History VideoGame / FireEmblemShadowDragonAndTheBladeOfLight

* AdultFear: Princess Maria is sold off as a hostage by her own brother Michalis to force their sister Minerva to fight for him when he chose to side with Dolhr. As a result, Maria spends a long part of her life as a hostage, and Minerva can't do anything but fight on the evil Michalis's orders to ensure she won't die.

* HumansAreTheRealMonsters: Humans and Manaketes have a long cycle of mutual oppression with each other.

''Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light'' is the first entry in the ''Franchise/FireEmblem'' series, released exclusively in Japan on the [[UsefulNotes/NintendoEntertainmentSystem Famicom]] in 1990.

This game was a pioneer in the genre of Japanese {{Strategy RPG}}s, becoming the defining archetype which influenced most future games within the genre and being quoted as the reason it became hugely popular among Japanese players. As a precursor of not only the ''Franchise/FireEmblem'' series but also the entire tactical genre, it does suffer from many issues, such as a poorly-aged and confusing interface, along with many cases of EarlyInstallmentWeirdness (a notable one being the lack of the now staple [[TacticalRockPaperScissors Weapon Triangle]] system). Still, while it received heavy criticism from Japanese publications for its complexity and lackluster graphics at the time of its release, player reception was far more enthusiastic, and ''Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light'' remained the fourth best-selling entry of the series in Japan before it exploded in popularity with the release of ''VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening''.

In 2008, a remake for the UsefulNotes/NintendoDS was released called ''Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon''. It is the eleventh game in the series, and unlike ''Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light'' was given an international launch. The remake makes a number of changes and additions to the gameplay of the original to make it more in line with its immediate predecessors, expands the story with new chapters and characters, and introduces the ability to reclass units.

''Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light'' is followed by ''VideoGame/FireEmblemGaiden'', which takes place on the continent of Valentia in the same continuity. The remake ''Shadow Dragon'' is followed by ''Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem: Heroes of Light and Shadow'', a remake of ''VideoGame/FireEmblemMysteryOfTheEmblem''.

!!''Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light'' contains the following tropes:

* EarlyInstallmentCharacterDesignDifference: ''Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light'' has character design that were altered, reimagined, or downright scrapped as ''Mystery of the Emblem'' more-or-less solidified many of the character's appearances.

** Navarre wearing shoulderpads and gear that would resemble a typical mercenary is a farcry nowadays when many recognized him with his tunic that became a reference design for Myrmidons. Even ''Mystery of the Emblem'' depicts him as the latter, even if he uses the Mercenary sprite due to the lack of Myrmidon class in both ''Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light'' and ''Mystery of the Emblem''.

** The Falchion in ''Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light'' can be missed if the player doesn't get the Starsphere or neglects to visit Gotoh. Medeus can still be defeated without it.

* ViolationOfCommonSense: In order for Curates to gain experience in ''Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light'', they must '''survive''' an attack. Since they are SquishyWizard, it is a completely asinine decision to place your healers in harm's way.

* CallBack: A few of the conversations added to the remake adds on relationships and plot elements that didn't exist yet in the original ''Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light'', but established in ''Mystery of the Emblem''.

This game was a pioneer in the genre of Japanese {{Strategy RPG}}s, becoming the defining archetype which influenced most future games within the genre and being quoted as the reason it became hugely popular among Japanese players. As a precursor of not only the ''Franchise/FireEmblem'' series but also the entire tactical genre, it does suffer from many issues, such as a poorly-aged and confusing interface, along with many cases of EarlyInstallmentWeirdness (a notable one being the lack of the now stable [[TacticalRockPaperScissors Weapon Triangle]] system). Still, while it received heavy criticism from Japanese publications for its complexity and lackluster graphics at the time of its release, player reception was far more enthusiastic, and ''Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light'' remained the fourth best-selling entry of the series in Japan before it exploded in popularity with the release of ''VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening''.

This game was a pioneer in the genre of Japanese {{Strategy RPG}}s, becoming the defining archetype which influenced most future games within the genre and beinf quoted as the reason it became hugely popular among Japanese players. As a precursor of not only the ''Franchise/FireEmblem'' series but also the entire tactical genre, it does suffer from many issues, such as a poorly-aged and confusing interface, along with many cases of EarlyInstallmentWeirdness (a notable one being the lack of the now stable [[TacticalRockPaperScissors Weapon Triangle]] system). Still, while it received heavy criticism from Japanese publications for its complexity and lackluster graphics at the time of its release, player reception was far more enthusiastic, and ''Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light'' remained the fourth best-selling entry of the series in Japan before it exploded in popularity with the release of ''VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening''.

In 2008, a remake for the UsefulNotes/NintendoDS was released called ''Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon''. It is the eleventh game in the series, and unlike ''Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light'' was given an international launch. The remake makes a number of changes and additions to the gameplay of the original to make it more in line with its immediate predecessors, expands the story with new chapters and characters, and introduces the ability to reclass units. ''Shadow Dragon'' is also the first game to have a multiplayer mode, wherein two players can battle each other with teams of 5 units on special maps.

Four years after its release, the game received an abridged [[VideoGameRemake remake]] one the UsefulNotes/SuperFamicom as "Book 1" of ''VideoGame/FireEmblemMysteryOfTheEmblem'', the third entry in the series, along with a direct sequel in the form of "Book 2" of the very same game.

''Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light'' is the first entry in the ''Franchise/FireEmblem'' series, released eclusively in Japan on the [[UsefulNotes/NintendoEntertainmentSystem Famicom]] in 1990.

This game was a pioneer in the genre of Japanese {{Strategy RPG}}s, becoming the defining archetype which influenced most future games within the genre and beinf quoted as the reason it became hugely popular among Japanese players. As a precursor of not only the ''Franchise/FireEmblem'' series but also the entire tactical genre, it does suffer from many issues, such as a poorly-aged and confusing interface, along with many cases of EarlyInstallmentWeirdness (a notable one being the lack of the now stable [[TacticalRockPaperScissors Weapon Triangle]] system). Still, while it received heavy criticism from Japanese publciations for its compelxity and lackluster graphics at the time of its release, player reception was far more enthusiastic, and ''Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light'' remained the fourth best-selling entry of the series in Japan before it exploded in popularity with the release of ''VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening''.

[[caption-width-right:350:Our tale begins with the Shadow Dragon, the blade Falchion, and the... [[TitleDrop Fire Emblem]]]]

->''Long ago, Medeus, king of the dragonkin, conquered the continent of Archanea, beginning an age of fear and despair for all its people. That tyranny was broken, however, thanks to a miracle. A young man hailing from the Altea region appeared with a divine blade in hand. He stood against the Shadow Dragon, and struck him down.'' [...] ''However, after a century's passing, the Shadow Dragon returned. He forged an alliance with a fiendish sorcerer who sought to rule the world, and their combined might toppled kingdom upon unsuspecting kingdom. Again, darkness threatened to engulf the continent.''

''Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light'' is the first entry in the ''Franchise/FireEmblem'' series, released only in Japan on the [[UsefulNotes/NintendoEntertainmentSystem Famicom]] in 1990. It stars Prince Marth of Altea, telling the tale of his efforts to win back his homeland and the entirety of Archanea from the Dolhr empire, and of his search for his family's AncestralWeapon Falchion, which is needed if the dragon emperor Medeus is to fall.

The game is a pioneer in the genre of Japanese {{Strategy RPG}}s, but partially as a result, its interface has not aged particularly well. EarlyInstallmentWeirdness also abounds.

In 2008, a remake for the UsefulNotes/NintendoDS was released called ''Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon''. It is the eleventh game in the series, and unlike ''Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light'' was given an international launch. The remake makes a number of changes and additions to the gameplay of the original to make it more in line with its immediate predecessors, expands the story with new chapters and characters, and introduces the ability to reclass units. ''Shadow Dragon'' is also the first game to have a multiplayer mode, wherein 2 players can battle each other with teams of 5 units on special maps.

In 2020, an UpdatedRerelease of the original game was announced for the UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch for a limited-time release on December 4th, 2020 as part of the 30th anniversary of the ''Fire Emblem'' franchise. In addition to several new quality-of-life features, the port features a complete localization, the first time the game has ever officially been released in English.

!!''Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light'' contains the following Tropes:

* TheAnimeOfTheGame: ''Anime/FireEmblem'', a two-episode OVA based on the first game was released in 1996 and was licensed by Creator/ADVFilms in 1997. WordOfGod put out that it was supposed to last longer, but did not due to a lack of funds. Marth was voiced by Creator/HikaruMidorikawa, who went on to voice him in future game appearances starting with ''Videogame/SuperSmashBrosMelee''; his dub voice was Creator/SpikeSpencer, who as of yet hasn't reprised the role as the gig of Marth's main English voice years down the line went to Creator/YuriLowenthal instead. The OVA was also the second anime adaptation of a Creator/{{Nintendo}} title (the first one being ''Anime/TheGreatMissionToSavePrincessPeach'', based on ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros''), just a year before the ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' [[Anime/{{Pokemon}} animated adaptation]] appeared in Japan.

** Item durabilities are much less symmetrical than the now standard "multiples of five" setup, and weapons weren't divided as cleanly into sets of equivalent power tiers as in later games. The Iron Sword is the only base weapon labeled with a material (the others being simply Lance, Axe, and Bow), and Marth gets no fewer than three different personal swords throughout the game.

* AnyoneCanDie: With the exception of [[HeroMustSurvive Marth]], each and every one of your units can be killed, [[FinalDeath permanently]].

** The Falchion is rather unimpressive, essentially being just a Silver Sword with infinite uses you get near the end of the game, that deals bonus damage to Manaketes and Medeus, but for the former you could just forge a Wrymslayer or Dragonpike that's stronger, and against Medeus, Tiki is always going to be much better, while it's also incredibly unlikely that Marth can survive a round against Medeus on the hardest difficulties even if you trained him up to his max level. Now it would be nice to have regardless, but to get it you have to give up the Starsphere and Lightsphere to make a Starlight tome to defeat Gharnef; the Starsphere is incredibly useful as having it in your inventory prevents your weapons losing durability, allowing you to spam your A rank weapons and expensive forges as much as you want, while the Lightsphere negates enemy terrain bonuses when held, useful against bosses who always have +2 Defense and +20 Avoid from being on the seize tile. Players will often consider the spheres more useful than the Falchion and keep them, while just ignoring Gharnef in his chapter as you don't need to defeat him to progress.

** Pegasus Knights become Dracoknights when they Class Change. This also means that Macedon is one of the only nations in the series that has their military made up of both flying mounts, making it split in two between Minerva's Whitewings (who sided with Marth) and Michalis' Dragoons (the side that stays with Dolhr after his sisters' defection). Later games made the two of them distinct {{Character Class}}es with their own strengths, weaknesses, class family, and factions.

** A number of {{Character Class}}es, such as the Thief and Fighter, are unable to Class Change. Curiously, there exist classes in the game that certainly ''feel'' like they were meant to be promoted versions of other classes (General to Knight, Horseman to Hunter) but wouldn't be made as such until ''Mystery of the Emblem''.

** While most games following the introduction of weapon triangle made the physical weapon types roughly balanced to each other on paper (i.e. every type comes in iron, steel, silver, and legendary varieties, plus a few gimmicks each like effective weapons or magic weapons), this game makes no attempt at all to balance them. There are eight available swords plus three locked to Marth, compared to five types each of lances and axes, and swords weigh far less than the other weapon types in a game where weight can't be counterbalanced. Also, the iron axe and hand axe weigh more ''and'' deal less damage than the iron lance and javelin, silver axes do not exist (and neither do steel lances), the only equivalent to a legendary axe is the Devil Axe, and there's only four axe-users in the game, none of whom can promote--you can't even buy new axes after Chapter 9.

** Item durabilities were much less symmetrical than the now standard "multiples of five" setup, and weapons weren't divided as cleanly into sets of equivalent power tiers as in later games. The Iron Sword is the only base weapon labeled with a material (the others being simply Lance, Axe, and Bow), and Marth gets no fewer than three different personal swords throughout the game.

** Characters recruited from the enemy do not have personalized statlines; they use the same calculations for their stats as regular enemy units. This means that the lower-leveled characters have ''base'' stats for their classes, including Minerva, Matthis, Astram, and Wendell. Also, instead of having a preset LuckStat, their Luck is randomized. This resulted in many characters getting their stats tweaked for ''Mystery of the Emblem''; most notably, Minerva's Speed was doubled, turning her into a LightningBruiser, while Wendell's Speed and Defense took some hits.

** There is no Magic stat, and the majority of characters have a Resistance stat of 0 with very few ways to increase it. This effectively makes all spells {{Fixed Damage Attack}}s.
** A number of {{Character Class}}es, such as the Thief and Fighter, are unable to Class Change.

** Knights and Pegasus Knights were able to wield both Swords and Lances, as opposed to being restricted to one weapon type.

*** Resistance does its usual thing of blocking magic damage, but nearly every single character has a flat 0 in it, making every magic attack effectively a FixedDamageAttack. The main way to increase it is to use Barrier or Pure Water (which raises it to 7 but decreases it over time). Notably, the Talisman statbooster actually does behind the scenes is give your unit the same effect as those two but with the decreasing removed. Not only does this make Resistance the only stat to cap at 7, but it also means a character can only have 0 Resistance or 7 Resistance.

** Being able to double attack only requires being 1 point faster than the opponent, while later games require a higher lead.

** Characters' Weapon Ranks are called Weapon Levels, a stat that randomly increases on level-up like the other stats, instead of gradually increasing based on weapon use. They also apply to all weapons a class have access to instead of having separate ranks for each weapon.

** While weapon weight existed, no stat counteracted it, making it effectively a varying fixed speed penalty attached to each weapon.

** Enemy units have a stat that displays how much EXP they are worth. In addition, any recruited enemy starts with the experience they had.
** EXP earned from battles that don't result in enemy kills is determined by how much damage dealt by player units, {{cap}}ping at 20.

** Item durabilities were much less symmetrical than the now standard "multiples of five" setup, and weapons weren't divided as cleanly into sets of equivalent power tiers as in later games. The Iron Sword was the only base weapon labeled with a material (the others being simply Lance, Axe, and Bow), and Marth got no fewer than three different personal swords throughout the game.

* RecurringElement: This is the game that started it all, therefore, most of the archetypes started here, including the Peaceful Lord (Marth), Heroine (Caeda), the dead parental figure (Cornelius), the CrutchCharacter (Jagen), [[ColorCodedForYourConvenience Red-Green Cavalier Duo]] (Cain & Abel), the junior Archer (Gordin), the Armor Knight (Draug), the scarred Mercenary (Ogma), the Axe Fighters (Bord & Cord), the Thief (Julian), the demure Cleric (Lena), the rogue swordsman (Navarre), the Pegasus Trio (Palla, Catria & Est), the Wyvern Duo (Minerva & Michalis, the latter's not playable, but [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness that's how it is in the earlier days]]), the Secret Noble (Jeorge, his status about the super Archer is established [[VideoGame/FireEmblemMysteryOfTheEmblem next game]]), studious male Mage (Merric), talented female Mage with dead parents (Linde), the magic mentor (Wendell), the MagikarpPower unit (Est), MutuallyExclusivePartyMembers (Arran & Samson), late-game General (Lorenz, [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness though he wasn't as hard to recruit compared to his successors]]), the EleventhHourRanger (Gotoh), the loyal enemy general (Camus), the ambitious opportunist (Michalis), the backstabbing politician (Jiol), the EvilSorcerer (Gharnef) and the non-human GreaterScopeVillain behind it all(Medeus).

** Marth is completely pantless, has unkempt hair, and wears a blue tunic in the original installment. His appearance in ''Mystery of the Emblem'' has been used as design since, even if his battle sprite still uses his old appearance.

** A case of PaletteSwap and YouALLLookFamiliar is blatant in this game with many character portraits being more or less the exact same. Several examples are Bord, Cord, and Barst, Dolph and Macellan, Matthis and Vyland, Caesar and Radd, Wendell and Boah, and Gordin, Wolf, Sedgar, and Tomas. Intelligent Systems would design these characters more distinctly from Mystery of the Emblem and onward.

** The Mercenary and Myrmidon class lines were originally a single class line, using the names of the Mercenary-family classes but functioning like a blend of the two.

** If you decide to send a unit into an arena, they will enter with whatever weapon they have equipped at the time, and will degrade its uses with each round of combat, which can potentially leave your unit defenseless if you're not careful. Add the fact that there's no way to yield a fight in the arena[[labelnote:Note]]This feature wouldn't be added until Mystery of the Emblem.[[/labelnote]], and this makes using the arena a very risky venture.

** In chapter 23, only the real Gharnef wields the Imhullu tome, while his clones carry a Swarm tome each instead. The DS remake changes this so that all of them have the same equipment.

** If you lost so many units that you can't fill up all your available deployment slots in a chapter, you will be given generic replacement units to fill up all your missing deployment slots. Now these generics are a lot worse than the actual characters and on the hardest difficulty will really struggle to survive one round with enemies, and have very low growth rates too so they'll barely get better, but they're better than nothing and at worst they're cannon fodder you can use to shield or bait away from your valuable units. This mechanic would not show up in future ''Fire Emblem'' games.

** You know all the fuss of getting the [[SwordOfPlotAdvancement Falchion]]? Well, on [[HarderThanHard Hard-5]], trying to use it to kill [[FinalBoss Medeus]] is actually a really bad idea. You see, Marth is capped at 25 speed and 60 HP, while Medeus has 30 speed, making it so that Marth always gets doubled. [[SerialEscalation Making this even worse]] is that Medeus has 50 attack while Marth's defense is capped at 25, if he gets lucky. Marth will thus need extremely lucky level ups and statboosters to just SURVIVE a single round of combat and not be sent straight to the GameOver screen for trying to kill Medeus like the plot told him to. And we haven't even discussed Medeus' chance to [[CriticalHit crit]], which with his astronomical attack, is a guaranteed OneHitKill on anything without exceptions.

** There are only 4 items slots per character instead of 5, and characters cannot trade items. While items can be given to other characters, giving an item immediately ends the unit's turn.

** A case of PaletteSwap and YouALLLookFamiliar is blatant in this game. The two duo, Bord and Cord and Dolph and Macellan, use the same portrait for each other when later games gave them some differentiation. Caesar and Radd started off as recolors of each other, and then given designs that diverge from each other later on.

** Jagen returns in this role, of being a prepromoted unit you get in the beginning of the game with slightly better base stats and a high enough Lance Rank to use the very powerful Silver Lance that makes him significantly better than your other units at the start, but has very poor growths, which when combined with levelling up a lot slower will have him fall off later in the game. Compared to the original game though his growths aren't as bad this time, with them being increased substantially (with his non-magical growths ranging from 15-40% instead of 0-10%), and you can now reclass him to a Dracoknight that gives him flying utility with better stats and improves his Speed growth to an acceptable 30% that can help him avoid getting doubled for longer. Combine those improvements with ''Shadow Dragon'''s dynamic growths system (where each time you fail to raise a stat its growth rate is increased slightly until you do raise it), and Jagen can maintain his usefulness for a lot longer, even on Hard 5 difficulty he can last into mid game before he truly falls behind.

* InventoryManagementPuzzle: You can only give items to another unit, and once you've given an item, the unit's turn ends.