Enlarge / With some filters and mod work on the in-game sprites, the PC port of Chrono Trigger is already looking a lot better. (credit: Steam)

When Square Enix launched a PC version of RPG classic Chrono Trigger on Steam last week, nearly 23 years after the SNES original came out, fans were surprised. That surprise quickly morphed into dismay as fans noticed some ugly HD filtering on classic character sprites and background art, as well as lazy, big-buttoned menus that look like they came from a port of the iPhone version of the game. (TouchArcade is quick to point out the differences that actually make the PC version look worse.) Indie developer Lars Doucet laid out other problems, including inconsistent pixel sizing and misaligned tiles, in a thorough Gamasutra blog post.

Now, modders are trying to fix Square Enix’s mistakes and restore the PC release to match the SNES original more closely. The core of the effort is modder Jed “Nyxo” Lang’s CT_Explore tool, which allows players to modify the game’s messy art assets with better-looking ones. Lang told PC Gamer that breaking the “poor-man’s encryption” Square Enix put on Chrono Trigger‘s resources wasn’t all that difficult, thanks in part to his previous work on mod tools for the PC port of Final Fantasy VI.

Since Chrono Trigger came with the original SNES sprites for the characters, I did a test with Crono: With minimal effort (double the image size and set transparency), his SNES art can simply drop in to replace the HD art! <3 pic.twitter.com/Kg75LuQaY6

— Jed Lang ジェッドラン (@rivernyxx) March 6, 2018

Lang has also released a separate defilter mod that removes the auto-upscaled versions of some of the game’s characters with the original, blocky sprites that are already buried in the game’s files (as seen here). The Chrono Trigger Restoration project, meanwhile, plans to expand on that work with manual graphical replacements for everything from background tile sets to menu UI. And other modders have already jumped in with additions that remove the game’s odd sepia filter and add in a CRT scan line effect for maximum retro feel.