Final Fantasy IV (SNES)/Version Differences

There are five different versions of the SNES game: Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy II each have 1.1 versions, each fixing a grand total of one bug. The Easy Type version of Final Fantasy IV, coming last, has the most changes to the underlying engine in addition to numerous changes to the game data. Then there's the PlayStation version, which uses the original game's data, but incorporates some of Easy Type's engine fixes.

Title Screen
The title logo of Final Fantasy IV has a nice glow effect where the logo starts dark at the edges and gets brighter closer to the crystal. This is done by alpha blending a color gradient logo over top of the standard logo graphics. In order to have space for the Easy Type subtitle graphics, the developers had to overwrite some of the gradient logo, so the glow effect was removed, revealing the true coloration of the logo.

Final Fantasy II got an entirely new title logo based on the one being used on US box art for the series at the time. The copyright information was updated to read Square Soft and "LICENSED BY NINTENDO" was added.

The PlayStation title is pretty much the same as the original, but with updated copyright info and a new Square logo. The blending on the glow effect is a little different, making the logo appear duller toward the edges. The western versions add a registered trademark symbol after "FINAL FANTASY", but this is not present in the Japanese version.

Equipment Duplication
It is possible to duplicate weapons and shields using several methods during a battle. The first method can be used on any character with any equipment. In battle, have the character you want to duplicate equipment on access the item menu and select a blank slot. Scroll up to the character's equipped weapon or shield and swap it for the blank slot. Close the item menu and finish the battle using any method. After battle, access the equip menu and equip the weapon or shield you wish to duplicate, depending on which slot you swapped the blank item into. A quantity of 2 will appear to the right of the item name. Unequip the item, and both will be placed into the inventory.

The next method must be done on a character with equipment in both hands. It's similar to the above, but make sure you have two adjacent item slots open. Take the second slot and replace a piece of equipment with it. Now select the other piece of equipment and place it into the same empty slot as before - your first piece of equipment will have been automatically moved into the first open slot. Run from the battle, then enter the equipment menu, you should see a character (this will vary depending on version) and 5 next to the hand with the first piece of equipment you removed. Equip something in this slot, then unequip it and it will "disappear" - you actually have 256 of it at this point. If you equip this slot again, one will be in your hand and the item will reappear in the menu with a quantity of 255.

Another method requires the Avenger sword, and must be used on Cecil. Equip a bow and arrow on Cecil. Place his arrows in the appropriate hand for whichever type of equipment you wish to duplicate - right for weapons, left for shields. Place the bow in his other hand and get into a battle. In battle, access the item menu, select Cecil's equipped arrows, and move them down to a blank slot. Now select the Avenger, scroll up, and replace Cecil's bow with it. Finish the battle and access the equip menu. Remove the Avenger, then equip whichever item you wish to duplicate into the hand Cecil's arrows were in. You will gain as many of that item as you had arrows equipped.

All of these methods are fixed in Easy Type.

Forced Repeated Actions in Zeromus Battle
The Avenger puts the wielder into an automatic berserk state, where they would normally automatically attack every turn. Something goes screwy with this in the Zeromus battle, which causes Kain to repeat other characters' actions if they preceded him and Zeromus hasn't shaken (using an invisible Black Hole spell on the party in the process) before his turn. Kain can use items and "cast magic" this way, although in the case of magic the effect is simply cosmetic and no spell will be used. This was fixed in Easy Type and the PlayStation version.

Hidden Encounter
In some locations, such as the Tower of Bab-il, Sealed Cave, Lunar's Lair, and Lunar Subterrane, there are map tiles, often doorways, that will give treasure when interacted with. These treasures were not placed intentionally. The treasures, exits, and other triggers for each map are all stored in the same block of data. While there is no risk of a treasure being misinterpreted as another trigger because treasures are always placed on tiles that can't be walked on, the opposite is not true, and a preventative measure was put into place to stop it from happening: The properties for every map has a byte used for determining the total number of treasures in the previous locations. Treasures are always placed before the other triggers, so this value is should prevent any additional triggers from working as treasures. In the aforementioned locations the value is set too high, and other triggers end up being misinterpreted as treasures.

The "treasure" in the Lunar's Lair warrants special mention: It's interpreted as a monster-in-a-box, and loads a formation with two RedGiants. Because the Lunar's Lair is not set to load the lunar dungeon attack sequences, these RedGiants do not behave correctly in battle, and will just cast Petrify on the party every turn. When defeated, no treasure is even rewarded. This particular trigger was corrected in Easy Type, but the others are still present.

Sliding Bug
In all of the SNES versions, it is sometimes possible to open the menu while walking between tiles on the world map. If a Tent or Cabin is then used from the menu, it triggers the "sliding bug." The map's collision will be shifted one tile away from the direction you were walking, while the graphics will be normal. This by itself is cosmetic, however saving and reloading the game will reset the collision to match the graphics. This means the bug can be used to bypass certain map triggers or other impassible areas. This was fixed in the PlayStation version - it is no longer possible to open the menu when moving.

Slow Palette Change
A minor cosmetic bug has been introduced in the PlayStation version, related to switching characters on the field as a dialogue box opens. If timed correctly, the player's sprite will update but not their palette. This effect only lasts until the dialogue box is closed, at which point the correct palette is loaded.

Stop Literally Stops The Game
Stop causes various strange behaviors when cast on monsters affected by other timer-based status effects. The most severe of these, a crash when Stop is applied to a monster with sleep or paralysis status, is fixed in Final Fantasy II 1.1, Easy Type, and the PlayStation version.

Useless Bard
The removal of Edward's Medicine/Heal command in Final Fantasy II and Easy Type, documented below, introduced a bug where the blank slot in Edward's command list can be selected after he returns from hiding. Selecting the blank slot will completely freeze Edward, preventing any more commands from being entered for him.

Wrong Battle Scripts for Underworld Encounters
A significant bug exists in Final Fantasy IV 1.0 which occurs during battle initialization: the programming beginning at SNES address checks memory addresses  to get the 16-bit value of the player's current location. If it's location (Cave Bahamut) or  (the Lunar Subterrane and core), the game sets a flag to load a different table of enemy attack scripts. However, the current location isn't accurate on a world map because of a shared memory byte.

On world maps, will continue to store the second byte of the last location visited, but the other half in  is now used to store which world map you are on ( = overworld,  = underworld,  = moon) The problem starts when you leave location  or. These location values include Toroia's basement treasure rooms (use the Exit spell to leave), the Misty Cave, the Watery Pass, the Antlion cave, and Mt. Hobs - West. If you take the airship to the underworld, the result is you now have a current location in the or  range even though you're not inside a lunar dungeon.

When you get into a battle on the underworld map, the game uses the wrong table of scripts and as a result the enemy attack sequences for most formations is completely broken. In many cases, the enemies cast Stone on themselves over and over until successful, and will never attack your party.

This bug was corrected in Final Fantasy IV 1.1 by first checking if is, which signals the battle was started inside a dungeon and not a world map. No other changes were made between Final Fantasy IV 1.0 and 1.1 besides this bug fix.

Text
Some additional text was added to Final Fantasy II. Two early examples are the dialogue spoken during the Mysidia flashback and Kain's explanation of how to move around and talk to NPCs. This extra text was retained for Easy Type.

Easy Type also updates the names of nearly every monster, item, and skill in the game. In many cases this was done to replace English words with Japanese words. The names in Final Fantasy II are based on the ones used in the original Final Fantasy IV, although many are altered because of length restrictions or for other arbitrary reasons.

For an in-depth analysis of changes to the game's script, check out Legends of Localization.

The text of the Mysidian Legend is yellow in Final Fantasy IV and Easy Type. This was changed to white for Final Fantasy II.

Monsters
Some monsters, particularly those found in the Lunar Subterrain, had their battle scripts modified for Easy Type...which, in a bit of irony, usually make the monsters more dangerous than they were in the original game. Maybe Easy Type is the real "hard type" after all...

The rare PinkPuff monster, which drops the rarer Pink Tail, has been relocated into the rooms containing the White Robe, Heroine Dress, and Ribbons in Easy Type. It has also been made the second-to-rarest encounter in those areas instead of the rarest, as it was in its original room.

In possibly the biggest "fuck you" of the game, Zeromus has been given the ability to use the Count spell in Easy Type. It'll only use this when nearly dead, but if the player is unable to kill Zeromus before the timer runs out, it's a guaranteed Game Over since Count's instant death cannot be protected against. Again, Easy Type.

Items
Nearly all of the items that could invoke magic spells were made inaccessible in Final Fantasy II and Easy Type, the exceptions being the FireBomb and Lit-Bolt, which are shown in the opening demonstration battles. The Lit-Bolt item cannot be found in the game itself, however. Additionally, all of the items intended to cure a single status effect have also been made inaccessible, replaced by the Heal Potion, which has been made cheaper in stores. Many treasure chests, shop inventories, and monster drops have been modified to remove these dummied items. The following items were cut from Final Fantasy II but are still available in Easy Type:


 * Book of Knowledge (Grimoire) - Summons a random summoned monster.
 * Golden Apple - Permanently raises a character's maximum HP by 100.
 * Silver Apple - Permanently raises a character's maximum HP by 50.

The Book of Knowledge is also available much earlier and more commonly than it is in the original game.

Equipment Changes

 * Lunar Staff - Does not cast Dispel when used as an item in Final Fantasy II or Easy Type.
 * Defense Sword, Murasame - Does not cast Protect when used as an item in Final Fantasy II.
 * Elven Bow - Does not cast Shell when used as an item in Final Fantasy II.

Easy Type-Exclusive

 * Coral Sword - Replaces the Ancient Sword. It retains the Ancient Sword's effectiveness against spirits, but has had its attack power boosted from 35 to 45, accuracy from 77% to 99%, is lightning-elemental, and can no longer inflict curse status on enemies. Unfortunately, this is found at the end of the dungeon where it would've been incredibly useful.


 * Piglet's Bamboo Sword - A non-metallic sword that can be found inside a pot in Baron Castle's basement. Replaces the Mythril/Silver Sword, which is no longer available for purchase in the village of Mythril/Silveria. Compared to the Mythril Sword, its attack power has been boosted by one point, from 50 to 51, and its accuracy from 80% to 99%. It no longer does extra damage against spirits, but it has the ability to turn enemies it strikes into pigs. Interestingly, this sword was featured in Final Fantasy IV Advance, with its stats buffed up for its appearance at the end of the game.


 * Ribbon - Now offers fire, ice, and lighting protection, along with the ability to absorb any elements the wearer is protected against.


 * Heroine Dress - Strength, agility, and vitality stat boosts lowered from +15 to +10; -15 wisdom and will stat penalties removed.

Additionally, all bows have had their accuracy increased by 10 points.

Although it has no affect on the game itself, since the item isn't available anymore, the code for the Alert item has been removed. This item allowed you to force an encounter with the current area's rarest enemy formation.

Commands
Many of the less-useful commands were removed from Final Fantasy II and Easy Type.

Cecil (Dark Knight)

 * Darkness - Unleashes a wave of non-elemental, defense-ignoring energy against all opponents at the cost of 1/8th of Cecil's HP. This ability is still available for use in Easy Type, and it is still used by the Dark Knight boss fought on Mt. Ordeals in both versions.

Tellah

 * Recall - Tellah randomly casts Fire1, Ice-1, Lit-1, Toad, Virus, Stone, Weak, or Fatal on all enemies. Weaker spells are more common, and this can fail entirely. Due to a bug, spells cast via this command are not considered magical damage. This is lost after Tellah remembers his spells on the summit of Mt. Ordeals.

Edward

 * Medicine (Heal) - A nearly useless command which splits a Cure1 Potion between all characters in the party. Does the same amount of healing regardless of how many characters are in the party. This will fail if no Cure1 Potions are in the inventory.

Rosa

 * Pray - Rosa's prayers have a 50/50 chance of either casting Cure1 on the party for 0 MP or being unanswered, thus failing to do anything. The command will also fail if Rosa has silence status.

Yang

 * Power - Yang halves his defense and magic defense, and powers up in order to deal double damage. The length of the "powering up" state is based on his agility; it's often more efficient to just attack twice.
 * Endurance (Bear) - Casts Armor on Yang for 0 MP. Will fail if Yang has silence status. Amusingly, this spell can be reflected if Yang has Wall status.

Palom & Porom

 * Twin - Twin magic takes a significantly shorter amount of time to cast in Final Fantasy II.
 * Bluff - Boosts Palom's intelligence by 16 when used, to a maximum of 99.


 * Fake Tears (Cry) - Porom pretends to cry, which halves the time required to run away from enemies.

FuSoYa

 * Spirit Wave (Regen) - Heals all party members for a measly 10 HP for a number of turns, which is based on FuSoYa's agility. The higher his agility, the less time for healing this command provides. After using this command, FuSoYa is completely disabled until the healing stops.

Magic
The following spells were cut from Final Fantasy II and Easy Type:
 * Protect (Armor) - White magic. Increases defense by 5. This spell is still used by the Mind enemy, but the white magic icon has been removed from its name, masking the fact that it was originally a spell available to the player.
 * Shell - White magic. Increases magic defense by 3. This is also used by the Mind enemy, and its icon was also removed.
 * Dispel - White magic. Removes Berserk, Image, Barrier, and Wall status effects. It can also remove Stop status if the target has Count status. The spell itself can be reflected by Wall, making it rather inconvenient to make use of in the one situation where it would be useful.
 * Cockatrice - A rare bonus summon for Rydia, which could be obtained from Cockatrice enemies and their palette swaps. Essentially a more efficient copy of the Stone spell. Turns a single enemy into stone with its Stone Beak attack.

The Asura summon was updated. In the original and Easy Type, she randomly casts spells similar to Cure3, Life1 or Armor on the entire party. Armor has been replaced with a stronger healing spell using Cure4's visuals in Final Fantasy II.

Menus
The configuration menu of Final Fantasy II was greatly stripped down compared to Final Fantasy IV. Here's an overview of the missing options:


 * Battle Mode - Can set ATB to Active, which allows enemies to attack when you're in menus.
 * Controller - Has two different selections:
 * Normal/Custom - Allows the buttons assigned to the Confirm, Cancel, and Menu options to be changed. The R button, used for switching characters on the field, is the only one that cannot have its function changed.
 * Single/Multiple - Multiple allows you to assign each party member to a different controller in battle. Without this set, either controller can control any party member.
 * Cursor - The cursor can be set to remember its previous location in menus.

Easy Type only lost the ability to customize button assignments (likely because of button hints being placed in the game's dialogue) and set the cursor to remember its previous position.

The features enabled by the options weren't actually removed from either game, and they will function perfectly if a save from another version with the options enabled is imported.

Maps
The Town of Baron, Kaipo, Mysidia, and Town of Toroia maps have been altered in Final Fantasy II and Easy Type to include the training room building. In Kaipo's case, this was done by adding a door to an existing structure. Namingway was removed from his unique location in each of these maps, since he is always available in the training room.

The original way of accessing the training room, from the Serpent Road building in Baron, has been removed.



The training room itself got two new maps, rather than sharing one with the magic classes in Baron Castle. Given the huge increase in the number of students, it's not surprising that more game mechanics are explained.

Nearly all of the secret passages found in dungeons have been made visible in Final Fantasy II and Easy Type. Those found in castles and towns are still invisible, as is the one leading to Cecil's Crystal Sword in Final Fantasy II. The latter was made visible in Easy Type.

The Towers of Zot and Bab-il, and the Giant of Bab-il all have foreground "overhang" tiles that the player can walk under in Final Fantasy IV. These tiles were removed, likely because they could confuse players into believing they were walls. Some areas were modified slightly when these were removed, so that proper border tiles could be placed, as seen in the screenshot.

These tiles were used on the floors, often as bridges, in Final Fantasy IV. They were swapped out for the standard floor tiles. They can still be seen all over the maps as a part of the walls.

One of the most well-known changes in Final Fantasy II and Easy Type is the removal of the Developers' Office. The secret passage that lead to it in Cafe HOWDY! is sealed, and the hidden staircase is removed.



The maps themselves were removed entirely.

A save point was added to the third floor of the Lunar Core in Easy Type. The square outcrop it was placed on was present, but worthless, in other versions of the game.

Graphics
The standard save points in caves were changed from a mine-like object in Final Fantasy IV to a tile with an "S" marked on it. This may have been for clarity, but the game is pretty clear as it is just what these things are the first time you encounter one.

The new save point graphic was based on the one used in the Sylvan Cave and Town of Monsters, which originally featured a Star of David.

The save points in the high tech dungeons, such as the Tower of Bab-il and the Tower of Zot, were also changed, with the original version being a simple black orb. Final Fantasy II and Easy Type change this to an elaborate flashing version of the same "S" tile seen above. In both versions, the black orb tile is also used for detail on top of the walls near doors.

The orbs surrounding the above high-tech save points were also changed. Final Fantasy II and Easy Type use Final Fantasy IV's black orb save point graphic, while Final Fantasy IV uses a different orb with the same flashing palette that Final Fantasy II and Easy Type would later use for their corresponding save points. The inactive teleporter devices in the Tower of Bab-il were also changed accordingly. The save point inside the Giant of Bab-il uses this graphic in Final Fantasy IV instead of the other orb. It was changed to a standard, non-flashing "S" tile in Final Fantasy II and Easy Type.

The treasure boxes in the high-tech areas were completely redrawn (and even animated) in Final Fantasy II and Easy Type, most likely to make them stand out, as the original chests in these areas were very low-key and easily mistaken for background tiles.

The giant metal ball hanging from the ceiling above Rosa in the Tower of Zot was originally a large metal blade. This was evidently deemed too gruesome a fate for the censors, who decided that a woman being crushed was somehow more appropriate. She's rescued just in time either way, so what was the big deal?

The dancer sprites were altered to wear a leotard instead of a bikini. The behavior of the dancer in Baron was also changed. In the original, she wore a dress, which she tossed aside during her dance routine to reveal the standard dancer sprite. This "striptease" must have been deemed too risqué for the younger audience, so Final Fantasy II and Easy Type altered the NPC data so that she would always use the standard dancer sprite. As a result, the tossed dress sprites go unused in those versions.

Zeromus got quite the makeover for Easy Type, going from some sort of cosmic horror to some sort of cosmic lobster wielding a sword and having an elf lady for a penis. This look was later reused for Zeromus EG, the new final boss in Final Fantasy IV Advance.

More item icons were added to Final Fantasy II, which helped with clarity since there often wasn't enough room to list an item's type after its name. In the original, lighter body and arm gear used the same armor and glove icons as its heavier cousins. Item types other than weapons, armor, and summon spells did not have icons at all. Additionally, icons are now shown as a part of the item name when collecting items from chests and when using them in a pop-up menu on the field.

PlayStation Additions and Changes
Unlike later releases, the PlayStation version is a straight port of the SNES original and even loads most of the game data and graphics off of a stripped-down SNES ROM. It did have some minor additions made to it:

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An FMV has been added to the game. The first portion of this, depicting the Red Wings departing Baron for the raid on Mysidia, is shown without music before the title screen. The full FMV with music is shown after finishing the game.



After the title screen, a new menu is displayed which allows you to start a new game or load a saved game. There's also a save tutorial available here, in which a Chocobo teaches you the difference between Memo saves and normal Memory Card saves. Memo saves save to RAM, which is faster than accessing a Memory Card, but are lost when turning the console off or hard resetting. A soft reset can be done by pressing L1, L2, R1, R2, Start, and Select simultaneously.



There are loading screens when accessing the Memory Card to load a save. They depict various characters from the game, using new sprites.

Holding down the cancel button allows you to dash everywhere except for the world maps.



The customize controls option now depicts PlayStation buttons, as you'd expect. It also has awful load times since it is a single image loaded off the disc when needed, unlike the rest of the game's menus. The face buttons in the Japanese version are white like the rest of the text, instead of being colored.

Scrolling down the item list in battle is painfully slow compared to the SNES originals. Strangely, scrolling up is faster than scrolling down.