The three mainline Final Fantasy games for PS1 are considered something of an unofficial trilogy, capped off by Final Fantasy IX– also Square's final release for the platform. It was definitely an "end of an era" type of game, not just for that generation but also in the way it looked back at the earlier FF games in tone and visual style.

Related: Final Fantasy 7: 10 Pieces Of Content That Were Cut From The Original Game

FFIX was a critical and commercial success, but given that it came to North America a month after the PlayStation 2, it got lost a bit in all the hype of Sony's new baby. With it having been released in Japan in July of 2000, the classic JRPG is now 20 years old– the perfect time to not only look back at the game itself, but the game it might've been had the following planned ideas not been cut during development. It's definitely fascinating to see how Square was already looking ahead to the future of FF with some of these concepts as many were used in later installments.

Updated on May 9th by Russ Boswell: There are a lot of amazing Final Fantasy titles out there but there is something truly special about Final Fantasy IX. Although the release wasn't considered as successful as Final Fantasy VII when it first released, it's grown quite the cult following over the years, with many applauding its return to FF roots, as well as its beautiful game world, interesting characters, and fun combat. But Final Fantasy IX isn't nearly as robust as it could have been. Although there isn't as much Final Fantasy IX cut content as some other games in the series, there is still a bit that players may have missed out on. To showcase more of this cut content from Final Fantasy 9, the following list has been updated with more entries.

13 A Job System?

FF9 Job COncept Art

Final Fantasy IX marked a return to the series' roots. The introduction of Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy 8 had twisted the narrative into something new-age and exciting, but developers wanted to return to the medieval-style influences and fantasy-rooted visuals that had been seen across the series up to that point. Because of this, it's easy to see the "call back" to prior games in Final Fantasy 9's concept art and initial planning.

In addition to the visuals and style, it seems that there was a job system planned for the title, similar to what players had seen in past Final Fantasy games. Some of the classes included in the concept art were Scholar, Dragoon, Bard, Viking, Archer, Dark Knight, Elemental User, and Light Magician. Dragoon is perhaps the only "closely related class" that players saw, with the introduction of Freya Crescent.

12 A Sneaking Mini-Game Of Sorts

Final Fantasy 9 Lindblum Castle

At one point during Final Fantasy 9's robust story, players are forced to get into Lindblum castle after it is occupied by Alexandrian forces. The solution to this "puzzle" is pretty simple, as players simply need to locate a specific NPC and then speak to him to gain entry into the zone, past all the waiting guards. Original plans show that this section was set to be a lot longer and much more difficult, as players would need to actually sneak past the guards in a sneak-style mission.

It's likely that this scene was cut for time constraints, but it definitely would have added a layer of excitement to Lindblum.

11 More Game Time For Cinna?

Final Fantasy 9 Cinna

The beginning of Final Fantasy 9 is pretty exciting. Players are thrown directly into the midst of a robbery of sorts, where a band of thieves sets out during a festival to kidnap a princess. It's a high-stakes ride filled with comedic moments that follow the iconic Black Mage Vivi, as he adventures around down in hopes of seeing the ceremony for himself. During these opening scenes, players are introduced to combat mechanics and given a party that mostly consists of Zidane and his crew.

But it seems that developers had originally planned more for one of Zidane's friends, Cinna. There is actually a portrait and a victory animation for Cinna, although players never get to see it during the battles he's involved in.

10 Free Movement During Battles

A lot of FF fans were unhappy when Final Fantasy XII introduced real-time battles for the first time in a mainline, non-online installment– and it's been the standard for the series ever since. But the idea of free movement during battles was considered all the way back to FFIX's development, as early design documents uncovered by the website Gaming Intelligence Agency showed a battle menu option called "eight-way run," suggesting characters could move around during fights in the vein of Chrono Trigger or Parasite Eve.

9 Realistically-Proportioned Characters

final fantasy ix

Even though the "field" versions of the characters in Final Fantasy VII were short and stocky like all FF characters had been up to that point, the battle and FMV models introduced more realistically-proportioned (except for Tifa) characters for the first time. This was continued into FFVIII, with characters that were even more human-like in appearance. As the developers told IGN in a 2000 interview, they initially planned to keep that evolution going for FFIX with not only realistic characters again, but characters that were even taller than they were in FFVIII.

Related: Final Fantasy 7 Remake: 5 Best Character Glow Ups From Their Original Versions (& 5 Worst)

8 Having To Fight All Four Shrine Guardians

Final Fantasy games love their weapons/guardians/big boss characters, and FFIX is no exception. However, when it comes to the four "Shrine Guardians" that the game introduces, you only have to have an actual boss battle with one of them– the rest are killed via story elements. But data uncovered by the website The Cutting Room Floor found code that makes it apparent that the original plan definitely included having all four Shrine Guardians be their own, full-on boss battles. As if late-game FFIX wasn't hard enough.

7 Having To Fight All Four Shrine Guardians... Twice

We're not done talking about the Shrine Guardians just yet. In addition to The Cutting Room Floor finding out about all of them being their own boss battle, the website also found data in the game's original source code that suggested that players were going to have to fight all four Guardians two times each in a very old-school, Mega Man-esque move. There are just some aspects of 8- and 16-bit games that can stay in the past, and artificially extending a game's playtime by arbitrarily doubling up on boss fights is one of them.

6 The Gold Chocobo Bug

Early Beta versions of Final Fantasy IX contained an infamous bug related to the Gold Chocobo that allowed players to skip almost the entirety of the game's third disc, which would've been a major boon for speedrunners and the like. Square did go in and patch the bug out, though many players have claimed that the Japanese release and very early pressings of the North American version still have it– but it should be noted that those claims have gone mostly unproven on official, non-emulated versions of the game.

5 Doing Away With Random Battles

By 2000, random, unavoidable battles were beginning to feel like a relic of the old guards of JRPGs and less & less franchises were still going that route, even including some of Square's other properties. Of course, that would remain a part of FF through Final Fantasy X, changing not only with the online FFXI but FFXII and beyond. Yet again, however, it was something that Square had in mind to tinker with beginning with FFIX, but it was ultimately decided that the PS1's hardware just wasn't quite equipped for what they wanted to do and it would have to wait a few more years & a more powerful console.

4 A Balloon-Finding Minigame

More cut content from The Cutting Room Floor– a great resource for this kind of thing, if you're interested– is this deleted balloon-finding minigame that was found basically complete in the source code and can still be accessed via cheat devices like GameShark and Action Replay. It's a surprisingly involved game, tasking you with finding balloons within a time limit and letting you re-up your timer by specified amounts given the color balloon you bring back. It's a bit clunky which may be why it was cut, but it still would've been a fun little diversion.

3 The PlayStation 2 Version

4- Final Fantasy IX Vivi

AAA PS1 releases continued for a solid year into the PS2's lifespan, including some of the best games on Sony's debut console. That said, for many of the big PS1 games that came out after the PS2 did, people couldn't help but wonder why those games weren't on PS2 instead, FFIX included. Turns out that Square briefly considered porting FFIX to the PS2 the very next year after the PS1 version's release according to an interview with EGM, but ultimately decided to stay fully focused on Final Fantasy X instead. It's unclear what types of upgrades or enhancements a PS2 version of FFIX might have featured, though at least slightly better graphics are a given.

Related: Looking Back At The Best PS2 Launch Games

2 The Six Original Endings

Final Fantasy games– at least, the one ones starting with the SNES era– have always had very deep, complex, and layered stories. Do they always make sense? Not really... but there is still a lot going on in them and it's not hard to imagine how much planning goes into just that particular aspect of a FF game. In coming to the story and ending that was present in the final version of FFIX, Square told IGN that they went through six ultimately scrapped ending ideas before arriving at the one that they felt satisfied with.

1 It Almost Wasn't A Mainline FF Game

There is the main, numbered Final Fantasy series, and there are the many spin-offs and side franchises that include Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy Legend, Dissidia, et al. In those early design documents obtained by the Gaming Intelligence Agency, Square initially had so many unorthodox ideas for FFIX that they considered the possibility of it being among the spin-offs rather than a core entry. Instead, they basically went in the opposite direction and created a FF game that was in effect the culmination of the previous eight core installments.

Next: Final Fantasy 9: Every Party Member, Ranked By Intelligence