Runebrid is an unreleased SRPG that was in development in 2003 / 2004 by Max Entertainment for the original XBOX. It would have been published by Takuyo, but only a single piece of artwork was ever shown for the project before its cancellation. Max Entertainment was a new company by Kenji Orimo, former Climax developer and co-director of the original Shining Force. Runebrid might have had gameplay similar to SF (and Orimo’s Super Famicom game FEDA: The Emblem of Justice), but sadly we’ll never know for sure.
Fire Emblem is known to most Nintendo fans after the release of Super Smash Bros. Melee. Before that, lots of people didn’t know about the characters from the game or from where they came from. Of course they were from a Nintendo game, but which one? Myself, I believed that they were anime characters (how should I’ve known? I was only 7 by then) … but soon we have figured out the truth, a-ha! So they are from a strategy game called Fire Emblem! How silly for us not to know that! Mmh, what i was saying? Oh right, I’m hungry. Me too, let’s get something to eat.
Eherm… I should stop with the nonsense… anyway, Fire Emblem 64 was supposed to be released on the 64DD, but no screenshots were ever released. In fact, almost no information came out before it got cancelled. But hey, I am not writing about this just for the sake of it, I got some other information. No, really.
Miyamoto said in an interview about the 64DD software that they were gonna produce Fire Emblem 64 after they were done with Super Mario RPG 2, both which were made by Intelligent Systems. This info was written on IGN on 29th July 1997, taken from a japanese N64 magazine. Miyamoto said that Fire Emblem 64 would have come out “the later half of next year” meaning somewhere around autumn 1998, or maybe around winter 1999, just because we know that Nintendo loves to delay games. Of course, we must remember that Nintendo delayed the 64DD itself to December 1 1999, but we don’t know if this affected Super Mario RPG 2’s development. Now let’s say it did, maybe ’round the middle of 2000.
What more can i say? As with Earthbound 64 / Mother 3, the game wasn’t REALLY cancelled. Maybe. In early screenshots of Fire Emblem: Fuuin no Tsurugi for the GBA, there seems to be some changes in the graphics and some characters were unused. Also, Fire Emblem 64’s original title “Maiden in the Darkness” is a title given to a character in Fuuin no Tsurugi, and speculation has begun: the storyline of FE64 could have been transferred to the GBA version of the game.
Fire Emblem: Fuuin no Tsurugi (The Sealed Sword) early beta screens from the game show different characters and graphic style. Different HUD and graphics are present, as well as Roy’s very different portrait. The weapon and item icons seem to be placeholders, as they’re all what look to be Iron Swords, but their names are different.
Thanks to Serenes Forest we can read about a list of differences that were found in the prototype version of Fire Emblem 7, a beta that was leaked online sometime ago. Major differences are in the colors of the CGs, options, sprites, animations, extra shops and items. The 2 betas can be download at the
Some months ago saturn_worship on the Assembler forum shared a series of scan from an old japanese Saturn Magazine, with lots of screens of Monster Maker: Holy Dagger, a Sega Saturn Strategy RPG developed by Nec Interchannel that was never released. This project could have been a sequel to the original “Monster Maker” also developed by Nec Interchannel and released for the PC Engine. This Saturn sequel looked really good, so it’s a real shame that we’ll never be able to play it.
If you have some more informations about this game, please let us know!
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