirror-world follow-up to Chrono Trigger that did its own thing with parallel dimensions, 45 playable characters, and a soundtrack that still gets covered on YouTube every other week. The Field of Time. Dragon Tear. Scars of Time. We know. We've already cued it up.

The Starky minifigure is the small surprise that ties this set together. He's the weird little alien from the El Nido archipelago, the kind of deep-cut character only Chrono Cross fans recognize on sight. Pair him with the Character Day calendar (yes, every page is illustrated artwork from the game) and you've got the kind of in-universe shelf piece that separates Chrono completists from people who only finished Trigger.

This was Series 3 of the Millennium Collection, released November 30, 2000, alongside Xenogears and Parasite Eve II. Series 3 is the hardest to track down. Japanese only, never reprinted, never crossing the ocean. Sealed copies are already trading at numbers that make every year of waiting hurt a little more.

If your Chrono shelf has Trigger but not this, your Chrono shelf is incomplete.