The Questionable Design Choices and Hilarious Errors of Fire Emblem's First Game
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- Опубликовано: 3 июл 2024
- Fire Emblem: Dark Dragon and Sword of Light set in motion an over 30 year long gaming franchise that is currently at its peak mechanical polish. But you know what they say, humble beginnings. upon closer inspection, Fire Emblem 1 is one of the jankiest games of them all. Now, a game developed in 1990 will of course have some goofy bugs and random weirdness here and there. And today's video is going to highlight a bunch of random shenanigans, jank and glitches that have been known to occur with Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light. Honestly, some of these when I first heard of them were downright hilarious, so let's get to the list.
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Original Aum bug discovery:
forums.serenesforest.net/inde...
Footage help:
Sturdyhax
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Thumbnail Art: FE Cypher
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#fireemblem #FE1 #fireemblemengage 
Игры
FE1 was a silly little game :)
Probably should have clarified a liittle better that some things in this video were just funny ways things were programmed. Anyways! Thanks for watching! Hope you enjoyed and learned some funny trivia stuff from FE1. If you enjoyed, please leave a like and comment down below. And THANK you for all the support recently. The channel just hit 108K subscribers!
I really wish Nintendo localized FE3 instead of this lol i wanted to play the SNES shadowdragon/newmystery
I thought this was going to be brought up, but there was something I ran into earlier this week. I was looking up the terrain movement in FE1, and every single class (except fliers share the same) has a slightly different move types. A lot only differ by a small amount (2 vs 3 forest cost, or 4 vs 5 river cost)
The reason I ran into this because as a joke I was going to remake Three Houses using FE1 mechanics (in SRPG studio). When I went to implement the movement types, it turned out FE1 had more movement types than SRPG studio supported. You need 22 movement classes, and SRPG studio only supports 12.
As opposed to 3 Houses which only has 4 different move types (infantry, forest, flier, mounted).
Really glad we were able to figure out what was going on with the Aum/Hammerne glitch. Gotta love the game grabbing random memory when something mildly goes wrong.
One of the biggest glitches in the original shadow dragon is in chapter 13 where Grigas was supposed to summon elephants, but played the ballistician animation instead.
I’m sorry, elephants?? That sounds awesome and I hope this isn’t just a typo.
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958There is a ballista named “Pachyderm.” In the original Japanese version, it is named Elephant. In a fan translation, he says “Take this! Elephant!”
@@ltranc
Ohhhhh lol, thats fun.
I know about the pachyderm though, a fun little cannon that thing is :P
@@ltranc "Pachydermata" is an obsolete classification for massive thick-skinned mammals like rhinos, hippopotamuses and... elephants.
Imagine using a goddamned _elephant_ as your ammunition. No wonder it hits hard. Feel a bit sorry for the elephant though.
I love FE1 and its brokenness is just part of it! A few follow-ups and other fun details about it that were missed or not *strictly* 100% accurate:
1. Marth won't be targeted "no matter what," the game still checks to see if it will deal 0 damage. If that's the case, it will pick other targets, but otherwise yes, it's Marth 100% of the time if he's a valid target.
2. It's all promotion items that can be used to boost manakete defense, not just the knight crest, though the knight crest is the first one you have access to (either that or the hero medal) so it's the one most often used for the manakete defense glitch.
3. Enemy mages are hard-coded to not attack units that have been given a Talisman, even if they are using a spell that could still deal damage, like Swarm, Bolganone or Thoron. So the res boost only directly applies on player phase.
4. Generals shouldn't be considered upgrades to armor knights, technically they're actually DOWNGRADES because they are locked to swords, while armor knights can use both swords and lances. They do have better class bases though.
5. If you think 30 turns of straight reinforcements is a lot, try 76 turns for the final map. It's a horrible slog for dumb challenge runs like Marth solo.
I'd never heard of the Aum/Hammerne glitch before though, so learn something new every day!
Aw man, and here I thought the 14 turn reinforcement spam on one map in Blazing Blade was annoying
@@Fermin-hw5pd yeah the final map is so egregious that WoD didn't even bother listing an end turn, or if they did it was incorrect, leading some people to believe the reinforcements are actually infinite.
@@MythrilZenith It was on the map before the final one, but yes it was a very funny experience for me because Hector and Heath handled everything by themselves, I was too scared to move people to the swarm of Falcon Knights
Fire Emblem WoD is a good page though :)
76 TURNS that explains why i hated that map, I just pressed end turn and super speed, waiting for the dragons to end with Marth and it was horrible
Oh! I’m the one who discovered that Aum staff glitch! Thank you for sharing it on here and learning more in detail about how it works!
One thing to note is that I was playing on the Famicom Online version of FE1 so it should work for all versions of the game.
Also one glitch I had heard about with the chapter where you recruit Samson/Arron on is that if you recruit one, kill them, then visit the other village to recruit the other (and get Xane), it can cause a lot of weird glitches too. (Possibly some sort of memory overflow)
And depending on the position on the X-axis of the last recruited unit (Arron, Samson, or Xane), it will change them into a different unit too, similarly to the Aum staff glitch.
Seriously considering a part 2 with all the chaotic bugs being mentioned in the comments LOL
I appreciate the Super Mario Land music scattered throughout. It fits FE 1's jank/charm very well lmao
FE1 definitely has more janky stuff.
I've seen someone else mention the credits warp as a glitch, but it isn't. It's an intended debug feature for the devs to check if the credits worked properly without having to replay the game the entire time. After every chapter you get the "Do you want to save?" prompt, say No, then press Up, Down, Left, Right, Up, A to get to the sound test menu, and hit Select to get to the credits.
In FE1 a triangle can also only have 2 corners.... because reasons. If you put 2 of your Whitewings next to an enemy and move one of them to a different tile, the game thinks of the moved unit in the original and new spots as 2 different units and lets you triangle attack with only 2 of them.
The geosphere is also a mess because the damage it does gets reduced by a units luck stat. Enemies never have luck so they always take damage but your lucky units could even avoid the damage entirely.
The devs also forgot to do boundary checking for the money in this game so if you grind too much in the arena, your money can overflow and make you broke again lol.
Lastly there is also some really weird and pretty undocumented glitch where the game lets you put your units on deployment spots where enemies are stationed at the beginning of a map but I don't know the details.
Omg haha if there's enough maybe I'll see about it part 2
I was wondering how I got a triangle attack without Est in the party and couldn't find out why anywhere until I read this comment.
Aye I know it shouldve never been like this, but Linde being able to do 20 damage regardless of the strength of the enemy honestly saved me from a countless amount of bad situations
Aura with FE1 mechanics unironically makes Linde a really strong mage for certain situations because of 1-shot potential. It's great!
Why don't u upload no more
@@magicfish8213 ive been working on a video since like january, its just taking long cause im too busy with life XD
Its comin though, I promise
Spellcasters are horrifically overpowered in FF1 in general given they all they need to be good is speed, Defense and HP. The less stat dependant you are to perform, the better of an unit you are. On the flipside, Bishops are one of the most dangerous enemy units in the game, together with Draco Knights and Manaketes
One quirk I found in FE1 that I've rarely seen discussions for online is that archers do not attack mages in the arena.
Add to this the fact that specific wagers (which increase with character level) are tied to specific opponents, and suddenly, the perilous arena becomes a literal goldmine, with your magic of choice in place of a pickax.
I still can't believe the Fire Emblem series is six years older than Pokemon. I wonder if there's an alternate timeline where FE becomes the super franchise instead, while Pokemon is the game series that only gets introduced outside of Japan due to Smash Bros. Fun to think about
Huh, yeah, that's something interesting to think about. I also saw a comment similar to yours in a video of one of the Fire Emblem's OVAs, that also imagined if in another timeline this was the franchise that managed to get a lot of anime series instead of Pokemon. Now that's an -scary- interesting thought.
What I found about FE1 is how the Ballistician class did not fire arrows any different from an Archer, and therefore, only had Range 2 instead of being the artillery that scared off squishies.
The use of Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins music really sells the goofiness of this game's jank.
Fun stuff, these under/overflow errors. Reminds me of how Edelgard can be killed by a chair
Okay, the weapon durability glitch is just the kind of weird NES exploit I was hoping for. And it was actually added in the Switch port? Awesome. Reading your X coordinate as a weapon index, and then reading another item index as durability is the best memory shenanigans I've heard of since Final Fantasy I's weapon crit rates.😊
Yeah, it's always interesting to see how insane (by our standards) the coding for these old games is, given how little space they had to work with.
Actually, ballisticians have worse than armored move, they have 4 instead of 5.
Damn. FE1 certainly is one of the games of all time huh.
As of when I’m commenting, I’m playing through FE3 for the first time, and it’s insane how many basic features were only introduced in FE3 as they weren’t in FE1 or FE2.
For one, FE3 finally allows you to view weapon stats in numeric form, a battle forecast, and movement ranges. I know part of it was that they jumped to the Super Famicom, but I have zero idea why Kaga and IS thought it was a good idea not to provide weapon stats in FE1.
It seems to be common with classic Nintendo series that they don’t figure things out until the 3rd game, but FE1 was missing so many basic features that are vital to survival. Perhaps Kaga truly wanted to encourage permadeath by hiding basic info from the player (similar to FE10 Hard Mode for hiding enemy ranges).
In addition, FE3 also introduced Crit Avo for the first time, so you could finally mitigate enemy Crit if you had enough Lck. Seriously, I have to think Kaga and IS were heavily encouraging permadeath by having every unit in FE1 and FE2 be susceptible to crits at all times.
I'm more scared by the lack of a battle forecast, wow
Kaga absolutely WAS encouraging permadeath in FE1. That is one aspect of the design philosophy that is clear: any unit, at any time, can just get smacked by a critical and die, no matter how smart your plan is or how powerful (outside busted glitches) they are. Units were expected to die and be replaced at the RNG's whim.
You can also tell Monshou and Seisen were heavily influenced by how players actually treated permadeath in FE1. Monshou recognizes and rewards players who are willing to reset to save all their recruitable, while Seisen preys upon the expectation that players will continue to play in that style to make it's mid-game gut punch all the more effective. And Thracia 776 was an attempt to go back to that style, with additional mechanics meant to force players to bring in normally-bemched substitute units even if there is not a large death count.
Weren't the weapon stats in the booklet? They did stuff like this often back then
Those were the days when games were usually played with a manual close by to fill in all the little details in the game proper. I don't own the manual to FE1, but I imagine things like weapon might were in there.
Not sure what caused it, but I warpskipped chapter 8 by killing the boss, then recruiting roger and the maps textures broke. (Switch version)
Sounds somewhat similar to a glitch I ran into.
One glitch I read about was the chapter where you recruit Samson or Aaron. If you recruit one of them, then kill them off, you can still recruit the other one as the village is still open. But doing so can have some weird glitches with the map textures too causing it to completely mess up. (I think you need to have Xane recruited as well)
I also discovered that like the weapon glitch, the last recruited unit’s position on the map horizontally will change them into a different unit, varying by their position.
There's also the clear the game glitch where you can just skip to the credits on startup, speedruns take all of 5 minutes.
Also there's plenty of other examples of ridiculous reinforcements in this game, many are infinite if I remember correctly
The one and only time i played fe1 was an iron man. I quickly found out that there was no dodge stat. Also that catria and palla don't show up if Minerva is dead.
Neither does Est, which means no Mercurius. So if you kill Maria you lose five units and a regalia.
This and OG Gaiden have given me battle scars... but I honestly do have a twisted soft spot for them both for different reasons. I would not recommend either of them, especially Gaiden, but I don't regret playing them.
I played the game on switch a while back and, well, I had fun! The thing is, it’s definitely an aged product of it’s time and certainly not the most comfortable play, but for what it tried to do, it did so incredibly well in my eyes.
My favorite part is how it gave you all the tools you needed and was perhaps the purest form of Kaga’s perma death philosophy where you’d get many units and, as long as you played decently, you could beat the game even with a chunk of your army dead.
This formula was later perfected in the radiant games and to an extent the GBA games and was later revitalized by the 3DS games.
It’s also why I don’t want these games to ever take example from Three Houses going forward. You can make a large cast of solid compelling characters, and this is supposed to be an army, not a slightly above average DND adventuring party.
To conclude my point on Three Houses, I don’t hate the game, but it sort of had to betray the nature of having a large and diverse army in exchange for the small classroom of units in order for its gimmick to work.
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958considering that we got some of the best casts in any fe game I am ok with the smaller cast
@dljb7463 Yeah I don't need all future FE games to be like Three Houses. Rather, I want future FE casts to be as good as that of Three Houses but better. With improvements in the primary protagonist and overall villains of course. Oh, and I think I prefer smaller casts too like those if Three Houses and Engage for higher chances of a quality cast, as Three Houses demonstrated.
@@sjk8495 dont forget echos!
@@sjk8495
Here's the problem, whats stopping them from just writing larger castes of fleshed out characters? Nothing. Past games have had it before. Plus, we dont need every unit to be plot relevant to be cool and fleshed out, or even interact with everyone else.
Its supposed to be an *army* of people.
I finished Gaiden for the first time recently and hoo boy, one video would not cover all of that game's bugs. Don't knock FE1 ballisticians though. Their weapons are all 90 accuracy and 12 MT at worst. They get really good when you're pumping up stats at the endgame infinite stat booster shop. I'm a little surprised you didn't mention that shop actually. It's way more abusive than FE3 and 11.
If I were to add anything else, FE1 arenas decide enemy strength based on your level, not your stats. So when you put in a unit that's freshly promoted, they're fighting the lowest level enemies and getting the full experience since FE1 experience is not scaled. The only thing keeping it from being too abusive is that they don't ask if you want to fight another round after victory like in later games.
Oh look, it's ZappBranniglenn from Serenes Forest.
fun fact: if you know the arena mechanics then you can grind infinite gold if you have a talisman
basically most classes can fight thunder mages, plus you can calculate who your opponent just by looking at the bet. thunder only has 6 might, and talismans give you 7 res
FE1 is one of those games that is just fun to break. Even the stuff that makes sense doesn't make sense
Yay an FE1 video! I played on Switch when it came out. Yes it is old, yes it is clunky, but I loved playing it!
I love finding the bugs that existed in games before I was born, it makes appreciate how far we've come.
Early game syndrome this definitely is
Idk what happened but I recruited Arran and then he died, then I recruited Samson in the same chapter and next chapter Rickard became a Hero with Samsons stats
This glitch has some similarities to the Aum staff glitch where the tile that the last recruited character is on at the end of the chapter (Arran, Samson, or Xane) determines who they will change who they change into.
There is just a bit of documentation about the glitch causing several issues when recruiting Samson/Arran after the other is killed so when playing earlier this year I got curious to try it for myself.
Upon discovering one of them changing into another unit, I did testing as it reminded me of the Aum staff glitch. I believe you normally can’t use the extra one, but killing off the unit they transform into will allow you to use them as that new unit in their current class.
FE1‘s Inventory system broke me, After a while I just gave up sorting items
Honestly, all of that is much, much better than the standards of the time. Yes, there's some bugs and oversights, but there's still a clear game design vision, there's already a surprising diversity of gameplay, and a good amount of features I didn't know existed in FE1.
Like sure, it may seem like the item management was junky. But it was still there! Most games back then didn't have item management, you had one or two default weapons per "soldier" and that's it.
I've gotta try the Tiki/Bantu glitch as well as the talisman glitch next time I play
Plus 1 like for the use of Super Mario Land 2 music.
Did these glitches carry over to the Switch anniverssary release? Asking for a friend...
Yes they sure do!
@@MythrilZenith Thanks!
Was NOT expecting to hear the Moon theme from Super Mario Land 2!!
I have heard that the ridersbane in this game ONLY deals effective damage against cavs, not paladins, but that the rapier does
I'm not fully sure that it's true, I haven't tested it, but it would not at all surprise me
I like the video and use of Mario Land 2 music.
I love this game tbh
I want one of these videos for FE2 on nes
tbh, when I played through FE1, I was impressed on how strong the core of the game was even back then. It lacks alot of QoL found in later titles, but the heart and soul of the game has remained consistent from its vary first title, and it still feels vary much like a modern fire emblem game at its core once you adjust to all the outdated systems.
We certainly have come a long way
I played through FE1 and it's a solid game. The only thing that's really wrong with the game design and not just a nitpick about "quality of life" is the item management. Every character has four slots for weapons and items, you can't sell anything, you can't trade (only give), and discarding one item ends your turn. It's a painful, mind-numbing nightmare to optimize your equipment and it really bogs down the game.
What is the outro music, I like it
I wish I got FE 1 when it was available, i always wanted to try it but I didn't have money at the time. 😢 thanks for the video Ghast I can at least appreciate the spaghetti code with your video
Funnily enough, I am about to try the first FE game, but I am struggling in how to apply translation patches: anyone can give me some tips on the matter?
As someone who has played this game from start to finish, I had absolutely no idea that this game was so janky. Jeezus.
such a fun game i love it more people should play it
Surprised you didn’t mention how the knight killer isn’t effective against paladins, just cavs. Even the weapon table on serenesforest has this wrong.
Good thing the patch update gave Marth pants.
I am just now learning chapter 8 has 30 turns of reinforcements, when I played I assumed it was infinite
I'm sure an elitist exists somewhere in Japan saying it was the good old days before needing boots or steers
Ah yes, Boots Emblem: Boots Dragon and the Boots of Light
Yeah. This is (to me) a prime example of first game syndrome.
Pure Water doesn't work for the Talisman glitch, because you need to have the maximum boost for it to work, and you can't use a Pure Water and a Talisman on the same turn.
This was my second Fire Emblem game after Three Houses and that may have been one of the single biggest mistakes of my entire gaming career
4/10 game, instant shitpost recommendation
Did you change the title of this video?
Cool
Here’s a fun bug: try recruiting Matthis while Lena is on a village tile. 😏
Matthis ascends and obtains Made in Heaven, allowing him to reset the universe.
You forgot one thing. If you and the enemy survive 5 turns of combat in the arena, he kicks you out anyway.
This might just be to prevent softlocks from you breaking your weapon while the enemy cant deal damage to you
FE1 jank is great
FE1 best FE
7:05
as a friend you are replaceable
A bit more levelling weirdness - growth rates are a bit of a lie. The game doesn't roll stats individually, but instead each character has a number of "templates" that pick which stats go up and one of those is selected at random. This is why, if you pay close attention, characters seem to always get the same four or five different level-ups.
This is... technically true? The game rolls level-ups the same way as any other FE game, by asking the RNG for a sequence of numbers to compare to the unit's growths. What's at fault is the RNG itself, which starts at 0 and simply adds 55 repeatedly to get to the next number. This means that there are only 256 distinguishable results for any given level-up or combat situation. The level-up patterns are the most noticeable thing, but it's also a big reason why attacking an enemy that can't counter leads to a disproportionate number of 1-hit-1-miss outcomes if you have less than 100% hit.
Just like red and blue, games just need time
Doesn't fe1 have a glitch that lets you beat it on the first map? I know the speedrun is like 5 minutes long
Unrelevant but the thumbnail is cute
0:00 Nice qualifier with the "peak mechanical polish", dodging the writing that was recently brought to the table.
I tried playing it recently and I couldn't get into it lol. I wanna play a game with marth idk, I guess the vibes don't mix with me
This game makes me feel insecure. Don't have courage to play it, just watch=D Thank you for an interesting video=)
And before anyone says FE1 is like this because it's a "product of its time," let me remind you that the Famicom had been around for 7 years by the time FE1 came out, and the Super Famicom was released the same year, but it still feels like an early Famicom game. Famicom games in 1990 for the most part were much more polished and felt much better to play than FE1 did. Intelligent Systems were clearly just not that good at making Famicom games.
Uh, can you even name any other SRPGs for the Famicom?
It would be rather absurd to compare this game's coding with a platformer, after all.
@@cabbusses Sure, it would be absurd, but platformers weren't the only games on the Famicom. Final Fantasy 3 was released the same *month* as FE1 and looks and feels far more polished than FE1 does. Sure, it's not a tactical RPG, but it is a turn based RPG with item and party management, which is pretty close.
@@Arkholt2 ... Seriously? FF3? The one with an 11-Minute TAS and an item dupe bug in the first page of results for "Final Fantasy III Famicom glitches"? I am pretty sure Mother is less buggy than that, and that one was coded by guys who needed Satoru Iwata to fix their sound code for the sequel.
Also: that was the followup to FFII, a game with a broken stat growth system where you got buff by punching your allies unarmed repeatedly.
NES-era Squaresoft is absolutely NOT a good example of polished, bug-free gaming.
@@cabbusses I didn't say "bug-free." I said "more polished" and "feels better to play" and "feels like it was released in 1990 and not in 1983." Just because a game is made better than another game doesn't mean it's perfect.
@@Arkholt2 Absolutely none of that applies to FFIII for Famicom. There was not even a graphics bump from FFI! Even Dragon Quest's Famicom trilogy had significant graphical and audio quality bumps going through each entry in chronological order, but not the first three FFs.
And remember: you are trying to compare this with Fire Emblem, which is a whole different genre. And this discussion started entirely BECAUSE OF A VIDEO ABOUT BUGS.
Stop trying to move the goalpost here, it is clearly NOT working for your example.
I would had respected your opinion more if you mentioned any RPG I would not have immediately recognized as "almost as buggy as Pokemon Green". At least I would have felt inspired to try to find some gamebreaking bugs in Sweet Home or Crystalis if those came up before I had to mention them myself.
Unfortunately, the peak mechanical polish of the series was FE5.
It's one of the best games but it's not the most polished. The fact you cannot rearrange units is really annoying in several maps. UI has been improved since then. I could agree to best story, maps, and innovative ideas. But not mechanical polish
@@PurpleRupees U.I hasn't improved unfortunately. Rearranging units is also rather irrelevant with infinite staff range, plentiful rewarps, and a whole slew of staff units.
And yet, in spite of all the jank of FE1, it's STILL a better game than Shadow Dragon. Go figure.
(okay SD is objectively better, but the series had come so much farther by then that it still represented a massive leap backwards in quality)
I could be wrong but I've heard that if you do the Manakete defense glitch too many times, the defense stat will overflow.
I like this game quite a lot when I have the patience for it. If it had proper convoy, trading, and battle preps like FE3 (and wasn't so slow), I think it would be an excellent game, as the map design still holds up pretty well after all this time.
Barely related but something really weird in FE4 is that lovers trust each other enough to give money but still won't give items. Even the first game had giving c'mon
Huh first games are really a glitch mese
Still unironically aged better than Gaiden
Never
Ever
Use this bgm again
Having played Three Houses and the Switch version of Shadow Dragon, while I may say the maps of Shadow Dragon are better, that game clearly suffers from first game syndrome, and Three Houses for me is better in just about everything else.
It’s okay,Hero King Marth did move on to Fire Emblem Warriors,Heroes,and Dragalia Lost for a long time before Engage.
Plus Codename Steam as a third member of the Emblem Agent Squad.
I don't like FE1 because it doesn't have Amelia, the greatest unit of all time
All games without Lute in it are inferior to FE8
Oh man, I feel bad for you. Only one game in the series (not counting Heroes) for you to enjoy? :(
Amelia is certainly an unit that can use lances
like ur mum
Love the series but can't stand the 1st game and it's remake