A lot of people think that FF7 was groundbreaking, but in truth everything you liked from FF7 was copied from FF6. Magitech, Active Time Battle System, ridiculously epic cutscenes, open (for its time) world design, large cast of recruitable characters, iconic villian, etc. Seven only really added 3D graphics to the mix. But IMO seven is a pretty damned good sequel.

Edit: Just wanted to add in that FF6 is part of what I call the big SNES 5. Five games that are utter masterpieces and have stood the test of time perfectly. They are...

Chrono Trigger

Final Fantasy VI

Super Mario World

A Link to the Past

Super Metroid

Best FF ever.

But wasn't VI built off of the same engine as the other SNES FF games? FF7 required a new build from the ground up, and was the first to use CG cutscenes. Just speculation, I could be wrong.

Still my favorite SNES game of all time, and tied for being the very best of the entire series (alongside IX). I will always love VII, but it always seemed like a step down from the perfection of VI.

It's a shame that North America didn't receive Dragon Quest V or VI until nearly fifteen years later! Those two games came close to rivalling the likes of Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger! I would have also loved to see Star Ocean!

An amazing game, well worth celebrating. I think I'll replay it since it's been a while.

Yes, FFVII was entirely new, but something interesting is there was an early build developed in FFVI's engine, back before most of the game was decided. There's a picture of it in the Ultimania books and here.

Square have done this type of thing for lots of FF games, FFXIII had an early version with Yuna and Rikku standing in for the undecided characters, to test the battle system.

The SNES era FF engine has aged far better than the PS1 era FF Engine. Game concepts are what make a game great. The graphics or engine is just a shiny coat of paint. In proper game development your entire game should be complete and playable with primitive objects taking the place of actual 3D models. Once you have everything working, codewise, then you move onto making pretty graphics. Most modern developers don't understand this though, so they wind up having the code, animations, script, sound effects, and 3D models all being worked on at once. This is a recipe for buggy, development hell though.