The Archanea Games

The first continent is the one the series keeps coming home to.

Archanea (Akaneia in Japanese) is where Fire Emblem began: Prince Marth, the Shadow Dragon Medeus, and the shield that gives the series its name. The series has returned to it in every hardware generation since, in sequels, broadcasts, remakes, and one far-future epilogue. Documented here: every game set on the continent, in the order they appeared.

THE RETURNS

Six visits across twenty-two years

Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light · Famicom · April 20, 1990

The original campaign: Marth's exile and return. Japan only for thirty years, until a limited Switch localization in December 2020. Its full history is shelved separately in this archive.

Mystery of the Emblem · Super Famicom · January 21, 1994

Book 1 retells the first war; Book 2 continues it, with the continent's politics curdling after victory. One cartridge holding both a remake and a sequel, a structure the series never repeated.

BS Fire Emblem: Archanea Saga · Satellaview · September 28, 1997

Four short episodes broadcast to the Super Famicom's satellite add-on, prequel stories for Nyna, Camus and others, voiced over the broadcast. Long unplayable after the service ended; the scenarios were rebuilt as bonus episodes inside New Mystery of the Emblem.

Japanese box art of Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem for Nintendo DS

New Mystery of the Emblem · DS · July 15, 2010

The Mystery remake, and the debut of two series fixtures: the customizable Avatar, Kris, written into Marth's war, and Casual mode. Never released outside Japan, despite its predecessor's remake crossing over.

Shadow Dragon · DS · 2008

The first game remade for the DS, with character artwork by Ghost in the Shell artist Masamune Shirow and portraits by Daisuke Izuka. The first Archanea game officially localized: Japan in August 2008, Europe that December, North America in February 2009.

Awakening · 3DS · 2012

The far-future return: the same continent, renamed Ylisse, some two thousand years later, with Valentia across the sea renamed Valm. Marth is a half-remembered legend, and his descendant Chrom carries the Fire Emblem as a shield once more.

HOW THE MAP READS

Chronology against release order

In story order the continent's arc runs: the Archanea Saga episodes and Marth's first war, Mystery's sequel war a few years on, and then Awakening at a distance of millennia, close enough to quote the old names and far enough to have forgotten what they meant. Valentia, Gaiden's continent and the setting of Echoes, sits across the western sea in the same world, which is why Alm and Celica's story keeps washing up on Archanea's shores.

For a collector the continent is also a paper trail: it is the only setting whose games exist in Famicom, Super Famicom, Satellaview, DS and 3DS form, and the only one where the West's copy and Japan's copy can be entirely different games, as the release-map shelf of this archive shows.

The History The Missing West

The Archanea Games

THE RETURNS

HOW THE MAP READS

THE FIRST WORD