Awful Emblem v1.0 - November 29, 2025
God help us, it’s finally done.
Awful Emblem is a project that has taken me and the rest of my team 12 1/2 years of work to complete, meeting each week for a few hours every Friday to hammer out a full-length FE8 hack. Why? Because we looked at the state of hacks in 2013 and, with all the hubris in the world, decided “Yeah, we could do that”. Development on this version of the hack started in earnest in 2018, after throwing out the existing, floundering project in favor of a completely rewritten story and a move to FE8 from the original version’s FE7 base.
So what is Awful Emblem, then? Well, the name originates from all of us being members on Something Awful’s Let’s Play subforum. While we tried to come up with more permanent names over the years, nothing stuck quite like the working title. A large emphasis was placed on the story and characters; we wrote a lot of words for everyone. I hope you enjoy our cast of characters as much as we do. The result is a lengthy hack that feels very vanilla or similar to FE7 or FE8 in its design, with a little spice added here and there as gameplay improvements or fun additions. Whether this is a good or bad thing is up to you. There is no skill system to play with, and most chapters do not feature overly complex objectives or setpieces. Expect a Vanilla+ experience the whole way.
Features:
- A brand new, original story with an original cast of characters!
- An accessible difficulty curve intended for everyone!
- 38 playable chapters!
- 3 Intermission chapters, and a full epilogue!
- 43 unique playable characters!
- Press “Select” on the character stats screen to see character growths!
- Press “Select” on the map to display all enemy ranges!
- An expanded magic system with new tomes and custom spell animations!
- An overhauled and expanded text engine that allows for much more flexible cutscenes!
- An updated unit info box that shows equipped weapons when you hover over units!
- A few new character classes that were not in the original game!
- Custom character portraits for everyone! (except for most generic bosses)
- A complete suite of support conversations for every playable unit with faster buildup of support ranks!
- New custom weapons, animations, and icons!
- Various adjustments to vanilla weapon and class stats!
- Female enemies, animations, class cards, and more!
- Can take actions and even attack after Talking to a unit!
- No Skill System!
Download the hack here! (v1.05)
If you want to discuss the hack you can obviously do so in this thread but we’ve also included a link in the hack’s Readme to a public release Discord server if you’d like to discuss the hack with us directly.
A word on difficulty:
Characters won’t die when killed on a map…sort of. If someone dies on a map they will no longer be playable, but they will continue to show up in the story as “retreated” allies. This was to be able to better integrate characters into the storyline and have the recur as the plot called for it. This is not a Casual mode experience, nor is Casual mode an option.
- Normal is the intended experience, somewhere between Hector Normal and Hector Hard Mode.
- Hard mode is closer to a Maddening and is best experienced after playing on Normal unless you are VERY confident in your abilities. (Enemies have extra levels)
- Easy mode should be somewhere between FE8 Normal and Hard modes/ (Enemies have fewer levels)
Not a Bug/Known Bugs:
-Various map sprites have shown graphical glitches when hovering over them, but it’s inconsistent.
-Pressing B to skip cutscenes can cause the cutscene graphics/portraits to not disappear properly or skip certain item get calls. Press Start to skip instead if you’re looking to skip cutscenes.
-Characters stay grayed out in battle animation when refreshed, but this is purely visual and they will be refreshed appropriately. (Probably a bug with the custom bard sprite/Play command).
-There will probably be typos every now and then. Feel free to report any you see.
-Whatever code we added to debug test the supports viewer at 100% completion refuses to unapply itself, so we recommend not looking at the fully Support Conversation viewer until you’ve beaten the game once. The original intention was to 100% unlock all support conversations as viewable after beating the game once on any difficulty.
Version History:
v1.05 (12/11/25)
-Fixed a trigger that would cause the game to crash if you didn’t have certain characters recruited (because they didn’t join in a previously bugged patch).
-Chapter 28 should no longer cause game over seemingly at random.
-Chapter 29 has less reinforcements overall and now warns you where the spawn zones are.
-Fixed additional typos.
v1.04 (12/4/25)
- Adds Ferris and June back to the game
- Removed the picture of a dog that blew up the boss quotes table
v1.03 (12/2/25)
- Removed another debug script from Chapter 24
- Fixed more potential instances of inventory resets during prep screens for characters joining that chapter.
- Reduced the number of bonus levels promoted enemies on Hard receive from +19 to +9 (same as Normal)
- Fixed additional typos.
- Purposefully re-enabled the 100% completion support viewer debug feature until we have proper code to unlock it upon beating the game once.
v1.02 (12/1/25)
- Removed a leftover debug script from Chapter 20
- Fixed an instance where Kate could have her inventory accidentally reset when prepping and resetting in Chapter 5, along with another one in Chapter 8
v1.01 (11/30/25)
- Fixed Summoner summons not working
- Fixed Nicaean units in Chapter 7x not having faction descriptions
- Fixed some typos
Team Members:
FPzero: Project leader, event scripting, mapmaking, battle palettes, general hack assembly
Artix: Project leader, writing supervision, support editing and encoding
Blastinus: Mapmaking, general writing, editing and encoding
PoorlyWrittenNovel: General writing, editing and encoding
ddinkins: Playtesting, general writing, editing, and encoding
nine-gear crow: General writing, editing, encoding, event scripting and additional portraits
Teyla: Portraits artist, additional writing
Tequila: Technical consult, bug fixes, ASM coding
Playtesters:
SweaterGear
MC50
Kinu Nishimura
Mmmmmmattttthew
SongofSquirrels
Madison
Resource Credits
Animations:
Judith - Ryushikaze
Soldier M - Alusq
Thief F Recolor - FPzero
Knight Recolor - FPzero
Troubadour Recolor - FPzero
Mage F Ponytail - Lisandra Brave
Great Knight Recolor - Cataphract
Mercenary F - Dei, TBA
Assassin F - moocavo & riku; FPzero
Shaman F Veilless - Black Mage
Bonewalker Axe - MrNight, RenOokami
Great Lord Ephraim - Nuramon
Berserker - Bwdyeti, shadowofchaos
Dragoon - Mercenary Lord, NYZGamer, Pikmin1211, Maiser6
Dread Fighter - Nuramon
Armored Brigand - TBA
Warrior Repalette - Pushwall
Wyvern Lord Repalette - TBA, Feaw
Wyvern Lord Armored - Nuramon
Wyvern Knight Repalette - Feaw, St jack
Magic Tomes - N426
Cursed Sword - DerTheVaporeon, Team SALVAGED
Ghost (Breath of Fire style) - Eldritch Abomination
Living Armor - Sphealnuke
Mage Lord - TytheBub
Black Beauty Falcoknight - TBA
Sonia Sage - Greentea
Custom Niime - Dachi
Bald Swordmaster - Pikmin1211, L95
Swordmaster Variant - Greentea, DerTheVaporeon, ltranc.
Additional Portraits:
Villager NPCs - HyperGammaSpaces
Magda - Levin64; nine-gear crow
Bardiya, Eusebius - Sphealnuke; nine-gear crow
Maeve, Vasco - LaurentLacroix, Lenh; nine-gear crow
Arges - L95
Istor - L95; nine-gear crow
Alvin - XVI; nine-gear crow
Larun, Malcolm - RandomWizard
Class Cards:
Cursed Sword - DerTheVaporeon
Ghost - Eldritch Abomination; FPzero
Cursed Tome - N426
Various Female Units - L95
Dragoon - Kenpuhu
Dread Fighter - Nuramon
Living Armor - Sphealnuke
Spells:
Ooze - Arch
Vortex - FPzero
Shaver - Blazer, BwdYeti
Elwind - Mikey Seregon
Shadowbane - Alusq, FPzero
Meteor - Blazer, Jubby
Tornado - Mikey Seregon
Spiritbane - Arch
Prism - Arch, Comaythanki
Saggitae - HyperGammaSpaces
Crux Magna - vilkacis
Pantokrator - Scriaza, FPzero
Map Sprites:
Militia (Judith) - Ryushikaze
Warmaiden (Judith) - nine-gear crow
Emperor (Richter) - Aruka, Kenpuhu; nine-gear crow
Exalted (Richter) - Unknown; nine-gear crow
Guild Master - Nuramon, It’s Just Jay
Merchant - N426; nine-gear crow
Hegemon - Nuramon
Cursed Sword - DerTheVaporeon
Ghost - Eldritch Abomination
Magic Tomes - N426
Weapon Icons:
FPzero
Ereshkigal
GoudaGrabber
LordGlenn
Celice
Myrina map design by:
nine-gear crow, Captain Fargle
Special Thanks:
2wb/Eliwan
Arch
Blind Sally
CanOfWorms
Captain Fargle
Circles
Cirvante
CJacobs
Faerie Fortune
Endorph
Kirb
Leonarth
LuigiMarioKOG
Mysticblade
Onmi
Ryushikaze
SCBracer
Shiny777
Smiles
Tanks
Temp
Tequila
TactHack
VennoBennu
Vilkacis
Zane
Everyone else who helped us along the way.
If you see something you submitted in here and you’re unsure if you’ve been credited, please let us know.