This next chapter takes place throughout 1994. None of it appears in any in-universe Nerd video.

The teams at the North American branch of Squaresoft were preparing a big surprise for the Japanese team. Ted Woolsey had looked at the data bank in the ROM and found that by removing the unused content of the Super Famicom version and all but 64 of Gau's rages, he could fit a vocalized opera scene in the game. Yoshiharu Gotanda, an employee at Wolfteam was the man whose sample driver they got permission to use. And this vocalized opera happened because Tale Phantasia, the game Wolfteam intended to use their sample driver for was being moved from the cartridge based SNES to the SNES-CD, and Gotanda didn't want his sample driver to go unused.

As for the casting of the voices, Woolsey wanted someone who was a good singer but wasn't a world-class opera singer to be cast as Maria. Kristin Chenoweth was the person that Woolsey and his team chose for the role.


Five days later, Ted Woolsey was at the Chicago Opera Theater watching a performance of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro. It's fitting that he meets the voices for the parts of Draco and Ralse at a performance of the opera that Edgar's kingdom was named after. Having got himself VIP tickets to the show, Woolsey could meet the performers backstage after the show was finished. The cast of this performance of included tenor Luciano Pavarotti and baritone Bryn Terfel.

"Pavarotti and Terfel were glad to introduce gamers into the world of opera through this game. They would be credited in-game for their role, as would Chenoweth."

The vocals would be recorded by themselves, and inserted into the game, while the in-game orchestral soundfont provided accompaniment. Wolfteam's driver would swap out the vocal samples on the fly.


Oh Maria!

Oh Maria!

My beloved, do you hear

My words whispered in your ear
As if I were by your side?


Oh my hero,
far away now.
Will I ever see your smile?
I'm longing to hear
your words that endear,
and songs that sweetly beguile

I'm the darkness,
you're the starlight.
Yet our love outshines the sun.
You lighten my soul,
with you I am whole.
My life had truly begun

My beloved,
a memory,
or a fading reverie
Oh, what shall I do?
I'm lost without you.
Speak to me once more.

Ever gently,
How you changed me
and revived my heart anew!
Ere I walk away,
I beg you to say
I meant as much to you

We must part now.
Tarry, somehow.
But my heart I can't ignore.
Our love come what may,
I won't age a day,
I'll wait for you, evermore


Draco

Maria!

Maria

Oh, Draco!

I knew you would

Come for me, my love!

Ralse

Insolent rogue!

Knave of the Western Horde!

You would address my queen to be, Maria?

Draco

Never shall you have Maria's hand!

I would die before that day comes!

Ralse

Then it's a duel!


On the other side of the country, a business executive wearing business casual attire was watching the news on his office's TV. This man is Tom Kalinske, CEO of Sega of America. As NBC Nightly News interviewed Kristin Chenoweth, a realization hit Tom Kalinske. Square had managed to fit an opera scene onto a cartridge SNES RPG that contains no enhancement chips. Square is Sega's biggest competition as far as role-playing games are concerned. "FUCK!" Tom Kalinske yelled, throwing a torn piece of paper at the window of his corporate office. Sega was gonna need something to counter this new development.

Slowly regaining his calm, Tom Kalinske grabbed the phone next to him and called one of his employees. "This is Kalinske. I would like the localized version of the Sega CD RPG Phantasy Star IV to have a vocalized anime opening theme song."

"It's after work. Could you at least have informed me in the morning?" the employee on the other end of the line asked. Tom Kalinske saw an opportunity, and he was gonna take it.


Final Fantasy VI launched in North America and PAL regions in October 1994, with the PAL region only getting an English language release. The game quickly became the best-selling RPG on the cartridge-based SNES.

The one thing that the game being on a cartridge meant was that the World of Ruin segments of the game are open-ended, with the minimum amount of characters in the World of Ruin required to beat the game being just Celes, Edgar and Setzer.

As for improvements added in the localization process, the 64 remaining rages were tweaked to be made useful, and enemies without rages could no longer appear on the Veldt. An added feature that made the game popular with speedrunners was the ability to run with the B-button, which when combined with the Sprint Shoes made your characters go super fast. Players can now Suplex Kefka during the Battle of Narshe, which provokes him to counter with an Ice 1 spell.


A fourteen-year-old Angry Video Game Nerd had just beaten AtmaWeapon, and was watching the cutscene where Kefka betrays Gestahl and awakens the Statues.

"Terror will engulf the world." Gestahl said right before Kefka threw him off the Floating Continent.

"Well, the world is fucked." The Nerd stated as Kefka moved the Statues out of alignment. A few minutes and a couple of fights with Naughtys and a boss fight against Nelapa later, the Nerd's party was faced with a choice.

"The airship's below!"
-Jump
Wait.

The Nerd selected Jump, and his party leaped to the airship known as the Blackjack. What followed is a montage of the game's world being destroyed, and the party being scattered as the Blackjack is destroyed.

Giant explosions covered the screen, as the game zooms out to a view of the planet with lots of explosions tearing the continents apart. The words "On that day, the world was changed forever." appear on a black screen.


Polly Klaas had chosen Final Fantasy VI to be her free Nintendo game for the month of October 1994. It was her first Final Fantasy, and her second Square title after the SNES-CD game Secret of Mana. This free game was part of a reward where Nintendo would give her a free game of her choice a month for 10 years starting after Richard Allen Davis tripped on Polly Klaas's SNES-CD Combo unit back in 1993. When Polly got to the famous opera scene, she was moved to tears, and stunned that a cartridge based game could do this. This was something that was rare even in the SNES-CD games of 1994.


As the 14-year-old Nerd got home from high school on a rainy November day, he looked in the mailbox to find the newest issue of Nintendo Power. The artwork depicts Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong in a vast jungle. This art must be depicting the SNES-CD game Donkey Kong Country. Having quickly made it inside his house, the Nerd opened the magazine to Counsellor's Corner, looking at the tips contained within. One of the tips in the issue showed "Super Metroid, getting Super Missiles early." Another one showed "Super Mario World 2, infinite 1-ups". The one his eyes focused on was "Final Fantasy VI – recruiting Shadow". The text of the issue described that you were supposed to wait for Shadow on the Floating Continent instead of jumping immediately.

"I just left a badass Ninja to die!" The Nerd began to cry at his decision, realizing that in his haste, he ended up abandoning Shadow. The Ninja that helped him take down the GhostTrain, and had somewhat gotten to know over the course of the World of Balance, was dead. And it was his fault.

"What was I thinking?!" The Nerd shouted, waking up his cat named Golbez. Loading the game's savefile, The only world of balance save he has on the cart is saved at the Returner's Hideout in the file that he's playing a co-op game of with his friends. But the Nerd didn't feel like redoing 8 hours of gameplay to save Shadow, so he resumed the file that was saved at the Zone Eater's Belly.