Advance Wars

Advance Wars is a turn-based strategy game for the Game Boy Advance, created by Intelligent Systems and released by Nintendo. It marks the seventh installment in the Wars series and the first entry in the Advance Wars spin-off line. The story unfolds on a fictional continent where the nations of Orange Star and Blue Moon have been locked in conflict for years. The situation escalates when Andy, a commanding officer from Orange Star, is blamed for unprovoked attacks on two other nations, Yellow Comet and Green Earth, sparking a global war.

Development

Originally, Nintendo did not plan to release Advance Wars outside Japan, believing Western players would find turn-based games too complex. To counter this, the developers simplified the mechanics and built a thorough tutorial that didn't require reading the manual. Designer Kentaro Nishimura noted that the game’s success changed Nintendo’s view of Western preferences, and this success is often cited as the reason Nintendo later brought another Intelligent Systems franchise, Fire Emblem, overseas starting with its seventh game. Advance Wars launched in North America on September 10, 2001.

Virtual Console

Its releases in Japan and Europe were postponed due to the September 11 attacks in the United States. It eventually reached Europe in January 2002, but did not appear in Japan until the 2004 compilation Game Boy Wars Advance 1+2, which also included its sequel, Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising—a game that had its original Japanese release canceled. Critics praised the game highly, and it is often listed among the greatest video games ever made. It was re-released for the Wii U Virtual Console in Europe and North America on April 3, 2014.

On April 21, 2023, a remake titled Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp, developed by WayForward, launched for the Nintendo Switch, bundling the original with its sequel. Announced at E3 2021, this compilation was released in America and Europe but not in Japan. Each mission’s goal is to defeat the enemy army. This can be done by destroying all enemy units on the map (routing the enemy) or capturing the enemy headquarters.

Gameplay

Some maps have special objectives, like capturing a set number of cities or surviving a certain number of days. Game modes include Field Training (tutorial missions), a Campaign mode that follows the story, the War Room (a set of maps for high-score challenges), multiplayer options, and a map design mode. Both Campaign and War Room modes let players earn ranks (from #100 to #1) and coins to unlock commanding officers and maps in the Battle Maps shop.

Battle system

After each battle, players also receive a separate rank based on speed (days taken), power (enemy units destroyed), and technique (percentage of surviving units). Battles are turn-based. Two to four armies, each led by a commanding officer (CO), take turns building and commanding units on grid-based maps. Actions include attacking, moving, holding ground, or capturing enemy or neutral properties such as cities, ports, airports, bases, and headquarters. All units have primary and secondary weapons that determine what they can attack.

For example, a Mech unit’s bazooka targets only land vehicles and is more powerful for that purpose than its machine guns, which it uses against other Mechs, infantry, and helicopters. Units attack either directly (adjacent to an enemy, which allows a counter-attack) or indirectly (must stay still and have an enemy in range). Damage depends on the attacker’s hit points, whether its main weapon can fire, the unit types involved, and the defender’s terrain. If attacked directly, the same factors determine the counter-attack damage.

Most units have limited ammunition for their main weapons, and they switch to secondary weapons when ammo runs out until resupplied. Terrain affects unit movement, vision, and defense. Types include roads, plains, woods, bases, headquarters, ports, cities, airports, sea, reefs, shoals, rivers, and mountains. All units except air units are affected by terrain.

Weather conditions can reduce ground units’ vision and movement. Fog of war limits a player’s vision to each unit’s line of sight, which varies by unit type. Infantry on mountains can expand vision, while woods and reefs are invisible unless a unit is adjacent to them. There are 18 different military unit types in Advance Wars.