Pony Fantasy VI

Hello everybody! Sorry for not being here, was out of town celebrating Christmas. Anyway, let’s get started.

Warning, this a long post.

Pony Fantasy VI is a Romhack of Final Fantasy VI that replaces the game’s cast and NPCs with the characters of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. It was created by QuickFix (aka BossManJohn1).

This game provides examples of:

• Alternate Universe: Although the world of FFVI is very different from Equestria, the characters of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic maintain their personalities for some rather interesting reactions to the game’s events.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Is it any surprise that Discord was cast for the role of Kefka?
• Boisterous Bruiser: Luna, retaining her ROYAL CANTERLOT SPEAKING VOICE from “Luna Eclipsed” fits into this, having replaced Sabin. Applejack also indulges this in the defense of Sweet Apple Castle.
• Break the Haughty: Being a stand-in for Celes, The World of Ruin does this for Trixie if she lets Sethisto die.
• Brought Down to Normal: Thanks to the War of Chaos, unicorns lost practically all of their magical abilities.
• The Cameo: Gogo the Mimic, one of the secret characters, is replaced by Lauren Faust as an alicorn. Many other cameos show up as well, such as Sethisto as Cid, Daniel Ingram as the Impresario, Snips and Snails as Biggs and Wedge, and Daring Do as Siegfried.
• Carrying the Antidote: Discord drops a Harmony Band after your first battle with him, an item which blocks two of the statuses he frequently inflicted during the battle. That would have been really useful beforehand… then again, I guess this kind of behavior makes perfect sense coming from Discord.
• Character Name Limits: The game only lets you input up to six letters in a name, while most of the characters have names that are longer. To get around this, most of them have nicknames, such as Twilight = Twi, Applebloom = Bloom, Celestia = Tia and so on. Their full names still appear in certain cutscenes. Early versions included a tag to ‘Please keep the name’; later revisions simply ask you to ‘Enter Pony Nickname’.
• Composite Character: Arguably everyone, but special attention should go to Commander Derpy “Hurricane” Hooves.
• Confusion Fu: Essentially Pinkie’s shtick.
• Crapsack World: It may be with ponies, but everyone who dies in FFVIwill die here, and those who can die depending on your choices (Fluttershy if you leave the Floating Continent too early, Sethisto if you don’t catch enough healthy fish) aren’t exempt either.
• The Dreaded: Fluttershy, thanks to rumors about The Stare.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Overlapping with A Taste of Power in a weird way. You don’t get properly introduced to Espers and how they work until Las Pegasus, but unlike in the original game, you actually get your first Esper earlier, just after getting Celestia. (Presumably because she stands in for Edgar, whose Tools were given to Applebloom, so they had to find some other gimmick to have her show us. They also needed to explain that, unlike in the original, only Unicorn characters can equip Espers in this game.) This has another strange side effect: the game doesn’t start telling you you’re getting Magic Points from battles (or explain what they are) until you’re ‘supposed’ to, but if you’ve been using Unicorn you’ll have been already getting them for most of the game.
• Leads to a bit of a Plot Hole when you get to the Magitek Facility and see Unicorn imprisoned there despite already having it.
• Easy Levels, Hard Bosses: BIG TIME.Word of God says this is intentional. Most regular enemies give little trouble, and the way skills are redistributed leads to a few Disk One Nukes. The bosses on the other hand, are another story, especially seeing as Espers no longer give stat boosts. Even tutorial bosses can and will kill you if you’re unprepared.
• You know those eight elemental dragons that were easy to counter with the right equipment? Well, their magic isn’t blocked by such barriers anymore. That’s also not to mention the fact that they deal tons of damage for each physical attack as well. Oh, and did we mention they revive with full health after you’e killed it once?
• Epic Fail: Invoked; the ‘Miss’ graphic for when someone doesn’t hit a target now reads ‘Fail’.
• Even The Mares Want Her: Given that Applejack has taken Cyan’s role, there’s a bar floozy who hits on her, much to AJ’s consternation.
• Applejack: Now see here, missy, mah barn door don’t swing that way!
• Furry Confusion: A Unicorn Esper being summoned by Unicorn player characters, anyone? Made stranger by the fact that only Unicorns (and Alicorns like Celestia) can equip Espers.
• There’s also the oddity of seeing bipedal ponies riding chocobos.
• Fusion Fic
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: You see Rarity using several Ice spells while attempting to put out a house fire in a cutscene. When she joins your party a few minutes later… she doesn’t know any. (She does know a Water/Wind based Blue Magic attack, but it would have been a bit weird to hear her yell out “Aqua Rake” in said scene)
• Girl with Psycho Weapon: Applebloom’s Autocrossbow and Chainsaw, anyone?
• Hyperactive Metabolism: Healing items are replaced by strains of apples, and MP recovery items with flavors of soda-pop.
• Jack of All Stats: Celestia, at least early on. Decent physical attack, can use some Magic (but not as well as Twilight) while NOT being a Squishy Wizard. Which makes sense, seeing as she has the power of all three pony races. Once stronger physical fighters like Luna and Applejack join though, she’s better used as a pure mage. (Still less squishy than Twi and Trixie though)
• Konami Code: Used as the input code for Luna’s Reiki skill.
• Least Rhymable Word: Zecora’s last words set up something to rhyme with “orange.” Naturally, Discord kills her before she would have finished the verse.
• Doorhinge?
• Magic Knight: It’s possible to make Luna one if you teach her magic from Espers. Celestia is one to begin with.
• The Magic Went Away: Due to the War of Chaos, magic was almost completely lost 1,000 years ago. This led to unicorns falling into obscurity, as the ability to cast spells became a rarity. Even Celestia and Luna were affected, though they didn’t lose their immortality.
• Mood Dissonance: Emperor Gilda talks in a Totally Radical fashion while making what should be ominous proclamations. This is likely an intentional case of Narm Charm.
• Pinkie Pie and Rarity’s death sprites are fairly amusing. When killed, Rarity is passed out on her divan, and Pinkie lays flat on her back holding a flower.
• Morality Pet: Applebloom towards Trixie.
• Mythology Gag: Despite being set in an Alternate Universe from the series, more than a few references are sprinkled in.
• Ultros will sometimes say “What’s soaking wet and clueless? YOUR FACE!!” when attacking.
• Two soldiers talking about Discord mention they wouldn’t trust him to pour them a glass of chocolate milk.
• After kidnapping Trixie and finding out she’s not Maria, Rainbow Dash tersely asks if she’s a spy.
• A few of Discord’s lines from the show are quoted verbatim in somewhat similar circumstances. Most notably his cry of “Arreviderci!“ when he kicks a mortally wounded Emperor Gilda off of the Floating Continent.
• During the escape from Discord’s Tower, Rainbow Dash remarks that she’s becoming more and more like Firefly every day. As CR once noted, Rainbow Dash is an Expy of Firefly.
• The Impresario is (usually) renamed “Ingram” after Daniel Ingram, the series’ song writer.
• In Canterlot, when Applebloom and Twilight are talking after Discord has spoken to Celestia, Twilight asks how can she be of any use by saying “But how do I fit in, with my magic? What does everypony do?”
• Nerf: Done to some attacks and gear starting with version .96, combined with strengthening certain bosses.
• Not His Sled: Fluttershy, filling in for Shadow, shoos Angel Bunny away and opts to stay behind as Discord’s Tower comes down around her earsin the game’s ending as atonement for her failings. Rainbow Dash takes exception and drags her to safety.
• RainbowDash: I’m NOT leaving you here Fluttershy…We all have regrets…and I’m not gonna let this be one of mine!
• The Not-Love Interest: Applebloom towards Trixie. Since they stand in for Locke and Celes, their relationship had to be changed presumably to avoid Lolicon based Unfortunate Implications. Applebloom is instead Trixie’s Morality Pet and a good friend.
• Punny Name: Quite a few towns have been renamed with horse-themed puns as per tradition. Narshe is now Neigshe, Zozo is now Las Pegasus, Maranda is now Mareanda, etc.
• Really 700 Years Old: Commander Hurricane was granted a centuries-long lifespan by King Nebula as reward for her services.
• She Is the King: The leader of the Empire is Emperor Gilda.
• Zecora (who takes the role of Leo) is referred to as “sir” by her subordinates.
• Shout Out: If you talk to Pinkie Pie while watching the opera, she talks about watching a theater production called Manos: The Hooves of Fatewhich she describes as “Soooooooo boring and creepy” but that the boredom was alleviated by some guys sitting in the front row making fun of the movie.
• There is also an NPC in Stalliongrad who asks “Who is funnier? Mike or Joel?” Picking “Joel” summons guards to fight.
• There are also at least two Skyrim references. Naturally at least ONE GUARD will talk of being retired due to an arrow in the knee, and there is an enemy in the game who can blow an ally with Fus-Ro-Dah.
• Both Luna and Applejack have had moves renamed from the original FFVI moveset to refer to other games. Sabin’s Blitz is now Hadouken, while Cyan’s Tiger/Slash is now Ryuenjin.
• When arriving in the Esper World in a flashback, Emperor Gilda gives this command.
• Gilda: “Get going you losers! We gotta catch ‘em all!“
• When Applebloom gives a vague answer to Trixie’s question about why she saved her in South Canterlot, Trixie remarks that Applebloom must have some “Past Sins” to atone for.
• Some of the sprites were made by MasterRottweiler which were based on characters from Diablo 2.
• Commander Hurricane (Derpy to her friends) mentions that even after all that has happened, Equestria will prevail. Her portrait was drawn byEquestria-Prevails.
• On the Phantom Train, when Daring Do shows up to keep you from taking the treasure near the front of the train, Luna tells her “We are not amused!”
• Spared by the Adaptation: Despite playing the part of Shadow, Fluttershy’s attempted suicide is interrupted by Rainbow Dash in the ending. She’s still nowhere to be seen on the deck of the airship though.
• Squishy Wizard: Twilight, naturally.
• The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: Other than rearranging character movesets around for appropriate ponies such as Edgar’s Tools for Apple Bloom, there are a few neat battle details. One example is whenever Luna uses Hadouken, instead of using her fists, her sprite roars with theROYAL CANTERLOT VOICE.
• Ultros’ Boss Banter has been heavily edited with new character-specific taunts, see Mythology Gag above. He also calls Luna “Princess Capslock.”
• Tsundere: Trixie is a rare non-romantic example of Type A, towards Applebloom.
• Unknown Rival: Trixie to Twilight. Well, it’s not so much ‘unknown’, Twilight just doesn’t care.
• Verbal Tic: Scootaloo’s “Ba-kak!”

Credit goes to tvtropes.org for releasing the information above. So in other words, Pony Fantasy VI is basically a hacked version of Final Fantasy VI with Discord as the antagonist.

Pony Fantasy VI v0.9 is available for download here http://cloudstor.es/f/fYm/

You will need an SNES emulator in order to play this. An emulator can be found here http://www.zsnes.com/

Here is a gameplay of Pony Fantasy VI