Hello everyone,
As creator of a living card game that shall arrive on the Fandom in no time (Cat, if you're reading me ^^), I have tried to restore some content that has been forgotten by the devs in order to add exclusive cards to my game. So far, I've managed to restore all of the forgotten / unused monsters from Final Fantasy III on the NES, and now I'm having problems with the ones on the Super Nintendo era.
There are six monsters I'm looking for to be adapted in cards :
- Imp (Final Fantasy IV)
- Big Boss (Final Fantasy V)
- Neo Goblin (Final Fantasy V)
- Chimera (Final Fantasy V)
- Colossus (Final Fantasy VI)
- Czar Dragon (Final Fantasy VI)
So far, I managed to find half of them. I'm still having trouble finding Imp, Neo Goblin and Chimera.
Through the use of the Snes9x emulator and the proper codes to alter battle formations, I have been able to find the three others by forcing the battle encounter to appear. I have found on japanese websites an exhaustive list (although poorly translated thanks to google) of all possible battle formations for all three Final Fantasy on the SNES. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find the three I'm currently missing and I don't know why.
More troubling, I have tested myself E*V*E*R*Y 510 combinations of battle formations for Final Fantasy IV. While I found the weird "Number 214" unused scrappy monster, I haven't been able to find the Imp for some reason.
I have yet to do the same for Neo Goblin and Chimera from Final Fantasy V but it's really tedious.
The codes to enact battle formations are the followings :
FINAL FANTASY IV :
7E1800 XX
7E1801 XX
FINAL FANTASY V :
7E04F0 XX
7E04F1 XX
There are two different sets of 255 encounters. To activate one or the other, the second XX code for each game must be switched from 00 to 01. The first XX code determines which battle formation you encounter from 00 to FF.
My question is this : if I have been unsuccessful finding the Imp from Final Fantasy IV while I have tested every single combination, how can anyone pretend it actually exists ? I know there is a page here about it, the sprite is indeed a redeco of the usual imp enemy throughout the game, and even the Cutting Room Floor website acknowledges its existence, but how were you, or them, able to find it anyway ?
If anyone could help me finding that little scoundrel, and his two FFV friends I'm still missing, I'd be able to screenshot them through my upgraded graphic filters to add them to my project. And possibly to this Fandom as well with true sprites and not copied sprites from internet.
On the other hand, I have to add that some informations about unused monsters are not credible. Take Final Fantasy III for example : aside from the incorrect programming for true monsters like Bugbear, Mandrake, Basilisk, Lost Gold and others that have been corrected with later releases of the game (3D versions and Pixel Remaster), there is still the problem of the so-called Terrible Dragon. Final Fantasy III on the NES uses uncolored sprites and add a two-colors filter that is easily switchable via a code.
I have tested this theory on the FFIII "Terrible Dragon" black and white basic sprite, and changed its color code for every 255 possibilities, and even took screenshots of what the result looks like. So, while stating that a Terrible Dragon indeed exists, which can be quite true in fact, pretending there are two known palettes and one unknown palette for it is clearly a misunderstanding of how the game works. So far, you can apply every 255 color combinations to every monster. "Creating" the Terrible Dragon is just a matter of finding the correct match for the hypothetical color online informations pretend it to bear. Which was easy.
But since SNES games don't work the same way, due to high limitations in programming, such palette swapping is impossible. Thus, if anyone has ever claimed these Imp, Chimera and Neo Goblin to exist, then there must be a way to truly find them somewhere, but as far as the battle formations lists go, they cannot be found in the code itself ... which I find pretty disturbing.
Long story short : are these informations credible ? How can we verify for real ? And where can I find them in order to screenshot them to death ?
If anyone is interested to dig them up with me, I'd be happy to talk about this. I'm going to create a discord profile in order to interact with the community in a better way very soon. In the meantime, please feel free to help here :)
Thanks !
Valerama