Trivia / Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade

• Bad Export for You: The European version makes some questionable changes. The epilogue with Roy and Lilina as children and Zephiel becoming a bad guy are completely excised, the level-up animation is reverted to how it looked in The Binding Blade^note The words just popping up out of nowhere instead of appearing in a flash of light, and the opening text for Chapter 16x/17x with English as the set language has one line written in Italian.
• Dummied Out:
  • Nergal has every magic weapon rank maxed out - including the Staff rank, despite never using Staves in the game, and having a unique unit class means there was no animation made for it. He can still use them if they're modded in, but his battle sprite will heavily glitch out.
  • Roy, Lilina, and Jahn, as well as the extended epilogue, were all removed from the PAL version of the game.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • For a time, the game had this problem; while The Sacred Stones got a Virtual Console release for the Nintendo 3DS early on if you were an "Ambassador" early adopter, thus meaning that it remained playable even after Nintendo handheld hardware phased out GBA cart support on current systems, The Blazing Blade didn't see any kind of 3DS release. Fans had to wait until May of 2014 for this game to be available, via Wii U Virtual Console. Unfortunately, as of March 27th, 2023, it is no longer possible to buy the port there. However, this game was included in the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack alongside The Binding Blade on June 23rd, 2023, thankfully salvaging both games.
  • Thanks to Fire Emblem Heroes and the increasing popularity of the cast, original-run carts remain a hot commodity in the second-hand market and even carts by themselves, without packaging, can fetch handsome prices.
  • Like The Binding Blade, a select number of songs from The Blazing Blade were released in an album in 2003 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 Binding Blade. That being said, the album consisting of the uncompressed songs have been long out of print.
• Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": Only outside of Japan, due to its chronological sequel The Binding Blade having yet to see an international release. Not counting Roy^note Who, despite making a minor appearance in non-PAL versions of this game, had already appeared in Super Smash Bros. Melee, released a few months before his actual debut in his own game, this is the first time Non-Japanese players saw fourteen of The Binding Blade's characters, with most of them in their younger versions^{note (spoiler)}Eliwood, Hector, Lilina, Bartre, Marcus, Merlinus, Karel, Zephiel, Guinivere, Murdock, Erik, Fae, Sophia, and Jahn. Out of the thirteen that are mentioned, Lilina and Jahn are the only ones to be completely absent from the European version due to the removal of the extended epilogue, though the former would finally make her first non-cameo European appearance 10 years later in Awakening.
• Milestone Celebration: Ahead of the game's 20th anniversary, Fire Emblem Heroes released a special banner themed around it called "No Matter Where" in April 2023, which features younger versions of the three lords, Rebecca, Lucius, and Mark.
• New Work, Recycled Graphics: Many sprites, backgrounds, maps, animations, and sound effects are reused from Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade. This is apparent with Fae and Sophia's cameo appearances, since given they didn't age at all between the 20-year gap, they reused their portrait from The Binding Blade, albeit with blinking animations added. Interestingly, while its inventory icon was also recycled from The Binding Blade, Forblaze has a completely new spell animation made specifically for this game.
• Sequel First: The Blazing Blade is a prequel to the The Binding Blade, which was never released internationally, causing Western fans to interpret its ending (originally meant as a Foregone Conclusion) as a Sequel Hook that was never followed up on.
• Urban Legend of Zelda: Players can access the Battle History in the game's Extras menu. If one holds the select button for a while, what looks to be a password will appear onscreen. There was wide speculation that it was a meant for some kind of contest held for the game, much like how the previous game held some of its own, but as revealed on its website's Q&A page, no contest was ever held for it, and official media never acknowledged the existence of one.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Durandal had a different animation and appearance, and was intended to be used by Lyn, too. Incidentally, the image of Roland holding Durandal in the opening crawl looks much more like this.
  • Vaida was originally supposed to be a Bernese Noble and (owing to the uncertainty of Japanese Honorifics) may have been revealed as Heath's sister.
  • Raven originally had grey hair, and Heath had red hair.
  • The Dancer and Bard rings originally had ribbon icons and could be used as a menu item.
  • The still images were in full colour and did not have a sepia hue over them.
  • Igrene was originally planned to appear as a playable Archer unit. She's still mentioned by Hawkeye in the main game.
  • Based on the existence of battle dialog for Uhai and Rath, it's likely that at one point in development, either Rath was going to be recruited sooner or Uhai was going to be fought later.

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