Crono's design was originally created by Chrono Trigger's story planner, Masato Kato, and finalized by Akira Toriyama.

While his design did not change much throughout the game's development, Kato's idea to kill the protagonist resulted in negative feedback from Square higher-ups for being too dark for the story, and thus Crono became able to revive.

He has been praised as a likable blank canvas for the player to project themselves onto, and his death scene in Chrono Trigger is considered by critics to be one of gaming's most memorable moments.

The hero retained his "innocence": His hairstyle, clothing, the Japanese sword he wields gave an image that stayed the same since the game's development.

[10] Kato and Yuji Horii initially proposed Crono's death, though they intended for him to stay dead; the party would have retrieved an earlier, living version of him to complete the quest.

Taking into consideration the fall of the Kingdom of Guardia and the rise of Porre's militarism on the main continent, Kato suggested the couple might have been involved in an incident.

While attending the Millennial Fair, he meets a young girl named Marle, and the two go see a teleporter created by Crono's friend Lucca.

This begins a series of time-traveling adventures where Crono and his friends discover that Lavos, an extraterrestrial monster who crashed on Earth in pre-historic times, is set to awaken in 1999 A.D. and destroy civilization.

This portal lands them in 2300 A.D., where they learn that an advanced civilization has been wiped out by a giant creature known as Lavos that appeared in 1999 A.D., and find the last remnants of humanity living in undergrowth domes subsisting off of machine energy in place of food.

[15] Their journeys involve defeating the remnants of the Mystics,[16] stopping Robo's maniacal AI creator,[17] giving Frog closure for Cyrus's death,[18] locating and charging up the mythical Sun Stone, retrieving the legendary Rainbow Shell, unmasking Guardia's Chancellor as a saboteur, and restoring a forest destroyed by a desert monster.

[11] The group can explore several temporal distortions to combat shadow versions of Crono, Marle, and Lucca and to fight Dalton, who promises in defeat to raise an army in the town of Porre to destroy the Kingdom of Guardia.

[21][22] Since his appearance in Chrono Trigger, Crono has received generally positive reception and has gained a strong fan following.

[31][32][33] Due to the character's silent personality and lack of friends, VentureBeat said Crono comes across as a common archetype of lonely role-playing protagonists who tend to spend most of their time recruiting new allies, most of whom happen to be attractive women.

[36] Comic Book Resources lamented the fact that the character was silent and believed he would be more appealing if he were given lines due to the large number of friends and enemies he possesses as well as his special techniques.

[42] While acknowledging the shock of Crono's death, IGN said his resurrection seems obligatory for the player due to the feeling of emptiness and loss caused by the literal absence of the main hero.

[45][46] Game Informer's Dan Rykert commented that while Crono was supposed to be "wish-fulfillment" for players due to his silence, his death contradicted that idea.

However, in the case of the story of Chrono Trigger, Crono's death is overshadowed by Lucca's actions in the next sequences before the player ends the game, among other side quests involving the main cast.

[50] The death of Crono is also analyzed in the book Japanese Role-Playing Games: Genre, Representation, and Liminality in the JRPG, as the impact is also notable due to him being the most powerful member of the party who was always available.