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This is a pipe dream. I understand that. Fire Emblem is a Nintendo franchise, and Nintendo isn’t going to be sending such a game to an outside device any time soon. But if we’re running a series of articles about games we’d love to see on the iPhone and iPod touch—games that are perfectly suited for the devices—we may as well aim high, right? And so, let’s take a look at why Fire Emblem should be on the iPhone, even if it never will be.

For those who don’t know, Fire Emblem is turn-based strategy/RPG series that’s been on Nintendo gaming devices since 1990. It didn’t make it to the U.S. until 2003 when Fire Emblem was released for the Game Boy Advance, but has since seen tremendous success on the GBA, Game Cube, Wii and DS systems. Utilizing varying characters and story lines, the games always feature levels of turn-based, rock-paper-scissor style combat tied together by strong stories in which, when a character dies, he/she is gone from the game for good.

This style of gameplay is perfectly suited to the iPhone for numerous reasons. First, because it’s turn-based, there’s not a large tax on the graphics processor. Battle is handled on a grid, with avatars representing your characters. The only animations required for the game would for battle sequences, easily possible because the total number can be controlled and preprogrammed (a certain number of unit types can fight against a certain number of backdrops). Various spells and weapon types can increase the overall number of battle animations required, but this can either be maintained, or the battle sequences can be eliminated altogether. Indeed, enough Fire Emblem players bypass these to warrant the ability to shut them off in the various Nintendo incarnations).

Second, turn-based gameplay is easy to control on the iPhone. Tap the character you want to control, tap the spot on the grid where you want him to move, then tap to select your action. No need for awkward accelerometer control or on-screen direction pads (although a d-pad would help with menu selections). The main problem would be the size of the grid. Individual squares would likely be too small to precisely tap with my large fingers, for example, so there’d need to be some sort of ability to zoom in on the area of the battlefield that the selected unit could reach. Beyond that, a Pogo Stylus type of device would be needed.

Third, the payment structure could help developers recuperate the costs. Obviously, the $0.99 to $4.99 pricing structure is far too prohibitive to create a Fire Emblem game that would do the franchise justice. These games are huge, often including well over 30 levels of combat interspersed with cut scenes and plenty of exposition. If done right, though, the developers could end up charging upwards of $30 to $40 in upgrades. Say a $0.99 investment will get you five levels with no inventory control (much like the opening levels of Radiant Dawn on the Wii). After that, courtesy of in-app purchasing in iPhone 3.0, you can buy additional levels…maybe even new characters and weapons. If a favorite character dies, for instance, you can pay for a potion to revitalize him or her. I can’t speak for everyone, of course, but I’d be happy to keep shelling out cash to get the full game experience…provided it lived up to the quality of its Nintendo device predecessors.

In fact, the only element of Fire Emblem that would need to be overhauled to work on the iPhone is the save game system. The series has toyed with numerous save game schemes over the years, but all of them require you to either complete a level, reach a certain point in a level, or save your progress to a file that can only be reloaded once. Considering the high possibility for interruption on the iPhone, as well as the pick-up-and-put-down-quickly nature of the device, you’d pretty much need to be able to save your game at any point and go back to it without restriction.

As I mentioned, though, I recognize that we’ll never see Fire Emblem on the iPhone. What I’d like to see, then, is for someone to step up and give us that experience in a different title. I’d prefer a from-the-ground-up development, but certainly wouldn’t turn away from an iPhone version of Final Fantasy Tactics, Heroes of Might and Magic, and the DS Age of Empires games. However it’s done, and from whomever it comes, there are certainly enough iPhone and iPod touch owners out there to warrant such an ambitious project, there’d just have to be a way for the publisher to know they’d be able to ultimately sell the game for $20 to $40 to warrant the investment. Hopefully, iPhone 3.0 will send us in that direction. Until then…well, if everyone’s happy with yet another Bejeweled clone, then $0.99 I guess it’ll be.

See previous iPhone Game Wish List entries.