Marth: Difference between revisions

|caption = [[File:FireEmblemSymbol.svg|50px|class=invert]]<br>Official artwork of Marth from ''{{s|fireemblemwiki|Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem}}'' and the ''{{s|fireemblemwiki|Fire Emblem Trading Card Game}}''.

|japanactor = {{s|wikipedia|Hikaru Midorikawa}}

Marth was introduced in the first ''Fire Emblem'' game, ''[[Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light]]'' for the Famicom console, which was later remade for Nintendo DS as ''{{s|fireemblemwiki|Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon}}''. While he was absent from the tangentially-related second game in the series, ''{{s|fireemblem|Fire Emblem Gaiden}}'', Marth's role and place in the story of Archanea was later expanded on in the third game, ''[[Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem]]'', released on the Super Famicom in early 1994. ''Mystery of the Emblem'' featured both a remake of the original game and a continuation of that game's story, and the continued story was itself later remade for Nintendo DS as ''{{s|fireemblemwiki|Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem: Heroes of Light and Shadow}}''. ''Mystery of the Emblem'' was adapted into a [[fireemblemwiki:Fire Emblem (anime)|direct-to-video anime]], which was released in Japan in 1996. It starred {{s|wikipedia|Hikaru Midorikawa}} as the voice of Marth, and he would reprise the role in ''Super Smash Bros. Melee''. The anime was dubbed in English and released in the U.S. in 1998, and it starred {{s|wikipedia|Spike Spencer}} as the voice of Marth. Marth's name is translated as "Mars" in the anime's English release; it is an alternate reading of his Japanese name.

The second story in ''Mystery of the Emblem'' begins three years after the first game's events and follows Marth as he is confronted by Hardin, now the Emperor of Archanea and corrupted by Gharnef. After Hardin conquers Altea and declares Marth a traitor, Marth and his allies embark on a journey through Archanea's northern wilderness and follow the legendary path once taken by Anri, where he learns the true history of the dragons and their role in shaping the history of Archanea. Marth is given the task of repairing the titular {{iw|fireemblemwiki|Fire Emblem|Archanean item}} shield to restore its ability to seal away the [[fireemblemwiki:Earth Dragon|earth dragons]], a malevolent species of a dragon to which Medeus belongs. The game ends with Marth defeating Medeus for the final time, uniting all seven of Archanea's kingdoms into one with himself as to its king, and his marriage to Caeda. Later generations would remember him as the legendary "Hero-King".

Outside of his own games, Marth is also a notable part of the backstory of ''{{s|fireemblemwiki|Fire Emblem: Awakening}}'', and two of its protagonists, [[Chrom]] and [[Lucina]], are his distant descendants. He has made frequent appearances as an optional bonus character, unrelated to the main story, in many ''Fire Emblem'' games from ''Awakening'' onward; he is available in ''Awakening'' via SpotPass and DLC, ''{{s|fireemblemwiki|Fire Emblem Fates}}'' via [[amiibo]] as a recruitable unit, and ''{{s|fireemblemwiki|Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia}}'' via amiibo as an illusory unit. He features prominently in ''Fire Emblem'' crossover media, including the video games ''{{s|fireemblemwiki|Fire Emblem Heroes}},'' and ''{{s|fireemblemwiki|Fire Emblem Warriors}}'' as one of their many playable characters, and the series' two trading card games. Most recently, ''{{s|fireemblemwiki|Fire Emblem Engage}}'' features Marth as one of the game's numerous Emblems, ethereal clones of protagonists from various other ''Fire Emblem'' games who dwell within special rings.

Marth makes his ''Smash'' debut (and by extension, his international debut, excluding the ''Mystery of the Emblem'' anime adaption, which was released in North America) as an [[unlockable character]] in ''Melee''. His design is loosely based on his appearance from ''Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem'', except his hair, cape, and shoes being a darker blue, along with his shoulder pads having silver rims instead of yellow. He can be unlocked in one of the three ways: using all fourteen starter characters at least once each in Vs. Mode matches, beat or fail Classic mode with all fourteen starter characters on any difficulty, or play 400 Vs. mode matches. In each of these cases, Marth must be battled one-on-one to be unlocked.

Marth returns as an unlockable playable character. Like ''Melee'', his appearance is based on his design from ''Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem''. Marth's voice actor from ''Melee'' mentioned in his "Target Lockon!!" column in Dengeki Playstation Vol. 414 that he was not actually called back to record new lines for ''Brawl''.<ref name="denps">Dengeki Playstation Vol. 414 (March 28, 2008) page 117: "Target Lockon!!" ({{ja|ターゲット・ロックオン!!}})</ref> Marth has a superior reach to most characters in the game and relies on the length of his sword to effectively zone against his opponents. While his changes are mixed, he was somewhat nerfed from ''Melee'' like many other higher-tier characters. He is currently in the A- tier according to the official SBR tier list.

Marth returns as a playable character in ''Super Smash Bros. 4''. Marth is now a starter character, as opposed to being an unlockable character as he was in ''Melee'' and ''Brawl''. He has been visually updated to closely match his design from ''{{s|fireemblemwiki|Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem: Heroes of Light and Shadow}}'', although Falchion retains its design from the original ''Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem''.

During the initial release of ''SSB4'', Marth was considerably nerfed, with few noteworthy buffs. These nerfs left him with less mobility and range relative to the cast (though his own range had been improved from Brawl), weakening his neutral game and depriving him of his potent comboing and punishing capabilities from previous games. Because of this, he had previously seen a huge drop in his tier placement. However, he has since received multiple buffs in update patches, with the most notable patch, [[1.1.4]], granting him improvements to his aerial combos and juggling game, as well as granting bigger tipper [[hitbox]]es, and higher damage output on several attacks. As a result, Marth is reasonably better than he was during the initial release of ''SSB4'', and has since seen significantly improved tournament results. Overall, although he's still considered fairly nerfed from ''Brawl'', he ranks highly on the ''SSB4'' tier list, ranking 11th out of 55 characters (tying with {{SSB4|Ryu}}).

Marth returns as a playable character in ''Super Smash Bros. Ultimate'', as with all previous characters. He uses a more detailed version of the ''New Mystery of the Emblem'' design from ''SSB4'', and now has a different hairstyle to match his more recent appearances in titles such as ''{{s|fireemblemwiki|Fire Emblem Heroes}}''. Like in ''[[Melee]]'' and ''[[Brawl]]'', Marth is an unlockable character. ''Ultimate'' is the first ''Super Smash Bros.'' game in which Marth is dubbed in English in overseas versions, specifically by {{s|wikipedia|Yuri Lowenthal}}, his English voice actor in all appearances from {{uvm|Code Name: S.T.E.A.M.}} onwards. In Japanese, Hikaru Midorikawa returns to voice Marth with new voice clips for the first time since ''Melee''.<ref name="denps"/><ref name="socgfe"/><ref name="nindsp">Nintendo Dream (February 2019) interview ([https://nintendoeverything.com/sakurai-on-smash-bros-ultimate-his-health-choosing-bosses-and-spirits-new-stages-much-more/ translation])</ref>

As Marth was a high or top tier character in all of his previous appearances, he received a mix of buffs and nerfs in the transition from ''Smash 4'' to ''Ultimate'', but was nerfed overall. While he received buffs both directly and from some universal changes, the faster pace of ''Ultimate'' combined with the removal of micro spacing techniques like [[perfect pivot]]ing makes it much more difficult to land his tipper sweet spots. He also received several direct nerfs: his jab is no longer an effective combo starter, and his sour spots are much weaker. Some buffs were tweaked a bit for Marth as an instance, they've made his tippers a bit bigger or easier to hit, but this didn't really improve Marth very much. As a result of these nerfs, Marth sees little representation in tournaments, with many players considering him outclassed by Lucina. As a result of this, Marth currently ranks 54th out of 82 on the current tier list, placing him in the B- tier as an upper mid tier character.

*Marth is the only playable {{uv|Fire Emblem}} character to appear in every ''Super Smash Bros.'' game since the debut of his universe in ''Melee''.

*Marth is the only playable {{uv|Fire Emblem}} character created by Shouzou Kaga, who stopped working on ''Fire Emblem'' games in 1999.