Acclaimed Flop: While the initial Super Famicom release reviewed well, Square considered it a failure due to low sales. It didn't stop them from attempting a second chance to rerelease the game as a remake for the Switch; while the remake still ended up being fairly niche, it performed well for its budget and is usually considered one of Square Enix's more successful small releases from 2022, a year that saw mixed performance for their games otherwise.
Acting for Two: In both the Japanese and English voice casts nearly everyone plays several characters across different time periods. The star case is Tomokazu Sugita who plays a character in every time period.
Actor-Shared Background: Instead of the usual Los Angeles casting, many characters in the English dub are voiced by actors who share the same ethnicity and nation.
Adored by the Network: Despite the game's obscurity both inside and outside Japan, Nintendo is reportedly fond of it; interest in remaking Live A Live originated from when Nintendo asked for it to be added as a Virtual Console title on the Wii U and 3DS for its 20th anniversary, at a time when Square Enix was otherwise not putting their older games on those systems.
Ascended Fanon: Prior to the release of the remake, fanart of Oersted after becoming the Lord of Dark, Odio commonly depicts him with a capenote The original release reuses Oersted's sprite if you play as him in the final chapter. In the mobile game Holy Dungeon, Oersted's official artwork has him wearing a cape as Odio, which carries over to the remake's version of the final chapter.
Beam Me Up, Scotty!: Fans commonly believe that the "original" reason Masaru doesn't battle Sundown or Cube in the final chapter is because he's a fan of the genres they represent (westerns and sci-fi respectively), and that this was present in the Aeon Genesis fan translation but not conveyed in the official translation of the remake. In reality, it's not in either version, as despite other differences and cases of Spice Up the Subtitles between the translations, they both have similar dialogue here (Masaru doesn't fight Sundown because he's got a gun and thinks Cube is too cool/cute to beat up) and there is no mention of genres.
Blooper: The devs are seemingly unable to get the order of the semi-earlier scenarios right. The original release's boxart has the China and Edo Japan chapters switched, while the remake has the former switched with Wild West, despite the fact Ryoma Sakamoto (aka The Prisoner)'s death came first before the Battle of Little Bighorn. As for the remake's trailers, Wild West is placed in second when the video attempts to show the chapters in chronological order (not counting the Middle Ages).
Colbert Bump: The game became more and more popular during the years after learning that it would be the predecessor to future Square RPG titles — Chrono Trigger, Octopath Traveler and Triangle Strategy — and that Oboromaru's stage plus the song "Megalomania" would inspire Toby Fox's own Undertale and the song "Megalovania".
Creator-Driven Successor: Chrono Trigger, another game directed by Takashi Tokita, shares many similarities with Live A Live, namely where characters from disparate time periods come together to defeat a greater enemy whose presence spans many of these periods. Both also have a medieval period, a prehistoric period, and a period featuring robots.
A roundabout example where the remake adds a bit of Flavor Text in the Distant Future chapter where Kato has a mint-condition Steel Titan toy, and a plastic model kit was produced alongside the remake's release.
The original version featured several accessories in the Near Future chapter that were unable to be obtained without hacking, one of them (the Tin Badge that has Odio's name on it) even having an illustration.
In the remake, many Palette Swap characters (such as the Mimic Mammet, weighty Chinese martial artists (and restaraunteur), tribesfolk (Pogo's tribe, Kuu Warriors, and wandering artisans), and etc.) possess sprites that are used exclusively for their differently-colored counterparts, yet due to the fact that these sprites aren't intended for them, they went unused.
The remake also has unused overworld sprites for the Bountiful Heart (and other weighty Chinese martial artists) being flirty, complete with the sprite of him blowing the air kiss to the player character. These sprites went unused due to the Adaptational Personality Change he underwent, being the overzealous martial artist instead of an Abhorrent Admirer.
He Also Did: Many of the character designers from each of the chapters are or were famous mangakas on their own right who had published for Shogakukan's many manga anthologies:
Gosho Aoyama, who did the Twilight of Edo Japan chapter, is the artist behind Case Closed, Magic Kaito and Yaiba.
Kazuhiko Shimamoto, who did the Near Future chapter, was the character designer of Mobile Fighter G Gundam and also the creator behind the character Anime Tenchou, who had appeared in many anime, like Lucky Star.
Ryouji Minagawa, the artist behind the Present chapter, did Project ARMS and Spriggan.
Yumi Tamura (The Distant Future chapter) did 7 Seeds and Basara.
Yoshinori Kobayashi (Prehistory chapter) is the mangaka behind the gag manga Obocchama-kun.
Yoshihide Fujiwara (Imperial China chapter), beside being Takao Saito's former assitant in Golgo 13, he also penned Kenji.
Dragon Quest IV has been cited as the inspiration for the game's anthology structure.
Director Takashi Tokita decided to make the remake after working on Octopath Traveler. The game's "HD-2D" style was a major factor in influencing that decision.
Late Export for You: This game didn't leave Japan during its initial release due to poor sales. It wouldn't be localized until its remake got released on the Nintendo Switch in 2022, nearly 30 years after its original release.
Odds are, most American fans of this game were more likely to have first heard about the game from WhoIsThisGit's videos on them rather than experiencing the game themselves due to how highly obscure the game was at the time, or through Toby Fox mentioning that he wanted to use the song "Megalomania" from this game directly in The Halloween Hack, but had to resort to composing a new song called "Megalovania" due to technical problems porting the original song over, which would later be popularised by its usage in Undertale.
The game had appearances in Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Curtain Call long before its remake announcement was made.
Newbie Boom: With the announcement of the game's remake coming out on the Switch in July 22, 2022, many more people outside of Japan aside from a rare few prior began to acknowledge the game's existence.
No Dub for You: A weird example of this exists in the Prehistory chapter in the remake, as it's the only chapter in the game that has Japanese voice actors exclusively. This isn't that big a deal considering the entire chapter is just grunts and gibberish, but it does lead to a strange case in the ending of the chapter where Pogo shouts "Aiiieeeee!" in what's very obviously a Sexy Discretion Shot. "Ai" is the Japanese word for "Love", with the implication being that "love" was the very first word Pogo ever said. However, since there was no English voice-over for this chapter, the implication is Lost in Translation and it instead comes across to English players as just more gibberish, this time of pleasure. However, this doesn't lead to a Dub-Induced Plot Hole; while the original version of the final chapter had Pogo remind Oersted that he lacks love, the remake changes this so that Pogo hugs Oersted, leading him to come to this conclusion by himself.
Official Fan-Submitted Content: The lyrics for "Go! Go! Steel Titan!" in the remake were from a Famitsu fan contest held during the time of the original's release.
Reina Ueda, known for voicing gentle, sweet, and girlish characters, voicing the abrasive, tomboyish Lei Kugo.
While Shizuma Hodoshima is mostly known as a stage actor, he used to voice someone from a Square Enix property (even dating back to before the merger): Definitive Knight in Shining ArmorCecil Harvey. Here, he's assigned to do Streibough, who is actually a really jealous friend of a Knight in Shining Armor that lets his envy get the best of him and doom the timeline by accidentally creating Odio. Very much a far cry from the heroic Cecil.
The reverse happens with Nicholas Corda (Streibough) who is grateful enough to gain the role that he shows his appreciation on his Twitter as seen here.
The Prehistory chapter in the remake uses the original release's sprites for the "dialogue", though Gori and Beru's sprites are recoloured a bit to match their new designs.
The "Captain Square" minigame in the Distant Future chapter reuses the same BGM, due to it being portrayed as a retro arcade game.
Referenced by...: Two of Toby Fox's songs are named after tracks from this game's soundtrack. Specifically, his recurring song "Megalovania" (featured most prominently in Undertale) comes from the boss theme "Megalomania", while the Deltarune track "Knock You Down!" takes its name from the Present Day chapter's battle theme.
According to Region Locked's Video on the game (which, in turn cites interviews and tweets from the game's director), part of the reason the game wasn't localized or remade for so long was that the eight artists who worked on the game's original concept art were all working for the "Shogakukan" publishing house at the time, which meant the company had partial rights to the game, and in turn meant that the original art was not easily able to be reused. Square Enix got around that by having just one artist, Naoki Ikushima, redo the art for all of the remake's chapters in his own style, who nevertheless tried to be as close as possible to the original designs. The original game artists are still credited in their respective chapters as the main character designers and the original art is featured on the game's website.
In the original game, if you finished the final chapter with a character and got the best ending with them, you were rewarded with an image of the character's face drawn by each chapter's original artist. Because of the copyright limitations concerning the original game's art, this is sadly no longer the case in the remake, where only the character's victory text is displayed.
Star-Making Role: Many non-big name VAs that are used in the dub have been alleviated due to their role, for example, Akira Tadokoro for David Cui Cui, and the Sundown Kid for Reagan Murdock.
The various chapters were originally supposed to have escalating difficulty. This was dropped to ensure the game could be tackled in a non-linear fashion. That said, the chapters escalate in complexity, with the Prehistory chapter being rather simple and the Near Future chapter being one of the most involved.
The initial trailers for the remake showed the Shifu's title/martial art as "Heart of the Mountain", a direct translation of its original name. The final game would change it to the similar but less wordy "Earthen Heart".
Squaresoft initially wanted to localize the original game for an SNES release, but the poor sales in Japan dissuaded them.
HP on playable characters wasn't meant to be shown in the original. It was rejected due to concerns over the game's difficulty.
Masaru's original design had him wear a sleeveless white gi, brown leather gloves and a band around his right arm while his hair was short, spiky and disheveled similar to Ryu from Street Fighter as seen in the Live A Live artbook. The design was rejected, leading to the current design today. The artbook also had Masaru's final design wearing a green bomber jacket.
The 1994 Imperial China art in the artbook has prototype designs of Lei Kugo with Odango Hair while Ou Di Wan Lee has a Yin and Yang symbol on his shirt instead of the black dragon. There is also artwork of a large lake and a boat within the mountains. Whether this is an intended area as part of the story or simply only for background purposes but omitted in the final game is unknown.
General Trivia
Kazuhiko Shimamoto, the original artist of the Near Future chapter, adapted its story for a doujin in 2019 for Comiket 97. Elements from the doujin were incorporated into the 2022 remake, such as Taeko's updated design and the Steel Titan's attacks. The doujin was eventually given an official rerelease through Square Enix for a limited time, but only in Japan.
In the end of 2022, he would adapt the Middle Ages in twovolumes.
Shimamoto in 2023 would also go on to make a second and third comic book retelling the final chapter with Akira as the protagonist. The fourth and fifth (final) books would be released on New Years Eve 2023.
Electronic artist Kensuke Ushio worked on the music for the remake's Distant Future chapter, while "Lovely Evening" in the Prehistory chapter was arranged by keyboardist Kaoru Inoue. Hironobu Kageyama, who famously sang several theme songs for Super Sentai and Dragon Ball, did the vocals for "Go! Go! Steel Titan!".
led to the creation of the "Guts and Glory Special" from the Near Future chapter.