Tell your Fire emblem story!

[maybe]

i played a demo of awakening and thought it was neat so i got the game like a year or two later

[Blue Druid]

Since getting into the series, I got into ROM hacking of the GBA games... and despite some issues I'd rather forget about my past... thanks to Fire Emblem, I was able to choose my major in college, have a relatively successful Youtube channel, have somewhat of a semi-celebrity presence in the community, have a well paying job, and met the most wonderful, kind, and caring girl in the entire world.

The beauty of piracy! :')

Picked up Smash. Played as Ike and thought he was cool. Researched on his game a bit and decided to start the series with FE7. And as of now I've played FE6 to FE14 (haven't played BR or RV yet).

You should play FE5 too. Is rly gud.

Embarrassingly enough, I thought Awakening looked pretty neat. Admittedly I probably wouldn't be a monarchist without it (long story Jesus Christ) but whatever.

Wha? Fire Emblem made you a monarchist? Wow.

[blah the Prussian]

Wha? Fire Emblem made you a monarchist? Wow.

Well, more like introduced me to the concept; I started liking monarchy as a guilty pleasure because I quite liked Chrom (I don't anymore) but basically it opened me up to the ideas that made it not a guilty pleasure anymore.

[Suspect]

2 of my friends played and i saw during the direct, so i thought it looks cool and i got a emulator to play 7 which i never finished.

[Bandit]

When I was young we got FE 7, I was really bad at it but I had a lot of fun playing it. I guess I've always just been a fan.

[SpacelessZarius]

I first heard about Fire Emblem back when Smash Bro's Melee was out, I was told at the time it was Japanese game only. Pass by many years, and im talking to 2015, Im still recovering slowly from the (here comes some bad fire emblem reference) "Awakening" of a chronic illness and due to this I am in a real game slump (not really enjoying much) and Im looking for RPG recomendations and on a list appeared "FIre Emblem: Awakening" so I looked into more and found it to be a Turn-Based Stratergy as well. Also seeing some really nice character designs I decided to buy Awakening and give it a go. Awakening pretty much hooked me and I really enjoyed it, hell I would even say it brought back a joy in gaming I hadn't had for quite a while. Over the months of me enjoying Awakening and looking more into Fates, I decided to see if I could give the older titles a go, and what do you know some were on virtual console. My enjoyment of the series is still going strong and I have only 2 more world release titles to go (not including Fates as I need to wait another month for that in the EU).

[EricaofRenais]

I liked the box art on SS and so I bought it and liked it, then bought RD when I bought my Wii and fell in love with the series. I have played 7,8,9,10,11,13 and 14 and I am planning on importing 12.

[alexsdx]

I was into the nintendo wars series, and while talking about gaming with a friend I lent him my copy of Advance Wars: Days of ruin, about a week later my friend told me "yeah this game is good but this one is even better" and he handed me his copy of Path of Radiance. He was totally right I loved that game, then I got the rest of the games (and emulated the japanese only ones), and now Fire Emblem is one of my favorite franchises, with FE4 being my favorite.

[Sentacotus]

Like just about every other person played melee would often go against my best friend who played as Marth and I would play as Roy. Looked at their trophies and saw disappointingly that they were from Fire Emblem a Japan only game. So I just assumed I'd never get to play their game.

Luckily enough FE7 got released here as just Fire Emblem and kept looking for Roy and Marth never finding them until the end tells you that Roy is Eliwood's kid. I was pretty terrible at FE then and lost alot of units so I took a break from it until I played FE9 at a friend's and really liked it but missed out on buying a copy so I decided to get FE10 when that came out.

Later got FE11 since it actually had Marth in it so I was pretty excited about that. Then I started college and pretty much got away from gaming altogether for a variety of reasons. But then I had to take a semester off to take care of things on the home front and it was a difficult time. Although Awakening had been out for about a year and a half at that point so I picked that up since I was at home anyway and fell in love with the franchise all over again especially with the ability to grind my units unlock the supports I wanted and all. Shortly after that I looked for a forum about Fire Emblem and joined here.

I did manage to eventually buy a used complete copy of Path of Radiance for about 100USD but to me it was worth it. I now own Fates Birthright and Conquest (Revelations Digitally) and still pretty much like to collect anything I can reasonably afford Fire Emblem related.

[Butterstroke]

Saw Fire Emblem: Awakening in Gamestop. Looked at it. Thought it was cool and got it. it snowballed from there.

[Levin's Scarf]

I started with Smash 4, really. At the time I couldn't get a 3DS for Awakening so eventually I decided to get ROMS and started my FE journey with Genealogy. Since then, I've finished Genealogy and Birthright, almost done with Revelation, and I'm in the middle of Thracia and Conquest.

[Locke087]

I swear we already had this topic just a week ago... But anyways....

I played Advanced War, I loved Advanced Wars and I wanted more so though Melee I learned about Fire Emblem, I then picked up FE 7 likely soon after release (my memory is so fuzzy here so who knows when I picked it up I just know I bought it around then) and Loved that game so deeply I have been a day 1 owner of every American released fire emblem since then (expect shadow dragon which came out during my DS emulation phase so I never physically bought it...). I have now also played many of the Japan Only games (I only found this forum because I was attempting to play them, and I joined it once I saw that it wasn't a cesspit like most other public forums) So far I finished every Fire Emblem but FE 1-3 and 5, 5 will be the next fire emblem I play. I will probably play sometimes around summer game drought...

Edited April 3, 2016 by Locke087

[eclipse]

Fire Emblem 7 was released in the US in 2003. . .so you can do the math and figure out about how old you were when you played AW. For reference, me thinking that Eliwood was good-looking wasn't too unusual for someone my age.

[Sunwoo]

The first time I saw anything FE-related was in SSBM, with Marth and Roy. Found out that both were Japan-only and that Eliwood wasn't Roy, lost interest. SSBB came out, and since Ike's game did have a North American release I decided to get PoR. Got all of the other English-released games after that.

[Locke087]

Fire Emblem 7 was released in the US in 2003. . .so you can do the math and figure out about how old you were when you played AW. For reference, me thinking that Eliwood was good-looking wasn't too unusual for someone my age.

I was 9-10 at the time I know that much, the problem is that I don't know if I got it really close to release date or just for my birthday or right before a trip. I reason think I might got it close to release date is because I remember playing it with my friends at the time, because me and my friends any my brother all owned copies of it around the same time... In retrospect it seems a little farfetched to have got it at some random point like my birthday and have my friends own it and be playing it at same time... So it's highly likely I got it around release date.

Edited April 3, 2016 by Locke087

[eclipse]

I was in double digits at the time I know that much, the problem is that I don't know if I got it really close to release date or just for my birthday or right before a trip. I reason think I might got it close to release date is because I remember playing it with my friends at the time, because me and my friends any my brother all owned copies of it around the same time... In retrospect it seems a little farfetched to have got it at some random point like my birthday and have my friends own it and be playing it at same time... So it's highly likely I got it around release date.

I'm more surprised that you thought Advance Wars was cool before you were 10, because that's what your post is implying.

[Locke087]

I'm more surprised that you thought Advance Wars was cool before you were 10, because that's what your post is implying.

I did, though it should be noted that while I loved Advance War, I loved it as a handheld game, Fire Emblem was the first handheld game I ever found myself playing at home actively preferring it to a console games (expect perhaps Pokémon Yellow). I think if I were to talk to kid me and tell him that two of my favorite games of all time (number 2 & 3 on my list FE 7 & Mother 3) were on the GBA he wouldn't believe me, franklin at the time I thought handheld games were inherently inferior to console games.

But as to why I liked Advanced Wars this mostly because when I was a kid I couldn't beat many video games (I think the first time I was beating any video games at all was in the GameCube era)... So finding a genre of games I was good at was a nice change of pace. Though young me is not all that cool he did think that Wind Waker and Okami were crap (mostly because they didn't have realistic graphics which are major contributors to the reasons love I them now) those are two of my favorite games ever now...

Edited April 3, 2016 by Locke087

[Fire Emblem Fan]

My first game was Shadow Dragon. I knew about Fire Emblem from Super Smash Bros., but never knew the series had started getting released internationally until I saw Ike in Brawl and saw Path of Radiance at a Blockbuster (does anyone else remember those?). I never saw any advertisements for any of them, though. Not for any of the GBA games, not for PoR...none of them. Then, in 2012, I stumbled across Shadow Dragon for ten dollars at Walmart. And thus I got and played my first Fire Emblem game.

[Rend Keaven]

Well I heard of FE from Melee (no surprise there) and even mained Marth in Melee to Smash 4. It was only until 2014 when I played FE7 on Wii U as it was on discount. Now I wished I played the games sooner.

[OakTree]

Saw the hype around Awakening, so in order to prepare, i played FE7 (And later, FE8), needless to say, i enjoyed Awakening, but i found the changes in gameplay... perplexing...

Since then, i've played FE6 and FE4 (I've also seen an in-depth playthrough of the Tellius games), and am now waiting for someone to make a tolerable FE5 translation patch.

Edited April 6, 2016 by OakTree

[Tolvir]

My Dad rented Radiant Dawn from our local Family Video, and started playing the game. My whole family sits around to watch him play through RPGs so this was no different, and I remember thinking it looked so cool. We went and bought Path of Radiance after figuring out that it came before Radiant Dawn, and I played through it. We were under the impression for years that Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn were the only games in the series until Awakening. Then we learned the game has been around as long as Final Fantasy, which was pretty funny to me. Ever since all of that I have been a fan of the games, and have been playing at least the Gamecube/Wii and 3DS games.

[Blue Druid]

i enjoyed Awakening, but i found the changes in gameplay... perplexing...

Since then, i've played FE6 and FE4 (I've also seen an in-depth playthrough of the Tellius games), and am now waiting for someone to make a tolerable FE5 translation patch.

Yeah, me too.

Also, bookofholsety is probably making a proper FE5 translation after he finishes his FE4.

[TheCaptain]

My friend introduced me to emulation in like 6th grade. Shortly after, I was browsing ROMs online (didn't know it was illegal then) and saw FE7. I thought "Hey, that's the series that those guys from Smash Bros are in" and I downloaded it. Fell in love during the first battle.

Started playing FE7 and FE8 simultaneously. Then my emulator or computer or something stopped working for whatever reason (it probably could have been fixed but I had even less of an idea than I do now of how computers work) and I was Emblemless for several months, but they always stayed in the back of my mind until I finally grew restless enough to want to order one online.

I ordered SS and played from there. Fast forward a bit and I found out about translation patches and stuff and played FE6 and FE4 (Like I said, I sucked with computers and it took me several hours to figure out how the patches worked), and just continued to branch out from there. Now, I have played and beaten every game besides 5 (lost my save data like 3/4 through) and 1+3 (because they have remakes that are mostly the same but better).

[AnnetheCatDetective]

'Twas back in the days of Nintendo Gamecube and Blockbuster Video... in fact, Blockbuster had recently started renting out video games. And there, along the row of games that could be rented for the Gamecube, was something that stood out to me.

Dad dropped me and my younger siblings off to look around for something to rent while he ran into the pharmacy, I think-- that was a pretty regular thing at the time, since Blockbuster was just across the parking lot from our pharmacy... I was a college student, the sibs were both old enough to be fairly self-sufficient in terms of spending an afternoon home alone or whatever but I was still often the 'adult' for babysitting purposes, if our parents went somewhere, and while we usually rented movies for the whole family to be able to enjoy together, if my mom had a conference to go to or something like that, we'd usually get a game instead, and/or a bunch of anime.

Anyway, being as I was older, and the Gamecube games skewed younger, there were a lot of them that I wasn't super interested in, or that were fun if we were playing together, but not something I'd necessarily gravitate to on my own (but we were not really a family that could afford to just not pick sides in the console wars at the time, nor could we afford to be early adopters when new systems came out, so Gamecube it was). Path of Radiance drew my eye right away.

It was a little different from the RPGs I was used to, but... it seemed like it hit the required marks-- turn-based, character-driven... well worth a rental. Turns out I loved the whole strategy thing at least as much as I've ever loved a JRPG, and I fell in love with the characters, the story, and the world-building that went into it all. It was an instant fave.

Sadly, not being early adopters of new systems, I was still stuck with the Gamecube when the Wii came out, and by the time we got a Wii, you'd have to be willing to pay ludicrous amounts somewhere online to get hold of Radiant Dawn, so I've only ever really been able to drool from afar, but at least for that, there's Let's Plays...

[The DanMan]

Yeah, me too.

Also, bookofholsety is probably making a proper FE5 translation after he finishes his FE4.

Eh, I was under the impression that Project Naga was stuck in limbo.

Anyways, my elder brother got a GBA from a friend a couple years after the DS came out (my family had no real video game exposure up to that point, outside of an N64 my dad bought used with pretty much every classic game ever on the system). My dad did research for good games for it, and Fire Emblem turned up. My brother got Sacred Stones, and many an afternoon was spent looking over his shoulder, watching him fail.

Eventually, we got Smash Bros. Brawl, and what do you know; I ended up as a junior and extremely crappy Marth main. Cut forward a few years, and my family's moving' I get Shadow Dragon for the 4-day roadtrip, and I've been hooked on the series ever since.