Dear Reader:
Sakurai shares how he got into the Fire Emblem series
The following interview comes from Making of Fire Emblem: 25 Years of Development Secrets...
Interviewer: Please tell us about how you first encountered Fire Emblem.
Sakurai: I think that Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light (henceforth referred to as Shadow Dragon (NES)) was released before I’d spent a year at HAL Labs, and I was really drawn to the spritework and animation. That feeling of satisfaction when a pirate cleanly hits with his axe (laughs).
Interviewer: (laughs) You played the first one, but did you play future entries in the series?
Sakurai: Generally speaking, as soon as they were released, I bought and played them. There were some where the release window overlapped with a particularly busy period and I gave up halfway through, but I’ve touched upon every entry in the series, and I’ve beaten most of them.