Fire Emblem[a] is a Japanese fantasy tactical role-playing game franchise developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo.

The series' title refers to the "Fire Emblem", a recurring element usually portrayed as a royal weapon or shield representing the power of war and dragons.

[1] The inclusion of Marth and Roy in the 2001 fighting game Super Smash Bros. Melee as playable characters is also cited as a reason for the series' international release.

[3][10][11] A feature introduced in Genealogy of the Holy War and used in later installments is that characters who fall in love can have a child who inherits certain skills and stats from them.

[7] Kaga worked on the Fire Emblem series until Thracia 776, when he left Intelligent Systems and began development on Tear Ring Saga for the PlayStation.

This, alongside the international success of Advance Wars,[1] is cited as what led to Nintendo localizing The Blazing Blade for Western regions under the title Fire Emblem.

[24] She has worked on later Fire Emblem games, alongside other composers including Saki Kasuga, Hiroki Morishita, and Rei Kondoh.

[29][30] The series includes several other notable staff members: Tohru Narihiro, who was involved in every Fire Emblem since the original; Masahiro Higuchi, who began as a graphics designer for Genealogy of the Holy War; and Kouhei Maeda, who wrote the scenarios for every game since The Blazing Blade and became a director for Awakening.

The designer for Thracia 776 was Mayumi Hirota, whose brief tenure with the series ended when she left Intelligent Systems with Kaga after the game's completion.

[31][32] Other artists involved in later games are Eiji Kaneda (The Binding Blade), Sachiko Wada (The Sacred Stones) and Senri Kita (Path of Radiance, Radiant Dawn).

[33] For Awakening, art director Toshiyuki Kusakihara worked with character designer Yūsuke Kozaki, who was brought in to give a new look to the series.

[28] For Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, illustrator Hidari was hired to revise classic Gaiden designs in addition to creating new ones.

[36] To depict a "glamorous, aristocratic society" in Three Houses, Intelligent Systems contracted character designer Chinatsu Kurahana, best known for her work on otome games such as Uta no Prince-sama,[37] while freelance artist Kazuma Koda provided the concept art.

[38] Kurahana returned to design protagonist Shez, Arval, and the house leaders in its spin-off, Warriors: Three Hopes, with Kusakihara filling in for the rest of the cast.

In 1994, Mystery of the Emblem was released for the Super Famicom, containing both a remake of Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light and a sequel of the first game.

The final entry for the Game Boy Advance, The Sacred Stones, was released in 2004 in Japan, and in 2005 in North America and Europe.

[41][7][47][48] A direct sequel to Path of Radiance, Radiant Dawn was released for the Wii in 2007 in Japan and North America, and 2008 in Europe.

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, an expanded remake of the first game, was released in 2008 in Japan and Europe, and 2009 in North America.

Shadow Dragon makes use of unique DS features unavailable to the Famicom and introduced new characters, added additional story elements, revamped mechanics, and modernized graphics.

A third entry, Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, was released on the Nintendo 3DS in April 2017 in Japan and in North America and Europe the following month.

[35] A crossover with the Shin Megami Tensei series, Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE, was released in December 2015 in Japan and worldwide in June 2016 for the Wii U.

[70] Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE was developed by Atlus rather than Intelligent Systems and combines gameplay, narrative, and aesthetic elements from both the Fire Emblem and Shin Megami Tensei series.

[71] Fire Emblem Heroes is a spin-off gacha game for Android and iOS, and was released in February 2017 for mobile devices.

An additional RTS-based game for the Wii was planned and would have been released after Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, but after trial and error and an unfocused development schedule, the project was cancelled.

[81] A rumored Fire Emblem remake for the Nintendo 3DS was being developed by AlphaDream, but was cancelled following the company's bankruptcy surfaced in late 2019.

According to the reports, it was one of the many video games that had been in development, but were ultimately scrapped for the platform, with many speculating those projects could be moved to the Nintendo Switch.

[82]Sales in Japan were the highest with Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light but progressively declined with future games, which sold 329,087; 324,699; 776,338; 498,216 and 106,108 copies respectively.

[114] In her review of Awakening, IGN's Audrey Drake said that "Far too few people have played the Fire Emblem series", calling it "[a] darling of the hardcore strategy RPG crowd - and one of the shining gems of the genre".

[115][42] Several journalistic sites have cited its low notoriety in the west as an effect of Nintendo's sporadic localization efforts, along with its place in a niche game genre.

The game bore multiple similarities to the Fire Emblem series, and Nintendo filed a lawsuit against Tirnanog for copyright infringement.