Fire Emblem (ファイアーエムブレム, Faiā Emuburemu) is a fantasy tactical role-playing video game franchise developed by Nintendo's Intelligent Systems division and published by Nintendo. The Fire Emblem series is well known for its innovation and for being one of the first Eastern style tactical role-playing games, with a strong emphasis on Western forms of medieval fantasy. The series is also renowned for having deeply developed characters, as well as the fact that most units' death—or defeat in battle—is permanent in the game until the end of the playthrough. The series currently spans thirteen games, and has been released on the Family Computer, Super Famicom, Game Boy Advance, GameCube, Nintendo DS, Wii and Nintendo 3DS. All games in the series were exclusive to Japan until 2003, when the seventh game in the series was released internationally under the title Fire Emblem, largely due to the popularity of Fire Emblem characters Marth and Roy in Super Smash Bros. Melee. Fire Emblem was designed specifically with newcomers to the series in mind, and the first ten chapters were structured in a manner that eased newcomers into the gameplay. All Fire Emblem games produced since have also been released internationally, except for Fire Emblem: Shin Monshō no Nazo: Hikari to Kage no Eiyū on the Nintendo DS.

Fire Emblem Gaiden (ファイアーエムブレム外伝, Faiā Emuburemu Gaiden, literally "Fire Emblem Side-Story") is the second installment in the Fire Emblem Tactical role-playing game series developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo. The game was released in Japan on March 14, 1992. It is also the second Fire Emblem game to be released exclusively on the Family Computer (Nintendo Entertainment System). It serves as a side story to the original game. Set in the same game world, the events of Fire Emblem Gaiden actually take place on a different continent, and thus have no bearing on the first game's story. However, several characters from the original game, such as the pegasus knight sisters, make an appearance.