A History of Fire Emblem

[The Former DMiller]

I've been working on this feature for about two weeks and it's pretty much done. If you guys find some time I'd love it if you could give me some early comments on it. Be as critical as you can because I want this feature to be awesome. If you still have questions about a Fire Emblem game after reading about it let me know what they are and I may add some things. I really want to know how well the article flows, and if you think I should shorten or expand some things. It's going to be posted by Friday at least, so at the latest so get your comments in by then. I'd post it here because I know how lazy everyone can get, but it's twelve pages long which is a little much. Enjoy, and criticize as much as you can.

A History of Fire Emblem

[A Black Falcon]

Seems good...

[N_A]

I guess it covers the basics, but then again, I only played the games in Japanese which I don't really understand and so guessing around with FAQs and some kanji learned from Chinese and such to say much of anything else other than that most of the Fire Emblems have melancholic endings.

[OB1]

Awesome, I look forward to seeing more of it. I'll get into details later on when I'm not feeling so sick.

[A Black Falcon]

My only comment is that on the second page you refer to things in the game we got from the others and mention them by name only when most people, who as you say haven't read the article, have no idea which one is which or anything...

[The Former DMiller]

That's a good point. Do you think that should be after I talk about all the games?

[A Black Falcon]

I don't know, but I definitely was confused when you are talking about where various things in the game come from when I don't know what games you are talking about... putting it after the info on the games probably is a good idea. And maybe use numbers as well as names? :)

But putting it later might be good. Yeah, people will really know what Thracia 776 is... (to name the first example)

The "Know your development studio" part also seemed a bit short, but you have more info about it in the game descriptions later on.

[OB1]

I love Intelligent Systems. They're currently my no.1 favorite developer. And they only make GBA games! Whaddya know...

[The Former DMiller]

I put the Fire Emblem traditions section at the end, and beefed up the Intelligent Systems section a little as well. One thing I want to ask you guys is whether you think this feature should be split up and posted one at a time? People might not have the patience to read that much at once.

[A Black Falcon]

Where to put that 'traditions' thing is a good question. A lot of the points on it clearly require knowledge of the series to understand but I see why it was in the beginning in the first place (to have more introduction before going into the games)... it's a nice thing but I don't know where it feels really in the right place. But the end is better than the beginning. :)

Oh, and that 'history of Intelligent Systems' section definitely is improved.

[N_A]

DOn't know if you've mentioned it, but theres this thing in FE games called sucky leader syndrome. For some reason, the leader usually sucks, and takes alot of effor to make him into a useful character.

[The Former DMiller]

Ah, I did mean to put that in. Thanks for reminding me.

[OB1]

I think you should release one or two pages per day.

[The Former DMiller]

Thanks a lot for all the comments everybody. You guys were a lot more helpful than the N-Philes staff. They mostly just said it was great, and didn't really give me any ways to improve it. The first part should be officially posted tomorrow.

[OB1]

Woo, go us for being better than N-Philes! :mariowin:

[A Black Falcon]

Well then maybe they should reconsider being annoyed about you asking us questions to go in your interviews. :)

[The Former DMiller]

Haha, that was our PR guy, and I totally understand why he was mad about that. I still don't know how he found Tendo City, though, and he may even be reading this right now.

Hi Ahmed.

[OB1]

Why didn't he like you asking us for q's?

[Great Rumbler]

We might steal Nintendophiles questions and use them ourselves before they get a chance to.

[A Black Falcon]

Wouldn't he be annoyed at this too? :) Oh well.

But what's wrong with asking for questions? You said in that email someone complained, but didn't give any details.

[The Former DMiller]

Because the companies we are interviewing might not like it to be known that we are sending them interview questions because many-times those interviews don't even go through. This is a different situation because it only has to do with the site, and will be posted this week.

[A Black Falcon]

Ah...

[A Black Falcon]

http://www.n-philes.com/php/epzupvlevuekukzkfvkp.php

I didn't remember this page in it before... there was some final page but I recall it being pretty different. :)

Or to be more precise it looks like you added three new paragraphs to the two that were there...

Oh, the last page needs a 'back to previous page' link...

[The Former DMiller]

Yeah, that last page was totally reworked. There were actually a lot of changes made to every page since I first showed it to you guys. I huge Fire Emblem fan got in touch with me when I posted the first part of this feature, and I let him look at the entire thing so he could tell me if I should add anything or if anything was wrong. Most of the changes were minor, but I did learn a whole lot more about the series, including those Bandai Satelleview games.

[OB1]

Hey Derek, I think it would be really cool if you would make a "History of Metroid" feature sometime after Zero Mission comes out. It would fit very nicely with the Fire Emblem one, since they share the same developer. :D

[The Former DMiller]

We talked about doing other histories, but the reason the Fire Emblem one is so unique is the games were never released in the US. Everybody knows about the Metroid games.

BTW, I got <a href=http://games.slashdot.org/games/04/01/26/1821224.shtml?tid=127&tid=186&tid=207&tid=209>Slashdotted</a> today. Yeah!

[OB1]

Yeah that's true, but that would just make a Metroid feature easier to do. :D The Wars series would be a good follow-up to FE.

[The Former DMiller]

I looked into the War series, but it isn't all that interesting. There were only two War games before Advance Wars, and there isn't anything too unique about them.

[OB1]

... well it could be a small article then...

[A Black Falcon]

Only two? Erm... there was Famicom Wars, Super Famicom Wars, Super Famicom Wars BS, Game Boy Wars, and Game Boy Wars Turbo... at least, those are the ones I have roms for...

[OB1]

Yeah!

[A Black Falcon]

Plus the two we got, that's seven. Not four. I don't know where you were looking, DMiller...

[The Former DMiller]

Oh, I forgot about the early Game Boy ones. Super Famicom Wars BS wasn't a full game, though, was it? I figured it would just be little scenarios like the Fire Emblem BS games.