Fire Emblem Awakening is celebrating its 10-year anniversary today, February 4, 2023. Below, we take a look at how a strict sales mandate from Nintendo almost spelled doom for the series, until it didn't.

Even among Nintendo's collection of top-tier IPs, Fire Emblem stands as one of the strongest. Announcements of new Fire Emblem titles frequently headline Nintendo's beloved Direct presentations, where they are received with a flurry of excitement and anticipation. But things weren't always this good for the Fire Emblem series. In fact, around a decade ago, Nintendo was ready to toss Fire Emblem into its vault of forgotten franchises. But in an amazing turnaround, the game that developers feared might be the final Fire Emblem, Fire Emblem Awakening, turned into the series' savior--though the influence it's had on the series over the past decade is not without some controversy.

According to a 2013 interview in Spanish publication Hobby Consolas, The Fire Emblem series had been declining in popularity during the Wii and DS era, and leaders at Nintendo told the team and co-developer Intelligent Systems that the series would be shelved if the new game didn't sell at least 250,000 copies. With the knowledge that this might be the last Fire Emblem game in mind, the developers came up with some truly wild ideas, including the possibility of setting the game in the modern-day world, and even on Mars. Ultimately, however, the team stuck with a traditional fantasy setting. They then decided to look at story and gameplay elements that had been received positively in previous FE games for ideas about what to implement and build upon.