Fire Emblem Engage's internal codename leads to speculation on missing game

Fire Emblem Engage was only released a few days ago, but fans are always eager to speculate on future titles in the series. Or in this case… past titles?

As pointed out by @DeathChaos25 on Twitter, Intelligent System’s internal codename for Fire Emblem Engage is “Iron19”. Nothing about that sounds too unusual, except in light of the franchise’s previous entry Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which had the codename “Iron17”. This begs the question: What happened to “Iron18”?

Some fans speculate that the missing Iron18 could refer to a long rumored remake of 1996’s Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War. It’s also possible that there was a different Fire Emblem title planned for release, that was cancelled or delayed for any number of reasons. One thing we know for sure is that a different internal naming system is used for Fire Emblem’s spinoff games, so Fire Emblem: Three Hopes doesn’t appear to be the answer here.

We’ll probably never know the answer for sure, unless evidence surfaces of the Iron18 codename being used for a future release. For now, we can just keep playing Engage and speculate away!