Today, 20th April, is the anniversary of the Fire Emblem series–its 29th one to be exact. To celebrate the occasion, I thought I’d dig up a slice of Fire Emblem history that’s been partially lost to the sands of times: the various official Fire Emblem websites.
Now, as you’re probably aware, the Internet is an incredibly fast-moving landscape. One year of the Internet can feel like a decade–and decades, centuries. So when you try to look back at websites from long ago, it can be extremely hard to find them again.
Thankfully, there are “time machines (or capsules)” such as the Wayback Machine, which hold archives of many old websites. For this article, I’ll be relying a lot on those archives. But even archives can be incomplete, especially for more complicated media like videos and flash files.
Our first destination on this historical tour is the website of Intelligent Systems, the developers of Fire Emblem. Presently, their website mainly links to the Fire Emblem websites hosted by Nintendo. Although they do have pages for recent merchandise, soundtracks and events.
However, long ago, between late 1996 and early 2002, Intelligent Systems hosted their own Fire Emblem hub page. The design was fairly amateur and perhaps quintessential of the time period. There was a plain repeating background, chunky navigation buttons and a nostalgic visitor counter.
The most interesting thing was probably the “designer’s notes” section, which included background and lore information not found in the games. For the most part, you can read about these in our designer’s notes section (please refer to “Mystery of the Emblem” and “Genealogy of the Holy War”).
There was also an “Embler’s Room”, which was a place for Fire Emblem fans to gather and contribute to the website. Presumably “Embler” means a Fire Emblem fan; a similar term, “Emblemier” appears in the profile creation in Awakening.
Inside the Embler’s Room was a message board where fans could post messages and whatnot. This was also where Shouzou Kaga–the series’s creator–occasionally posted his ideas and comments (refer to “Shouzou Kaga’s comments” in our designer’s notes section). This sort of thing would never happen nowadays, especially with Nintendo!
Finally, within the Genealogy of the Holy War game page, there was a section containing concept and promotional artwork for the game (such as Ayra and Altena above). For your convenience, you can check out all the artwork in our official art section. A big thanks to Starwolf_UK for saving the images way back!
Anyway, after early 2002, following the release of Binding Blade, Intelligent Systems removed the old Fire Emblem hub page and simply replaced it with Binding Blade‘s website. Thus marked the end of an era.
Around 2003, a new era dawned, shining its majestic light on Western shores. As you ought to know, Blazing Blade–the 7th game in the series–was released internationally. Of course, with every big game release, they had to build a website for it, to interest would-be-fans browsing the Internet.
Thus, Nintendo of America created their own Fire Emblem website devoted to their latest (and only) Fire Emblem release. Unlike the offerings of Nintendo Japan and Intelligent System, their website used a lot of flash elements, which allowed for increased interactions, but are a pain in the butt to archive.
Likewise, they created similar websites for The Sacred Stones, Path of Radiance, Radiant Dawn and Shadow Dragon, when those were about to launch. Eventually, they removed access to these websites, following the release of Shadow Dragon and, later, Awakening. So good luck if you ever wanted to see them again…
Now, I was able to archive the international Blazing Blade website personally. Please click this link to have a gander.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to archive the other websites. However, you can find the rest over at Tanas Manor. For the record, we citizens of Serenes still haven’t forgiven the nobles of Begnions for their crimes, but we can’t fault them for their impeccable foresight on this occasion.
I think of the lot, the website for The Sacred Stones was the best (or most unique) one. It featured a world map of the Magvel continent that you could poke around to learn details about the inhabitants there. The map itself had a fairly realistic design and is not used elsewhere.
It was also the first place to feature Valter’s official artwork.
The Path of Radiance website also featured a prominent world map, although this was just the in-game map at an angle. My most distinct memory is the “Classes” page, which has the un-localised names for all the ultimate skills, like “Sky” instead of “Aether”. Maybe they hadn’t been finalised yet?
By the way, before Radiant Dawn came out, the international Fire Emblem hub page promised E-cards, presumably featuring Fire Emblem characters. These were apparently “coming soon”, but I waited and waited, yet they never came. Eventually, that space was replaced with Path of Radiance, when the Radiant Dawn site was launched.
But I’ll never forget…
Moving on, the Radiant Dawn website is notorious for featuring the beta map of Tellius, where it’s shaped like an island (and some of the landmarks are in different areas). Honestly, I have no idea how that got past quality check, considering they used the actual map in Path of Radiance already…
Lastly, the Shadow Dragon website housed the Iwata Asks (or perhaps more accurately, Sakurai Asks) interview for the game. After the website was taken down, the interview could no longer be accessed via Nintendo. Um, oversight much? Thank Naga somebody thought to save the whole thing.
From here on, you can view the rest of the websites pretty easily. But knowing past trends, it probably wouldn’t hurt to save a backup of Awakening, Fates and Echoes‘s websites. Who knows, in another decade, they might disappear into the void just like the rest.
By now, we’ve journeyed quite far, but there’s still another ancient ruin that I want to dig up. You might know that Japan has their own Fire Emblem hub page known as “Fire Emblem World”. This hub was renovated in late 2018 to prepare for the release of Three Houses.
By “renovate”, I mean they built a new website from scratch and tossed away all of the old contents. Because who wants to see all of the old stuff anyway? Er… some of us? But all hope isn’t lost; it’s time for us to jump into the time machine!
The first version of Fire Emblem World launched in early 2007, ahead of Radiant Dawn‘s Japanese release. At the time, the website had a distinct black background with red highlights. Maybe a tad unfriendly for visitors, but it was sleek in its own way.
Initially, the website featured an ever-growing museum with basic information about the games’ stories, characters and legendary weapons etc. There was also a quaint fortune telling game; getting a certain fortune would reward you with a cool wallpaper as well (the Whitewing sisters or axe-men trio).
Later, the website expanded to include a “sound museum”, which showcased a small selection of songs from each game. They also added “background” sections for Radiant Dawn to Awakening, which had supplementary information not found in the games, like a detailed timeline for Radiant Dawn.
On 25th October 2012, Fire Emblem World had its first major makeover. In place of its original dark theme, it was now white with blue highlights, similar to Awakening‘s style. All of the original content was kept; they also added a popularity poll for Awakening and, later, a Fates background section (and poll) too.
Prior to “Choose Your Legends” in Heroes, the official popularity polls were crucial for deciding future content. Notably, the top 2 scoring males and females from each generation (minus female Corrin for logistical reasons) had special cut-scene illustrations in the Scramble and Bond DLC maps.
Anyway, this version of Fire Emblem World continued until around mid 2018, when Three Houses was first shown to the public. Up until that point, the website kept adding banners for all the new game releases (such as Heroes, Echoes and Warriors) and notable merchandise. Which was cute, but made the page rather busy.
After that, the website entered a brief transitional period. The trailer for Three Houses was placed front house and centre, while game and merchandise news was bunched up below it. Meanwhile, after scrolling all the way down, all of the old content was still available at the very bottom. It was a bit of a mess, honestly.
Finally, Fire Emblem World was updated to its current version in late 2018 as mentioned. It’s definitely a lot easier to browse than before, but the lack of current content is a concern. At the very least, it’s a strong foundation to build on; time will tell if it becomes a website worthy of its peers.
Well, hopefully that was an interesting history lesson for you. Maybe you caught a glimpse of your own past in there somewhere? Anyway, the next anniversary is the 30th, which is going to be a big one. Three Houses will also have come out before then. Here’s to the future~
