Overview
If you had a Gameboy Advance you probably had or played Advance Wars 1 or 2. Developed by Intelligent Systems, the Nintendo-affiliated developer responsible for it's sister series, Fire Emblem, this game series absolutely ruled. The series got it's start as Famicom Wars, but like Fire Emblem we didn't get any of the original games in the West until the Gameboy Advance. The original Famicom Wars would be extremely familiar to fans of the Gameboy Advance and Nintendo DS series, however features such as Co Powers or building units in captured factories as well as map design not quite up to the snuff of the later games makes the original a bit difficult to adjust to, even if one did find a translation patch.
The Gameboy Advance Games
Replaying the original Advance Wars, it really is amazing how pure and fun this game is. The graphics are honestly some of my favorite seen on a Nintendo Console. The GBA really pumped out some beautiful color. When a unit initiates an attack, we're brought into a quick vignette of the two units hashing it out, with each army, represented by a distinct color distinguished by completely different sprites for each army. Each Army has all the basic units available to them, but the artwork flavor provides a really neat distinction which you really just don't see very often in games from this era.
The gameplay is quite similar to Fire Emblem, but with a few twists that really distinguish the two. Fire Emblem is at it's core a roleplaying game, with unique units and leveling and equipping characters. Advance Wars has nothing of the sort, but in it's stead we have a table of units that are far more distinct than Fire Emblems. The game is still basically Rock / Papper / Scissors, but with more options and potential threats to account for, air units, tanks of varying sizes, artillery, recon, submarines and naval units, etc. Also, rather than simply eliminating the enemy units, there is a currency system managed by how many cities a player controls. A player with more cities and bases can produce a larger army, and so the player must strategize which targets they must hold. You can starve an enemy army out by fortifying bases, or you could attempt to move an infantry into the enemys HQ to capture. Additionally each Army is controlled by a commanding officer and each has a unique power it can initiate when a bar is filled as well as different passive abilities. One CO can capture cities quicker, while another can increase the range of his artillery.
The second game, Black Hole Rising is much of the same. The single player campaign offers a bit more variety with some more unique mission structure, and a rather unneeded Neo Tank (it's the large tank, but larger!). This game really seems like the peak of the franchise to me though, more COs to choose from and the War Room where you can play single missions purchased with currency from wins in the campaign. There were so many maps to choose from (and many were rebalanced Famicom Wars levels!) and I spent hours and hours playing these and trying to S Rank them all in mom and dads car as a middle schooler.
Also the music was pretty dope, despite GBA sound not being the best.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Okp_A6aSdtU&list=PLhHcMbVmbwCcT5_HiVvjtkkTPtG-M0Bc_
The DS Games
The DS games on the other hand, are a bit more flawed if you ask me. The absolutely beautiful GBA graphics were kind of destroyed in the transition to Dual Strike (the first DS game). They went with this strange skewing of the map to try and make it look a bit fancier, and a lot of the new COs seemed to be drawn in an entirely different style from the previous games. They also stretched and skewed the sprites in the battle vignettes to make it look more 3D. I'm not sure if there was a different artist or art team working on this one or what, but something changed. I also was not a fan of Dual Strikes top map, a feature utilizing the Dual Screen where air units could be sent up to high altitudes to fight on a second map where land units couldn't take them down. It felt a little forced and just threw off the balance of the original game if you ask me.
Advance Wars 1 and Black Hole Rising had absolutely stunning map graphics. It's simple but beautiful.
The DS doing this weird Mode 7 thing where they skew the maps (this screenshot isn't of the highest fidelity so it's a bit unfair to compare the two side to side, but this was the best I could surface).
This is not an improvement! (sorry for the dark screenshot, again I was struggling to find good Dual Strike screenshots).
Days of Ruin was perhaps the most bizarre of the four. For whatever reason they decided that this colorful game needed a gritty reboot, so they created a whole new world that was dark and apocalyptic. The funny thing is, a lot of the art in this game looked pretty good, but it just wasn't Advance Wars. [strike]Another odd thing I noticed looking back, they decided to turn all the sprites to give it a 3D look. I think they're kinda nice looking, but i'd still take the old classic sprites any day.[/strike] EDIT: whoops, users have pointed out the isometric sprites are only featured on zoom-in, so points to Days of Ruin on this one! The gameplay was way better than Dual Strike and seemed to reign it back in a bit, but I just couldn't get over the grittiness. My nitpicking aside, this was still a fantastic game and I'd still happily take a Days of Ruin sequel over what we got though, nothing.
They also did that weird 3D thing again, although it looked a bit better in DoR.
The Gamecube and Wii
These weren't developed by Intelligent Systems and don't exist.
The Future Of The Series
We haven't really heard anything about Advance Wars since then, and now that Intelligent Systems is making that $$$ with Fire Emblem, I don't know if we're going to see an actual Advance Wars anytime soon. Maybe they could hand it off to a different developer!
One ray of hope, the Nintendo Switch has an Advance Wars-like on the way, Wargroove by Chucklefish. The game has a medieval theme but seems to ape Advance Wars in every way, and looks just as beautiful. This is gonna be a day 1 for me.
knee;252581181 said:
Wow, this looks pretty fascinating too!
