Advance Wars (series)

Lore & Background

The Advance Wars series began with the 2001 Game Boy Advance title Advance Wars, which was the first Wars game released in North America and Europe. It introduced CO Powers, special abilities that give temporary advantages in battle. The sequel, Advance Wars: Dual Strike, released in 2005 for the Nintendo DS, expanded the format with Tag CO Powers. A spin-off, Battalion Wars (2005), developed by Kuju Entertainment, shifted to 3D action real-time strategy, and its sequel Battalion Wars 2 (2007) added online multiplayer over Wii's Wi-Fi connection. The last major title, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (2008), departed from the series' lighthearted tone and weakened CO Powers while reintroducing a unit level system. After a decade-long hiatus, a collection of remakes titled Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp was announced at E3 2021 for the Nintendo Switch, developed in collaboration with WayForward Technologies. Its release was delayed multiple times, first from December 2021 to April 2022, then indefinitely due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, before finally being set for April 21, 2023.

Reader's Guide

The Advance Wars series holds significance as the international face of the Wars franchise, which began in Japan in 1988 with Famicom Wars. Its success in Western markets is frequently credited as a driving force for Nintendo bringing Intelligent Systems' Fire Emblem series outside Japan, as both share similar tactical gameplay. The series introduced innovations such as CO Powers, fog of war, and map editors, which increased replayability. Multiplayer was a key component, evolving from local link-play on the Game Boy Advance to online play in Days of Ruin and Battalion Wars 2. The series' legacy includes influencing the tactical strategy genre on Nintendo handhelds. The delayed release of Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp in 2023, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, highlighted the series' continued cultural relevance and the sensitivity of its military themes. Despite the long gap since Days of Ruin, the remakes demonstrate enduring interest in the franchise.

Did You Know?

• Advance Wars was released in the United States on September 10, 2001, and launched in Japan on September 21, 2001, and in Europe on January 11, 2002, with no official hold due to the September 11 attacks.
• The original Famicom Wars featured two armies, Red Star and Blue Moon; Red Star was changed to Orange Star in international releases, possibly to avoid associations with Communism.
• Battalion Wars, a spin-off, was developed by Kuju Entertainment and released for the Wii under the title Totsugeki!! Famicom Wars in Japan.
• Advance Wars: Days of Ruin was released in Japan on January 21, 2008, as a standard retail game under the title Famicom Wars: Days of Ruin.

The Gameplay-First Philosophy Behind New Franchises

At Nintendo, the creative process for a new video game begins not with a character or a brand name, but with a core set of mechanics. Designers first conceptualize how a game should feel and function, and only then do they decide whether an existing franchise is the right vessel for that experience. If no current property fits the intended gameplay, a brand-new franchise is born to house it. This mechanic-driven approach means that the identity of a series is often shaped by what players do in the game rather than by a pre-existing narrative or mascot. It also explains why Nintendo's catalogue spans such a wide range of genres and tones, from the long-standing adventure of The Legend of Zelda to the experimental ink-splatter combat of Splatoon, which emerged as one of the more recent successful new series. The franchise label is, in this model, a wrapper chosen to best suit the gameplay rather than the other way around.

Ownership, Licensing, and the Broader Ecosystem

Not every game that carries a Nintendo connection is straightforwardly a Nintendo-owned property. Some franchises are jointly held with partner studios: the Kirby series is shared between Nintendo and HAL Laboratory, while the Pokémon video game franchise is a three-way arrangement involving Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures. Other titles occupy a more tenuous position. Bayonetta, for instance, is owned by Sega but reaches Nintendo platforms exclusively through licensing agreements, meaning it appears on Nintendo hardware without being a Nintendo franchise in the traditional sense. Conversely, Cruis'n is technically owned by Nintendo yet is more commonly associated with Midway Games and Raw Thrills, and is frequently published outside the Nintendo brand umbrella. This layered web of ownership and distribution means that the line between a Nintendo franchise and a game playable on a Nintendo console is not always the same line.

Commercial Scale and the Weight of Legacy

A handful of Nintendo's franchises have crossed the threshold of one hundred million total copies sold, a mark that places them among the most commercially successful video game series in history. The Legend of Zelda series, the Wii-branded titles, and the Pokémon franchise all sit in that elite tier. At the very top stands Mario, which has accumulated over 763 million copies sold as of 2025, making it Nintendo's largest video game franchise by a wide margin. These figures underscore that a small number of properties carry an enormous share of the company's total revenue and cultural footprint. For the broader catalogue of Nintendo titles, including strategy-focused series that appeal to a more niche audience, the commercial expectations and marketing weight are naturally different, yet they still benefit from the institutional infrastructure and platform reach that those flagship brands help sustain.

Longevity, Console Cycles, and Franchise Birth

Nintendo has been building and sustaining video game franchises for nearly as long as the medium itself has existed. The Game & Watch handheld system, first released in 1980, and Donkey Kong, debuting in 1981, represent some of the longest-running properties in the company's history, spanning multiple decades and generations of hardware. New franchises, meanwhile, tend to cluster around the early years of a console's lifespan, when the company is still exploring what its new hardware can do. Splatoon is cited as one of the most recent successful examples of this pattern, arriving as an experimental title that eventually grew into a full series. This rhythm of long-running legacy properties alongside fresh, console-anchored debuts gives Nintendo's catalogue a distinctive shape: a deep historical foundation continually being extended by new experimental entries that test the boundaries of the current platform.