In most strategy games a lost unit is a number. In Fire Emblem it is a person with a name, a face and a part in the story, and once it falls it is gone for the rest of the game. That one rule, set on the Famicom in 1990, changed how people played. Japanese players learned to reach for the reset button the moment a favourite character died, and Famitsu remembered the first game’s rule that the dead could not be brought back as, in its Japanese, a “frighteningly severe system”. Nintendo Power, introducing the series to Americans in 1996, wrote that Nintendo had “took a chance on an unusual game”. Western players had to wait until 2003 to play one.
Fast facts
- Developer: Intelligent Systems, with Nintendo.
- First game: Fire Emblem: Ankoku Ryū to Hikari no Tsurugi (Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light), Famicom, 20 April 1990, Japan only.
- Scenario: Shouzou Kaga of Intelligent Systems; produced by Nintendo’s Gunpei Yokoi.
- First Western release: Fire Emblem for the Game Boy Advance, 2003, the seventh game in the series.
- Later games: Fire Emblem: Awakening (3DS, 2012), Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Switch, 2019), Fire Emblem Engage (2023).
A wargame with names
Intelligent Systems had already set red and blue armies against each other on a map of squares in Famicom Wars (1988). Fire Emblem kept the grid and the turns and gave every unit a name, a story and one life. Its credits show how the work was shared: Gunpei Yokoi produced it, Nintendo’s Keisuke Terasaki directed, and the scenario was by Shouzou Kaga of Intelligent Systems, who is usually described as the series’ writer and designer.
The hero of the first game is Marth, a prince who gathers knights, archers, mages and fighters against a dark dragon. Nintendo Power explained the idea in 1996: “The game’s unique approach is to break up the traditional RPG party into individual characters.” Each one moved separately across the map, “where strategic placement is the key to success”, and each had a story that crossed the others’. The magazine compared the result to a mix of Final Fantasy and Ogre Battle.
The rules gave every decision weight. “If you lose a character, they remain lost for the duration of the game,” Nintendo Power warned. Weapons wore out: a sword might last “fifty strokes” before it had to be repaired or replaced. Characters could change to a stronger class, and “certain pairs of characters become stronger when they work together”. Underneath it all ran a weapon triangle that Hyper later called a “Rock-Paper-Scissors relationship”: in Edge’s words, “lance beats sword beats axe beats lance”.
Thirteen years in Japan
The series grew on the Famicom and the Super Famicom. By 1996 there were four games, and Nintendo Power devoted pages to the fourth and newest, which told a story across two generations. Characters “develop relationships, including love relationships”, the magazine reported, and couples could have children who fought in the second half of the game. “But if you carelessly let one of the characters perish, you’ll never see what the future holds.” It added that there were no plans for a North American release. Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 was one of the last notable Super Famicom games, released as the console’s life was ending.
Smash Bros. and the West
Before any Fire Emblem game was translated, two of its heroes, Marth and Roy, appeared as hidden characters in Nintendo’s GameCube fighting game Super Smash Bros. Melee. The Australian magazine Hyper opened its 2004 review of the Game Boy Advance Fire Emblem by saying that Western gamers might assume the series had been invented so that Melee could include them. “Not so.” A Shacknews history in 2017 argued that the popularity of the two characters, and the success of Intelligent Systems’ Advance Wars, convinced Nintendo that Western players wanted turn-based tactics.
Nintendo showed Fire Emblem at E3 in 2003, and it came out in the West that year as the series’ first English-language game. It was, Hyper pointed out, “actually the seventh game in the series, so we’re kind of late to the party”. Its heroes, Lyndis and Eliwood, talked to each other and to the people they met, and the player chose from more than a dozen classes, “from Lords, Fighters and Knights, to Druids, Mages and Clerics, to Thieves, Troubadors and Dancers”. The rule about death still bit. “You cannot resurrect your lost members, so the temptation to Reset is high,” the reviewer wrote, and with so much invested in a few units, “death is devastating”.
Edge counted The Sacred Stones (2005) as “the third GBA game” in the series. Then came Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance for the GameCube in 2005, which Electronic Gaming Monthly described as “the GBA tactical-RPG hit” migrating to the Cube, Radiant Dawn for the Wii, and a remake of the first game for the Nintendo DS, Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon.
Awakening
By the early 2010s the series was in trouble. Nintendo’s producer Hitoshi Yamagami later said that the team meant Fire Emblem: Awakening (2012) to be the last, because Nintendo’s head of sales had told them the series “isn’t making the numbers”. Awakening sold well enough to change his mind. Edge gave it nine out of ten. It found that the relationships between characters did the work: “in all our hundreds of hours of Advance Wars play, we never once fell in love with a tank.” Units fighting side by side gave each other bonuses, could block blows meant for each other, and in time could marry. Retro Gamer gave it 93% and called it “the best Fire Emblem yet”.
Awakening also brought to the West a Newcomer setting, first used in the Japan-only Heroes of Light and Shadow (2010), in which fallen characters return after the battle. Its director, Kohei Maeda of Intelligent Systems, told Edge that many beginners stayed away because they thought the games difficult, and the mode was there “so that those kinds of people could play Fire Emblem too”. Even with permanent death on, the series had found a way to write it into the story: a fallen unit, Edge explained, was “retired” and never seen again.
Three Houses and after
Fire Emblem: Three Houses (2019), made with Koei Tecmo, took the series back to a home console for the first time since the Wii. The player became a teacher at a monastery school, choosing one of three student houses to lead, and spent rest days on meals, tea and conversation as well as battles. Wireframe gave it 88% and called it “the series at its best”. It noted two changes: the weapon triangle had been dropped “in favour of stats and weapon durability”, and a limited rewind, “first introduced in 3DS entry Shadows of Valentia”, let players undo a fatal mistake without resetting. The series has continued with Fire Emblem Heroes for smartphones (2017), Fire Emblem Engage (2023) and Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave for the Nintendo Switch 2 (2026).
Sources
- Nintendo Power issue 87, August 1996, pp. 56–59: “Fire Emblem Rises from the Paks” (1990; “took a chance on an unusual game”; Marth; individual characters on the map; the Final Fantasy and Ogre Battle comparison; lost characters “remain lost”; weapons with “fifty strokes”; class changes; pairs of characters; the fourth game’s two generations, relationships and children; no North American release planned).
- Uwaman, “『ファイアーエムブレム』シリーズ第1作が発売30周年”, Famitsu, 20 April 2020 (Japanese; web, secondary): release on 20 April 1990; characters who die cannot be revived, and players reset. https://www.famitsu.com/news/202004/20196935.html
- Kyoto Report, “Staff Credits – Fire Emblem (Famicom, 1990)” (web, secondary): Gunpei Yokoi as producer, Keisuke Terasaki as director, Shouzou Kaga for the scenario. http://kyoto-report.wikidot.com/fire-emblem-credits
- David Craddock, “How Super Smash Bros. Melee Introduced Fire Emblem to Western Audiences”, Shacknews, 3 February 2017 (web, secondary): Kaga as writer and designer; Marth and Roy in Melee; their popularity and Advance Wars behind the Western release. https://www.shacknews.com/article/98904/how-super-smash-bros-melee-introduced-fire-emblem-to-western-audiences
- Retro Gamer issue 23, 2005, p. 46: Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 among the last Super Famicom games.
- IGN Unplugged issue 10, February 2002, p. 49: Marth and Roy as unlockable characters in Super Smash Bros. Melee.
- Electronic Gaming Monthly issue 169, August 2003, p. 32: E3 report, Fire Emblem among Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance games.
- Hyper issue 126, April 2004, p. 74: John Dewhurst, Fire Emblem review (Marth and Roy; the seventh game; Lyndis and Eliwood; classes; “Rock-Paper-Scissors”; “the temptation to Reset is high”).
- Edge issue 152, August 2005, p. 77: Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones review, “the third GBA game”.
- Electronic Gaming Monthly issue 196, October 2005, p. 88: Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (Nintendo, GameCube) among the month’s releases.
- Retro Gamer issue 116, July 2013, p. 100: Stuart Hunt, Fire Emblem: Awakening review, 93% (Japan only until 2003; the Shadow Dragon remake; “the best Fire Emblem yet”).
- Edge issue 253, May 2013, pp. 106–107: Fire Emblem Awakening review, nine out of ten (the tank; pairing; “retired” units; the Newcomer setting from Heroes of Light and Shadow; “lance beats sword beats axe beats lance”).
- Edge issue 261, Christmas 2013, pp. 68–71: Kohei Maeda on the Newcomer mode.
- Wireframe issue 22, September 2019, pp. 56–57: Alan Wen, Fire Emblem: Three Houses review, 88% (Intelligent Systems and Koei Tecmo; first home-console game since Radiant Dawn on the Wii; the weapon triangle dropped; the rewind from Shadows of Valentia).
- Nintendo, Iwata Asks: Fire Emblem Fates, part 4 (2015; web): Awakening intended as the last in the series. https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Iwata-Asks/Iwata-Asks-Fire-Emblem-Fates/Fire-Emblem-Fates/4-It-s-not-a-simple-enemy-ally-relationship-/4-It-s-not-a-simple-enemy-ally-relationship--1032072.html
- See Intelligent Systems for the company’s history, Famicom Wars, Heroes, Engage and Fortune’s Weave.