Making tiny edits to SNES graphics is very direct if the sprites are uncompressed in the game’s ROM. You can see the in-game graphics with TileLayerPro and edit like it’s MS Paint.

Tools mentioned:

TileLayerPro

FF4 offset guide

LunarIPS

Entire Concept

  1. Download and open TileLayerPro (TLP). Open the offset guide linked above in your browser; search for the sprites you want to tweak: there are offsets (locations in ROM) for the battle, map and portrait sprites listed.

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  1. Open a copy of FF4 in TLP. The game file needs to have an “.smc” extension, so change it to this if necessary.

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  2. Use Ctrl + G to open the GoTo feature. Paste in the offset you want to go to, and then… go there.

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If the sprite isn’t showing up as expected, adjust the display options— 8 color vs 16 color have different settings and each requires a different display option or they will look like static.

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  1. Drag the tile of the sprite you want to edit into the Arranger box. (Choose another set of colors if that’s your preference, or even doubleclick to edit them.)

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  1. Now just use the cursor like a paintbrush tool to edit the tile’s pixels inside the Tile Editor box. TLP works very much like MS Paint: choose a different color from the Palette Editor, and then just touch a pixel in the Tile Editor to change it. You can assemble multiple tiles into the Arranger box if that makes it eaiser to keep track. (Yes, the color palette is wonky, so re-open the View menu to help refresh it. If this workflow is suboptimal, consider trying this process in a similar program like YY-CHR or TileM*lester.)

  2. When things look better, save the game file.

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That’s it. Now use LunarIPS to make a patch from your saved file against an unmodified version of the game, and BINGO you’ve created an upgraded version of the game’s graphics. Congrats!