Advance Wars series
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The Advance Wars series is a series of three turn-based strategy games. These three games also fall under the larger Nintendo Wars series of video games. However, besides the three games in the Advance Wars series, none of the games in Nintendo Wars have been released in the United States; only in Japan.
The three Advance Wars games are:
- Advance Wars (2001, Game Boy Advance)
- Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising (2003, Game Boy Advance)
- Advance Wars: Dual Strike (2005, Nintendo DS)
The title Advance Wars comes from the name of the system the Game Boy Advance (although the third game is for the Nintendo DS, not the GBA). In Japan, the first two games are in the Game Boy Wars series, and entitled Game Boy Wars Advance. Advance Wars: Dual Strike is Famicom Wars DS in Japan.
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[edit] Gameplay
In the Advance Wars games, players engage each other as Commanding Officers in a turn-based battle system. The game takes place in the near future, with available units including infantry, several tanks, as well as naval ships and air-based units.
Among the games' several dozen Commanding Officers (COs), each CO has various strengths and weaknesses. Max of the Orange Star Army, for example, excels offensively with Tanks, but his long-range combat suffers. Each CO also has a CO Power, and a Super CO Power. By defeating enemies, the COs CO Meter fills up. When it hits it fills enough stars, that COs CO Power can be used. CO Powers usually give the player a boost of offensive/defensive power, or another advantage in battle. Some Powers inflict field-wide damage to enemies, such as Drake's tsunami or Hawke's Black Storm (see List of Advance Wars COs for information on every CO).
Super CO Powers take longer to charge, but are more powerful versions of the standard CO Power. This type of power was introduced in AW2. After using either power, the meter resets to being empty. Some COs have longer CO Meters than others, depending on the overall strength of the power.
[edit] Story
In Advance Wars, the player takes the role of three COs from the Orange Star army. The four armies of Cosmo Land, Orange Star, Blue Moon, Green Earth, and Yellow Comet, are at war. However, Yellow Comet CO Sonja discovers that the Black Hole Army's leader Sturm had posed as Orange Star and attacked other countries to stir up conflict between the four armies. However, he is defeated at the end of the game by the armies, who band together to take down Sturm.
In Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising, Sturm returns, with several new COs and an army of his own. He then starts an invasion of each nation. Within each of the four nations, Sturm constructs a factory designed by Lash, a fellow Black Hole CO. Her factory can drain resources from the surrounding area and turn it into Black Hole units. After a retaliation by the four armies, Sturm is backed into a corner. In a last ditch attempt to do some damage, he tries to blow up the Black Hole HQ, in order to kill himself, his minions, and many of his enemies. However, Sturm's right-hand man, Hawke, kills him before he gets a chance to execute his suicide mission.
In Advance Wars: Dual Strike, the four nations ally under the name the Allied Nations. Although Sturm is gone, Black Hole now has new COs and launches a third attack. The COs of the Allied Nations discover that the life force of Omega Land is being drained again. They discover Black Obelisks, large pyramid-like structures that drain resources from the land. As they find out near the end of the game, Von Bolt (Black Hole's new commander-in-chief) was using the Obelisks to power a life support system that would make him immortal.
[edit] Trivia
- This series scored 26 in the top 200 hundred Nintendo games for Nintendo Power magazine.
- It scored among the top games for Game Pro magazine.
- And it finally scored Best series For Electronic Gaming Monthly.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- advancewars.com - minisites for all three Advance Wars games
