Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon

Version DifferencesThe US and European translators can't seem to agree with each other.

Unused Portraits#

There are several unused portraits:

• Midia, Caeda, and Minerva, all dressed in a less formal attire.
• A duplicate of the boss Zharov's portrait, intended to be used by Nehring, a boss from Mystery of the Emblem. This is rather bizarre, as not only does Nehring not appear in any version of Shadow Dragon, but he uses a completely different portrait in New Mystery of the Emblem.
• Early portraits for Tomas, and the bosses Kannival and Merach.
• A dummy portrait obviously used in the early stages of the game before the portraits were drawn out. The Japanese text on the portrait is 制作中, which means "in production." The miniboss, Heimler, still uses this portrait for his full portrait which can be seen if he's hacked into the player army.
• A blue hooded figure, simply labeled MAGE_BLUE. Only a mini portrait exists, as the full version is only the dummy portrait. Given mini portraits are only used by units that appear within battle, its possible this was intended to be used by a miniboss of sorts.

Unused Classes#

Fire Dragon, Mage Dragon, and Divine Dragon are separate classes in the game's files, but lack working map animations. Their data is used when fighting with their respective Dragonstones, though.

There is also data for on-foot Cavaliers, which hints at dismounting, like in Mystery of the Emblem, but this was ultimately dropped from the final game.

Unused Item#

The Torch item, which is used to increase a unit's vision in fog of war maps, is present in the game's data. It was likely cut due to the fog of war mechanic being exclusive to multiplayer versus matches in Shadow Dragon.

Unused Hair Color Settings#

Blonde and purple hair colors for women are both fully implemented and functional in Shadow Dragon, even though these colors wouldn't be used until New Mystery of the Emblem.

Scrapped Features#

Unused My Unit/Avatar Feature#

A feature that appears in later games, starting with this game's sequel remake, New Mystery of the Emblem, and continuing through Fates. There's strings for both My Unit and My Unit Registration, suggesting it was meant to be used here, but ultimately left on the cutting room floor.

Order Function#

It seems Intelligent Systems were planning to implement the ability to issue orders to units, like in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, but this was dropped at the last moment for this game and New Mystery. This function would have been used to tell all units, besides Marth, how to behave when you end the turn without manually giving them instructions.

The unused tutorial for US releases translated the text strings, but not the text in the screenshots, as the feature was cut before release.

Strings for this feature are still in the ROM, located in the m/en_system file for English releases:

Development Text#

Within arm9.bin, 0xD05F8 (EU):

Offline Shop
かいわそのた
Talk 016-204
Talk 005-015
10KMI_MyUnit
Preview Face
オープニング

Wireless対戦
Anytime Load
10DebugMenu2
Sound Player
イベント回想
金子　第２章
10EMI_Record

Ohashi(Link)
Battle Aging
大橋（通信）
11KMI_IDAging
Wi-Fi Utility
11DialogYesNo
11DbMI_Kaneko

11DbMI_Ohashi
11DbMI_Ending
My Unit Entry
ロードメニュー
12KMI_MagAging
LR : Round %2d
フレンドリスト

メインメニュー
Practice Match
Wireless Match
Preview Battle
Preview Effect
どこでもロード
12DbMI_Kaneko2

12LMI_Practice
12LMI_Wireless
12DbMI_Opening
Title Sequence
スタッフロール
13OMI_OnMapUnit 
13KMI_AgingSkip

Oddities#

A specific tile in Chapter 12 is defined as a Forest tile, even though there is no Forest tile visible on the map. Since a Forest tile is present at that location in the original Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, the developers likely just forgot to place a Forest tile there.

In the Japanese version, two tutorial images show a Vulnerary with five uses. However, in any release of the final game, a Vulnerary can only be used three times. This matches how Vulneraries worked in the original Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light game, where Vulneraries had five uses.