I won't commen on 1 and 2 since the subject was brought up and discussed countless times already, but as for 3 and 4, it's because the PSX version is the original version of FFIV (AKA Hardtype). The SNES version we had (which was released BEFORE the Easytype version in Japan, by the way) was made much easier because apparently, we people in North America were considered too stupid to play such a hard game with so many different items.

So in the SNES version, enemies were all on one row, for example, whereas in the original version, they were in the front and back row like the characters. And instead of having various items to heal status effects in the SNES version, they only had one. The original had maiden kisses to cure frog, diet foods to cure piggy, and so on. Plus, we get those nifty items like the ones Cecil uses in the intro that we can use in combat. And let's not forget the uncensored stuff.

If you ask me, loading times and horrible sound aside, I'm quite glad they decided to release the original version on the PSX insted of giving us "Final Fantasy II" again. We finally got to play the game as it was designed to be played, and the challenge makes it worth it.