Nintendo Expands Switch Online's GBA Library With Fire Emblem

Geez one retro game on Expansion Pak. I miss the virtual console era with multiple games per week.

Wasn't expecting a GBA game this month (March and May had GBA meanwhile April had N64) but still fantastic to see this game return.

My first Fire Emblem and one I still enjoy. They really should add Binding Blade in English though, it’s been translated for a long time now and it’s a direct sequel to this one. I mean, it’s a bit rubbish and horribly balanced but it’s worth playing.

No romance options. Sweet

Can't stand Fire Emblem. Good for those who care though.

Keep pumping them out like this, Nintendo. There's been something new every week lately. Consistency is all we ask for.

There are no two ways about it - the last few releases for the online service have been stellar. I was sour on the the 3 GBA Mario's that released at first - but I played the SNES versions alongside them and now I'm pretty into the improvements.

This thing is showing value now. I only recently joined MS's gamepass and while it has a lot of benefits - seeing the games leave the service like every week is a real bummer.

I personally think Nintendo's service is the best of the three. Sony's is a garbo sandwich.

@Don We legit got 3 last month, just got a handful of GB games including Tilt and Tumble, and now we are getting Fire Emblem. I think that's pretty decent.

Japan is receiving two Fire Emblem GBA games, with this one and 2002's "The Binding Blade" with Roy.

Once one gets past the overly long forced tutorials, this is a solid game that becomes hard to put down. A real classic.

But good lord, Nintendo's snail-paced rollout of Expansion Pass games is embarrassing.
In a day and age when someone can have the entire GBA library on a computer or phone in under an hour, Nintendo is doing nothing to prove that their paid service is a superior option.

People complaining about the drip feed but honestly if you took the time to play & 100% all of these games released on the service, you would barely have time to complete them before the next release. As we get later into the systems, the games get even longer and meatier to complete.

@Axecon drip feed is a sort of method to keep the NSO relevant and thriving as well, with new releases semi frequently. Just dropping them all at once a few years ago wouldn’t have been as good of a strategy, I agree with you

@Cashews
With the sony one I'm at least happy that you can purchase and keep the psone/psp games on their own without the service (iirc certain games you can download for free if you owned them through the previous "psone classics" line)

Its really my biggest flaw with the NSO service in that there's no "buy and keep" option, at least with the games (you can do it with the DLC offered)

With the account system in place it would have been cool if the virtual console carried over from wiiu along with your purchases since digital backwards compatibility definitely helps solve the issue of having to buy the games again.

though even without that there are quite a few of the NSO games i definitely would buy if they were available to purchase.

Really desperate to play this one, but I'm planning on getting a PS5 in a couple of days which I imagine will take all of my attention away from my switch! Once the excitement of the new console has died down though, I'm going to jump on this straight away

I wish Nintendo would translate Binding Blade to English

Ohh, this one stings, FE is definitely the kind of game you want to own, not rent.

It's too bad Nintendo goes to such lengths to patch things up in many of these old games but they don't offer the bonus items from the Mario Kart DD bonus disc.

There are some weapons you can't get otherwise. Plus, the soundtrack mode will never be at 100%.

Lmao at people spinning the drip feed on the premium tier as a feature that adds value.

As happy as I am getting this game, I wish we could also get a translation of Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade.
Japan's getting both Binding Blade and Blazing Blade respectively.

I don't care what people say about this service, I would much rather pay the yearly cost to play a decent size of classics and games I wouldn't have paid for anyway, than to spend 5-8 bucks each on them. Plus with the DLC and some NSO exclusive games and features, I think the service is worth it imo. I would have never tried this game out or a lot of other ones if it weren't for this.

A lot of people first FE game. Mine as well. I can always go back to this game.

Exciting news as a longtime FE fan. Have been since Sacred Stones. Speaking of, I do sincerely hope that game is added. Not that I absolutely NEED to beat it for the 100th time, but I frickin love SS.

Also, don't let Japan have all the fun, share Binding Blade translated for Pete's sake...

Cowards! Throw the service into the road Nintendo darling, it hasn't got a chance!

Fire Emblem
Your spirit shall shine
Across the generations
Now and for all time

Fire Emblem
Heroes, bring us hope’s light
Journey from distant worlds
To still the coming night

With sacred relic at your side
See our champions fall from on high
In this land where timeless heroes live
And their legends never die

Fire Emblem
Brave heroes of the ages
With my design and your hearts true
We’ll start anew

The end is within our reach
Take up my fight as I beseech
To kingdoms ravaged by senseless war
Bring us peace forevermore

The strong, the weak, the brave, the meek
All shall fight for the light we seek
Hear my voice, brave heroes, hear my plea
Come to me, come set us free

Fire Emblem
Your spirit shall shine
Across the generations
Now and for all time

@Mgalens I agree you should have been able to keep your Wii U purchases. That is annoying at the very least.

It will be a big deal to me if they don;t add backwards comp. somehow with the next system. They should add another slot for these little carts and another one for the new games. All eshop purchase move with you. Forever preferrably.

One of the best Fire Emblem game of the original era. This time made much easier thanks to save-states so even if you mess up your strategy you can still return to a previous safer strategy. I'll probably play this again just to experience Hector's story.

The unfortunate thing about Binding Blade is that Nintendo will neither acknowledge the work of fan translations nor spend the time and money to make a translation, to give it away (basically) for free.

I have no idea why anyone would pay for the expansion pass with this SLOW of a rollout... just not worth the money right now. You can get amazing deals on eshop games all the time and they provide far greater value than these... Spiritfarer is $5!!! Go get that if you haven't.

@Serpenterror That's fine if savestates are how you want to play.
Though I personally, wish they made quick restarts an option. Restarting the chapter feels like more of a middle ground between have some consequence for fatal poor/risky choices while not being as punitive as permadeath.

@FIS-PODCAST People probably pay this much for Expansion Pass because they WANT the games on Expansion Pass. If they wanted to play value roulette by downloading random eShop games that may or may not be worth money, they can do that.
At least with the older games offered on NSO, they are old enough to have more critiqued reviews to see if they stand up or not. (And well, if they've already paid for the service, the games are free to play anyways. Random eShops are not free.)

In general I'm just kind of incredibly sick of the slow limp to release things on this service. It looked like we were getting Mario Party 3 seven freaking months ago and still no sign of it and in general the GBA library is just way too big for this plodding dripfeed to not be utterly stupid. Current rate of things there'll still be dozens of games yet to be put out by the time the Switch successor's released.

@Don Is this sarcasm? The comment sections on virtual console articles were just a load of folk complaining about another week of nothing lol.

Nice. Something good to play until Nintendo finally decides to add Oracle of Seasons/Ages on the drip feed.

Zero interest. I'm still fuming that GBA is under the premium subscription that I cancelled my renewal altogether, which ended in March. I quickly discovered I don't need access to these games. Good one, Nintendo!

@SalvorHardin

It doesn’t add value from customer side, but you can bet it does from Nintendo’s side. They know that at least a portion of gamers will be reluctant to let subscriptions lapse “in case that X title gets added to the service”, and that keeps them locked in.

@Axecon this, exactly this. I bought hundreds of games across the Wii, 3DS and Wii U virtual consoles, and half are still sitting untouched in the backlog, waiting for the time to shine.

I wish my purchases migrated over to the Switch, and I wish I could at least have the option of buying individual classics to keep, without the subscription. But I’m not going to begrudge people who prefer the all-you-can-eat sub model. Ideally Nintendo would offer both options - though I imagine thwy don’t see that as financially sustainable

Still on Valentia with 2-3 binge entries inbetween (depending on whether I'll decide to play Binding Sword before or after), but I'm honestly tempted to start a new playthrough here. Owing much to the deceptive title as with an undoubted lot of people, Blazing Blade was my first foray into the franchise and I think I was well into the Eliwood campaign when I lost [access to] the save file. Pretty sure I didn't even get to see Ninian (as she was an unfamiliar face in Heroes later) - basically delaying my acquaintance with THE Fire Emblem race and one of its best lore facets for another 10-12 years! But what I played was enough to carve the fond memories of other characters like Lyn and Florina into my heart.😄 Looking forward to following this chronicle through to the end at last!

Binding Sword would be awesome as well, but NSO western debuts aren't to be taken for granted, even if the combined fame of Smash Bros and FEH should have prepared a pretty fertile market niche by now. Time will tell, although there's always the translation patch to turn to.

@Axecon but we gamers don't subscribe to play games - we subscribe to hoard them!

This game was my first Fire Emblem and it's made me a huge fan of the series. I prefer to play this game on my Retroflag GPi, though, since that way it also has achievements, which is a huge bonus if you're nuts about playing the game in different ways, or challenging yourself. Sometimes I even fire it up on my good ol' Game Boy Advance SP NES Edition, it's a great game. Probably one of my faves of all time.

@LikelySatan Roy’s mom is determined by Eliwood’s S-Ranks in game. Romance and friendship is still present in game/series. (This I why I wonder sometimes if “old FE fans” actually played the games. Or they never payed attention to the support system.)

Edit: this isn’t hyperbole but rather statement of fact.

Again no option to just buy the games I want instead of paying them a yearly fee (which I don’t) for features and online play I never use.

@gaga64
I’m dint understand the argument that it’s no feasible to offer both. The way I see if they’d make money either way. In fact with them not offering them for sale they are missing out on quite a lot of potential money.

I still have it on Wii U but many don’t and at any rate it’s good to have the option.

@Ryu_Niiyama hyperbole for both of us then. Marriage in that game is nowhere near as intrusive and annoying as the dating sim stuff in later games. Don't be a big meany.

Between two wiius, a gamecube, and 3DS (and switch) I have the entire series (and have beaten most of them at least once…gotta finish Thracia and Engage) but I am always grateful for more ways to play. Time to pair Lyn and Florina again.

My miyoo mini has had this one for months.

The GBA was a HELL of a handheld. Loved it to bits.

@Ocaz At this pace of release I do get the appeal of the miyoo mini. It's a pain.

Hell yeah, I love that game! Too bad we don't bet The Binding Blade as well, though.

I have a slight hope that they'll surprise western players with a translated version of FE6, but that's probably not going to happen, and if it is, it's probably going to be sold separately like FE1 was. Not that I'd mind either way, just having an official translated release at all would be nice!

@KingMike We don't know that for sure. After all Nintendo did gave us some games that were never release outside Japan too such as Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragons and the Blade of Light for Switch as a limited anniversary released not to mention the very first Mother title, EarthBound Beginning as a Wii U release which is now on NSO.

My guess is they are saving that particular version for a special release such as an anniversary release or something. Usually I don't like it when they do something like that cause then the game end up with a limited digital release window and if you missed out on it you'll never get a chance to buy it anymore. This is what happen to Super Mario 3D All-Stars and Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragons and the Blade of Light.

This is still my favorite Fire Emblem game, I think.

finally something that's not Kirby

@GameOtaku I’m just guessing that they’ve done some maths somewhere and decided that offering one-off purchases as an option would undermine the NSO value proposition and cannibalise NSO subs, so they’d feel compelled to increase the sub fee, which in turn would steer people away.

I’m guessing, I have no proof of any of it.

You can argue that they’d make enough profit from individual VC sales to compensate any drop in NSO subs, but without knowing the actual cost to Nintendo of each element of the NSO service, it’s hard to be sure.

The best one imo

Ooo Binding Blade, nice. Let's see if I can finish it in Japanese

@coolioam
However those three were all remakes I feel like we could do better here. The GBA has my favorite handheld library but the expansion pass is barely scratching the surface. N64 is even worse somehow though.

Ahh, no Binding Blade.. Nintendo can fund throwaway titles like 1-2-Switch and a sequel, but not for translating games on their NSO service to pull in more people?...

@Don presumably the Virtual Console didn’t do so well on Wii U hence why Nintendo had to change tactics. There are several retro compilations on Switch for those not subscribers to NSO.

More N64 titles pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease!

Awesome! Fire emblem is a great game, I was a bit disappointed with all the Marios (kind of redundant).

I love Fire Emblem but this is one of the ones I haven't actually played. Will probably give this a spin even though I prefer the more later Fire Emblems to this era. Now anyway.

Its not Golden Sun, but I'll take it. Certainly better than what they've been giving us

@Bass_X0 that and the stock market absolutely loves subscription numbers.

@Bass_X0 also didn't do well overall on the Wii and 3DS too. At least, not enough to warrant the resources Nintendo had placed into ALL the VC titles. The original developers and publishing companies would send Nintendo the game, they would package it up and support it. Third parties do not handle any of those titles. VC games also stopped a lot of retro collections from being released, whether duplication or the fact Nintendo was doing it on their platforms, we didn't start to see that change until the Switch; the 3DS did get the Mega Man Legacy Collection.

@Bass_X0
Yes there are several compilations but none have any of these games in them save for maybe Sega Genesis Collection. Regardless I don’t see adding the option to purchase the games being that intrusive to Nintendo. They could just have the games listed as dlc in their respective eshop pages.

i just got a pikmin t-shirt that cost me 22.99 in pound. But when I got fire emblem i got a t-shirt for free and it had stunning artwork on it and everything. But it broke. It would be even worth it to buy the game just for that and sell the game and keep the shirt. I kept both and enjoyed both,

About damn time, been waiting for this since it was announced!

There you go. “Real” Fire Emblem in all its glory for those of you Pre-awakening fans.

@Gavintendo Bummer to hear that. What's the problem with it?

OH EM GEE. IT’S HAPPENING.

@Axecon especially since unlike say gamepass, the games don’t cycle off the service. A lot of people forget that.

I have Fire Emblem on Wii U but would much rather have it on Switch. Can't guarantee I won't hit the rewind button from time to time. 😁

Have fun with the Lyn Tutorial+Eliwood Normal mode, frankly even though I do enjoy the game having to play through so much mindless easy mode gameplay to unlock the game's hardest difficulty just makes the vanilla game without any prior save files unplayable to me. Plus of course I wouldn't support Nintendo's dumb rental only game plan anyway.

Just grab a hacked translation of 6 and give NA/EU that

@bones

Your T shirt broke?

Can't wait to play this again. Probably my favourite ever (?) Fire Emblem game. If and when I ever knuckle down and finish Three Houses that might be subject to change, but I doubt it.

@Classic603 it ripped.

@Deemo37 GBA I understand we are still missing some key titles, but what is N64 missing? I feel like we have all the actually enjoyable games besides Smash on there.

@coolioam
The main things would be Rare’s suite of titles. I realize there’s complicated legality there but Golden Eye made it so it’s possible. Besides that more niche games would be nice. Giving long forgotten series a chance to reclaim the spotlight for a bit would be great. The point is the games are there Nintendo is not putting the effort in to get them on the service. GBA however is a bit more than just a few key titles. Off the top of my head no Wario Land no Pokémon (easily the biggest missing titles) no golden sun and no 3rd party whatsoever. Atlus in particular had a strong lineup I’d like to see represented.

Playing it over the weekend

People are gonna relive FE7, play just one playthrough that forces the easiest tutorial and difficulty on new saves, complete with eaze, and think Lyn is the best unit in the game ever when that's far from the truth. Quite lackluster in harder difficulties.

Hector Hard Mode is the actual meat of the game. You gotta complete the game 2 or 3 times; with increasing the difficulty every completion before getting access to HHM. Shame they hadn't released a SP version with those unlocked from the get-go.

Yay! More Fire Emblem!

Said nobody ever.

So many great GBA games that they could bring ahead of this one...

@coolioam Are you joking? We're missing most of the Rare back catalogue for a start! Just off the top of my head...

Diddy Kong Racing
Perfect Dark
Donkey Kong 64
Blast Corps
Banjo Tooie
Rogue Squadron
1080 Snowboarding
Ogre Battle

And then there's still a few to release that they announced almost a year ago. Excitebike and Mario Party 3 I think?

How long is this game and how many missionschapters?

88 on MetaCritic
NintendoLife users rank it the #14 best GBA game.

So, turns out, a lot of people, ever.

Yay! More Fire Emblem!

@Don It was multiple games per week, but 5-10 dollares each. Don't miss that at all

I say yay fire emblem but also can we get more too, sacred stones and maybe some path of radiance and radiant dawn remakes.

OK fair play. I don't mean to bash on Fire Emblem.. I know they are solid games with a big fan base. It's really more the fact the Switch has a LOT of FE on it already! I'd be happier seeing some other franchises getting a game or two... especially when the GBA and N64 have some serious omissions... Golden Sun for a start. And Donkey Kong 64 might be an idea, since Nintendo seem adamant to allow ten years to go by with no new DK game!

@JohnnyMind I presume Hectors story is an extra story then, and the game ends at chapter 21? Thanks, FE can be confusing.

@JohnnyMind thanks😀😀😀. I wil do.

@JohnnyMind Im currently on chapter 21 in kinships bond. Is this the last chapter of eliwoods story and of the game? On the wiki it shows his story carries on after chapter 21.

@JohnnyMind @JohnnyMind It was hard enough getting this far. Ill stop playing after chapter 21. I didnt realise there was 31 chapters. Thought each story was 10 chapters. Plus, once I arrived at dragons gate in ch19, I thought I was at the end of the game. Its quite deceitful🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣. Thanks for all the help. Just a pity Ill never truly beat the game.

@JohnnyMind I had to go back didnt I🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣? Few chapters from the end. At the boss of chapter 27. Only have two good units left(oswin and hawkeye, any other units arent leveled up) and haven't leveled up lyn, eliwood or hector. Ive read you need the main characters to hurt the dragon. With the units I have, can I get to the end? I just cant keep away from fire emblem can I🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣?

@JohnnyMind Im at chapter 30. Im hating it as much as chapter 19. Its doable with the units Im using, but very difficult. Have you any advice? Also nills is required for it, but if he dies in the chapter, you dont get a game over. Is it ok to let him die? Thanks for the encouragement.

@JohnnyMind At chapter 31. Have the same units as last time, no healing items or healing abilities. Not sure what strategy to use. Very easy to be killed by the archers and shamans. Any advice? Also when you finish the first part and go on to face the dragon, does your health get replenished? Thanks for all the help and encouragement😀😀😀

@JohnnyMind Ok. Cant believe I managed to get all the way here! Just need to play it right, rewind feature comes in handy. Has done during my playthrough. Wish I could get some healing items.

@JohnnyMind Cant beat the dragon. Have Athos with Luce, Aurella, forblaze, and gepsent. Hawkeye with baskilos and oswin with with rex hasta. No stat boosters of any kind.Lords are very low level. No healing items or healers. And the dragons attack is impossible to dodge even with RNG manipulation. I have a savestate at the dragon, So I can skip part 1. Is there anything I can do?

@JohnnyMind Think Im screwed. Dont have nills or ninians rings. Dont have luna either. Thanks for help though. Came so far only to fail.