It’s why the N64 was so devoid of these games when Square shifted to other consoles. After trying and failing to market RPGs in the NES era, it generally left those efforts to other companies for the 1990s. It means Nintendo waits – often too long – to return to these efforts. Those went very, very poorly, and management remembered. It jumped into online services in the 1990s with the Satellaview and 64DD. Those with a keen eye will see that it’s often too eager to jump onto new things, getting there ahead of time and ending up burned. Nintendo’s known for a particular pattern of innovation, one that leaves inattentive observers constantly frustrated at its reticence to embrace new ideas. The SNES had become a welcoming home for Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger in the mid-1990s, and the opportunity to give Fire Emblem a larger audience through a game that retells the first game’s story seems like a blown call. It was a bad time to launch a franchise that brought with it a high barrier to success.įire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem (1994, Super Famicom) Japan-onlyįire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War (1996, Super Famicom) Japan-onlyīut then we move on to these and the absence is a little less excusable. And by 1990, starting to translate and release a Famicom game would have meant a 1991 launch or later on a platform that had already been replaced. Fire Emblem, a game with JRPG DNA but also rooted in the strategy genre that had taken hold in the PC market but struggled on consoles, was a tough sell. The local arm of the company had tried with some fervor to get the JRPG to catch on in the West like it had in Japan, pushing hard to market games like Dragon Warrior to little effect. In the beginning, Nintendo of America’s anti- Fire Emblem stance was simple and, perhaps, justified. The 1990s: Where Are You, Fire Emblem?įire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light (1990, Famicom) Japan-onlyįire Emblem Gaiden (1992, Famicom) Japan-only Let’s look back at how this belief kept the franchise away from most outside Japan, and what strides have been made in recent years. Today marks 30 years since the release of the first Fire Emblem game for Famicom, Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light! That means it also marks something else: 30 years of Nintendo thinking Western fans don’t want to play Fire Emblem.
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