Gemfire Nintendo

Gemfire is a strategy game from Koei, set in a fictional fantasy medieval nation. It borrows elements from previous Koei strategy series like Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Nobunaga's Ambition. Players raise armies of knights and cavalry and supplements them with fantastical creatures like dragons and gargoyles in order to take control of the nation of Ishmeria.

The game was released on MSX, NES, SNES, Genesis, FM Towns Marty, the NEC PC-9801 and MS-DOS PCs. The NES, SNES and Genesis versions were released in the US. In Japan the game is known as Royal Blood, or Super Royal Blood in the case of the SNES version.

Gemfire takes place on the fictional, war-torn island of Ishmeria. The Gemfire is a crown adorned with seven jewels, each one containing a powerful being. Six of the seven jewels are wizards, the seventh being a vengeful fire dragon. The wizards were sealed inside gems as they fought to save Ishmeria. Their ultimate sacrifice trapped the dragon in a ruby, but they could not escape the spell. The King of Ishmeria turned the seven gems into a crown and used its power to bring peace to the island. When he died, his son Eselred took power.

Eselred used the crown to exact a tyrannical rule. His daughter, Princess Robyn — encouraged by the whispers of Pastha the water dragon (who once fought alongside the trapped wizards) — destroyed the Gemfire to thwart her father's oppression.

Breaking the crown scattered the gems to the far corners of Ishmeria where the island's rebellious families found and used the wizards inside to aid their quest to overthrow Eselred and unite the country in peace.