Final Fantasy VI/Revisional Differences

This is a sub-page of Final Fantasy VI.

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Bugs

Some bugs were fixed between versions, while others were introduced in later versions.

(Source: Final Fantasy 3us/6j Glitches & Bugs guide)

3-BAR Summon Oddities

Present in: SFC, SNES

When Palidor is summoned with a 3-BAR on the Slot command, Setzer or Gogo will take a step back after landing.

When Phoenix is summoned in the same manner, they will take an extra step forward for each character present in battle.

Banon's Missing Sprites

Present in: SFC, SNES

Banon lacks the sprites used when riding a Chocobo. As a result, if you detour down to the hidden Chocobo stable near the Figaro desert with him as your leader during the brief time he's in the party, he'll use the wrong sprites when riding. This was fixed in the PlayStation version by having him use Terra's sprites instead.

Enemies Respond to Wrong Status

Present in: PS1

Some enemies, such as the Magic Urns, have commands in their attack sequences which test the party's status. These respond to the wrong statuses: for example, instead of Petrify, the Magic Urn responds to Safe status.

Idle Lockups

Present in: PS1

If you let the game sit idle for a period of time without loading anything from the disc, it will lock up. This can be cured on an original model PS2 by attempting to eject the disc, which will force it to be read again.

Inaccessible 256th Item Slot

Present in: NA PS1, EU PS1

Unlike the SNES versions, which limit the inventory to 255 slots in both locations, the 256th item slot is accessible in the field but not in battle in the English PlayStation versions.

Optimum Equipment Bugs

Present in: SFC, SNES v1.0, PS1

In the Super Famicom version, it is possible to equip any item to any equipment slot for any character using the Optimum option in the Equip menu. If your inventory has none of a specific type of equipment (weapons, shields, helmets, or armor) the character can equip, using the Optimum option will equip the item in the 256th inventory slot (bottom right) as that type of equipment for the character. This was sort of fixed in the SNES version by making the 256th item slot inaccessible in the menu, however it is still possible to put an item in the slot with the Sketch bug present in the 1.0 revision.

A similar bug with the Optimum option is present in the PlayStation version, which once again has an accessible 256th item slot in the field menu. The method for setting it up is the same, but this bug only allows a weapon placed in the 256th item slot to be equipped. If there are more than one of the weapon available, and the character is using a Genji Glove relic, two will be equipped.

Opera House Rats

Present in: SFC

A pretty serious bug can be found in the Opera House in the Super Famicom version, involving the rats in the rafters. If you don't kill all of them in the World of Balance, they will still be there in the World of Ruin. If you engage them in battle and lose to them, the game will throw you back outside the Opera House in the World of Balance with no way to get back, rendering the game unwinnable. This was fixed in all subsequent versions by removing the rats once you reach the World of Ruin.

Phantom Train Music Cuts Out

Present in: PS1

Sometimes after entering or exiting a train car, the menu, or a battle on the Phantom Train, the music will be replaced by the train whistle heard in Cyan's dream. And sometimes after this occurs, the music will come back when taking these same actions. There's no known cause for this bug, but it doesn't happen outside of the PlayStation port.

Reflect Causes Enemies to Glow

Present in: PS1

If Bserk, Haste, Regen, or Slow is reflected off an enemy, they will glow with the spell's effect while they are reflecting the spell.

Remove Locke and Celes from Opera House Party

Present in: NA PS1 v1.1

In the Greatest Hits version of Final Fantasy Anthology, it is possible to move Locke and Celes to different slots when forming a party after finding Terra and Ramuh in Zozo. From there, they can be removed from the party altogether. Additionally, they won't appear in Arvis' house, so if a party of Edgar, Sabin, Cyan, and Gau is made, it will be impossible to switch party members again. It is unknown if this applies to the European version.

Shadow and Chupon

Present in: SFC, SNES

When you bet the Striker to fight Shadow at the Colosseum, Chupon's name will be listed below Shadow's name.

Sketch Bug

Present in: SNES v1.0

One of the most infamous bugs of the game, the SNES 1.0 revision introduces a bug related to Relm's Sketch ability: If you use it and it misses its target, unpredictable effects will occur including broken graphics, large-scale memory corruption, or even an outright crash. This was fixed in the 1.1 revision.

This glitch is caused by two programming flaws in the game, which in combination end up being disastrous:

• When the Sketch ability is used, the game tries to fetch the monster ID by calling its slot in memory, which normally goes from 0 to 5. However, when the Sketch ability misses, the game stores FF as the monster's slot, which causes the game to try to fetch the monster ID from an area of memory that normally stores the spells available to the characters.
• The game then attempts to draw the monster sprite based on the (invalid) monster ID it just fetched. Final Fantasy VI stores the monster graphics in one-dimensional form (in one row) in ROM and uses two nested loops to draw a two-dimensional sprite. The outer loop (which draws the rows) is programmed as a do-while loop that first subtracts the current row and then checks if there are still rows to draw. However, if the amount of rows is 0 (which is likely the case for an invalid monster ID), the game will subtract the current row and thus wrap around from 0 to 255... and then attempt to draw 255 more rows of the sprite, which corrupts a large portion of the memory.

Skills Menu Doesn't Clear Previous Text

Present in: SNES

The skills menu doesn't clear the text in the box when switching between categories in the SNES version, so for example loading up the magic menu and then switching to another command will continue to show the MP cost for whatever spell you had selected. This was not a problem in the Japanese version, because the skills menu had a different layout.

Misplaced Cursor

Present in: SNES

Returning from a subscreen in the Espers menu causes the scrolling cursor to be shifted upward by 8 pixels from its intended position. This was not a problem in the Japanese version, because the skills menu had a different layout.

Step Mine MP Display Bug

Present in: SFC, SNES

When Step Mine's center digit is a 0, it will not be displayed properly. This can only be seen between 50 and 55 hours of gameplay, since Step Mine's MP cost formula is (play time in hours) × 2.

Uncondensed Enemy Names

Present in: SNES

When fighting two different types of enemy that have the same name in the Japanese versions, such as the Mag Roaders and Cranes in Vector, they will share a name entry in the battle window, and the quantity number accounts for both types. This is not the case in the SNES version, which will print two copies of the same name in the window. The code that is supposed to condense different enemy types which share a same name down to a single entry was never updated to account for the change from eight-character to ten-character enemy names in the SNES versions.

Magic Doesn't Sort Correctly

Present in: SNES

The function that makes the magic menu more compact in battle fails to account for the fact that the standard, triple-column format in the Japanese version was abandoned. As a result, the algorithm excludes three unavailable spells at a time rather than two, which can make the menu more difficult to navigate.

Yellow Line in Gogo's Command List

Present in: SNES

When viewing Gogo's command list in the SNES versions, there is a pale yellow line going through part of it. This is actually the bottom line of Gogo's portrait, which is drawn behind the list, and shows through because of a priority issue. This was not a problem in the Japanese version, because portraits were placed higher up on the status screen.

Wave Animations are Broken

Present in: PS1

Magic and skills which cause a graphic to move to its target in a wave-like manner in the original versions, such as Demi, travel in a straight line in the PlayStation version.

PlayStation Additions and Changes

FMVs

An opening FMV, "The Magitek Empire", plays before the title sequence. This depicts several short scenes from the game, shows Wedge, Biggs, and Terra preparing for the raid on Narshe, and also serves as the opening credits.

After completing the game, "For the lovers..." is shown. It depicts even more scenes from the game.

This FMV, titled "PILOT" in the Bonus menu, reuses scenes from the other FMVs and plays a vocalized version of "Aria di Mezzo Carattere".

Bonus Menu

The Bonus menu is available from the menu after the title sequence and contains three submenus: Studio, Status, and Secret. While this option is always available, most of its content is locked until a system save is present, which requires completing the game.

Studio allows the three FMVs to be watched through its Theater option and stills, renders, and storyboards from them in its Gallery option. Gallery 5 shows FMV stills and concept art from Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy V. Only the opening FMV and first two galleries can be viewed without a system save.

Status shows the highest and lowest stats for each character, based on the saves on the current memory card. Magic and character skills, if applicable, can also be displayed. This option is not available without a system save.

Secret contains a bestiary, list of lores, esper information, and a colosseum chart. Only the bestiary is available without a system save, and only "Pre-C" (World of Balance) enemies can be viewed.

Phunbaba

In the PS1 version, Phunbaba is immune to Vanish; all attempts to cast this spell on him will fail.

This was apparently implemented to fix the infamous "Vanish-Doom bug" which allows you to kill any boss instantly by casting first Vanish on them and then Doom, which bypasses the instant death protection that bosses normally have. However, it's done pretty poorly: for one, it also prevents you from casting Vanish on the third and fourth party member due to how the game's targeting system works, and you can still use Rippler to swap Vanish status over to Phunbaba and then cast Doom to kill him instantly.

Credits

• The staff credits in the ending now keep scrolling to the top of the screen when they appear. In the SNES version, they would move up only slightly when fading in, then stop and stay in position.
• The people listed have been altered somewhat as has been the exact time when they appear on screen.
  • Battle planner Akiyoshi Oota was removed.
  • Field planners Yoshihiko Maekawa and Keita Etoh were removed.
  • Battle programmer Akihiro Yamaguchi was removed.
  • Field graphic designer Kaori Tanaka was removed.
  • The transliteration of Sinitirou Hamasaka's name was changed to Shinichirou Hamasaka.
  • Sound effect staffers Kazumi Mitome, Yoshitaka Hirota, Yasumasa Okamoto and Shun Ohkubo were removed.
  • Remake planners Weimin Li and Aiko Ito were removed.
  • Translator Ted Woolsey was removed.
  • System engineer Mitsuo Ogura was replaced by Yoshinori Uenishi.
  • System engineer Yutaka Ohdaira was removed.
  • Executive producers Tetsuo Mizuno and Hitoshi Takemura were removed.
  • A "special thanks to" credit for "Square all staff" was added.
  • All SNES "test coordinator" and "special thanks to" credits were replaced by "remake staff" credits listing the people who worked on the PS1 port.

Misc.

• The English script is based on the SNES version, but has seen some minor updates. Vicks is now named Biggs, and Fenix Downs are Phoenix Downs, for example. Enemy names in battle have been shortened from ten to nine characters, and most names used in the Bonus menu retain the original Japanese length limits.
• The menu font has been changed to the same one used in the other PlayStation Final Fantasy ports.
• It is now possible to sprint at any time by holding the cancel button. When the Sprint Shoes relic is equipped, this sprint button allows you to move even faster. This change was retained for Final Fantasy VI Advance.
• Gau can no longer equip the Merit Award in the PlayStation version. This was a popular exploit used to stack special effects with those Gau's Rages already provide. It's still possible to equip the Merit Award to Gogo and have him use the Rage command instead (this was fixed in the GBA version).