Advance Wars (series)

Nintendo Wars|ファミコンウォーズ|Famicom Wars is a series of military turn-based and real-time strategy video games (See wargame), developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo. The series debuted in Japan on August 12, 1988. It debuted two years prior to its little brother series Fire Emblem (released on April 20, 1990), and this interval is true for both Japan and the U.S. (2001 and 2003 respectively) Like Fire Emblem, most games in the series were released only in Japan; Advance Wars (2001) was the first to reach the North American and European markets. Advance Wars, known in Japan as Game Boy Wars Advance, was not released in Japan before the Game Boy Wars Advance 1+2 compilation (consequently, neither was its sequel, Game Boy Wars Advance 2). The English version was released in North America on September 9th, 2001.

In 2005, Advance Wars: Dual Strike was released on the Nintendo DS platform, which follows the basic form of its predecessors; and Battalion Wars on the Nintendo GameCube, which is a 3D action real-time strategy game.

Gameplay
The player takes the role of Commanding Officer (CO) in an army, usually of a country called Red Star (Orange Star in Western releases). In the single-player campaign of the Advance Wars games, each level consists of a new map and opposing CO to defeat. Victory is achieved when all of the opponent's units have been destroyed, their HQ is captured, or another (usually mentioned) victory condition has been applied.

Players take turns to use their army units, each of which may be used once per turn. Resources available include infantry, tanks, artillery, rockets, and many other military units. At the beginning of each turn, players receive an amount of money based on how many cities or bases they currently hold, which can be spent in factories to build new units. However, each factory can be used for deployment only once per turn, since the newly deployed unit cannot be moved and would block the factory's exit. Also, in all installments of the Nintendo Wars series before Advance Wars, the factories had to be near the HQ to be used for deployment.

Multi-player mode is an important part of the Nintendo Wars series. This allows players to compete against friends, each choosing a Commanding Officer to play and country to represent. The Advance Wars series of games along with the far lesser known Game Boy Wars 3 include map editors, giving infinite replayability.

Unreleased

 * 64 Wars was under development for the Nintendo 64, but was cancelled before its release.