Fire Emblem: Dark Shrine Maiden
Nintendo's first wave of GBA titles are definitely not what gamers would have expected from typical Nintendo tradition. We're dealing with a new Game Boy, and yet there is no Pokemon, Mario or Yoshi in sight. Instead, Nintendo seems to be pushing its less mascot-based game franchises. One of those is Nintendo's acclaimed strategy series Fire Emblem.
The Fire Emblem series has never been released outside of Japan. The game was programmed by Nintendo's Intelligent Systems under the supervision of Gunpei Yokoi. Fire Emblem remains as one of the last Yokoi inspired Nintendo series'. Fire Emblem basically plays like a strategy game, with an RPG inspired storyline and dramatic character interaction. The SNES version's gameplay had you taking control over an entire army. There were different types of troops like swordsmen, knights on horses, slower but stronger grunts, etc. Your army would be opposing an enemy army who was invading your kingdom and small townships located around your base. Your mission was to place the right troops depending on your enemy's particular weakness per character, pick the right weapon, and make sure you had enough energy and stamina to vanquish that foe. Time was also of the essence, as the enemy was capable of destroying the peasant towns, all while approaching your forces and your homebase.
While the gameplay was fun, there certainly is room for overall improvement. There could be more actual interaction and a wider selection arrangement involving your strategy management. One of the game's main strengths, as in all typical role playing games, is the game's fantastic character design, storyline, and music. Of course, the more enchanting and interesting the characters are, the longer one wants to stay and be part of that world.
Information on the game is still rather scarce. Shigeru Miyamoto admitted he was involved in production of the N64 incarnation. Unfortunately, Fire Emblem 64 never materialized. The word is the game was bumped up to a future hardware platform. What remains to be seen is whether this game is the once N64 bound title, or whether it's a port or original title to interact with a newly developed Gamecube version of Fire Emblem. Regardless, Fire Emblem will be a killer app to look out for when Nintendo releases it on the Game Boy Advance next year.