they were well into the development of Maiden of Darkness, the internal development structure at Intelligent Systems was changed, which combined with the poor sales of the 64DD resulted in the game's development being restarted in 2000 for the Game Boy Advance (GBA). Very little of the original Nintendo 64 game concept survived the transition. Aside from the characters Roy and Karel, most of the original game's characters were scrapped. The subtitle Maiden of Darkness remained in use as a working title up until 2001, when it became The Binding Blade. Production on the final version of The Binding Blade took approximately one year. The game was the first title in the Fire Emblem series on a portable console. While development of a handheld Fire Emblem title had been considered for earlier games, the team felt available hardware lacked the expression to realize their vision. The GBA offered technical capacities superior to the Super Famicom, the release platform of the last Fire Emblem title Thracia 776, while also offering portability, making it more appealing to players. The platform was also chosen due to estimated development time and budget considerations. Developing for the new hardware proved challenging in some respects, and easy in others such as creating basic software. During development, two different versions were developed while the team were getting used to the new hardware. One of the main issues they faced was the limited resolution and screen size of the GBA. The game's combat animations were intended to evoke scenes from high fantasy, such as Record of Lodoss War and Slayers, contrasting with the equivalent styles of fantasy fighting in Japanese stories. Compared to earlier titles in the series, the story for The Binding Blade was made deliberately simple, with clear heroes and villains, and an obvious objective for the player to complete. It was the first time the Fire Emblem series employed a branching narrative, with different characters opening up different story routes. The titular "Fire Emblem" is represented as a family crest. The character of Roy was designed to appeal to younger players, and was also given a strong character in contrast to earlier recent titles. He was also made to be a free-spirited and emphatic character so he appealed to as wide an audience as possible. Also in contrast to earlier entries, particularly the notoriously difficult Thracia 776, the difficulty of The Binding Blade was intentionally