Advance Wars is a turn-based strategy video game developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy Advance. It is the seventh title in the Wars series of video games, and the first in the Advance Wars sub-series. The game takes place on a fictional continent, where two nations, Orange Star and Blue Moon, have been fighting each other for years. The conflict enters a new stage when an Orange Star commanding officer named Andy is accused of attacking the armies of two other nations, Yellow Comet and Green Earth, without reason, resulting in a worldwide war.
As with previous Wars titles, Advance Wars was not originally intended for release outside Japan, due to Nintendo feeling that Western consumers would not be interested in turn-based games because of their complex mechanics. In order to alleviate this, the developers made the mechanics easy to understand, adding in an in-depth tutorial that did not require players to read the manual. Designer Kentaro Nishimura commented that the game's success shifted Nintendo's attitude over Western tastes , and that same success is frequently credited as a driving force for Nintendo bringing another Intelligent Systems franchise, Fire Emblem, outside of Japan beginning with the seventh installment.
Advance Wars was released in North America on September 10, 2001. Its release in Japan and Europe was delayed due to the release date in connections with the September 11 attacks in the United States. Although eventually released in Europe in January 2002, it would not be released in Japan until the Game Boy Wars Advance 1+2 compilation in 2004 alongside its sequel Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising, whose original Japanese release was cancelled. The game received critical acclaim from critics and has been declared as one of the greatest video games ever made. Advance Wars has been re-released for the Wii U Virtual Console simultaneously in Europe and North America on April 3, 2014. On April 21, 2023, the title was remade for the Nintendo Switch alongside its sequel Black Hole Rising in a compilation developed by WayForward titled Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp, which was announced by Nintendo at E3 2021. It was released in America and Europe, but not Japan.
Gameplay 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.
Terrain The terrain on a map affects unit movement, vision, and the defense attribute of units stationed in the terrain. The different types of terrain include: roads, plains, woods, bases, HQs (Headquarters), ports, cities, airports, the sea, reefs, shoals, rivers, and mountains. All units are affected by terrain, except air units, which gain neither an advantage or a disadvantage as a result. Weather conditions, when active, can affect the vision and movement of ground units, while fog of war, when active, can reduce a player's vision, making them depend on individual units' lines of sight, which varies from unit to unit; infantry can expand the vision when in mountains, while woods and reefs cannot be seen into unless a unit is adjacent (next) to it.
Units There are 18 different types of military units in Advance Wars. Each unit has a set amount of attack power, vision range in fog of war, movement range and type, and fuel supply. Some units are equipped with two weapons, which can be used against different types of enemy units. There are both direct and indirect attack units, as well as unarmed transport units. All the units are either infantry, vehicles, ships, or air units. Units have specific strengths and weaknesses. One rule of thumb that units have to adhere to is that a portion of their fuel supply is used up each turn; ground units who run out cannot move, while air and naval units who run out are destroyed as they consume fuel even when stationary. Submarines consume more fuel than usual when submerged.
Multiplayer In Multiplayer mode, players can compete against the AI or against other human players. Multiplayer matches feature a variety of settings that can be changed pre-battle. Multiplayer comes in two forms: Versus mode and Link mode. In Versus mode, only one GBA system is used, which every participant in the game uses. One player will take their turn, then pass the system to the next. Link mode is the same game as Versus mode gameplay-wise, but multiple consoles are used, one for each person. It can be played with just one game pak or with one game pak per player.
Commanding officers Armies are led by COs, who control units. Most COs provide units with innate special advantages and disadvantages, such as extra firepower, greater strength, or a shorter firing range, with some COs being better with specific units (e.g. being better with air units than naval units). COs also have a Power Meter which fills up by defeating enemy units or when on the receiving end of a brutal offensive attack. When the meter is full, a CO can unleash their "CO Power", which gives a temporary positive effect to friendly units and/or a negative effect to enemy units. For example, Nell gives a Critical Strike bonus to her units and Olaf makes it snow, limiting the movement range of his opponent.
Plot 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.
Development Advance Wars was first announced at Nintendo Space World 2000 under the name Game Boy Wars Advance. In January 2001, Nintendo France gave new screenshots from this and other Game Boy Advance games to French gaming sites with little other information. It was developed by Intelligent Systems, and eventually published by Nintendo. Four player mode was confirmed before E3 2001 and with it a US release date of September 10. Game Boy Wars Advance was originally scheduled for an October 12, 2001 release in Japan, but it was canceled in order to avoid competition with Game Boy Wars 3 (released for the Game Boy Color that same year). It was eventually released in a two-in-one compilation in 2004 with its sequel, Game Boy Wars Advance 2.