Recently a beta version of Fire Emblem the Sacred Stones has been found. It is a very early version of the Sacred Stones and contains many differences. This pre-alpha ROM uses many things from the previous game as placeholder; even the title and menus from the Blazing Sword are still there. The game opens up with a debug menu that is identical to the one from the Blazing Sword prototypes. Although the game does have some of the stages programmed in it many of these still need much work. Some do not yet have enemies and have a level two Cavalier as the only enemy. The game’s own music has not been implemented and certain moster enemies are missing battle artwork. Many character portraits are absent; those that do exist were changed in the final. These alterations are mostly minor but some characters were changed quite a bit. Also Ephraim’s name was originally Izark.
Alpha on the left. Final on the right.
Debug Title Screen
Additional information from Serenes Forest:
- Amelia has Tana’s role; her class was planned to be a flying Trainee.
- L’Arachel has a variation of Tana’s portrait, while Tethys has a variation of Neimi’s portrait.
- There was a Wyvern Rider called Nate planned Ephraim’s name was planned to be Irzark (seen in the debug menus).
These characters were changed drastically in the final.
- Many of the World Map locations have different names. Some of the battle map layouts are slightly different.
- In Chapter 6, after Eirika hands over her bracelet, the Grado soldiers kill the civilians in front of her eyes.
- At the end of Chapter 6, Saleh appears and kills the boss with a critical attack. Chapter 6’s battle map is the same as Chapter 11’s (Eirika’s route) in the retail version.
- The boss of Chapter 8 is Dyude Rubarth, one of Grado’s Seven Generals, also known as the Black ?-stone.
By using the debug options one can remove an enemy’s weapon. This shows sprites that are not viewable in normal gameplay.
- Eirika promotes at the beginning of Chapter 17 The Final Chapter is comprised of just one map.
- The Tower of Valni has two extra stages- seen in Floor 2 and 3.
You can find even more infos at Serenes Forest! Props to them
Below you can see a bunch of scans from Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones beta, before it came out. You can see its earliest scans (first reveal scans) where the first couple chapters are different and there are different animations and mugshots for some characters. The stolen prototypes (they were stolen from Intelligent System’s network) seem to have some content from this earliest version, but also content that wasn’t present in the earliest OR the final version.
Thanks to Iven Allen for the scans!
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