BS Fire Emblem: Akaneia Senkihen

This game is defunct. Do note the game no longer works at all without modifications. This is most likely due to the game's servers being shut down. As a result, further official developments with the game are unlikely to happen.

The Fire Emblem series tries its hand at the Satellaview's SoundLink game-with-a-streamed-radio-drama format with BS Fire Emblem: Akaneia Senkihen, a set of four short stories about what some of Fire Emblem: Monshou no Nazo's supporting cast were up to before Marth got his start. Players have less than one hour per episode to get the highest score that they can by collecting treasures and resisting endless waves of enemy reinforcements. Since every episode is basically a modified version of Monshou no Nazo, there's a significant amount of that game's content remaining in their data.

It's also one of the few Satellaview releases to have shown up again in any form in the years since the service's demise. Fire Emblem: Shin Monshou no Nazo includes modified remakes of all four episodes as a little bonus.

Unused Text#

All Episodes#

In every episode, this dummy string replaces every text string in Monshou no Nazo, excluding the death quotes of those characters who appear in a given episode and whatever in-ROM dialogue the episode contains. Its appearance is accompanied with a different portrait per episode.

Almost all chapter title and objective text strings from the Monshou no Nazo status screen are left over, and can even be viewed in BS Fire Emblem‍ '​s status screens if the byte at 7E07DF is set to any value other than 01. The only missing ones are the title and objective of Monshou no Nazo‍ '​s Part 1 Chapter 1, since every BS Fire Emblem episode overwrites those strings with those of its own map.

Episode 1#

A pair of event placeholders. Like the above dummy string, Nyna is on speaking duty here.

A mysterious bit of dialogue, with no counterpart in the final version of the episode. Its contents are so vague that it's basically impossible to come to any conclusions as to what it could have been for, who the speaker was, or what "you lot" were supposed to get their hands off of.

Episode 2#

This short dialogue with Minerva and Frost was likely intended for an event in which the player would manually recruit Frost. In the final version, Frost is automatically recruited after a certain amount of time has elapsed, with the discussion between himself and Minerva leading to his joining being a) delivered in the streamed voice-acting, b) much longer, and c) much more sympathetic toward Frost.

A brief bit of dialogue, spoken by Palla, leading into the episode's ending. In the final version, the end of the episode still features Palla returning to the scene, but goes on much longer this and adds speaking bits for both Minerva and a generic Macedon soldier. This dialogue entry also calls Palla's unused portrait.

Episode 3#

As with Frost in the previous episode, there are two brief dialogue exchanges intended for Rickard to recruit Dice and Malice respectively, passed over once again in favor of doing it with streaming audio and an automatic pre-timed event that recruits both characters at once.

As with Episode 2, there's a bit of dialogue leading into the episode's ending, this time spoken by Camus. In the radio play delivery of the final version, Camus still speaks these exact lines verbatim, albeit preceded by a subordinate informing him of the situation and an initial shocked reaction from Camus himself.

Unused Graphics#

Character Portraits#

Likely as a result of the constraints of the broadcast format, each episode is typically very lean on character portraits and only has the ones that it needs. No portraits from Monshou no Nazo survive at all, and each episode's portraits are removed from all subsequent episodes unless a character reappears. Despite this, a few unused portraits still snuck into some of the episodes.

Episode 2#

Episode 2 has an entirely unique portrait for Palla. Although she never appears in gameplay in BS Fire Emblem, Palla does have a prominent role in the episode's opening and ending cutscenes. The above unused ending text for Episode 2 calls this portrait.

Episode 3#

Camus' portrait from Episode 4 is present in the preceding episode. Similar to Palla, Camus makes an appearance in Episode 3's ending cutscene. The above unused ending text for Episode 3 calls this portrait.

Unused Items#

Although only a small selection of them are ever available in each episode, every item from Monshou no Nazo still exists complete with description text and icons, even the unused ones. All of their functionality is intact, except that BS Fire Emblem's total absence of proper animated battle sequences means that using the class change items, dragonstones (except for the Firestone, when used by Episode 4's boss), Starlight, or Imhullu will cause the game to hang.

Unused Characters#

Please elaborate. Having more detail is always a good thing. Specifically: Do any of these characters have any surviving stat/growth/inventory data of their own from Monshou no Nazo? Do Palla and Camus have unique stats in the second and third episodes?

BS Fire Emblem retains the full index of character IDs and matching names from Monshou no Nazo, and entries for the handful of new characters in each part are simply appended onto the original index's end. Weapon locks associated with character IDs are still functional, so hacking both a character ID and a matching weapon onto a unit - for instance, character ID 00 (Marth) with item ID 0B (Falchion) - will enable use of that matching weapon.

Unused Classes#

All classes from Monshou no Nazo still have data in BS Fire Emblem, although any classes not used in a given episode have had most, if not all, of their map sprites removed. Classes which are earlier on in the index retain their default standing animation, while later classes are completely blank and, if moved, spawn garbage tiles in place of their movement sprites.

Every class appears to retain all of its functionality, but again as a result of BS Fire Emblem having no full battle sequences, attempts to have Dancers refresh or Freelancers imitate other units will cause the game to hang.

Preparations Menu#

The battle preparations menu from Monshou no Nazo still exists in all four episodes, although it is never used as every episode skips it to begin gameplay immediately. All of the menu's functions still work to an extent, but in each chapter only one unit is present in the menu - Nyna in Episodes 1 and 4, Hardin in Episode 2, and Rickard in Episode 3 - so there isn't much that can be done with it.

Unlike in Monshou no Nazo, where Marth cannot ever be deselected on the preparations menu, BS Fire Emblem allows you to freely deselect and reselect Nyna/Hardin/Rickard, and does not prevent you from pressing Start to begin playing the episode without them. Unsurprisingly, though, doing this will cause the game to hang.

The save option still technically works in that it can be selected without causing errors, but doing so does not play nicely with the BS-X BIOS: if the player resets to the BIOS after selecting the save option, then attempts to access the BS Fire Emblem episode again, the BIOS will throw up an error message and delete the episode from its memory. As a side note, since Anna no longer has a portrait to use on the save screen as in Monshou no Nazo, most episodes load junk data as a "portrait" in her place. The exception is the second episode, where a villager portrait appears here instead.

The menu can be accessed by memory editing in a specific window of time when the episode is starting up. Before the game finishes panning around the chapter map, set the byte at 7E07DF (default value 01) to any value other than 01, 15, or anything beyond 2A, and the battle preparations screen will open. In both Monshou no Nazo and BS Fire Emblem, this byte determines the chapter data that is loaded, including whether or not battle preparations should be entered. By setting it to a value whose chapter in Monshou no Nazo has a preparations screen, the game will be tricked into loading the preparations screen even though BS Fire Emblem doesn't have the map in question.