Fire Emblem: Monshou no Nazo

Fire Emblem: Monshou no Nazo
Also known as: Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem Developer: Intelligent Systems Publisher: Nintendo Platform: SNES Released in JP: January 21, 1994 This game has unused areas. This game has unused playable characters. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused items. This game has unused abilities. This game has unused music. This game has unused text. This game has debugging material. This game has anti-piracy features.

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: There are two versions, 1.0 and 1.1. What are the differences?

To do: Some more unused stuff is documented in this link. Bring over the stuff that hasn't been documented here yet. A lot of prerelease material is documented here. Create a prerelease page and bring over all of these differences.

Fire Emblem: Monshou no Nazo is a part-remake, part-sequel follow-up to the original Famicom game. It's divided into two parts: the first is a slightly shortened remake of the first game, and the second tells the brand-new story of how a collapsing marriage nearly brought about the dragon apocalypse.

The second part was later given a stand-alone remake as Shin Monshou no Nazo for the Nintendo DS, which ended up also being a Japan exclusive.

Sub-Page

Debug Menu Welcome to the Build-A-Battle Workshop.

Development Stamp

Located in the game are left over strings from an internal development tool, such as S-CG-CAD. Such strings can found in other SNES titles, such as Super Mario All-Stars and Rokkun! Monster!!! More information on this software and the left over strings can be found here.

Region	Offset	Text
JP	0x028200 0x264000 0x287A00	NAK1989 S-CG-CAD Ver1.11 930511 F

Leftover Characters

A total of five chapters and six playable characters from the first game were cut from its Monshou remake, but some data remains for both the missing playable characters and the bosses and enemies of the cut chapters, mostly in the form of unit IDs and matching name strings.

• 08: Wrys (リフ), a playable curate.
• 0E: Darros (ダロス), a playable pirate.
• 27: Beck (ベック), a playable ballistician.
• 2D: Roger (ロジャー), a playable knight.
• 2E: Jake (ジェイク), a playable ballistician.
• 33: Gotoh (ガトー), a playable bishop. Gotoh is still a major character in both parts of Monshou, but he never appears in gameplay so this character ID is never used.
• 35: Wyler (ワイラー), an unused boss name from the original game.
• 3D: Bentheon (ベンソン), a cavalier boss from the original game's Chapter 4.
• 3F: Mannu (マヌー), a manakete boss from the original game's Chapter 9.
• 42: Heimler (ヒムラー), a paladin sub-boss from the original game's Chapter 12. Although the chapter is still in Monshou (now Chapter 10), Heimler is absent.
• 43: Grigas (ギガッシュ), a ballistician boss from the original game's Chapter 13.
• 47: Sternlin (スターロン), a paladin boss from the original game's Chapter 18.
• 4A: Orridyon (オーダイン), a paladin boss from the original game's Chapter 21. Curiously he has a unique palette associated with his ID.
• 5C: Raman Soldier (ラーマンへい), a label for generic enemies at the Fane of Raman, used in the original game's Chapter 19. The generics in the Monshou version of the chapter (now Chapter 15) are instead predominately Dolhr soldiers with a handful of "Raman Thieves" (74).

None of these characters (with the obvious exception of Gotoh) have portraits. All of these characters were restored to their original state in Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, the second remake of the original game.

(Source: Original TCRF research)

Unused Classes

Dark Knight

The dark knight (ダークナイト; ID 21) is a variant of the cavalier class. It has a unique set of map sprites and it shares its battle sprites with the cavalier. It still wields lances, but unlike the cavalier it is unable to dismount.

Both Tear Ring Saga and Fire Emblem Awakening revisited the dark knight class idea. The Tear Ring Saga class has a very similar look and function to the Monshou class, while the Awakening one is a mounted magic/sword class.

	HP	Str	Skl	Spd	WLv	Def	Res	Mov	EXP Yield
Base stats	22	9	5	6	8	9	5	9	40
Growth rates	80%	30%	20%	20%	N/A	30%	0%	N/A	N/A

Guardian

The guardian (ID 25) is a variant of the general class. It has a unique set of map sprites, and shares its battle sprites with the general aside from its unique silver palette. It isn't programmed to use any weapons at all in regular gameplay, but the debug mode treats it as able to wield lances.

Unusually, the guardian has two completely different names depending on where one looks. The game has a separate list of class names used on the battle screen, which is usually used to abbreviate the longer classes to make them fit, but it spells "guardian" completely differently. Menus refer to it as "ガーディアン", a.k.a. the English word "guardian" spelled in katakana, but battle screens call it "しゅごしん", or "guardian god".

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia later introduced a similar guardian class, which is also a lance-wielding variant of a pre-existing armored class, except that the Shadows of Valentia guardian is a monster class with a slightly different Japanese name.

	HP	Str	Skl	Spd	WLv	Def	Res	Mov	EXP Yield
Base stats	32	10	0	0	16	14	20	5	0
Growth rates	90%	30%	30%	20%	N/A	20%	0%	N/A	N/A

Ocean Dragon

The ocean dragon (かいりゅう; ID 27) is a water-based dragon species, a concept which had originally been planned for Ankoku Ryu to Hikari no Tsurugi. It is able to move freely on water in the same way as the pirate class. It has a set of unique sprites for moving and attacking on the map, including a very distinctive dodging animation where it ducks underwater; although its stationary map animation no longer seems to exist, one frame of it still appears in unit list menus. In battle scenes, it just reuses the fire dragon's sprites.

It doesn't have a matching breath weapon of its own, but has no problems using the other four breaths if they are hacked into its inventory. Like the other dragon classes, when battle scenes are in map animation mode, it always uses a specific set of breath attack frames exclusive to itself that depict a waterspout, regardless of what breath weapon it is actually using. Appropriately, the Ankoku Ryuu concept also describes ocean dragons as attacking with waterspouts.

The debug menu indicates that a matching dragonstone item was also intended for it at one point, but its slot was eventually repurposed into the Part 2 version of the Aum staff.

Shadows of Valentia later introduced the dagons, a similar class of water-based dragons which also happen to reuse some assets from that game's fire dragons.

	HP	Str	Skl	Spd	WLv	Def	Res	Mov	EXP Yield
Base stats	26	6	0	0	16	15	20	6	50
Growth rates	50%	10%	10%	10%	N/A	10%	10%	N/A	N/A

(Source: Original TCRF research)

Unused Items

ID	Icon	Weapon Name	Translation	Durability	Worth	Help Text		Notes
54		あんこく竜石	Shadow Dragonstone	18	N/A	マムクートがつかうと あんこくりゅうに へんしんする	When used by a manakete, they transform into a shadow dragon.	In the finished game, the only shadow dragon is Medeus in Part 2, who doesn't start as a manakete. Works like the used dragonstones, except it doesn't provide a breath attack.
59		ぎんのかぎ	Silver Key	1	5000	ぎんのとびらをあげる	Unlocks silver doors.	Hints at silver doors as a cut mechanic. Presumably, regular keys would not have worked on these doors.
7A		オームのかけら	Aum Shard	N/A	N/A	せんじょうより　りだつ する これをもっていると １どだけ　しなない 戦場より　離脱する	Retreats from the battlefield. When held, it prevents you from dying just once, and you retreat from the battlefield.	Despite its very detailed description, it unfortunately has no remaining functionality whatsoever.

(Source: Original TCRF research)

Unused Text

Enemy Midia

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: Where is it located in the ROM? Original Japanese text?

Heartless fiends who point their arrows at our holy kingdom,
if you wish to step foot inside Archanea Palace,
then you'll have to kill me first!

There is what appears to be a battle quote meant for Midia in Part 2. It is possible that she was initially intended to remain loyal to Hardin despite his corruption, but in the finished game, she is captured by Hardin for trying to lead a rebellion.

(Source: Serenes Forest)

Unused Music

There are 8 unused music tracks in the game, which can be heard on the file select screen by using the Pro Action Replay code 8491C6 XX, where XX is one of the following values:

XX	Audio
42
46
4A
4B
4E
59
5B
66

(Source: Serenes Forest, Original TCRF research)

Unused Maps

Test Map

Chapter ID 00 contains a leftover test map titled "第９９章 デバッグがんばれ！のまき" (Ch.99 Good luck debugging! Nomaki). The map itself is a near-exact duplicate of the Part 2 Final-1 map. According to the status screen, the chapter's objective is to "Find all of the bugs" (バグをかんぜんにとる).

Set the byte at 7E07DF to 00 to access this map. Note that any attempt to save the game in battle preparations will fail and just delete the save file entirely.

The player is allowed to deploy a maximum of 7 units, including Marth. Unlike the actual chapter, the player's army starts right in the middle of the map (pictured). There are 13 enemy units, all of whom are named "Galder Soldier" and all of whom have Marth's Part 1 portrait. None of them have particularly remarkable stats or items, aside from a female mage who has a Nosferatu tome.

The map has a handful of noticeable differences from the actual Part 2 Final-1:

• The chapter's seize point is missing, so there's no way to end it through normal play.
• The map plays the Part 1 map and battle themes, instead of the tracks used by the actual chapter.
• The village and shops along the top are all missing. Instead, a random assortment of village fence tiles is sitting in their place.
• A few of these fence tiles are also strewn around the bottom-left, where the player starts in the actual chapter.
• Unsurprisingly, the map has no cutscenes or events at all. This also means that the cursor is not placed on Marth at the map's beginning, and instead sits in the top-right corner of the map.
• If loaded from the chapter select screen, the game zooms in along the top of the world map, opens a text box to begin the customary opening narration, then crashes.

(Source: Original TCRF research)

Orphaned Maps

To do: Polinym's findings discuss how other maps exist in some fashion from 31 onward, as some combination of junk data and duplicates/variants of other maps. What is the nature of the duplicates/variants - do they exist in their own right, or are the attempts to load their data merely piggybacking off the originals of those maps in some way? Do any of them have anything of interest worth reporting on?

There are at least two unused maps which, unlike the test map and used chapters, exist only as maps and have no associated chapter data - no name or objective of their own, no enemies, no ally spawn points. Additionally, any space that one would expect to have some sort of interactive terrain effect (e.g. doors to open, thrones to seize, healing effects) is non-functional, although some other terrain effects (e.g. requiring mounted units to dismount to enter) are functional.

These maps can be accessed by setting the byte at 7E07CE to the appropriate value for a given map at the main menu, then doing one of two things:

1. Load save data. When started fresh this way, no enemies are present, and no units other than Marth can be deployed in the battle preparations menu (the header claims you can still choose 55 more units, but will act like you're at maximum capacity). Marth starts the map invisible (possibly out of bounds) due to the lack of ally spawn point data, and attempting to automatically move the cursor onto him (e.g. by selecting him in the Unit menu) will hang the game as it tries and fails to find him in the map's bounds.
2. Load a suspend point for a chapter already in progress. This forces the suspend point data to load on the new map: all allies and enemies within an area the size of the unused map are put on it in the same relative positions they were at the time of the suspend point's creation.

ID	Map	Dimensions	Notes
17		30 x 30	Set in a castle or fortress, featuring a distinctive brown-gold tile set. Its basic structure - a branching path leading to two (in this case, non-functional) doors, both of which appear to lead to a large, converging area in the back of the map - is reminiscent of Olbern Keep from Part 2 Chapter 6.
22		30 x 30	A dark tower that uses the same tileset as the Tower of Thabes from Part 1 Chapter 18, sans the glowing desert exterior. The torch animations work properly in the same way as that map. A non-functional throne is present.

(Source: Polinym)

Unused Terrain

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: Currently only observed on map entry 3B (see "Orphaned Maps"), where it: a) has what looks like a unique tile that does resemble the design used in Gaiden but could be some sort of product of glitchiness in the same manner as a lot of those maps in that range, and b) is non-functional, just like all of the other terrain types that are meant to have functionality that's present on that map. Is it possible that these two traits are purely the result of being on one of those unstable maps? Is there some way of editing it onto a proper map to confirm whether the terrain type does indeed have that tile design/lack function in general? Also, can we get some sort of internal ID number for the terrain type?

• Heal Tile: Ostensibly, a piece of miscellaneous healing terrain other than forts, gates or thrones, like in Fire Emblem Gaiden. Seems to be non-functional, but has a complete set of terrain window help text:

Japanese	Translation
回復ゆか 回ひ　：３０％ 回復できる	Heal Tile Avoid: 30% Can heal

(Source: Polinym)

Anti-Piracy

Like many post-1993 first-party SNES games, Monshou no Nazo tries to protect itself against being run on cartridge copiers by checking RAM at startup. The game calls a subroutine at $93EA4E that compares the memory range $700000-$702000 with the range $702000-$704000. If the cartridge has the correct amount of RAM, the ranges will be identical due to address mirroring and the game will pass the check subroutine, but an incorrect amount of RAM (as copiers commonly have by their very nature) will result in mismatched ranges that fail this check, prompting the game to throw up a stern warning message (featuring a fun typo) and freeze.

(Source: Zane Avernathy)