Marth was one of the characters created for "" by the game's designer and writer Shouzou Kaga. According to Kaga, though Marth takes a prominent role in the story, he is not technically the main protagonist. During early development, a scene would have depicted Marth kneeling in grief next to the body of his retainer Jagen in a pool of Jagen's blood: this was designed to be a symbolic moment of Marth violently coming of age by losing a father figure. Due to hardware limitations, this and other similar scenes needed to be cut. Marth's character designer is currently unknown, though the graphics and character art for "Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light" was cooperatively handled by Tohru Ohsawa, Naotaka Ohnishi, Saotshi Machida and Toshitaka Muramatsu. Marth's appearance underwent alterations for promotional posters, having a slightly different hairstyle and an altered shade of blue for his hair.