Final Fantasy VI had numerous versions since the 1994 SNES release and a bunch of mods created for each version. We have seen Playstation and GBA ports, an iOS/Steam release and finally more recently the Pixel Remaster. Each version comes with differences and I suggest you read this version differences FF Wiki page to know more about those. This article will however focus on complete hacks and randomizers for the SNES/SFC version that give a fresh experience to the player, whether it is an enhanced version still feeling like the original game or a complete overhaul changing a lot of aspects of it.
A hack with a lot of changes. Character sprites have been changed drastically, some are based off the original sprite, others are almost entirely from scratch. The characters are now “Classes”, which you should name to whatever you want. The characters stats have been changed, some of the special commands have been shuffled around as well. Not only that, but espers no longer teach magic or give stat boosts - The summons have been made far more powerful in exchange.
Magic, instead, is learned from equipment. For example, the “Avenger” weapon teaches Sleep at an 8X Rate, but can only be equipped by Red Mage and Blue Mage. No one else will be able to learn Sleep through that method, and many characters may not be able to learn it at all. Various random enemies have been altered. Some of them are the same, some of them have new attacks, some of them have stats that have changed. All of the bosses have been changed. Some of them have had just minor alterations, whereas others are complete overhauls. The difficulty is higher then the original FF6. Equipment has been changed. Almost every piece of equipment has been renamed and had stats altered. I know how FF6 works, so I tried to give most of the equipment a use for the time you will get it, unlike pointless things in the original game.
Dialogue has been almost completely changed. Now, the NPC text is split into two categories - Helpful, such as people who give you tips about the game that you amy or may not have known, or telling you where to go next or about an area, or completely random, which is almost certainly an injoke, or at least a reference to something. Still, at the very least it's something different to read then the plain old FF6 plot, right? The main plot is silly, but it is a bit more serious, and some parts of it were shamelessly stolen from other things. Again, it's something different to read, and should make for an interesting experience. It really feels quite different with the different dialogue and sprites combined. (source)
Antinomia (n.) - Two principles equally valid but diametrically opposed.
The intent of this hack is to elevate General Leo to a deuteragonist role and periodically shift the narrative focus from the main party to him, in order to explore the events on the Imperial side in parallel with the main casts' actions (kind of like what FF8 did with Laguna). The narrative split continues until Leo and the Returners' stories intersect, at which point more substantial changes occur, such as Leo surviving and eventually being able to join the party as a permanent member, and the World of Ruin's story progression being retooled. The overall story and mechanics remain mostly the same, but utilize an expanded ROM and dialogue bank for dozens of new cutscenes and events to expand upon what's already there, for all characters, not just Leo.
This is first and foremost a story hack rather than a gameplay hack. Not to “change” the story, so much as tell it from a different set of eyes, and to give my favorite character a chance to participate in that story more than he did originally. There are a few new boss fights and some minor adjustments to battle mechanics, as well as a few events that utilize mechanics not present in the original game. But expanding on the original world, characters, and themes while still remaining loyal to them was my goal going into this rather than changing the manner in which the game is played. As such, no characters have been added, replaced, removed, or significantly altered, with the exception of Siegfried, since he served no purpose in the original game and I wanted to utilize his sprite memory for something else, so he no longer exists. So if you're a die-hard Siegfried fan, this hack is not for you. (source)
A Soldier’s Contingency is a comprehensive Gameplay and expansion hack for FFVI. It has been in the works for 5-years and is based on the wonderful hack by Fauntleroy/Fedorajoe titled the “General Leo Edition”. In addition to being able to recruit Leo, the whole game has a fresh new experience from start to finish while remaining faithful to the original. All the original content is still there, but with a significant overhaul and expansion. Battles should feel exciting rather than tedious. Gameplay is more challenging, but never in an unfair manner. Grinding will NOT be necessary with some good strategy. (source)
What started out with my initial desire to properly case everyone’s names turned into a rather innocent discussion between a co-worker of mine and I about ways to improve/fix the original game, which in turn (somehow) became this. FF6 - Brave New World is a fairly complete overhaul of Final Fantasy VI, featuring…
One thing BNW is not is a difficulty mod. While it is harder than vanilla FF6, we wanted to keep it accessible to newcomers while at the same time giving veterans a new experience. Hopefully, we succeeded. (source)
Final Fantasy VI Challenge Mod is a balance overhaul mod intended to give players a fresh experience with a higher difficulty level, but does not make the game punishingly hard either. This encompasses the following:
Final Fantasy VI: Divergent Paths is a complete modification of Final Fantasy 6 for the SNES. At it’s heart, it is a storyline modification, re-arranging content, re-purposing content, and sometimes adding new content in order to make the game flow more naturally. Leo has been repurposed from a guest to a main character, with a full character arc, sidequests, and even his own musical theme. In addition, every named character receives an end to their story arc, both main characters and side characters.
There are more edits than just storyline modifications though. Instead of replacing an existing character, Leo is added as a 15th fully-playable character. A secret 16th character has been added too. You can even recruit crew members to the Falcon! There are new spells, new espers, new abilities, a reduced encounter rate, dummied content restored, and more. Over 2 dozen hackers are listed in the credits of the manual for contributions to this project.
Even with all of those changes listed, Divergent Paths has become somewhat noteworthy not for its changes, but for its restraint. There is no difficulty rebalancing, no retranslation, no graphical changes, and only a handful of spells and items renamed. Every change is made in service to its characters, and the core of the game remains the same. It never stops feeling like the Final Fantasy 6 you know and love. (source)
This is a full romhack of the game themed around My Little Pony. From top to bottom, story, gameplay, and graphics are overhauled, and there’s even a couple music edits too.
1000 years ago, King Sombra waged a great war to conquer Equestria, until the Two Sisters banished him to the spirit world. In the aftermath the Crystal Empire and the Crystal Ponies vanished from Equestria, and the events faded into legend as the Crystal War.
Now, Sombra has returned, he has taken control of the Crystal Empire to form a new army to continue his conquest, and he seems to have some lost knowledge about the Crystal Ponies that he is using to leverage into making his army stronger than any known before.
It is time to rally the heroes of My Little Pony together to defend their homelands, discover the secret truths of the Crystal Ponies, and free Equestria and the Empire from Sombra’s control. But he’s not the only threat to be concerned with… (source)
ReCast is a ’standing on shoulders’ half-hack that assembles various material created by members of the FF3SNES hacking community. Originally intended as a simple graphics patch to fix FF3’s combat art clash, ReCast has grown into a “vanillish” scenario adjustment, making Banon a more prominent character and adding a second story split to the latter half of the game to adjust Ruin pacing. Several characters are rewritten and some scenes are expanded or moved to different parts of the game (such as “Taming of the Gau” being moved to the World of Balance).
Additionally, spells were changed and natural magic was given to more characters. Enemies were made vulnerable to more status ailments and the Zombie status had its mechanics altered. This isn’t intended to be a major re-balance of combat or a hard-type patch, so the difficulty of the game should be roughly comparable to the original. (source)
Final Fantasy VI Reimagined, to sum it up as simply as possible, is my vision of what a proper FF6 Remake could be like, or at least as close to one as the original SNES engine can be. I consider it to be more than a remaster, but it is not a proper remake due to these restrictions, hence the term “Reimagined”.
For a comparison, this is a “Remake” of FF6 in the same way that the Super Mario RPG remake was a remake of the original, or how the Pixel Remaster versions of the NES FF games were remakes of the originals.
FF6 Reimagined features major overhauls to gameplay for a more balanced experience without being brutally difficult; a revised script that aims to polish up the narrative; enhanced graphics in various ways; and more.
What this mod does NOT do is significantly stray from the original FF6 story. There is new story content and the script is rewritten, but the new content only fleshes out what was already given and the new script does not change the overall story. FF6 purists should find little to take issue with in this mod, as I hewed very closely to the original game's vision, and when I deviated from the letter of that vision, I still tried to keep to the spirit.
In addition to all of the mentioned, this mod also has quality of life improvements, and incorporates the C.V.Reynolds Bugfix Compilation, the Restored Ability Names and Expanded Item Names patches, and various other tweaks and QoL mods. I recommend visiting the school in Narshe, the NPCs there will go over many of these changes.
Return of the Dark Sorcerer is an incredibly large fan-made Final Fantasy 6 modification that’s been in development since around 2010. Originally the brainchild of Gi Nattak, the project has evolved over the years thanks to a dedicated team and other skilled members of the FF6 romhacking community.
This mod promises to showcase some of the challenging aspects of FF6 romhacking, as well as plenty of fun and exciting new content; from an all new cast of playable characters with customized movesets, a radically changed story with many new and edited events, new overworld maps, a new musical soundtrack, difficulty selection, new battle scripts for monsters & bosses, and an absolute ton of custom monster/esper and NPC sprites.
It is a highly personalized modification of the original game and therefore naturally won’t appeal to everyone. It’s not a sequel, or a prequel, or a remake to FF6, it is quite simply a massive amalgamation mod and customization of FF6 which does contain a whole bunch of references and can be rather nonsensical or even immersion-breaking at times… but if you go into it prepared for this, you should have a much more enjoyable experience. That being said, a whole lot of time and energy has gone into this project and we are quite pleased with the result. (source)
Final Fantasy VI: Revised Old Style Edition is a thorough and nostalgic revision of the text and presentation of Final Fantasy VI for SNES.
The purpose of the hack is to refine FF6's surface-level elements according to the standard set by the PS1-era FF titles (e.g. FF Origins), while preserving the scope and difficulty of the original game as Square designed it. This is a classic improvement-type hack intended for newcomers and veterans alike.
The dialog script has been revised based on multiple translation efforts, both official (SNES/Woolsey, GBA/Slattery) and unofficial (kWhazit, Tomato, Lina Darkstar, et al.). It aims to combine the completeness and accuracy of the GBA with the energy and pacing of the SNES, sans censorship. Much of the official English text is retained in the updated script, particularly where the SNES and GBA agree closely with one another. Where unofficial sources are used, the wording is adapted as necessary to maintain cohesion with the overall script.
FF6:ROSE introduces two major advancements in its localization:
Several of the new features have either been developed from scratch or updated by the author specifically for this hack, including:
A considerable amount of original technical work and attention to detail have gone into making this a uniquely polished and uncompromising FF6 experience. At the same time, the project builds on the work of many, many FF6 fans and hackers. See the Readme for a detailed list of features and full credits. (source)
FF6 T-Edition is a popular Japanese ROM hack of Final Fantasy VI for the Super Famicom. It's intended for Final Fantasy VI fans who would like to play the game with new twists. Think of Final Fantasy VI T-Edition as a fun, lengthy, and more difficult version of Final Fantasy VI from an alternate universe.
In simple terms, this ROM hack:
(source)
Back when Final Fantasy VI (Final Fantasy III US) was released the game was heavily toned down, censoring graphics and the like. When it was re-released for the Playstation, the graphics were uncensored but toned down script remained. Then came Final Fantasy VI Advance with a newer (though some consider drier) translation, but the color palette and music were altered for the handheld console. Others have made re-translations, such as the great work by RPGOne, Lina Darkstar, and Kwhazit.
Now this is Final Fantasy VI: Ted Woolsey Uncensored Edition. The goal was to make the SNES version uncut and to clean up the script but keep the nuance used by Woolsey in the original game’s release. Using the original Woolsey script as a basis to analyze, the entire game was looked through, line by line, using FFVI Advance, RPGOne, and Lina Darkstar to accomplish this. Recently, the game’s script was also heavily analyzed by Kwhazit and Mato (Legends of Localization). With these newer and more heavily detailed looks into the game, the script was again updated to provide a much more accurate version while still remaining true to the original game’s release.
Also used was various tools and patches to uncensor the graphics, restore Character Class names, extend spell names, rename monsters and items, and make hopefully the version of Final Fantasy VI that everyone will play.
Any bug fixes or additions that were used were chosen not for any balance changes, but to fix persistent issues in the game, as to not change the experience of the original too much. This even includes the long list used in the optional Bug-Fix versions of the game.
Additional Add-Ons are also optionally included. These tweaks bring an overall complete experience that many would say should have been in the original game to begin with. (source)
This is a completely playable hack from beginning to end. It maintains the BASIC structure of the original game, but is loaded with surprises.
Changes from original Final Fantasy 3 (US):
(source)
Beyond Chaos CE is a randomizer, a program that remixes game content randomly, for FF6. It is a fork of Abyssonym's Beyond Chaos randomizer with even more features. Every time you run Beyond Chaos CE, it will generate a completely unique, brand-new mod of FF6 for you to challenge and explore. With the basic flags, there are over 10 billion different possible randomizations!
Nearly everything is randomized, including treasure, enemies, colors, graphics, character abilities, and more. Beyond Chaos CE is also customizable. Using the flags in the above section, you can choose to only randomize certain parts of the game. Every flag you select will make the game a little more random, and also a little more difficult. Therefore, even experienced players should be able to find some challenge in the resulting game. As the game progresses, enemies may become more and more difficult, so that it becomes necessary to develop specialized strategies for individual formations. (source)
Worlds Collide (WC) is an open-world randomizer for Final Fantasy VI on the SNES. Players begin aboard the airship and can travel freely between the World of Balance and the World of Ruin to discover characters and espers. Once you've gathered enough, you can face off against Kefka.
Options within WC include options to randomize characters, commands, espers, treasure, shops and more with over 200 flags to customize each playthrough. (source)