Final Fantasy II

Final Fantasy II
Developer: Square Publisher: Square Platform: NES Released in JP: December 17, 1988, February 27, 1994 (I·II) This game has unused areas. This game has unused code. This game has unused items. This game has unused abilities. This game has unused text. This game has revisional differences. This game has a development article This game has a prototype article This game has a prerelease article This game has a notes page This game has a Data Crystal page

Final Fantasy II proved that the preceding game wasn't actually the final fantasy, and Square didn't fail after all. This sequel featured defined player characters with a story driven around them. It also had a somewhat experimental progression system, in which the actions of each party member determine how their stats are raised, allowing players the freedom to develop each party member to how they best saw fit without worrying about experience points and class assignments (at least in theory). Square would refine this same progression system in their later SaGa series.

The game was almost released in the U.S. for the NES, but due to the impeding launch of the Super NES, Square skipped it along with the third game, to focus on localizing the newer and fresher fourth entry, which became Final Fantasy II in the U.S. to cover up this fact. A prototype of the scrapped NES localization was eventually leaked to the public though (after the Japanese ROM had already been fan-translated) and many of the game's later remakes (starting with the PlayStation version) were given official worldwide releases as well.

Sub-Pages

Development Info

Prototype Info

Prerelease Info

Notes

Leftover World Map Data

At the end of the world map data in ROM bank 01 is a remnant (specifically, the bottom 37 rows) of an earlier version of the world map.

Leftover
Used

The leftmost 114 columns, which are completely filled with ocean in both versions, are excluded to make the maps a reasonable size and aspect ratio.

In the earlier version of the world map the Tropical Island is larger but lacks a proper shoreline on its north and east sides, and the land bridge joining the northwest and southeast corners of the world is blocked by a mountain range. These mountains would have prevented the player from travelling between the Fynn and Palamecia regions. The tower-like gray object in both versions is the Dreadnought's gangway; in-game, it isn't visible except when the Dreadnought itself is present.

Unused Location Map

To do: Replace screenshot with proper map rip.

Compressed tilemap 2F, a room containing a single treasure chest, is not referenced by any location data. It's sandwiched between the maps for Castle Deist and Castle Kashuan (2E is the tilemap for location 5C, the room with eight chests in Deist, and 30 is location 60, the ground floor of Kashuan) so it's likely it was intended for one of the two castles.

Because there is no associated location data, the intended contents of the chest and even the correct tileset and palette to use are unknown; here it is rendered using the castle tileset and palette based on the locations it was most likely intended for.

Unused Weapons

Item ID 6E: キラーボウ (Killer Bow)

The Killer Bow would've been pretty awesome, what with the instant-death property and all. Shame about the 0 attack power and accuracy, though.

It appears in the Dawn of Souls GBA remake, albeit still unused.

Unused Abilities

Spell ID 3E: ぶんれつ (Split)

Sandwiched between じばく (Self Destruct) and じしん (Earthquake) in the monster spells data. It is nonfunctional and its spell effect data is clearly a placeholder--just a bunch of 00 and FF bytes. Splitting monsters would prominently feature in the next game in the series.

Unused Text

There are two unused strings after the ending text at the end of ROM bank 04.

Unused String	Comment
なかまたちのもとへ 　　かれらの　ゆうじょうと　おもいでだけは 　　けっして　きえることはないのだから……	This string begins in the middle of a sentence, implying that it was partly overwritten by the final ending text. It looks like a remnant of an earlier (and substantially different) draft of the ending text. It translates to "[...]to where their comrades are. Their friendship and memories shall never fade..."
エンディング １　ここ　フィンおうこくにすむ　４にんのわかものたちも ２　　てきのこうげきによって　りょうしんを　うしない ３　しつようなてきの　おってから　にげつづけていた……	This string is identical to the third paragraph of the opening Prelude text, except for the addition of the word "Ending" (エンディング) and what appear to be line numbers. The Prelude text that's actually used is in bank 0A, and the entire text is one string.

Unused Code

Sound Freeze

Writing a non-zero value to RAM address 00E6 will "freeze" one or more sound channels so that they continue to play the current note forever. A value with bit 01 set will freeze pulse channel 1, a value with bit 02 set will freeze pulse channel 2, and a value with bit 04 set will freeze the triangle channel. This is leftover functionality from Hanjuku Hero, which FF2's music driver is closely based on. In Hanjuku Hero all the sound channels can be multiplexed between music and sound effects, and a bit mask indicates which channels are currently in use by a sound effect so the music driver shouldn't touch their registers. FF2 doesn't multiplex the sound channels this way (it uses a setup similar to Final Fantasy, in which the music doesn't use the noise channel at all and only pulse channel 2 is shared between music and effects) but the music driver retains the functionality.

Leftover FF1 Subscreen Routine

At ROM offset 3E3D0/CPU address E3C0 is a routine almost identical to the one at EBFD in Final Fantasy, labelled "DrawOBSprite" in the fan-created disassembly of that game. In Final Fantasy this routine draws the Light Warriors' battle sprites on the subscreen based on their status (standing if healthy, crouched if poisoned, gray if stone, not drawn at all if dead). FF2's subscreen displays portraits rather than battle sprites, so this routine goes unused. The only change to the FF2 version of the routine reflects that FF2 represents "dead" by 80 rather than 01 as in FF1. It still uses the FF1 values for "poison" and "stone" (which are incorrect for FF2), it doesn't handle any of FF2's new status ailments such as Toad, and the palette lookup table it uses still contains the palettes for the 12 classes of FF1, not the 9 characters of FF2.

Revisional Differences

Original	Re-release

When the game was re-released together with the first game on a single cartridge, a typo in the opening text was corrected. "ならかった" was changed to "ならなかった".