Marth

Marth (, Marth; formerly translated as Mars prior to Super Smash Bros. Melee) is the main protagonist of four games in the series of tactical role-playing games. He debuted in the first and third games, Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light and Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem, and later reprised his role in the Nintendo DS remakes of these two games. He made his first appearance in the  series as a playable character in Super Smash Bros. Melee and has appeared in every proceeding game since. At the time, no Fire Emblem games had ever been released outside Japan, but his popularity in Melee (along with that of his counterpart Roy) is believed to have influenced Nintendo's decision to release almost all subsequent Fire Emblem games internationally.

Origin
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 . While he was absent from the tangentially-related second game in the series, , 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 . Mystery of the Emblem was adapted into a direct-to-video anime, which was released in Japan in 1996. It starred 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 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.

Marth is the prince of, one of the Seven Kingdoms of the continent of. He is descended from the family of a legendary hero,, who once used the "blade of light", Falchion, to defeat the sinister dragon-emperor. Marth is characterized as a courageous, good-natured, and honorable man. He takes his royal responsibilities to his people very seriously, always putting their needs first, no matter how troubled he is by developments in his own personal life. As a leader, he not only cares deeply about his friends and comrades but believes that he could not have achieved anything himself without their support. Later appearances tend to emphasize Marth's determination to save as many people as possible and ensure that none of his comrades die, even in seemingly hopeless situations.

In Marth's first adventure, told in Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light and its remakes, Medeus has been revived by the sorcerer and has conquered almost all of Archanea, and by the time that the games begin Marth has spent two years in exile in the remote island kingdom of  with his future wife, Princess. The games follow his quest in the, in which he forms a coalition with Princess of the Holy Kingdom of Archanea and Prince  of  to fight back against Medeus and his dragon empire, , and gain the power to fight Gharnef so that he can retrieve Falchion and rescue his abducted sister,.

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 shield to restore its ability to seal away the 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".

In his starring games, Marth has given the unique character class: as the commander of his army, it is necessary for him to seize castles and thrones held by enemy armies to complete chapters and progress in his quest, but if he is defeated in battle, the game is over and the player must restart from their last save point. He is also the only unit who is able to visit villages to receive the items, money, or new recruits that they offer. In battle, he plays as a jack-of-all-trades who lacks the greater statistical advantages of other classes, but has a unique advantage in his relatively powerful exclusive weapons, including s (lightweight and effective against both heavy armor and cavalry) and Falchion (effective against dragons and cannot be broken, among various other abilities in specific games).

As the first lord in the Fire Emblem series, Marth established many trends in both narrative and gameplay roles that later series protagonists, such as Roy and Chrom, would closely follow. The majority of Fire Emblem protagonists share the lord class with Marth, with only a few notable exceptions, such as Ike and Corrin. Despite only being the star of four out of the series' sixteen games, Marth is treated by Intelligent Systems as the face of the entire Fire Emblem series.

Outside of his own games, Marth is also a notable part of the backstory of , 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, ' via amiibo as a recruitable unit, and ' via amiibo as an illusory unit. He features prominently in Fire Emblem crossover media, including the video games , and  as one of their many playable characters, and the series' two trading card games. Most recently,  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.

In Super Smash Bros.
Neither Marth nor any Fire Emblem content appears in the original game. However, according to an interview from , Masahiro Sakurai wanted to include Marth as a playable character in that game but was unable to do so due to time constraints.

In an official poll held on Smabura-Ken (the game's official Japanese website) regarding characters for a potential sequel to the first game, Marth placed 11th with 21 votes.

As a playable character
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 is one of the game's most effective fighters, currently ranking 2nd on the Melee tier list. His strengths include the long reach and fast startup of his sword attacks, the excellent damage and knockback the sweetspot on the tip of his blade deals, his moderately fast dash, long grab, useful floaty wavedash, excellent edgeguarding capabilities, easy and efficient combos, and great SHFFL, with his drawbacks being his lack of a projectile, high endlag on his moves and a laggy up special. Marth's "clone",, has attacks that are almost identical in animation, and many "Marth vs. Roy" debates ensued in the years following Melee's release, but professional analysis places Marth in a higher tier than Roy because he lacks Marth's subtle but vital advantages.

All of Marth's standard and special attacks involve him using his sword, the Falchion.

Trophies
As with the other playable characters in Melee, Marth has three trophies which are obtained by defeating the single-player modes - a normal trophy from and two "Smash" trophies from Adventure and All-Star Modes respectively.

As a playable character
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. 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.

As a playable character
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 , 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 hitboxes, 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 ).

As a playable character
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 . 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, his English voice actor in all appearances from onwards. In Japanese, Hikaru Midorikawa returns to voice Marth with new voice clips for the first time since Melee.

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 pivoting 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.

Trivia

 * Marth and Mario are the only characters in the Super Smash Bros. series to have two different clones, Marth's being in Melee and  in SSB4.
 * In Super Smash Bros. 4, both Marth and Mario each have one full clone ( and, respectively) and one semi-clone ( and , respectively).
 * Counting as an indirect semi-clone, Marth has the most combined clones and semi-clones of any character at three.
 * Marth was one of three characters that spoke Japanese in all regional versions of Smash games (a trait he shared with Roy and ). The first game to give him English voice lines (by ) was , which was released after Smash 4. Lowenthal's first Smash performance as Marth was in Ultimate.
 * Marth is the only playable character to appear in every Super Smash Bros. game since the debut of his universe in Melee.
 * Marth is the only playable character created by Shouzou Kaga, who stopped working on Fire Emblem games in 1999.
 * Despite wearing armor, Marth has always been somewhat light since his debut, being tied with Lucina for the lightest weight among all of the Fire Emblem fighters.
 * Not counting Final Smash transformations, Marth has the fastest walking speed in every game: he is tied with Fox in Melee, and Lucina in SSB4 and Ultimate.