Advance Wars went on sale in America in the same week as the 11 September attacks. Edge later wrote that “perhaps the most non-threatening wargame ever”, a game of cheerful cartoon tanks and big-eyed commanders, “became bizarrely caught up in one of the most serious moments in recent world history”. Nintendo of Europe held it back. “Given the recent tragic events in the US,” the company told Edge, “we decided it was not an appropriate time to release a game of that title.” By the time British players got it in 2002, Edge had already given it nine out of ten and called it “the game GBA was made for”.
It was the first game in Intelligent Systems’ Wars series to leave Japan, and it was not supposed to. Nintendo’s director Kentaro Nishimura told Edge that when he joined the company he was told turn-based games “would never be successful abroad”.
Fast facts
- Developer: Intelligent Systems. Publisher: Nintendo.
- Directors: Kentaro Nishimura for Nintendo and Makoto Shimojo for Intelligent Systems, as Edge reported.
- Platform: Game Boy Advance.
- Released: North America, September 2001; Britain, early 2002; Japan, November 2004, in Game Boy Wars Advance 1+2.
- Series: the Wars games, which began with Famicom Wars (1988) on the NES.
- Units: 18 kinds of land, air and sea unit.
Making a wargame approachable
The series was already old. Intelligent Systems had set red and blue armies against each other on a map of squares in Famicom Wars in 1988, followed by Game Boy Wars and Super Famicom Wars, none of them released abroad. Edge’s review called Advance Wars “an update of the Japan-only Game Boy Wars”, and Edge later counted six earlier games, all Japanese.
It began, Nishimura said, while Nintendo was working on the launch games for the Game Boy Advance and was “already too busy”, so it asked Intelligent Systems to share the work. Shimojo said the team aimed its pop look, “the bright colours and rounded characters”, at the young children it expected to own a GBA. “Of course, when we got feedback from the game we discovered that it had sold mostly to teenage boys.” The team were not wargame enthusiasts, he added. They loved Beatmania, shoot-’em-ups and fighting games, and they borrowed from them: a shoot-’em-up fan made moving a unit feel free of stress, and the music-game fans worked on the rhythm of moving one unit after another.
Since nobody planned to sell it abroad, Nishimura explained, the team simply tried to make the game easy to learn, with a tutorial good enough that “people didn’t need to read the manual”. That tutorial runs to 13 missions, plus one more, before the rest of the game opens up.
How it plays
Each battle is a single map of plains, woods, mountains, rivers and towns. Two armies take turns to move. Units have fixed movement and attack ranges, terrain changes what they can see and how fast they move, and every vehicle needs fuel and ammunition. Edge explained the catch: a unit that runs out of shells is far less effective, but one that runs out of fuel is removed from the game entirely, which makes aircraft, with their thirst for fuel, the most precious units on the map. Supply trucks, the APCs, ferry fuel and ammunition about. Captured cities raise income, and income builds new units at factories. Most battles are won by wiping out the enemy or capturing its headquarters.
The commanding officers are what Edge, looking back in 2013, saw as the game’s main addition to the series: CO Powers, special abilities that “steadily charge with time and through attacks”. Nintendo Power Advance counted ten COs in the campaign, each with strengths, weaknesses and a power of their own:
| Commander | Strength | CO Power |
|---|---|---|
| Andy | Balanced, a mechanic | Hyper Repair: restores damaged units |
| Max | Close combat; weak at long range | Max Force: boosts direct-combat units |
| Sami | Infantry move further and capture faster | Double Time: extra movement for infantry and mechs |
| Olaf | Unhindered by snow | Blizzard: snow slows the enemy |
| Grit | Long-range guns; weak in close combat | Sniper: more range and power for indirect units |
| Eagle | Air units | Lightning Strike |
| Drake | Naval units; weak in the air | Tsunami: a wave damages every enemy unit |
Kanbei and Sonja complete the line-up, and Nell, who does not fight in the campaign, can be unlocked in the game’s Battle Maps shop. Edge thought the powers well judged: “crucial, but not game-changers”.
Beyond the campaign there were more than 100 maps to play, a shop for unlocking more, a map editor and a battery to save long battles. Two players could pass one Game Boy Advance back and forth, and up to four could play on linked machines, each with a cartridge. One Edge reader wrote in 2002 that a two-player game against a professor of military history ended with the professor recommending it to his students.
Reception
Edge gave it nine out of ten and wrote that it “beautifully encapsulates the essence of the TBS [turn-based strategy], and in so doing removes any of the peripheral complexity that can unnecessarily bog down more expansive titles”. In 2002 the magazine named Nintendo its developer of the year, counting Intelligent Systems as part of Nintendo’s in-house talent, for “the brilliant Advance Wars” and Mario Kart: Super Circuit. Its 2013 retrospective was firmer still: “Advance Wars would never be improved upon, though we suspected it.”
Later games
Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising (2003) followed on the GBA, and Edge’s Trigger Happy column found it “not quite as beautifully pure a success as its predecessor”. The DS brought Advance Wars: Dual Strike (2005) and Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (2008). Japan finally received the first two games together in November 2004, as Game Boy Wars Advance 1+2.
The series returned in 2023 with Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp, a remake of the first two games for the Nintendo Switch by WayForward. Its history repeated itself. Due in April 2022, it was postponed in March that year, Nintendo said, “in light of recent world events”, which the press took to mean Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It came out on 21 April 2023.
Sources
- Edge issue 104, December 2001, p. 13 (Nintendo of Europe’s delay of the European release and its spokesman’s explanation) and p. 63 (review: an update of Game Boy Wars; $40; US and UK release; the tutorial; 18 units; fuel and ammunition; more than 100 maps; Design Maps; battery back-up; nine out of ten).
- Edge issue 110, May 2002, p. 52: Developer of the Year award to Nintendo, with Intelligent Systems.
- Edge issue 111, June 2002, p. 92: reader’s letter on a game against a professor of military history.
- Edge issue 127, September 2003, p. 23: Trigger Happy column on Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising.
- Edge issue 149, May 2005, pp. 89–92: “The Making of… Advance Wars” (Nishimura and Shimojo on the project’s start, the target audience, the team’s tastes and the tutorial; the US release on 11 September 2001, the delayed UK release and Game Boy Wars Advance 1+2 in Japan in November 2004).
- Edge issue 258, October 2013, p. 78: retrospective (six earlier Japan-only games; CO Powers; Andy’s repairs and Sami’s Double Time; “would never be improved upon”; Dual Strike and Days of Ruin).
- Nintendo Power Advance issue 2, 2001, pp. 37–39: guide (the ten campaign COs and their powers; Nell; Battle Maps, Design Maps and multiplayer).
- Electronic Gaming Monthly issue 195, September 2005, p. 12: Advance Wars: Dual Strike for the Nintendo DS.
- See Intelligent Systems and its sources for Famicom Wars (1988) and its successors.
- NME, “Advance Wars remake delayed by Nintendo due to ‘recent world events’”, 9 March 2022 (web, secondary): Nintendo’s statement. https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/advance-wars-remake-delayed-by-nintendo-due-to-recent-world-events-3179072
- Nintendo Life, “Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp is deploying on Switch this April”, 8 February 2023, and Shacknews, 8 February 2023 (web, secondary): the release date of 21 April 2023, WayForward, and the delay linked to the invasion of Ukraine. https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/02/advance-wars-1plus2-re-boot-camp-is-deploying-on-switch-this-april
- Wikipedia, “Advance Wars” (web, secondary): the European release in January 2002 and Days of Ruin in 2008. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_Wars