Game Center CX Special – Back to Contents
Virtual Console
Fire Emblem: Monshou no Nazo

Chousen

This challenge is another first for Arino: a strategy RPG! And it’s Fire Emblem: Monshou no Nazo ("Mystery of the Emblem"), the first in the series for the Super Famicom, and later remade for the Nintendo DS. It’s a straightforward game, but FE is known for its harsh nature (dead characters stay dead), and Arino never played one before.

Given the length of the game and the five-hour challenge limit, Arino is tasked only with completing the second chapter of the game. The first map begins, and as is typical, all he has to do is defeat all the enemy units. Arino makes quick work of the first immedate wave of enemies, coming to the end of the map where the commander Lorenz blow shimself up rather than choosing to fight.

In the next map, dragon knights are introduced, who use the flying creatures to expand their traveling distance. Still, Arino does okay as he continues fighting enemies. But after one fight, Arino’s stopped by AD Inoue, who walks in and asks him to reset. Turns out he killed an important character, Warren, in that last fight when he shouldn’t have.

And so, Arino restarts the map, and instead has another character, Kachua, talk to Warren instead of fighting him. That gets on his good side, and so he joins Arino’s team. But it’s not the end of the map, as Arino still has to contend with the one or two dragon knights flying around. Unfortunately, he loses another important character, Luke, and resets once again.

Some more fighting, and another reset. Luke dies again, and although Arino sees some improvement using the lancer Alan to defeat some of the smaller-time enemies, he’s still tormented by dragon knights, who end up killing more people than should be acceptable. With about an hour left in the challenge, Inoue comes back with a tip about bypassing the dragon knights somewhat. Arino uses the rock-solid Doga as a shield to absorb the first hits from the dragon knight, then uses Warren to finish it off.

The map is now much easier to deal with, but Arino only has 30 minutes to go. He relies on Warren to deal with the rest of the dragon knights, which works as desired: the "boss" knight is defeated, and the map’s loose ends are tied up.

Inoue returns, and offers Arino a chance to play the remake of Monshou no Nazo on DS. It offers a "Casual" mode where there is no perma-death, but Arino goes ahead and tries it on Classic mode. But after he dies in the tutorial, he decides that’s enough for now.