Collection essentials #513-#514: Advance Wars (GBA) and Advance Wars 2 (GBA)

In 1988, Intelligent Systems, close partners with Nintendo, released a turn-based strategy game called Famicom Wars for said Famicom. It received critical acclaim and spawned a series. Game Boy Wars would follow in 1990, and then Super Famicom Wars in 1998, both for the systems in the title. And Hudson Soft developed two sequels to Game Boy Wars as well. Sadly, none of these games were released anywhere outside of Japan, as it was probably assumed that turn-based strategy wouldn’t catch on with American kids due to complexity or what have you. But at the turn of the new millennium and with a hot new handheld, Intelligent Systems decided to give the series a fresh reboot and also bring it to the rest of the world at the same time. The tradition of naming the game after the system continued, as this new Game Boy Advance Entry would be called “Advance Wars”.

In a game of Advance Wars, your goal is to either capture the enemy’s headquarters or wipe out all of their units to achieve victory. Typically, you won’t start with an army, but you will start with a few buildings under your control, including one or more factories which can be used to build units. At the start of each turn, you’ll get a certain amount of money depending on how many buildings you control. The goal at the start of the game is always going to be to “build” footsoldier units and use them to capture more buildings (whether they be neutral or under enemy control). Once you’ve captured some, you’ll have a good amount of money to spend on powerful units that can do a lot of damage, as footsoldiers are quite limited in what they can do in combat. 

There are many factors in a game of Advance Wars that have to be considered, leading to a game that really does require and reward good strategy. There aren’t a huge number of different units you can build, but there’s still plenty of choice so that you really have to think about what’s needed in each situation. A lot of times building a lot of low-cost units that can still be relatively effective in battle is the best strategy, but occasionally investing a lot of money into one powerful unit can be worth it. There are also units that attack from a distance, with the stipulation that they cannot both move and attack in the same turn so they must be well-positioned. Some maps have airports and/or docks, which give you a variety of planes and ships that you can build too. Some factors like terrain and weather affect unit performance, putting some units at a bigger advantage or disadvantage than others. Some matches involve “fog of war” which greatly changes everything because you won’t be able to see enemy units unless they’re in the vision range for one of your units, and different units have different ranges of vision.

Advance Wars features various characters who serve as commanding officers, or “COs” for short. You’ll be playing with one CO in each battle. All of them have their own strengths and weaknesses, such as Max who is strong in close-quarters combat but has poor indirect combat units, and Grit who is basically the inverse. But what’s extra cool about COs is that they each have a unique “CO Power”. As a battle progresses and units fight, they have a power meter which will slowly build, sort of like a “special meter” in a fighting game. When it’s full, they can activate their power which can potentially have a huge effect on the game. Examples of CO Powers include Andy’s which repairs some damage on all his units, or Olaf’s which changes the weather to snow which hinders enemy units but not his own. These powers really add a lot of spice to this game and can give an explosive way for players to get back in the game when they’re behind. 

Advance Wars features a few different modes. There’s the campaign, which is a nice way to be introduced to the game, easing the player in with a series of missions that slowly increase in difficulty and complexity as the game’s characters meet and clash with each other. There’s the “War Room”, which provides a whole bunch of extra challenges to try and beat, with a high score board incentivizing players to replay the maps for the strongest victory possible. There’s a map maker, which lets players create their own custom battlefield. And of course, there’s arguably the most important mode, which is multiplayer. Up to four players can compete in the same battle. And this makes for a perfect portable handheld title due to the turn-based gameplay, because you don’t need a link cable and can simply pass around the same Game Boy Advance as players take their turns.

Advance Wars 2, which came out two years later, is largely more of the same. But as you’d hope for in a video game sequel, everything is bigger and better. The campaign of Advance Wars 2 is much more fleshed out and memorable. The cast of COs is larger, especially thanks to a series of new villains. It’s perhaps surprising that there’s only one brand new unit that you can build, so that’s a slight disappointment. But the biggest change in Advance Wars 2 is that COs now have two different powers they can use. Once the power meter reaches a certain point midway up, they can use a basic CO power. But if it’s allowed to keep building, then the player will have the option to use a much stronger Super CO Power. This doesn’t sound like a huge change, but it makes a bigger impact than you’d think and makes the game even more fun.

It’s easy for strategy games like this, due to their complicated nature, to be overly daunting for new players. Advance Wars succeeds in part because it manages to be accessible. It’s fairly easy to grasp how the game works and to try it out, and it also manages to be complex enough and deep enough to make players stay once they’re familiar with it. The quality graphics and audio add to the appeal, and some of the songs will get stuck in your head.

An interesting thing to note is that Advance Wars is not especially balanced. Some COs are definitely more powerful than others. However, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Even when COs are stronger, the layout of a given map can also affect the balance. And when playing against a newer player, you have the ability to give them an advantageous CO and position so they’re not so mismatched due to their inexperience.

Advance Wars 1’s release was unfortunately not timed very well. It hit store shelves in America on…September 10th, 2001. Yikes. Well, actually, it would have been even worse had it been scheduled for just a little bit later than that, because at that point it hadn’t yet been released in Europe or Japan, and its release in those territories was supposedly delayed because of the terrorist attacks and the apparent poor taste of releasing a game about war so soon afterward. Still, despite the bad timing, Advance Wars was a success, garnering high critical acclaim (tied for the 5th-highest Metacritic score among GBA games) and respectable sales. The second game saw similar success. 

As I said in my previous post, 2001 was the year I finally got a subscription to my first gaming magazine, so I learned about Advance Wars back then and read some of its glowing reviews. I was interested in it, but unfortunately as a young teen I couldn’t afford to get every cool new game that I read about, so it would take some time before I would actually play this series. It was actually the third Advance Wars game that I first tried (stay tuned for a future post), but I put it down for a few years after struggling in the campaign. It wasn’t until 2011 that I decided to really go all in with Advance Wars starting with these two games. And I fell in love with them! I got totally hooked, and it became one of my favorite gaming series of all-time.

Nowadays, Advance Wars 1 feels a tad obsolete, though it’s a solid choice for new players who need to learn the ropes. Advance Wars 2, on the other hand, is incredibly good and well worth your time if you’re open to trying a strategy game. Both these games were remade in one package on the Nintendo Switch, and that remake isn’t a bad way to get into the series, but it has some drawbacks, including the baffling inability to suspend a multiplayer game if you want to pick it back up another day. 

Advance Wars 1 and 2 are shining staples of the Game Boy Advance library, among the best it has to offer. They’re so good that even people who don’t usually play strategy games are known to like them. Often when I try to play some other strategy game, I grow disinterested quickly, thinking that “I could just play more Advance Wars instead of trying to learn this. What’s the point?” If you ever wanna play against me, let me know and we’ll make it happen, and if you don’t know how to play then I’ll teach you. These are the only non-RPG strategy games I need, and the only ones which are quintessential essentials.