Why am I making another post about revisiting the past? Well let me tell you my dear questioner. I was recently looking through Youtube and then a sudden idea came to me, to look for the official sound tracks (OST) for Advance Wars!!! And yes, I searched, I heard, and I downloaded. And looking back, I invested a lot of time on this game, a few years back. So, doing what enthusiasts do, I looked up on the game (never did this much a few years ago).
Apparently Advance Wars was supposed to be for only Japan!! The game was also to feature a retro look to appeal to younger audiences. The reason that it was at first only meant for Japan was because the producers thought that turn-based games weren't really popular outside of Japan and that the game mechanics would be to hard to understand. The developers managed to make the game easy to understand and also made it possible that you wouldn't have to read the manual to grasp the mechanics of the game. The testing of the game (as I read it in Wikipedia) would go on until eventually someone would ask why isn't this released already. The US
marketing division for Nintendo played the game and found it great, wondering why they
couldn't sell it in the US, so I guess it was kinda thanks to these guys the game got out. Advance Wars was a huge success and also changed the opinion of the designer Kentaro Nishimura over western tastes. The game had an average rating of 9, a very high rating for a GBA game!!!
Aside from the brief history of the game, I'll just get to the screen shots of the game, I never played the first one on the Gameboy, I did however play both on the emulator and play the second installment Advance Wars Black Hole Rising on the Gameboy briefly.
The Difference between the 2 games, as you can see even the font for the first game was more, well, trendy...
The way you move units or even the look hasn't changed much, and each unit having specific movement ranges, the infantry having 4 spaces while the tank above has a movement range of 7. The terrain also limits the movement of certain units, the river and moutains allowing only Infantry and Mechanized Units (Mechs) to move across. Air units, the second picture shown above, are of course not limited by terrain, Battle Copters (B Copters) having a movement of 6.
And speaking of Infantry Units, some shots of them taking shots!! Muahahahaha!!! Not really funny, but the Infantry Unit firing on enemy Infantry, who are apparently capturing a city, how dare they, I was gonna make that my own!! And also it takes 2 days in-game time to capture a city or property, as shown on the "Cap" mark at the lower right corner. It also depends on the capturing unit's health, at full health, 2 days!!
And speaking of capturing cities!!! You capture to acquire additional funds, to allow you to produce units from factories. Though I did not take any screen shots of those... The capturing animation is an Infantry stomping on the city, has not changed in all 3 games.
Now let's move on to them Tanks and Artillery here!! Tanks being stronger than Infantry (Duh~) and Mechs (depending on who attacks first though). They also deal better damage to other mechanical units like Artillery for instance. Hohoho, smashing those weak Artillery units!! (as shown in the above picture). Artillery units attack in a form called "indirect fire" so they suffer no chance of being counter attacked while attacking, however, they fail miserably at "direct combat". The range of the Artillery units can be shown, and as you can see, 3 spaces!! But there are other "indirect fire" units which are not shown here for those who have yet to try this awesome game, you'll have to find out yourself!!
When you finish off units, they go poof, the picture above shows Mechs completely taking out an APC, and poof, it goes up in smoke.
And if you noticed on the screen shots of when the red forces are attacking, the facial expressions of the CO changes, in this case, she smiles, and if you destroy a unit, she laughs, not really the kind of attitude you use in war but just to make the game look a little cheerful, yeah? However, when you are attacked, and the enemy dealing more damage, her face changes to that scared look, while the other guy looks happy. They also show a percentage of damage you will deal to the enemy, as shown above 61% means the attacking unit will lower the enemy's hit points by 6. The facial expression "thingy" was removed in the second game however, and just to show you that I'm not lying : 
"Imma launch ma missiles, you scared brah?" Expressionless... NEXT PICTURE!!
"Yo life went down by 3, you scared now?" Still not an expression to be seen, hmmmm, ALL OUT!!
"Not a Tank in ma sights, weep now!!" And the CO just stared his same dull stare, Poker face, you're doing it right...
Not gonna miss a picture on Tanks can we now, so just some Tanks taking out Anti-Air Units, nothing big really, I mean, they're just Anti-Air Units that have unparalleled power against air units and Infantry, nothing to weep about, right?
And last of all, the Super CO Power, the picture shows you the pure awesomeness of the CO!! The ability of the Super CO Power however is only available after the first game, you just have CO Power in the first but I didn't take any screen shots. All your units get boosted firepower and other benefits as well. Just to clarify, the 2 pictures above show the initiation of the CO I was using, Sensei's Super CO Power, however the bonuses, the flashing lights there, affect the enemies units cause I took a screen shot of his Power, so 2 different COs using their powers.
This game was really nostalgic, I actually came across it while looking at the top GBA games a few years back. It was great times, cause this game could be played on multiplayer with only 1 Gameboy!! However, you will spend if not hours on this game, trying to beat the other player, especially if the other player is human. You basically use different Commanding Officers (COs) each one having different abilities. I played the third one on the Nintendo DS, and of course the graphics were much better, and they also returned a few other features such as the facial expressions of the COs when taking out enemies, which was removed in the second game.
So anyway, just my little post for such an awesome game. That's all!!
Farid
The first one was as they said retro, the second however had a more serious tone, in my opinion, the third a combination of both.I'm wasn't really a fan of turn-based games before, but this was one of the few exceptions that I actually spent hours on just trying to finish, really spectacular game made by the designers.The thing I remember the most about the game is the unique theme for each CO, some having cool themes while others of some other genre. How'd the guy come up with those awesome themes?!?
So anyway, just my little post for such an awesome game. That's all!!
Farid
