Tear Ring Saga

Tear Ring Saga Yutona Eiyū Senki (ティアリングサーガ ユトナ英雄戦記) is a tactical role-playing game developed by Tirnanog, a development studio started by Shouzou Kaga, the creator of the Fire Emblem series. The game was released only in Japan on May 24, 2001 by Enterbrain. Mayumi Hirota from Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 served as the character designer for the game.

Gameplay
Tear Ring Saga is a war simulation RPG where the player places units on a gridded two-dimensional map and attempts to fulfill the objectives in each scenario. The view returns to a larger world map once the battle ends, and the player can choose to travel to new locations as the game progresses. There are two protagonists in the game, Ryunan and Holmes, and the player must divide their main army into two separate armies for each protagonist. Ryunan's story follows a strict set of scenarios where he battles against an enemy empire, but it is possible to ignore the main scenarios to gather treasure and increase the army's strength during Holmes's story.

Though the two armies travel separately for the majority of the game, they re-combine several times to exchange items and other members. This allows the player to use units trained in Holmes's army in Ryunan's battles, or vice versa.

Lawsuit history
The game was designed by Shouzou Kaga, a former game designer for Intelligent Systems and creator of the Fire Emblem series. Resulting from this the game bears many similarities to the Fire Emblem series. This caused Intelligent Systems and Fire Emblem series publisher Nintendo to file a lawsuit against Enterbrain and Tirnanog in July, 2001, claiming that the company was guilty of copyright infringement. The first trial ended in November, 2002, where the Tokyo District Court turned down Nintendo's claims. Nintendo filed a second lawsuit on appeal, and the second trial began three months after the first, this time under the Tokyo High Court. The second trial ended in November, 2004, and Enterbrain was ordered to pay a fine of 76 million yen to Nintendo. However, the game was not ruled as a breach of copyright, and copies remained in stores. Nintendo and Intelligent Systems made another appeal to the Japanese Supreme Court, where the second ruling was upheld. The final court proceedings ended in April, 2005 (see also ティアリングサーガに関わる問題).

Tear Ring Saga had originally been announced in 2000 as Emblem Saga, but the game system and layout were changed around considerably by the time of the game's actual release after Nintendo threatened to take legal action.

Plot
The game takes place on an island continent called Riberia (リーベリア), which had long been divided and ruled under four kingdoms. However, these kingdoms were destroyed by the evil Zoa Empire (ゾーア帝国) and its devil-worshipping ruler, and the island was starting to regress into a period of instability and darkness.

The Rīve Kingdom (リーヴェ王国) was one of the four kingdoms of Riberia, and the first protagonist, Ryunan (リュナン), is the prince of Razelia (ラゼリア); one of the principalities within the kingdom. After the fall of his father's principality, he escaped and went into hiding in a nearby port-town. However, this town also fell into the hands of the Empire, and Ryunan and Holmes (ホームズ), the prince of another one of the kingdom's principalities, retreat to the newly-created Uelt Kingdom (ウエルト王国) with a small contingent of troops. The two receive assistance from the Uelt king, and begin a long journey to destroy the evil empire.

Related releases
Two official game guides have been released in June and July 2001 (ISBN 4757704844 and ISBN 4757705204), both by Enterbrain. A novelized version of the game has also been released by Famitsu Bunko in 4 volumes (ISBN 4757705751, ISBN 4757706847, ISBN 4757707576, and ISBN 4757726538) between 2001 and 2006 (the release of the final volume was prolonged for over a year due to the lawsuit by Nintendo). The game's soundtrack was released by Scitron on June 20, 2001, under the Sony music label.

The game's sequel, Tear Ring Saga: Berwick Saga was released for the PlayStation 2 in 2005.