Huh, I can’t believe this of all things is gonna be my first topic on FEU. Funny how life works!
I’m sure most of you guys are at least somewhat aware of my earliest work in this community, my first FE7 ROM Hack. It was something I made back in 2006 when I was but 16 years old, and it shows! I streamed a whole playthrough of it on Twitch last month and finally started uploading it to my YT channel.
I figured you guys would get a kick out of it since I do go into detail about the finer points of the creation process at certain points, plus it’s fun seeing how far we’ve come from one of the earliest full reskin projects! It may not be much but it did help set a precedent, no matter how slight, introduced some people to some of the series this cast contains, and made me meet lifelong friends. Even if I don’t really do much any more these days. I’ll always be glad to be a part of this community!
I’ll leave the playlist link here as I plan to upload parts to this regularly and update this topic semi-regularly until the whole of it is uploaded. If you guys have any questions not brought on by these videos feel free to share!
Welcome to the early days of ROM hacking in the FE Universe. This is one of Ray’s story about his history with Fire Emblem 404. This Reskin of a ROM hack is very different from your regular FE7. You remember Lyn being one of the three main characters of FE7, now prepare to meet Linoan as the main character of Lyn Mode and as your basic tutorial.
How well do you remember attempting to edit text before FEditor came around? Welcome to the age of the parser suite! Also discussed are my attempts to adapt Yggdra Union’s art style into FE and potential custom animations circa 2006 for Kid(and Linoan)!? (spoilers: neither of them were feasible back then but I have receipts!)
Gazanto really went above and beyond for this image and I couldn’t be happier with the attention to detail for it. “I am 404” indeed.
Making event battles play nice before event editing came to be was always a slippery slope since you gotta keep stat parameters roughly the same else you get goofs and zombie units on the map. Sakura plays with a little too much fire but she just manages to avoid that scenario. Also who was my first media crush!? (it was also Sakura)
Linoan Mode wraps just as uneventfully as Lyn Mode does normally - with an axe slammed into Lundgren’s face. But soon, the time where I will no longer be bound by the tutorial will come and Eliwood and myself will continue to make a mess of Elibe! (mostly just me)
And now the fun really begins with Eliwood Mode. FE7’s roster sees some interesting changes and it becomes a test as to how well my 16-year-old brain could write around this stuff. Prepare yourself.
[Bad use of ebonics warning, please forgive me uncle Eric]
What’s Altena doing on the enemy side this far out in the back? How does Matthew manage to convince her to turncoat with such ease? Will Megan ever stop teasing Raymond about cringe? And how does a man deal with mercs from “da hood”? All this and more on today’s episode!
We also get to see the first original character enter the party! This was something I did want to talk about for a bit seeing as a good chunk of the roster past Linoan Mode features them. Part of their inclusion was me wanting to see my characters come to life in the GBAFE format and eventually test the waters for what would become A Sacred Dawn. Though I never did finish that, the desire for me to tell a story with them was strong even back in 2008, which did influence the inclusion of a few of them. (Heather, Derek, and Ellen primarily)
It also reminds me of the days of Devourer of Time and Worlds where many of this and ASD draw parallels from, including the use of OCs.
We arrive at one of the more well-known facets of FE404, the appearance of Kyosuke Nambu! Adapting Super Robot Wars characters into FE was an odd thing as the two are of different settings entirely, but as long as a pilot could reasonably pull off what they could do in a giant mecha on foot, no harm, no foul, right?
Initially Kyosuke was a Mercenary as that fit his character art much more than adapting a suit of normal armor. However his main MO in-universe is to charge in and punch holes into enemy ranks by piloting what is essentially a moving brick house with a giant pile bunker. After the first beta, he swapped to being an Armorknight. Having him don a suit of armor styled like his machine Alteisen looked a bit funky in practice, but ultimately served well as it matched his MO more closely.
Not to mention we got some pretty fun animations out of the community that are themed after the Alteisen, whether or not this was the inspiration for them is unknown to me (I know at least one old one by CO Raptor was what made me think of doing this in the first place) but the fact we have them at all is real cool!
The main antagonist shows himself - Ingram Prisken styles and profiles. And he knows.
Not much else until the big clash at the Dragon’s Gate, but some small stuff on display here, such as Jaffar becoming a memer and Steena proving that she truly was roster padding. Sorry, girl.
Also introducing another frontlining OC in Heather Myriah, whose inclusion ended up shaping the last bits of FE404’s story around her as well as the lore of my OC cast at large. This ended up becoming the groundwork for what was planned to be the sequel to A Sacred Dawn, had its completion ever seen the light of day. (for now it’s only form of conclusion lies in The Raymond Chronicles)
Just one map today and not much to grab you here unless you really like seeing Kishuna’s battle sprite being used in 2009. The Dragon’s Gate will be more interesting, promise!
Oops, I missed last week’s upload! Must’ve been pretty distracted…
Part 11 has us in the Dragon’s Gate, where General Viper tags along, Darin is still a massive jobber, Jaffar emboldens his memelord image and Ephidel gives us a brief demonstration of his ninja skills, before being incinerated… or has he? After that and a poorly aged joke at Eliwood’s expense, Part 12 has him steeling himself onward and deals the last blow to one of the last vestiges of FE7’s vanilla cast.
It’s around here where things start coming to its own regarding the altered story of FE7’s lore and where I decidedly get more, uh, “Unhinged” I guess. Trying to put my own spin on FE7’s story while maintaining the new party’s status quo and explaining everything to the player was taxing. Lots of dialogue and hoop jumping abound. It’s pretty silly but also a bit admirable I suppose.
Full edit time - don’t think I forgot about this topic now; I’ve been posting videos every now and again since the last post. The last part of the run is up!
The main focus of this part is the character of Megan, how this random nobody ended up taking Athos’ place for laughs, and how her character has changed since this mod. Plus we fight Ingram, he’s cool.
With that, the run is complete!
It’s funny, I don’t hold FE404 in high personal regard as it’s a time capsule of my youthful indiscretions and a bit of cringe from looking back on it while playing, but it’s still a part of FE ROM hacking history, even if it’s a small part. Plus it was lots of fun to talk about the workings of stuff on stream and mention character bits. FE404 ended up springboarding my interest in making more OCs and a world to flesh them out in, even if that has been slow going.
The playlist is still on the first post if you wanna watch the whole thing or individual parts.
Thanks a lot for letting me post this run, guys. Soon I’ll post a run of the semi-reboot one-shot ROM Hack that is set in FE404’s era, Yuri Tanaka’s Sidestory as a bonus for this topic! (It’s the one ROM hack I made that I still enjoy today )
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