Proto:Chrono Cross/Graphical Differences

Character Portraits
Every dialogue portrait which is present in both the demo and final game was changed to some degree, except the unused placeholder portrait (for obvious reasons).

Serge's face was made a little less chubby, and the shading was enhanced.

Complete overhaul, and for the better I'd say. Demo Lynx was chewing something, and then somebody shined a flashlight in his face, so he spit it out and moved his head up a few pixels for the final.

Very subtle shading differences that you won't notice unless you flip between the two images quickly. This is a common change for the more plot-relevant characters.

Norris was murdered and replaced by his evil clone who has slightly altered shading.

Same as Guile.

Karsh's old portrait hair color seems a lot closer to his 3D model's than the final.

Still subtle shading differences between the one that was (presumably) most current during development of the demo and the final. An older version was also included, with much uglier coloration.

Zappa is the only character to have his own unique horizontally reversed dialogue portrait. During the game's development, he got awful tired of gouging out his eye and jamming it in the other socket every time he faced the other direction to talk to somebody. Somebody forgot to tell Square this when drawing his portrait for the demo, because they just mirrored it.

Here is the first character whose face was still a sketch, and a very rough one at that. The general pattern you'll see is the rougher the face sprite, the more extraneous the character was, and the better off Square would have been investing their time in the game's other attributes.

Looks like Harle's costume was overhauled at some point after Square received a C&D from DC Comics.

Here's where (according to Square's own official sequence of characters used in the game's party roster) the cast goes from interesting to overcrowded and nearing the abyss of uselessness.

Pierre looked downright effeminate in the demo.

Demo or final, evil Serge's face shading is pretty poor.

The unused Lynx/Kid faces were updated despite never being used.

The dragon's faces were pretty heavily updated. Note the demo doesn't have a portrait for the red dragon.

Oddly, there was already a portrait for this extremely minor character at that point in development. Could she have been planned as a playable character at some point? I sure hope not.

There are also some portraits in the demo with no counterparts for the final:

The following portraits are present in the final and have no counterparts in the demo: Belthasar, Direa, the Dragon God (unused), the Fire Dragon, Garai, Gogh (rich and poor versions), Hell's Cook, Kid (alternate), Marge, Neo-Fio, the Sage of Marbule, Miguel, Pip (and all his alternate forms), Rosetta, Tia, Una, Wazuki, Young Dario, Young Glenn, Young Karsh, and Zippa.

Menu Background Character Art

 * Serge, Kid, Guile, and Glenn have art that is identical (to the naked eye) in both the demo and final versions.
 * Macha, Pip, and Lynx do not have background images. Macha's place in the roster (between Fargo and Glenn) is skipped over. The blank placeholders in the end might be for Pip and his alternate forms (though there aren't enough slots if that is the case).
 * In the demo, there is a blank template image between Mel's and Leah's. There are no characters between those two in the final. This is the slot for Kukuru, a character who was deleted outright in the final (see this here page).
 * Interestingly, Pierre's image seems to be of the character Toma XIV.

Textures
The final world map has a more detailed water pattern and the addition of several more islets.

The window has warmer colors and is missing facial details in the demo.

The emblem is brighter in the final version, showing off more of the rocky texture and lighting up the jewel.

The symbol is much darker in the final version and the outer circle is slightly smaller.

The Fort Dragonia Symbol is far less detailed and slightly brighter in the demo version.

A much simpler texture is used in the demo version. The final version adds several filters inside the teleporter.

Weirdly, the Lucca drawing is more detailed than what is in the final version.

The arrows have lines attached to them.

The eye was completely redrawn in the final version. The background was also redrawn.

The animating flowers were added to the final version.

The skulls also have animations of them laughing maniacally. The background in the demo is recycled from the shellfish frame, but it got a unique one in the final version.