This is kind of a random thing to post about, but I just wanted to tell someone about it. I was playing through Final Fantasy III recently while looking through the scripts of both the Famicom and Pixel Remaster versions. Unlike I and II which were moderately rewritten in the WonderSwan and PS1 versions and that got carried over into future versions including the Pixel Remaster, III never got any older remakes except the heavily changed 3D one, so the Pixel Remaster script is almost identical to the Famicom script with just some reformatting (using kanji and extra punctuation which is easier to read). So it stands out a lot when something is suddenly different between the two version.
There's exactly two instances of the word 狂う meaning "go crazy" or "be insane" being used in the Famicom version of FF3. The Pixel Remaster version rewrites both lines to remove the word. There's a normally peaceful sea dragon that's gone out of control at one point in the game. An NPC says
Famicom: The Nepto Dragon has started rampaging as if gone mad.
Pixel Remaster: The Nepto Dragon has started rampaging.
At another point, there's a king that's doing crazy stuff because he's possessed by a demon. An NPC says
Famicom: The king has gone mad...
Pixel Remaster: The king has changed...
I checked the equivalent lines in the 3D remake, which rewords and changes the script a lot more anyway, and the second line has basically the same change, but the first line still had the "as if gone mad" part. There's no obvious reason why these two lines would be the one of like 5 lines in the game that are different between the Famicom and PR scripts, so I can't help but wonder if some consultant told Square Enix that crazy is a bad word they shouldn't use and that's why they were rewritten.
While I'm on the subject, as mentioned there's a lot of rewritten lines between the Famicom and later versions of FF1 and FF2. One line that stood out to me in FF2 though was that if you talk to Gordon at one specific point, he'll express shock at you accomplishing your mission and say something like "You're such a brave bunch. One of you is even a frail woman. In contrast, I'm pathetic..." The "one of you is even a frail woman" part is missing from the Pixel Remaster script. I thought maybe it was an old change, but I found footage from the PS1 version and it's still there in that version. I can't find footage to quickly check the GBA and PSP versions, but it might be a change done specifically to the Pixel Remaster version. And I can't see any reason it would suddenly be removed except for political correctness reasons.
And talking about this also reminds me of something else similar. Some time ago I played both the Famicom and Switch versions of Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir. Kind of like FF1 and FF2, there's a fair amount of rewriting between the original and remake, but mostly just adding more detail or rewording sentences to sound more natural. But there's one part I noticed where when you're looking at the corpse of a guy who was stabbed to death, when you ask the nearby cop about it in the Famicom version he says that with how deeply the knife is stabbed into him it's "likely not something a woman's strength could do". In the remake he simply says that with how deeply it's stabbed "the murderer must have been pretty strong".
