Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade pre-release build 0206

Rekka no Ken File:Ss fe07 0205 prototype title.png

Developer(s) Intelligent Systems Build date 2003/02/05 Final release date JP April 25, 2003 Platform Game Boy Advance ROM

In 2008, a set of three prototype builds of Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade and The Sacred Stones were leaked from the Intelligent Systems FTP server and obtained and subsequently released by a Japanese group, eventually coming to the attention of the English fanbase through the message board Fire Emblem: Sanctuary of Strategy. The three builds were internally timestamped as having been assembled a couple of months before the final releases of the games, and as such contain numerous differences of varying degrees of substantiality, and provide an interesting insight into the development of the games.

This page dissects the differences between this build and the final version. A patch for the prototype can be downloaded here.

Start-up menu

File:Ss fe07 0205 prototype startup menu.png

The opening menu.

On loading the prototype, the player is brought to this debug start-up menu with options to start the game from numerous points. In order, these are:

• Release Entry (Japanese: リリースエントリ) starts the game from its opening demo.
• Continue Chapter (Japanese: どこでも再開) resumes an in-progress game file.
• Manual Continue (Japanese: 手再開) resumes a manually suspended game file.
• Initialize File (Japanese: ファイル初期化) prompts the player to wipe all save data. Unlike The Sacred Stones' prototype, it is functional.
• The last row is a chapter select function, where the player can press left and right to scroll through the game's maps and select one to start playing from.

Debug functions

Main article: Fire Emblem (GBA) prototype build 0205/Debug functions

Within the prototype there are various debug menus that can be accessed in various ways. A lot of these debug functions are identical to those in the 0216 and Sacred Stones's prototype.

Sound and music

File:Ss fe07 0205 prototype sound room.png

The sound room in action.

Main article: Fire Emblem (GBA) prototype build 0205/sound and music

The soundtrack featured in the final release is present, however several songs, while clearly identifiable, sound slightly different and/or use different instruments. The songs do not have their final titles, instead using descriptors. For example, Wind Across the Plains is just called "Lyn".

There are also several songs that do not exist in the final release. There is also one song, Ｐｒｏｌｏｇｕｅ, that, while not present in the final release, would go on to be used in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones.

The sound room in this version of the prototype is, graphically, mostly unmodified from The Binding Blade's sound room. This version of the sound room has a few bugs, though nothing of the game crashing nature, some tracks have glitchy names that the game takes a good few seconds to display.

Graphics

A large amount of the graphics are close to or identical to the final release.

Chapters

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The vast majority of the chapter maps in the prototype are extremely similar, or identical to the final release. However, a small few chapters do have somewhat significant layout differences.

• The Dragon's Gate is white instead of green.
• The ballista in chapter 8 is positioned in a way that the player can get to it earlier.
• The Lloyd variant of chapter 23 lacks an arena.

Portrait differences

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File:Ss fe07 0205 prototype nergal portrait error.png

The somewhat amusing expression resulting from the error in Nergal's portrait.

The majority of the portraits are not vastly different from the final version, though some bosses have shuffled portraits, the vast majority of the bosses in this revision use small portraits from Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, despite their full portraits being complete. Some portraits have received minor touch-ups in the final release compared to those here, and, in particular, Lyn and Eliwood have slightly different portraits for their expression changes.

Also of note, the majority of the generic villagers use portraits from The Binding Blade. There is also a minor error in one of Nergal's portraits; his mouth hangs open slightly instead of closing when he is not speaking.

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Eliwood's screen-facing and sad portraits were revised fairly significantly. His angry portrait received some touch-ups.

Lyn's sad and angry portraits were revised slightly.

Heath's hair color was changed from red to green.

Raven's hair color was changed from black to red, the colors of his outfit were also changed slightly.

Jerme's design was changed; he was given a headband.

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Aion's prototype portrait is edited and given to Kenneth and uses a different portrait in the final release.

Kenneth's prototype portrait would later be given to Teodor, while he would receive a modified version of Aion's portrait as replacement.

Teodor uses a recolor of Denning's portrait.

Denning's jawline and facial features were touched up slightly.

Zephiel's portrait received some touch-ups to his eyes and hair.

Classes

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The vast majority of classes present in the final release of Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade are fully graphically implemented.

• The Fire Dragon's battle animations and map sprites are implemented.
• Dark Druid does not yet have a custom battle animation or map sprite, and uses the druid battle animations and map sprites.
• Eliwood has a different animation when using Durandal.
• Lyn has an unused animation for using Durandal.

Gameplay

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The prototype is fairly complete, game play-wise, though there are occasional glitches throughout the game.

• The sound room is fully unlocked immediately.
• Nergal's stat screen occasionally freezes the game.
• Collapsed Nils and Natalie have view-able stat screens, that also freeze the game.
• Chapter 19xx: A Glimpse in Time loads Nergal as a playable unit and erroneously adds him to the player party.
• Sometimes the final door to Nergal's room does not open in the final chapter; making the chapter impossible to complete.
  • Fog of War is present in said chapter.
• The camera occasionally glitches when skipping chapter events with start, making player units invisible, this can be fixed by a suspend and reload.
• The player units start at the bottom of the staircase, instead of the top, in the final battle against the dragon.
• Some chapters do not have accompanying world map narration.

Items

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The prototype largely has all the items that are in the final release, however several items crash the game when their help description is viewed, and many items use placeholder icons.

• The Emblem weapons crash the game when their help description is viewed.
• Regal Blade, Rex Hasta, Basilikos, and Rienfleche use equivalent (E.g. Regal Blade uses the Silver Sword icon) silver weapon icons as placeholders.
• Wolf Beil uses the iron axe icon.
• Flametongue uses the berserk staff icon.
• Ereshkigal's durability is improperly implemented, instead of having infinite durability it has 0 durability and breaks after being used once.

Supports

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A large amount of support conversations and pairs are implemented into the game, including the scripts to the actual conversations, however several pairs say "Test 1" or some variation. Several support scripts vary from the final release.

Classess

• The Morph class variant for Sage does not seem to be utilized.

Status conditions

The new dancer ring status effects are implemented and functional.

Trivia

• For some reason the L shoulder button backs out of the options menu like the B button, the final release does not have this feature. This also occurs in The Sacred Stones' prototype.