Advance Wars

Advance Wars is a turn-based tactics video game developed for the Game Boy Advance by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo in 2001.

Advance Wars is the first game in the Advance Wars series of video games, followed by Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising and Advance Wars: Dual Strike. This trio of games is a sub-series of the Nintendo Wars set of games.

Development
In January 2001, Nintendo France gave new Game Boy Advance screenshots exclusively to French gaming sites. Amongst them were new screenshots for Game Boy Wars Advance. . At the time, very little information was given. Four player mode was confirmed before E3 2001 and with it a US release date of 10th September.

Gameplay
The objective is to defeat the enemy army. There are two ways to defeat an opponent: destroy every one of his units on the map or capture his headquarters.

Battle system
The battle system in Advance Wars is turn-based. Two or more armies, each headed by a commanding officer, take turns building and commanding units on grid-based maps. When a unit is selected, spaces around it are highlighted; this represents the unit's movement range. A unit can move to any unoccupied space that is highlighted. After moving, a command list appears with available unit commands. The default command is wait, a "no action" command which can always be used. However, if the unit is adjacent to an enemy unit (or within range of an enemy unit if the unit selected is an indirect-combat unit, such as artillery), the fire command can be used, which orders the unit to attack the target. The amount of damage done to the enemy is proportional to the number of hit points it has. Thus, a unit with 5/10 HP will do half the damage it would at 10/10 HP. This also gives a unit with more HP an edge in combat.

All units are limited in the types of units they can attack. For example, infantry can only strike land vehicles, helicopters, and other infantry. 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 those same Mech units can use against other Infantry and Mechs. All weapons, with the exception of machine guns (and the Cruiser's Anti-Air Gun), have a limited supply of ammunition.

Terrain
Each space on the battlefield contains terrain. There are several different types of terrain, including plains, forests, mountains, rivers, sea, reefs, and shoals. These terrain types differ in how effectively certain units are able to cross them, if at all. For example, vehicles cannot traverse mountains or rivers. Infantry can navigate mountains and rivers, though they move more slowly than on plains. Sea units can move around freely in seas or reefs; positioning themselves in reefs gives a small defensive bonus. Shoals are "halfway points" between land and sea; transport ships may dock at shoals to take on board units. Terrain does not affect the movement of airborne units, but they cannot receive defense bonuses from it either.

The rest of the terrain types are man-made, and include roads, bridges, and properties which in turn include cities, bases, airports, ports, and the headquarters. These properties can be captured by infantry of any army, and when they are captured their color changes to match that of its owner. Each day, a captured property generates funds for the owner, and those funds can be used to produce new units at a base, airport, or port.

Map effects
Fog of War is a term applied to maps that are covered in fog, preventing the player from seeing the entire map. Vision is limited by individual units' lines of sight, which varies from unit to unit. Some terrain types, such as mountains, offer vision bonuses to units standing on them. Cities, factories, and headquarters all have a set line of sight visible to their respective owners. Fog of War is an optional setting in multiplayer battles and can be found in certain campaign maps. Although the setting should affect all sides, only units hidden in reefs and woods are hidden from computer players. All other locations are plainly visible to the computer players, as their units habitually attack units they shouldn't be able to see.

Weather conditions can also affect gameplay. During rain, sight ranges decrease and movement costs rise for ground vehicles. Snow causes movement costs for all units to rise. In multiplayer games, weather can be set to change randomly, fixed to a specific condition, or turned off.

Units
There are 18 different types of military units in Advance Wars. Each unit has a set amount of attack power, movement range and type, and fuel supply, and most units have two weapons which can be used against different types of enemy units. Units have specific strengths and weaknesses, as well as enemy units they can and cannot fight, lending the game a distinctive Rock, Paper, Scissors feel to it.

The cheapest, most basic unit is the Infantry, and the Mech is a slightly stronger and costlier version. They are the only units capable of capturing properties. Infantry machine guns can be used against other infantry units, as well as ground vehicles and helicopters. Mechs' bazookas are much more effective against vehicles, but cannot be used against aircraft. The bazookas have limited ammunition, so Mechs carry machine guns as secondary weapons.

All other ground-based units are classified as vehicles. Tanks and the stronger Medium Tanks have a cannon for use against vehicles and ships, as well as machine guns for use against infantry, helicopters, or ground vehicles if their cannon ammunition runs out. The Artillery and the more powerful Rocket unit are Advance Wars ’ surface-to-surface indirect units. The Missile unit is a variation on the Rocket unit that is strictly surface-to-air. Indirect units may move or attack during their turn, but cannot do both. Other vehicles include the unarmed APC, which can carry one Infantry or Mech and resupply adjacent friendly units; the Recon, a lightly-armored jeep used for scouting which has a high vision range in fog of war, but is very weak against units armed with anything more than machine guns; and the Anti-Air unit, a direct combat unit that is very effective against air units and infantry.

Sea units include the Battleship, Cruiser, Lander, and Submarine. The Battleship, the most expensive unit to produce in the game, is an indirect combat naval unit with the largest firing range of any unit. The Cruiser has an anti-air gun turret and anti-submarine missiles as well as the ability to carry up to two copters for transport. Landers are simple transport boats which can carry up to two ground units. They can pick up and drop off these units at shoals and ports. Submarines are direct combat units that can attack all other naval units, and are able to conceal themselves from enemy units by diving underwater, unless an enemy unit is directly adjacent.

Air units include Fighters, Bombers, Battle Copters, and Transport Copters (abbreviated to B Copters and T Copters respectively). Fighters can only attack other air units. Bombers can attack any ground or sea unit. However, their lack of air-to-air weaponry makes them highly vulnerable against fighters. The B Copter has air-to-surface missiles, as well as a machine gun for use against other copters and infantry. The T Copter is an aerial version of the APC, with the only differences being that it is not limited in movement by terrain and that it cannot resupply adjacent friendly units.

Depending on which CO the player chooses, some unit map-sprites and most battle animation sprites will reflect the country that CO represents. A Yellow Comet CO's forces have a WWII-era Japanese feel (down to the use of Zeroes as the fighter design), a Blue Moon CO's forces are vaguely Russian, a Green Earth CO's units have a Germanic design to them, an Orange Star CO's units resemble American forces, and Black Hole COs' units have a distinctly robotic appearance. The designs (but not the colors) are consistent across army assignments: for example, a Blue Moon CO assigned to an Orange Star "slot" in a battle will have orange-colored Blue Moon styled units. These country-specific sprite differences have no effect on unit performance.

Commanding Officers
Armies are lead by Commanding Officers (COs) who control units. All COs except Andy provide units with special advantages and/or disadvantages, such as extra firepower or a longer unit range. 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 his or her CO Power, which gives a temporary positive effect to friendly units and/or a negative effect to enemy units.

There are 11 Commanding Officers that can be played, battled, and unlocked in the various game modes. These are Andy, Max, Sami, Nell, Olaf, Grit, Eagle, Drake, Kanbei, Sonja, and Sturm.

Note that in later games, additional COs were added to expand gameplay options.

Game modes
Advance Wars has a variety of gameplay modes and extra features, but not all are available from the start; some must be unlocked.

Field Training
Field Training is the main game mode that is one of only a few available from the outset. 14 missions hosted by Nell introduce the gameplay, including unit movement, battle, terrain, weather, and CO powers. On completing the final mission, the rest of the game is unlocked.

Campaign mode
The Campaign mode is the main part of the game. The Campaign mode takes place in Cosmo Land, where the Orange Star army must contend with the armies of Blue Moon, Green Earth, and Yellow Comet in a series of 20+ missions that involve branching paths based on the Orange Star CO chosen for each mission at times, and secret missions as well.

The missions in Campaign mode are objective-based, with most requiring the player to defeat all enemy forces or capture an enemy headquarters. After each mission, the player is rewarded with a Rank, from D (lowest) to S (highest). The ranks are based on three categories: Power, Technique, and Speed. Power is determined by the number of enemy units destroyed in one turn, Technique by how few of the players’ own units are destroyed, and Speed by how fast the mission is completed. When a mission is completed, the rank awarded thus determines the amount of Advance Wars coins that are rewarded. These special coins can be used to purchase maps and COs in the Battle Maps mode.

Once the Campaign mode is completed, Advance Campaign can be unlocked, which is essentially a more statistically difficult version of the standard campaign. Missions completed here yield twice as many coins as normal.

The story of the Advance Wars campaign begins with Orange Star in a war against neighboring Blue Moon. As a tactical advisor for Orange Star, the player follows the war effort through all four countries over the course of the game. In the end, 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.

War Room
Twenty preset missions outside the main story in Campaign Mode occupy War Room mode. Each mission takes place on a map against one or more enemy COs; the player may choose the COs he will use in the battle. These maps usually have no pre-deployed units, but on occasion, there can be. Some War Room maps must be unlocked first. If a mission is completed, a ranking system identical to that of Campaign Mode's is used to reward the player with mission ranks and coins. Any map can be replayed at a later time to aim for a higher rank.

Multiplayer
In Multiplayer mode, players can compete against the AI or against other human players. Gameplay is like the normal turn-based missions in the Campaign and War Room, but no coins or ranks are awarded. Multiplayer matches feature a variety of settings that can be changed pre-battle. These include weather conditions; the option to enable or disable Fog of War; how much money each captured property yields each turn; and other options. There are over 100 maps available for multiplayer matches (many of which must be unlocked by spending coins at the Battle Maps mode), and up to 11 COs are available for each player to choose from.

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 person will take their turn, then pass the system to the next person. 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.

Battle Maps
Here, all the coins earned in the Campaign and War Room modes can be used to buy Multiplayer maps and COs.