Creator Marlowe Dobbe recently released her latest project. It is a Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones mod featuring characters from the Gilmore Girls, aptly titled, Fire Emblem: Gilmore Girls.
The mod is intended to be a quick experience; about one hour. As for the story, monsters have invaded Stars Hollow and the player takes the role of the cast of the Gilmore Girls, who have to drive them out. The mod boasts four custom maps, multiple playable characters, amusing dialogue, and "depictions of a normal mother-daughter relationship." From the images provided, it looks like the cast that has been confirmed at least includes Rory Gilmore, Dean Forester, Lorelai Gilmore, Babette Dell, Luke Danes, Kirk Gleason, and Taylor Doose. Most of whom are portrayed with pixelated edits of Google Image search results for their names, with the exception of Dean, who appears to be an edit of actor Jared Padalecki's head, edited onto the sprite of Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones character Valter.
The hack comes in the form of a .ups patch. So play the game, the player needs to have a Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones ROM and .ups patching software. Using that, it's possible to apply the patch to the ROM and run it on a Game Boy Advance emulator. Thus adding the game to the storied collection of rare Nintendo games which can only be found on emulators.
This isn't the first Fire Emblem mod to come to emulators. The Game Boy Advance Fire Emblem games, Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade (just known as Fire Emblem, outside of Japan), and Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, all have vibrant and thriving modding scenes. People have made mods to do everything from adding new characters, to increasing the difficulty of the games, to making full-fledged fan sequels. Nintendo games are no strangers to mods that add new content, such as fans adding Final Fantasy 15's Noctis to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Marlowe Dobbe created Fire Emblem: Gilmore Girls as a fun and silly Christmas gift for her boyfriend, who watched the entirety of the Gilmore Girls show with her. This looks to be an incredibly fun and cute project, that should appeal to fans of both Fire Emblem and Gilmore Girls alike.
Of course, Nintendo is a famously litigious company, having taken down hundreds of fangames with DMCAs before. It is known to sue the makers of fan games and mods to force them to take down their work. So it's impossible to know for how long Fire Emblem: Gilmore Girls will be able to stay up before Nintendo tries to have it taken down. Some fan projects have been able to escape Nintendo's watch indefinitely, while others have been caught almost upon release. For those who are interested, it might be best to download this mod as soon as possible.
Fire Emblem: Gilmore Girls is out now for Game Boy Advance emulators.
Source: itch.io