Radical Dreamers[a] is a 1996 text-based visual novel adventure video game developed and published by Square for the Satellaview, a satellite peripheral for the Super Famicom.

A version of the game is included with Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition, which was released worldwide on April 7, 2022, for Windows, the Nintendo Switch, the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One.

The game centers around an infiltration carried out by the titular thief gang led by Kid; aided by Serge and Magil, she seeks an artifact called the Frozen Flame and revenge on its keeper Lord Lynx.

Attempts to bundle the game with the PlayStation port of Chrono Trigger were stopped by Kato due to quality concerns.

Depending on the choices made, the player may enter a new area, be presented with a new situation or character, or have to choose again if the previous selection was incorrect.

The young adult narrator, Serge, is a drifting musician who met Kid by chance three years ago in a remote town.

[14] The thieves locate Lynx and the Frozen Flame deep within an underground ruin of the Kingdom of Zeal—an ancient, airborne civilization destroyed after it awakened Lavos in search of immortality.

Kid learns of her heritage as princess Schala of Zeal, a meek girl who was coerced to help awaken Lavos with her magical power.

Nearby in the Ocean Palace, the Frozen Flame felt her grief and changed her to a baby, sending her to the modern era where Lucca found her.

[18] It is also circumstantially revealed that Magil is in fact Magus, Schala's wayward brother who searched for her after battling Lavos in Chrono Trigger.

[6] Kato intended both Dreamers and its eventual successor Chrono Cross to prompt players to pursue their personal dreams in life.

[6] Kato's team completed Radical Dreamers in only three months under a rushed production schedule, prompting him to label the game "unfinished" in an interview for the Ultimania Chrono Cross guide.

[34] Kato regretted that the schedule hampered the quality of his work, and explained that the connections to Chrono Trigger were evoked towards the end of the project.

[29] The finished ROM totaled 8 megabits; the developers later reflected that the scenario was changed three times to work within this limited capacity.

[1] Owing to the eventual shutdown of the service, Radical Dreamers became impossible to play except on end users' cartridges that had the game installed during its broadcast period.

[36][37] Square originally wanted to include the game as part of the PlayStation port of Chrono Trigger, but Kato stopped them due to his dissatisfaction with the final product.

[2] The patch works by modifying the ROM image of Dreamers used for playing console-based video games on personal computers through emulation.

It was released worldwide on April 7, 2022, for Windows, the Nintendo Switch, the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One with English, French, Italian, Spanish and German translations.

[43][44] Chris Kohler, in his 2004 book Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life, cited Radical Dreamers as a precursor to Mitsuda's explicitly Celtic musical style as heard in Xenogears.

[5] A reviewer for Home of the Underdogs lauded the game's excellent writing and the "superb" English translation patch, noting that the "interesting plot" would appeal to fantasy fans if they could stomach the limited interactivity.

Masato Kato cited the desire to "redo Radical Dreamers properly" as the genesis of Cross, attributing the latter's serious atmosphere to the former.

This idea was scrapped due to difficulties in representing the story of Magus among the game's numerous other characters; the unrelated, enigmatic magician Guile was created instead.