Marth (Fire Emblem)

Marth is a character from the Fire Emblem series, which is developed by Intelligent Systems and owned by Nintendo. He serves as the protagonist of the first and third games in the franchise—*Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light* and *Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem*—along with their remakes. His first appearance outside Japan was in *Super Smash Bros. Melee* in 2001. The inclusion of Marth and Roy in Nintendo’s *Super Smash Bros.* series is often credited with convincing Nintendo to release Fire Emblem games internationally, beginning with *Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade*. In December 2020, Marth’s original Famicom game, the first in the series, was localized and released outside Japan for the first time to mark the franchise’s 30th anniversary.

Marth was created for *Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light* by designer and writer Shouzou Kaga. Kaga noted that while Marth has a prominent role in the story, he is not technically the main protagonist beyond being required to survive in battle, and he felt it was fine for players to view the story as revolving around whichever characters they preferred. An early scene would have shown Marth kneeling in grief beside the body of his retainer Jagen in a pool of blood, intended as a symbolic moment of violent coming-of-age through losing a father figure, but hardware limitations forced its removal. The character designer for the first game is unknown, though the graphics and character art were handled cooperatively by Tohru Ohsawa, Naotaka Ohnishi, Satoshi Machida, and Toshitaka Muramatsu. Promotional posters altered Marth’s appearance slightly, giving him a different hairstyle and a different shade of blue hair. For *Mystery of the Emblem*, Marth was redesigned by character artist Katsuyoshi Koya. For the remake *Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon*, the staff aimed to make him look and feel fresh without straying too far from fan expectations, and his redesign was handled by Daisuke Izuka and others. He was redesigned again for the remake *New Mystery of the Emblem* by Daisuke Izuka. For downloadable content in *Fire Emblem Awakening*, Senri Kita, the character artist for *Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn*, designed Marth in what was called an “underworld” style. When designing Marth for *Fire Emblem Warriors*, the team took input from female staff members to make him more appealing to women.