GBA

Advance Wars

The first Western release of Nintendo's long-running Wars series introduces turn-based tactical combat with charming CO units. Features 114 maps across Campaign, Versus, and Design modes with deep fog-of-war mechanics.

Release Date
January 1, 2001
Publisher
Intelligent Systems
Players
1
Region
US

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Story

The story of the Advance Wars begins in the "Field Training" tutorial mode, with the nation of Orange Star in a war against the neighboring nation of Blue Moon, with Olaf as the Blue Moon Army commanding officer (CO). Olaf suddenly ordered an invasion of the Orange Star nation and is in battle with the Orange Star Army. The campaign continues the story that started in the tutorial. Nell, the de facto leader of the Orange Star COs, gives the player the duty of a tactical advisor for the Orange Star Army.

The player follows the war effort through all four countries, with its own COs, over the course of the game. Starting with having only one choice of a CO to advise, Andy, the player will have a choice of two more Orange Star COs, Max and Sami, to advise as the story progresses, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. Depending on which CO is chosen by the player to advise, there are times when a mission is split into a choice of two or three, where the maps and dialog could be different. After completing that mission, the story paths could split up, depending on which CO was chosen in that previous mission, with the story differing from the other path, eventually leading back to the main path.

After winning a battle against Green Earth, Andy gets mysteriously accused by Green Earth's CO, Eagle, of committing a treacherous act of aggression against Green Earth. After defeating the Blue Moon troops that invaded the Orange Star country, the Orange Star Army then invade the Blue Moon country, defeating their troops. The Blue Moon COs, Olaf and Grit, are revealed to be COs who both used to work for the Orange Star Army, but switched to Blue Moon. When the Orange Star Army's intention was to just pass through the other two countries, Green Earth and Yellow Comet, the countries' COs like Kanbei of Yellow Comet assume a threat of an invasion and declare battles against the Orange Star Army in their land.

Later on, Green Earth CO Drake tells Eagle that the Orange Star Army did not attack Green Earth, saying that "This entire conflict has been orchestrated from the beginning". Meanwhile, Yellow Comet CO Sonja and Grit try to discover the person who is really behind the attacks. When Eagle meets Andy again, Eagle again accuses Andy of attacking Green Earth, to which the Orange Star COs eventually convince Eagle that it was not Andy who attacked Green Earth. This explains why the three nations have been declaring battles against Orange Star, as they thought Andy attacked them first.

When Eagle meets Sonja, Sonja also tells Eagle that Andy was not behind the attacks, saying it was someone else, and goes with her to see what she discovered. It is revealed that the enigmatic Black Hole Army, under the command of Sturm, is the true enemy. Using a CO doppelganger clone of Andy, Sturm stirred up war among the four countries in order to confuse, weaken, and eventually conquer them. Once this is revealed, the four countries unite to drive Black Hole out of their land, the Cosmo Land, with COs automatically chosen depending on the paths the player took during the game.

Gameplay Systems

The objective in each mission is to defeat the enemy army. There are two ways to defeat an opponent: destroy every one of the opponent's units on the map, known as routing the enemy, or capture the opponent's headquarters. However, some maps have specific objectives, such as capturing a certain number of cities to claim victory or survive a set number of days. The available modes of play include "Field Training" which offers tutorial missions, a campaign mode which carries the game's storyline, the "War Room" which is a collection of maps on which the player strives for high scores, as well as multiplayer modes and a map design mode.

The "Campaign" and "War Room" modes both help to rank the player up (from Rank #100 to Rank #1) and to earn coins to unlock COs and maps in the "Battle Maps" shop. The modes also gives the player an additional rank for effort after winning a battle on that map, which assesses the player's speed, power, and technique in that battle; speed being the number of days spent trying to win the battle, power being how many enemy units were defeated, and technique is the number of the player's units that survived (in percentage). Battle system The battles of Advance Wars are turn-based . Two to four armies, each headed by a CO (commanding officer), take turns building and commanding units on grid-based maps, while attacking enemy units, moving positions, holding ground, or capturing enemy/neutral properties (cities, ports, airports, bases, or HQ).

All units are limited in the types of units they can attack. What dictates a unit's ability to attack different targets are its primary and secondary weapons. For example, the Mech unit has a bazooka that can only be fired at land vehicles, but are more powerful for that purpose than their secondary weapons, machine guns, which Mechs can use against other Mechs, infantry , and helicopters . Units that can attack do so either directly (can attack adjacent to another unit where standing or moved, but will be counter-attacked by the enemy unit), or indirectly (must remain still to attack, and have an enemy in firing range).

The amount of damage done by a unit to an enemy unit in combat comes down to a number of factors: the number of hit points the attacker has, whether they can fire their main weapon (if not, they either cannot attack or will use their secondary weapon instead), the type of unit the attacker and the defender are, and the terrain the enemy unit is on; by contrast, if the enemy unit is directly attacked, the same factors determine the damage done when they counter-attack the attacking unit. The majority of units have main weapons with a limited supply of ammunition, with the amount of ammo depending on the type of unit. Units with secondary weapons will resort to these when their primary weapon's ammunition runs out until they are resupplied.

Media Reviews

IGN
9.9/10
GameSpot
9.1/10
Edge
2001
Eurogamer
10/10
Game Informer
9.25/10
Electronic Gaming Monthly
7.5/10
Nintendo Power
5/5

About Advance Wars

Advance Wars is a classic video game released for the Game Boy Advance on January 1, 2001. Developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Intelligent Systems, this title has become a beloved entry in the retro gaming library.

This wiki entry provides comprehensive information about Advance Wars, including release details, gameplay information, and story synopsis. Whether you're looking to revisit a childhood favorite or discover classic games for the first time, Emulator Games Wiki has you covered.

Some information sourced from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 3.0.