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Trivia / Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade

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  • Blooper: In Chapter 21, Roy and Yoder meet once more, with the song When the rush comes playing in the background. However, once the scene cuts back to the map, the first few seconds of Shock II starts playing before it was cut off abruptly.
  • Dummied Out:
    • Idunn was originally going to be a much more terrifying True Final Boss, having a unique Dragonstone weapon tucked away in the game data. This "Demon Dragonstone" gave Idunn such blatantly ridiculous stat boosts that everyone not named Roy and wielding the Binding Blade can't even damage her; even units with other anti-dragon weapons are only capable of Scratch Damage at best. Since Roy's Binding Blade was subject to Breakable Weapons like everything else, if it broke in The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, defeating Idunn was almost impossible. The developers decided this was just a bit too much and gave her a weaker weapon instead, but they... overcompensated.
    • The bridge key and watch staff of previous games are found in the files, albeit unused. However, they do not have any function whatsoever.
    • Damas, Ruud, Slater, Erik, Dory, and Debias all had their own unique color palette that went unused due to an error that gives them a palette for when they are promoted.
    • The infamous unused female mercenary sprite makes its first appearance in this game, and would later show up in the next two Game Boy Advance titles, also being unused, as there were no unpromoted female mercenaries throughout the trilogy. Sprites for female versions of the cavaliers and paladins exist in the files as well, but they were also never used in the entire trilogy, despite female cavaliers/paladins having made appearances outside of Binding Blade.
    • An unused boss named "William" uses Roberts' portrait, and is also a paladin. However, he has nothing in his inventory, only has an A-rank in lances, and a blank help box.
  • Keep Circulating the Tapes:
    • Due to a lack of international releases, the only legal way for non-Japanese fans to play this game is through a copy sold online. Interestingly, a lot of them, be it used cartridges or sealed GBA boxes, only sell for less than ¥2,308.33 (Which is $20 USD), at least on Japanese sites like Mercari, which isn't so much of a big deal, but for those who prefer playing the game on a Game Boy Advance, original Nintendo DS, or DS Lite console, the issue is that new or used copies of these consoles can be very costly.
    • Despite being the first game in the GBA trilogy, it actually took The Binding Blade quite a long time to be ported onto the Wii U as a Japan-only virtual console title, being released over a year after the other two GBA games were ported. However, as of March 27th, 2023, it is no longer possible to buy the port there. Despite this, this game was finally added in the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack alongside The Blazing Blade on June 23rd, 2023, saving it from potentially falling out of circulation, though the catch is it remains Japan-only (Though since the Nintendo Switch is not-region locked, this isn't a complete loss).
    • A select number of songs from The Binding Blade, alongside the opera commercial version of the Fire Emblem main theme, were released in an album in 2002 albeit in uncompressed form. The game wouldn't see a full soundtrack release until 2018 where all songs from this game were released and bundled with those from The Blazing Blade. That being said, the album consisting of the uncompressed songs and the aforementioned main theme have been long out of print.
  • Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": Actually, in contrast to the trope namer, Roy did debut in that series, six weeks before The Binding Blade came out. For the world outside Japan, though, this remains true (and heck, he's half the reason the prequel got released internationally at all!)
  • Milestone Celebration: 1/7th scale figures of Roy and Lilina were announced on the same year The Binding Blade celebrated its 20th anniversary, and were later released in Fall 2023. In commemoration of this, A special illustration was provided by the game's artist, Eiji Kaneda.
  • Missing Episode: Back in 2002, there were promotional events that gave away cartridges of the game with at least one of the four then-new trial maps. These maps were "Graizel Execution Court", "V-Type Original Map", "J-Type Original Map", and "Defeat Bandits". The problem is that none of them appeared in the original game, as they were only ever preinstalled onto the special cartridges. Unfortunately, after these events have come and gone, the cartridges that had these maps were never heard of again, rendering them lost. The only surviving remnant of the lost trial maps ingame is the Map Transfer system hidden within the Link Arena menu, and due to this, it remains completely useless unless the game is modded to add an extra trial map.
  • Moved to the Next Console: The game was originally developed for the Nintendo 64 and the 64DD, but got pushed back to the Game Boy Advance after the 64DD failed and development was restarted.
  • No Export for You: Most Western players know The Binding Blade through a fan-created translation patch, as the game has never been officially localized. Its prequel, The Blazing Blade, later became the first localized installment in the series. Thanks to Roy's popularity through Smash Bros, it's also become one of Nintendo's more visible localization gaps (and one that the director of Shadows of Valentia is on record as saying he'd enjoy closing). Despite this, Nintendo actually had planned to localize the game, but for reasons unknown, never fully materialized.
  • Reclusive Artist: Despite being better known as the character designer/illustrator of The Binding Blade and also having contributed to other Fire Emblem-related works, as well as works not related to Fire Emblem, all of which he continues to do, Eiji Kaneda is known to be a Hikikomori, and few information is known to exist about him, which includes having owned eleven cats and a dog. He is also sporadically active on Twitter, and does not have any other known social media presence. He used to have a personal website named COLONYONE, but he took it down in 2018 after neglecting it for over a decade.
  • Saved from Development Hell: First announced in 1997, the game was originally going to be released as "Fire Emblem: Maiden of Darkness" for the Nintendo 64DD, being expected for the second half of 1998. After the franchise's original creator, Shouzou Kaga, left Intelligent Systems, as well as years of multiple hardware issues, the game got shelved before eventually being restarted for the Game Boy Advance, finally being released on March 2002.
  • Troubled Production: The game started development sometime before 1997 as a title for the Nintendo 64 and the 64DD peripheral. The failure of the 64DD and shakeups within Intelligent Systems led to development being restarted and moved to the Game Boy Advance. Just about everything got scrapped outside of the characters Roy and Karel.
  • What Could Have Been: Has its own page.

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