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Fire Emblem General FAQ
Last revised: 8th October 2008

Notes: Fire Emblem will be abbreviated as FE where appropriate.

Q) What's Fire Emblem?

A) A strategy RPG developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo.

Q) What's a strategy RPG?

A) A game where you take turns to move characters across tile-based maps to fight, and ultimately clear the screen of, enemy units (sometimes winning consists of fulfilling other objectives, but this is true in general). The "RPG" part comes from characters being able to gain experience, level up, gain new equipment and, of course, lots of talking between characters.

Q) Can you revive characters when they die?

A) In general, no. Once they die they're gone (gameplay-wise at least- some characters "retreat" and still appear in dialogue).

Q) Are Marth and Roy in Fire Emblem?

A) Marth is the main hero of the first and third games, Dark Dragon and Sword of Light and Mystery of the Emblem, as well as a DS remake of the first. Roy is the main hero of the sixth game, Sword of Seals. None of the aforementioned games have been released in English officially.

Q) What Fire Emblem games are there?

A) Here's the current list:

Note 1: Only FE7 and above (currently, minus 11) have been officially released in English. The rest are Japanese-only
Note 2: The numbers before the games are commonly used by fans and are not official
Note 3: The English titles for FE1 to 7 are commonly used by fans and, again, are not official
Note 4: Famicom refers to the Japanese NES and Super Famicom refers to the Japanese SNES
Note 5: Additonally 4 games (collectively known as BS Fire Emblem: Akaneia Senki) could be downloaded via the Broadcast Satellaview attachment for the Super Famicom

Q) Are the Fire Emblem games all related to each other?

A) Not in general, however there are connections between certain games.

FE3 is a direct sequel to FE1 (it actually contains a remake of FE1, which can be accessed by beginning a Book 1 game).
FE2 exists in the same world as FE1 and 3.
FE5 is a midquel to FE4- it actually takes place near the beginning of FE4's Chapter 6 and ends near the end of Chapter 8.
FE7 is a prequel to FE6.
FE8 currently has no relationship with any other games.
FE10 is a direct sequel to FE9
FE11 is a remake of FE1

Q) Why do people number the games?

A) Obviously, so it makes referring to the games easier (eg. FE3 is Mystery of the Emblem). The reason why they are specifically used is because, one, there are lots of games (eleven currently). Second, unlike other series, most of the games are in Japanese. Thus using abbreviations of the subtitles isn't feasible, since some subtitles are not official (and often disputed amongst fans) and some people don't know them altogether!

Q) Who are the main heroes in each games?

A) Again, the current list:

FE1: Marth
FE2: Arum and Cellica
FE3: Marth
FE4: Sigurd and Celice
FE5: Leaf
FE6: Roy
FE7: Lyn, Eliwood and Hector
FE8: Eirika and Ephraim
FE9: Ike
FE10: Micaiah and Ike
FE11: Marth

Note: The main heroes are usually of the Lord class, so many fans refer to them as just Lords.

Q) How can I play Fire Emblem 1~6?

A) You can try buying them online at import sites, like Play-Asia. For the older games, you might have to try online auction sites such as EBay. Or you could just emulate them- in that case your favourite search engine should come in useful.

Q) Will the older Fire Emblem games be released and translated on the Wii Virtual Console?

A) Currently is it looking highly unlikely. FE3 and 4 have been available from the Japanese Virtual Console since late 2006 to early 2007. Also, Nintendo of America appears to have no interest in translating the games.

Q) Will Fire Emblem 6 be released in English?

A) Just as with the above case, it is highly unlikely. The game was released in 2002 and is technically inferior to the later GBA titles. It would probably be best for a remake to be released, but the game just isn't popular enough in Japan, nor the series in America, to warrant a remake.

Q) How do you emulate the games?

A) You need to download the ROMs of the games (note that owning ROMs is illegal), as well as the compatible emulators (eg. SNES emulator if you want to emulate FE3 to 5). Then you just run the ROM using the emulator. If a translation patch exists for the game, you can also apply it to the ROM.

Q) What is a translation patch?

Q) Are there translation patches for all the games?

A) Almost. FE2 to 6 have near-complete translation patches. Near-complete meaning that they are mostly complete, but there are minor things that could do with fixing or translating. Unless you want to wait forever, it's probably not worth putting off 90~99% complete translation patches...

Anyway, please check this page for more information.

Q) How do you patch a game?

A) There's two ways to go about this- by soft-patching or hard-patching.

To soft-patch, firstly your emulator must support this feature. Most good emulators support this, although you may need to enable it from a configurations menu. Rename your patch and ROM so that they both have the same name, barring filetype suffix, eg. the patch is FE4.ips and the ROM is FE4.smc. If the filetype suffix isn't displayed on your computer, don't add it! Then just load the game as per normal.

Some people have problems with soft-patching or their emulator doesn't support it. In this case, you'll want to hard-patch the game. To do this, you will require an external program that specialises in patching files, such as LunarIPS or IPSWin. Download one of these, run it and then follow the instructions to patch the file. It should be pretty straightforward to do. Note that hard-patching a file is permanent, so you may want to keep a clean (un-patched) copy of the ROM, just in case.

Q) I followed the above, but I still can't get my game in English. What do I do?

A) I'd suggest asking for advice on the forums or elsewhere. Just make sure to clearly describe everything you've done, so people can figure out what's wrong.

Q) What is a Jeigan?

A) A fan-term for a promoted (higher class) unit that joins at the very start of each game, usually a Paladin. In general they have superior stats to other units, but are later surpassed, due to their typically low growth rates. Therefore is recommended not to overuse them early on, since they usually gain much less experience than other units that you get at the start. Jeigan, from FE1, was the first Jeigan (hence the term).

Q) What is this FE4 two generation thing I hear of?

A) Basically the game takes place in two halves- the first generation (or generation of parents) and the second generation (or generation of children).

Both last about 6 chapters each (in this game, chapters are very large and consist of multiple castles to conquer). In the first generation you can pair up almost any male and any female. If a female is married before Chapter 5 is over, they will have two children characters who inherit the weapons and stats of the father and mother (if a certain female is unpaired, you will get substitute characters for them instead). This also applies to the second generation, although pairing characters is less important since there's no third generation. Lots of the fun of FE4 is getting certain combinations of mothers and fathers, which affect the children in good ways...

Q) What is the Fire Emblem Anime?

A) Otherwise known as the Fire Emblem OAV, it was a two-episode animation series based on the events of FE3. It seems more episodes were planned, but the series were stopped for unknown reasons. Surprisingly an English dub was released in America.

Q) Is there going to be a new Fire Emblem game coming out?

A) Yes. See here.

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