From the game box:
Follow the dark knight Cecil - Lord Captain of Baron's elite force, the Red Wings - as he embarks on a fateful journey riddled with trials, betrayals, friendship, loss and self-discovery. Plagued with uncertainty over his monarch's motives, can Cecil turn away from the path of darkness and destruction?
User summary:
Final Fantasy IV was Square's first Final Fantasy installment for the SNES. The game was early planned to be released for the NES, but was quickly changed for a SNES release when Nintendo announced it, thus hitting the SNES RPG scene before Enix' Dragon Quest V did.
As playing RPGs was still something new at that time, Square made an attempt to get new players into the RPG gaming by releasing a special version called Final Fantasy IV Easy Type. The most notable differences included marking all hidden passageways with white spots; replacing all the specialized status restoration items with a generic "Remedy" item that healed all status changes; and removing many character abilities from the battle system. Also, the secret "developer team" room that lies hidden in the full game was not accessible in Easy Type.
The American release: Final Fantasy II and the numbering
As FFII and FFIII for the NES were never released in the US, the title of FFIV was changed to Final Fantasy II for the US release, years later causing confusion. Notably, the American release was in reality "Final Fantasy IV Easy Type". Also, a short conversation scene in the starting town, where a dancer girl, being scared of the main character's Dark Knight appearance, throws off her dress and dances in her underwear, was deemed "inappropriate" and was removed. The dancer girl keeps her dress on in the US release. This caused internet rumours that the scene contained explicit nudity, which of course it didn't.
FFV also never got a US release, so FFVI, the last FF for the SNES, was named Final Fantasy III in the US. The numbering of the Final Fantasy US releases was restored upon the first Final Fantasy for PSX – Final Fantasy VII. After that, all US versions of the SNES remakes have been correctly numbered.
Individual credits:
Hironobu Sakaguchi: Director
Nobuo Uematsu: Music
Yoshitaka Amano: Character & monster design
