BS Fire Emblem

Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem is a tactical role-playing video game where players take control of Marth's army and Marth himself, the main protagonist of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, across story-driven missions on the continent of Archanea. In between battles, characters engage in conversations with each other in cutscenes, which advances the story.

Battles are turn-based and take place on grid-based maps. Victory is achieved when an enemy base is captured or all enemies are defeated. Each character holds four weapons and four items, and each has an assigned character class, which affects their movement range, damage and what weapons can be used. Mounted units also have the option to dismount, which changes their abilities and stats while reducing movement range.

Mystery of the Emblem is set on the continent of Archanea, and is split into two halves dubbed "Books". "Book 1" is a retelling of the events of Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light: Marth, the prince of Altea, is forced into exile when his homeland is attacked by the neighboring kingdom of Gra. With his father killed and his sister Elice captive, Marth must muster a force to defeat the will driving the invasion: the dark dragon Medeus and his ally Gharnef. Marth's allies include the princess and Pegasus knight Caeda, Marth's mentor Jagen, Prince Hardin of Aurelis, kindly Princess Nyna of Archanea's Royal Family, and the Archsage Gotoh.

His quest leads him to recovering Falchion, a magical sword which can defeat Medeus and which only Marth can wield due to his ancient heritage as a descendant of Anri, the warrior who defeated Medeus. Having recovered both Falchion and the magical Fire Emblem shield, Marth confronts Gharnef and Medeus, the latter of whom is leader of the last surviving tribe of Manakete, an ancient tribe which could shapeshift into dragons. In the end, Marth defeats Medeus and restores peace, surrendering the Fire Emblem to Archanea for safekeeping. Hardin marries Nyna and becomes the king of Archanea.

Mystery of the Emblem was developed by Intelligent Systems, the original creators of the Fire Emblem series, under supervision from publisher and studio owner Nintendo. Development began in 1992 during the development of Fire Emblem Gaiden, with production lasting almost three years. Shouzou Kaga returned as designer and writer. Keisuke Terasaki acted as director, while Gunpei Yokoi returned as producer.

The characters were designed by Katsuyoshi Koya, who would go on to work on Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War. The music was composed by Yuka Tsujiyoko, who worked on the soundtrack with sound designer Masaya Kuzume. She would later refer to the game as her favorite title out of the Fire Emblem games she had worked on.

While no exact figure is available, Mystery of the Emblem stood as the best first-week debut for the series until the Nintendo 3DS title Fire Emblem Awakening in 2012. As of 2002, Mystery of the Emblem had sold 776,338 units. This made Mystery of the Emblem the best-selling title in the Fire Emblem series to that date.

Famitsu was generally positive about Mystery of the Emblem, citing both its overall quality and the improvements made to the gameplay and presentation of content from Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light. Mike Moehnke of RPGamer felt that the story was "fine without being great", especially as it was a partial remake of the first game. While he enjoyed the gameplay, he noted that it felt like a precursor to the more refined and expanded mechanics of later titles in the series, despite praising the dismounting mechanic. The graphics he found unimpressive for the platform, while he found the audio a mixed effect with a lack of tunes in the first half and more variety and strength for the second half. He finished that the game was worth seeking out for series and genre fans, but that the language barrier and advances of subsequent Fire Emblem titles made it less appealing.

Mystery of the Emblem was adapted into an original video animation (OVA): two episodes were produced by KSS and released in 1996, but no further episodes have been produced following poor sales, leaving the OVA series unfinished. Marth's Japanese voice actor, Hikaru Midorikawa, would go on to voice the character in subsequent appearances in spin-off and crossover media. These episodes were dubbed into English by A.D. Vision and released in North America on April 14, 1998, five years before Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade was localized.

BS Fire Emblem: Archanea Senki-hen commonly referred to as BS Fire Emblem, is an episodic tactical role-playing game developed by Intelligent Systems and released in 1997 following the release of Genealogy of the Holy War. It acts as a prequel to the events of the first Fire Emblem title and Mystery of the Emblem. The four episodes of BS Fire Emblem were broadcast between September and October 1997 on the Satellaview peripheral service, a system where short games were downloaded via satellite at given times of day. While it employs the same tactical gameplay as the mainline titles, it throws waves of enemies at the main party during a three-hour time limit.