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A Quintessential Tale
Why in the world does anyone hack the turn-based strategy game Fire Emblem? It might just be Nintendo’s most underground game series as far as popularity and brand recognition are concerned. Many people only know of it as the games that “Marth” and “Ike” come from in Nintendo’s far more popular Super Smash Bros franchise.
However, ever since the games escaped Japan’s mainland with Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword (the seventh entry in the series; simply localized as Fire Emblem outside of Japan), there has been a rabid fanbase that’s kept the series alive and well. There are now over 16 games, a mobile phone app, and the characters are regularly featured in Nintendo’s merchandise (including the aforementioned Super Smash Bros). It seems only natural, then, that some fans have found a way to leave a mark on their favorite game series.
The Last Promise - one of the best known fully custom Fire Emblem 7 hacks
What the Hack is That?
One way that fans engage in the series is by modding or hacking (I'm just going to stick with hacking from now on). This involves using a variety of tools to modify the internal code of officially released Fire Emblem games to make them into something new. Despite all the newer games to the series, the most active and popular games to hack are 6, 7, and 8 (the Gameboy Advanced (GBA) series) for a variety of reasons.
Some prefer the charming pixel art:
others like the gameplay:
Regardless of reason, this group of hackers has become an innovative and recognized part of the Fire Emblem fanbase. They’ve existed in some form since the mid 2000’s and, if anything, have grown in number with time. In fact, today is the most easy, user-friendly time to be a Fire Emblem hacker yet. Where in the past one had to open and use half a dozen or more applications to accomplish much of anything, today it can all be done with one:
FEBuilderGBA - One Application to Rule Them All
From characters, classes, and text, to graphics and missions, it’s all easier now than it was a decade ago. In this series, I’ll be examining the tools available and how to use them. First, though, it seems only proper to take a look back at the roots of the Fire Emblem hacking community and how it’s changed. And it’s changed a lot.
I could pearly stand the old memes
An Internet Graveyard
One of the unique aspects of the Fire Emblem hacking scene is that it started when the internet was on the verge of becoming the tremendous sensation that it is today. The internet was a Wild West of sorts, with forums and all sorts of websites popping up one day and dropping the next.
The Fire Emblem scene was no exception. Most of the sites that I frequented back around 2006 are long gone now—the tumbleweeds of their old identities can be seen with a Google search but little more. Fire Emblem Sanctuary of Strategy (FE:SS), Fire Emblem Planet, the original Fire Emblem Universe, several iterations of feshrine, and many more have all been lost to time. With their disappearance went a trove of resources that hackers had pooled together in their quest to make their mark on Fire Emblem.
This was especially prominent for me as a frequent user of FE:SS. This site had one of the premier Fire Emblem hacking communities and had a very active base for both the art and hacking side of things. Thousands of guides, sprite works, and projects were lost when it fell (A non-working archive link for the curious). Luckily, we know far more today than back then, but the loss still stings because of the community and open source works that were lost to the void.
A New Sheriff’s in Town
Personal feelings aside, the overall community also gained quite a lot from the death of these sites. As sites were lost, members of their respective communities migrated to those that remained, with some of us having to make one, two, or even three hops before finally landing somewhere stable. Finally the chaos of the Internet Wild West died down around the 2010’s, leaving three pillars of the english hacking community:
Serenes Forest and it’s hacking subforum
FEUniverse
& FEShrine. But as of today, FEShrine has also largely died.
Thus, the twin winners of this internet rodeo were made. As information funneled at last into a more or less cohesive group, ROM knowledge went through a renaissance of sorts and all-the-while certain stalwart individuals were creating tools to make hacking Fire Emblem easier, such as Nintenlord. One tool in particular arrived to simplify the complex and often frustrating process that was ROM modification:
Hextator’s FEditor adv.
Next time we’ll get into some of the stone age tools of the pre-FEditor Adv era! Have any thoughts to share about your history with the community? Did I forget anything? Misremember? Let me know in the comments section! Until next time, I'm Shindad The Great, and you're pretty awesome, too.