CT Movement Notes

Chrono Trigger Tips and Tricks

Holding Start+B:
Buffering this combo lets you exit menus on the 1st possible frame (i.e. you'll only ever see black). You can use this on the merchant after meeting Marle. It's especially handy for fadeouts, and for forced character-swaps where you don't wish to swap (e.g. meeting Gaspar, Ayla joining your team). You can also tap Start+B to get the heck out of a menu quickly (try it while using healing techs/items out-of-battle).

Holding A:
On the overworld, buffering A lets you enter an area (or vehicle) on the 1st possible frame. Also hold A to close the end-of-battle messages, and the Greendream message ("Frog got up!"). It also allows you to pick the default option in choice dialogues, which closes the text on the 1st possible frame (we want to do this for most choice dialogues in the game).

Mashing A:
Textboxes and events proceed generally on 8-frame cycles... that is, closing any given textbox 1 frame sooner can potentially gain you 8 frames (or 1 frame later can lose you 8 frames). But also learn when not to mash, and save yourself some strain. For Ayla's soup contest, button presses only register when Crono is holding his bowl up drinking (not when it's being refilled), and you only need 8 bowls to win. There's balance in nature.

Double-Tap A:
Sometimes mashing is dangerous. In time-sensitive fights where you want to open your menu ASAP, it's best to anticipate when your turn will come up by watching your ATB (Battle Meter), and tap A twice in succession. This way, if both taps register then you won't accidentally use a move or item (which would occur if you'd tapped 3 times). Often you can open battle menus just a bit before they even appear (seems more prevalent on English version).

Holding X:
This lets you automatically Attack the default target (1st possible frame). If you start holding X too early in battle, it will NOT register! You must wait for the Battle Menu to open (the frame it begins to open is the earliest it'll register). This feature is enabled by setting Battle Cursor to On/Memory (which we do in the very 1st menu of the run). Also notice, that when your menu is on Tech but you Attack using X, your menu will still be on Tech on your subsequent turns... very convenient.

Tapping X:
X has even more nuance to it. You can simply tap X to choose Attack (even if you're pointing to Tech or Item), or tap X to confirm an enemy or ally target. This is actually what is happening during the first Lavos Elixir Glitch: when you tap A on Elixir, the game kicks your cursor back out to the menu (even though it's invisible); inputting "X-Left-X" is nothing more or less than "choose Attack, point to head, Confirm".
Beware: if you press X to choose Attack but back out and use a Tech or Item, that action will not get "remembered"! For example, if your menu is initially on Tech, and you press X then B (notice your cursor is now on Attack?) and you decide to use an Item instead.. on that character's next turn, her menu will STILL be on Tech (just as if you had followed through with Holding X).

Holding L+R to Escape:
UNLIKE holding X, you can (and generally should) begin holding L+R as EARLY as possible (before the battle even starts). The escape counter begins counting several frames before the Battle Menu appears. Once in battle, you can enter your Tech or Item menu and let the escape counter increment (Tech menu is better, as you're liable to scroll your Item menu way down (fix it later by holding R)). For battles with sluggish enemies, escaping without going into a menu is better.

Item Menu Cursor:
Merely pointing to an item (not using it) will store the cursor on that item slot for next time. All 3 party members share the same Item cursor, so anyone can change the cursor for the whole team, at any time.

Holding L+R+Start+Select to Reset:
This is the "soft reset." If you hold any 3 of the 4 buttons, tapping the 4th sends the command.

~~Movement~~

Hitboxes:
All hitboxes for sprites are a maximum size of 1 tile (16x16 pixels), even for sprites that appear quite large. Most fights and traps are activated by touching either an enemy sprite, or an invisible sprite ("hot tile") on the field.
When you stand still, your hitbox is smaller, and corresponds roughly to the visible space you're standing on. But when you move, your hitbox extends out fully in the direction(s) you press. Try approaching a friendly NPC head on, and notice when you collide that you've stopped several pixels from it. Now walk past the NPC instead, trying to brush past its side; you'll see that you can close that gap entirely without colliding. This applies to enemies and hot tiles as well -- you can squeeze past safely, so long as you don't "look them in the eye", or cross their path of movement.

Running:
While moving with Run held, you advance 2 pixels per frame, on each axis you're moving on (another way of saying this is that your pixel coordinates will stay Odd or Even as long as the Run button is held: important for later). Play around and notice how moving on the Y-axis does not affect your speed on the X-axis, or vice-versa. Get comfortable with this, and use it to your advantage. There's no penalty whatsoever for hugging walls in the direction you intend to move next, and cutting corners. Unless of course it's an oddly shaped wall (e.g. in the Cathedral room with the sliding stairs, beware those blind underpasses).

Running on Stairs (they're just Slopes!):
Let's say you're running straight (one axis only) against a slope. On every frame, you will advance Forward by 2 or 0 pixels (alternating: 2-0-2-0...), while also getting pushed 1 pixel Sideways. In effect, this is the same speed as walking, so it's faster to run diagonally on stairs.

Running against Slopes/Corners:
For some skips that require running straight Up/Down or straight Left/Right against a slope, you should at least be vaguely aware of your coordinate (Odd vs. Even) before proceeding, because: on the frame that you pass the ending of the slope, you want to step 2 pixels forward (not 0: see above), and therefore avoid the slope pushing you an additional 1 pixel sideways (into the trigger you're trying to skip). Fortunately, Odd/Even is trivial to deal with -- You always enter a room on Even X-coordinate (xx00), but if you need to be sure, WALKING against a right-hand wall will also set you on Even X. Left-hand walls are Odd X.
- Bird Skip (Truce Canyon): this is the only skip where Y-coordinate matters. You step off the ladder running on Odd Y, which is what you need. But make an effort to stay against the very upper or lower side of the bridge (both of these are Odd Y). Then, once you get far enough Left to do the skip, hold the Run button BEFORE beginning to move Up, so that you'll stay on Odd Y.
- Waterfall Skip (Denadoro): Your X-coordinate has to be Even, which you start the room with. As long as you're running (and don't bump into any corners on the way), you'll keep your Even X and be fine. If you want to ensure success, there's a nice wall to the right to fix your X with. Your Y coordinate doesn't matter (just don't start too low and miss the slope entirely~)
- 1st Dactyl Skip: notoriously pixel-perfect and lacking good visual markers... But the specific X-coordinate you need happens to be Even, which you start with. So by keeping Run held, moving in multiples of 2 pixels as you line yourself up, you're able to SEE a bit more easily whether your position is right or wrong (because you'll be off by 2 pixels minimum, instead of 1).
*There's other triggers you must skip by running against slopes, but they're not coordinate-sensitive:
- Bat Skip (Heckran Cave): run straight Down (for just a bit)

Running at Room Triggers (to Skip them):
When a room loads, everything begins moving together at once: player, NPCs, and triggers. The triggers cycle every 28 frames (this is the tempo of the Guardia Castle / Zenan Bridge music). What's happening is: based on the 1-in-28 that you touch a trigger, the game will take away player control a certain number of frames after that (ranging from immediate, to like 1/8 second). The trick to such "trigger skips" is actually to cross the trigger-tile at the point in the 28-frame cycle where it gives you extra time to reach all the way to the tile past it (where you can save your game), before control is taken from you. The setups for these absolutely REQUIRE that you begin running forward on the 1st frame possible (i.e. buffer your dash BEFORE the room loads!) Sometimes also a number of "taps" are called for (release Run for the shortest duration you can muster: ideally 2-3 frames each). These taps must be performed WHILE moving (releasing Run at all before moving = not good; actually need to walk for those 2-3 frames). Then, try to menu on the tile past the trigger. If you menu early, just continue running further while mashing menu (both you and the trigger cease/resume movement when you enter/exit a menu, so there's no problem there).
- Yakra Skip: actually an uncommonly lenient trigger (because you can just save on top of it, rather than having to reach the other side). Still, enter the room running.
- Heckran Skip: running straight Up into the room, Tap 1x while running. You can actually make a safety save when you first enter the room, but note: be mashing menu WITH your Run buffered, so that even if you menu a couple frames slow you may still attempt a proper skip without reloading.
- Captain Skip: running Left, Tap 3x while running (gotta also jog a bit up then down to avoid the Captain). If performed correctly, the game will let you run a full tile past the fallen guard's head! So just practice the movement to see if you're accomplishing this, before even adding in the menu. Once you have the movement down, try to menu with Crono's foot just a few pixels past the fallen guard's helmet.
- Zombor Skip: running Left+Down, Tap 1x while running. Try to get shoulder-to-shoulder with the guard (or within a couple pixels behind him) when you menu.

"Regrouping"/Whipping into Battle Formation:
This is just the thing where you try to get your party members kinda near to you when you activate an event like a gate or pillar (or cake), so they don't take as long to group up. There's other things like: discovering Robo (get Marle close to him before checking), and getting Broken Hilt from Frog (prevent Lucca from moonwalking to the left).
As well, there's many fights (mainly in Magus' Castle) where your party assumes the familiar triangle formation. You can do a right-left-right "whip" motion as you run upward, to help that along (often there's a nice mark on the floor you can "dodge" to accomplish this).