Fire Emblem (series)



The Fire Emblem series (ファイアーエムブレム, Faiā Emuburemu) is a series of games released on five Nintendo platforms, which includes Famicom, SNES, Game Boy Advance, Gamecube, Wii, and Nintendo DS. The games are developed by Intelligent Systems,(specifically Shouzou Kaga), and are published by Nintendo. It is noted for being the first of it's genre, the Tactical role playing genre.

Gameplay
The gameplay that is found in all games are nearly identical, with each new game adding something (usually minor, though sometimes big) to the series. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance probably was the most dramatic (though largely positive) change in the series. While it not only added new features (and many), it also went from the challenging transition from 2-D to 3-D, which often times can destroy a series.

Common features
As aforementioned, all Fire Emblem games are essentially the same in terms of gameplay. The easiest way to explain the genre is looking at its simularities to the better known board game of Chess. Like in Chess, you'll move your units on a grided map, though (also like in Chess), each unit can only move a certain distance. For example, one unit might be able to move ten spaces, while another can only move eight.

The genre also tends to be much more complicated than Chess, and this can be proven by the thousands of different options you can give you your team. Each unit is different from any other unit, which is something uniqe to Fire Emblem. Something else thay you don't usually see in video games - Your playable characters can actually die, unless they are a key point in the story. And once they die, they can not be revied like you can in most other tactical RPG's.

Fire Emblem in the West
The Fire Emblem series has been going on since 1990 in Japan, but it wasn't until 2003 that the Fire Emblem games featured an international release. This was mostly due to the popularity of Marth and Roy in Super Smash Bros. Melee.

List of games in the series
There are a total of games in the Fire Emblem series.


 * Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragons and the Blade of Light - Famicom
 * Fire Emblem: Gaiden - Famicom
 * Fire Emblem: Monshou no Nazo - SNES
 * Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu - SNES
 * Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 - SNES
 * Fire Emblem: Fuuin no Tsurugi - Game Boy Advance
 * Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken - Game Boy Advance
 * Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones - Game Boy Advance
 * Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance - GameCube
 * Fire Emblem: Goddess of Dawn - Wii
 * Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon - Nintendo DS