Fire Emblem is a popular Japanese fantasy tactical role-playing game franchise, developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo. The series, which premiered on the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990, currently boasts seventeen main games and five spinoffs. The gameplay centers around strategic, turn-based battles on grid-based maps between the player's team and enemy non-player characters. A unique feature of the game is the permanent death of characters in battle, which can render them unusable for the rest of the game. The success of the first game, which began as a dōjin project, led to the development of more entries in the series. The franchise made its Western debut with the seventh game, The Blazing Blade, in 2003. Despite a slump in sales in the late 2000s, the series resurged with the critical and commercial success of Fire Emblem Awakening in 2012 and Fire Emblem: Three Houses in 2019, the latter being the best-selling entry in the series. Fire Emblem is recognized for its innovative gameplay and is considered a seminal series in the tactical role-playing genre.