To Far Away Times

To Far Away Times is an instrumental composed by Yasunori Mitsuda as the credits theme to the video game Chrono Trigger first published on 1995-03-11. The song was included on the game's official soundtrack released on 1995-03-25, and released dozens of times more on re-releases of the soundtrack, arrangement albums, remixes, fan recordings, and others.

Personal

I first heard this song when I watched one of my high school friends beat Chrono Trigger around 1996. After that, I found MIDI recreations of the song online, and eventually got a ripped SPC of the SNES game which allowed me to hear the music by itself. I really adore this song and find it to be one of the best video game songs ever composed. The song's has a very positive timbre, but an almost melancholy aspect to it which I find very fitting to the game. I especially love the opening piano 0:24, the change up at 1:16, the chords at 2:06, and the inclusion of the clock pendulum sound effect from the title theme at 2:39 which really helps wraps the whole narrative up.

Titles

The song's official Japanese title is 遥かなる時の彼方へ [Harukanaru-Ji no Kanata E], which translates literally to "Beyond the Distant Time." Early fan translations used "To Far Away Times," but the English translation used on the official Final Fantasy Chronicles PlayStation soundtrack release was "Outskirts of Time." However, later official releases of the soundtrack, like the Chrono Trigger Original Soundtrack Revival Disc of 2019, use "To Far Away Times," which I find to be much more poetic.

Media

Videos

Album version.

True ending of Chrono Trigger.

Brink of Time remix.

To Far Away Times: Chrono Trigger & Chrono Cross Arrangement Album remix.

Orchestral remix by Malcolm Robinson.