It's not Fire Emblem! Lets Play Advance Wars

[Perrydotto]

Advance Wars is good, y'all. Like, for real very good on the overall. Only problem is that it's not the series Intelligent Systems got to revive and turn into a giant cashcow. While you all get to gacha your waifus and beat up your enemies in a steady stream of new content, I get to cry into my boxed copy of Advance Wars 2 over the fact that the last entry in the Advance Wars series was almost exactly 10 years ago.

All I got is replaying, so that's what I'll do.

If you want a really good and thorough LP of these games, I wholeheartedly recommend the offerings on the LP Archive. I'm only sorta decent at this series and definitely not as informative as Paul Power. I'll do my best to cover the franchise and drill into your head how much I love it, but I can't promise more than that.

Join me on this trip through foreign lands, wacky anime wars, questionable AI, obnoxious rappers, the post-apocalypse and the everlasting question:



Lets play some Advance Wars.

[Perrydotto]

A Quick History of Famicom Wars

The Wars series is a pretty long-running series of turn-based strategy goodness, going back all the way to 1988 and the NES days (That means it actually has 2 years seniority over Fire Emblem). Originally the brain child of Satoru Okada, also known as the dude who invented the Gameboy, it was company Intelligent Systems' foray into making software as opposed to hardware. Thankfully for us, it turned out nicely, though only for audiences in Japan for next 13 years.

After being a solid runner in Japan, Advance Wars 1 proved to be a smash hit and a big selling point for the Gameboy Advance in the West. Having colorful, accessible strategy on the go was a pretty damn sweet deal - The GBA had RPGs and the likes aplenty in its repertoire, but even throughout its lifespan, it never got anything else quite like Advance Wars. It plays more like a "big boy" strategy game on the PC or elsewhere would: You produce units in your bases, no unit is unique, and your economy is an important backbone for your army. There is no leveling or other fancy stuff, just you, your CO and your units. Stuff like terrain and positioning are key, and the bigger picture is generally more important than keeping a specific unit alive.

Advance Wars 1 spawned a direct sequel in 2003, and got two entries on the Nintendo DS in 2005 and 2008 respectively, with spinoff intermezzos on Gamecube and Wii. It's been radio silence since. I have no idea if the 3DS or the Switch will be graced by Advance Wars, but I don't feel it's likely.


What will be in this LP?

As said, I'm not a master at this game, which wouldn't be a problem if Advance Wars 1 didn't have a notoriously nuts Hard Mode campaign. I'll play through the main mode and try to unlock as many characters as I can (this gets hairy, as you'll find out) and see how far I get into Hard Mode before I eat my keyboard or something.

I'll be covering more details about the history and whatnot as we go, too. I'm a fountain of useless Advance Wars trivia, and you bet I will use it. Advance Wars is also subject of some rather neat/silly localization stuff which I'll also discuss.

The western world didn't get any Wars games until the GBA days and 2001 with Advance Wars 1, but had several entries exclusive to Japan before that. As a result, I haven't even played most of these, something I might change. I hear the SNES entry has an English patch now, and maybe I'll finally get around to tackling the weird beast that is Battalion Wars? Who knows.

[Perrydotto]

But, first things first:





What's our name? It can be up to 9 characters long (if we use one capital letter at the start and lower case after that)

[Blarghalt]

N-Gage.

[Aria Genisi]

Birb

[Jill]

my dude

[West Filly]

Eggman

[West Filly]

Dingus

[West Filly]

Darth.bum

[West Filly]

I'm not sure how I feel about the cutesy tone of this game. There's war and death everywhere, but Nell is all about it.

Nell is the lady in the purple suit btw.

I'm not saying the game needs to be all emo about it, just sometimes the thought crosses my mind like what kind of psycho do you have to be to express this kind of joy at war.

[Fizzbuzz]

I'm not saying the game needs to be all emo about it, just sometimes the thought crosses my mind like what kind of psycho do you have to be to express this kind of joy at war.

Even in the last game (Days of Ruin, the post-apocalyptic one) the tonal dissonance is still weird.

[Blarghalt]

I'm not sure how I feel about the cutesy tone of this game. There's war and death everywhere, but Nell is all about it.

Nell is the lady in the purple suit btw.

I'm not saying the game needs to be all emo about it, just sometimes the thought crosses my mind like what kind of psycho do you have to be to express this kind of joy at war.

My favoritest Awkward Zombie comic ever sums up my feelings about that:

[Vivianinatoga]

Butt9

[Perrydotto]

I think the main reason for the goofy anime style is making the game look inviting - It's not a "grownup" strategy game, anyone can pick up and play. It helps that Advance Wars 1 also has an extensive and friendly tutorial that covers a lot of bases. It very much positions itself as "baby's first turnbased strategy", which is appreciated, but definitely brings up some uncomfortable dissonance with its subject matter. It doesn't help that Advance Wars 1 has some Fire Emblem baggage in the sense that some maps get very unfair later, and that unlocking some of the characters is intensely obtuse, so once the training wheels come off some stuff is pretty ridiculous.

Storywise, Advance Wars 1 is definitely the goofiest, and the later games try to find a better balance. In my opinion, Advance Wars 2 mostly succeeds, Dual Strike tries really hard but doesn't succeed and Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict tries REALLY hard and mostly succeeds. YMMV, of course, but we'll cross those bridges when we get there.

[Inkie]

My headcanon is they're just a bunch of nerds who roleplay while playing boardgames, and Andy is just the newest recruit to the group who needs to have the rules explained.

[Fontra]

Name should be Zawana:

[Perrydotto]

Y'all give some mighty fine suggestions. However, considering Advance Wars 1's general goofiness levels, I went with the classic:




The woman here giving us a friendly introduction to a place literally called Wars World is Nell.


Advance Wars OST - Nell's Theme

Nell is a CO, a Commanding Officer, in the Orange Star Army. In Advance Wars 1, we'll be playing exclusively as Orange Star. She is our mentor and basically puts us in charge of babysitting Andy (whom we'll meet shortly). Nell is not playable in the campaign and is instead one of several unlockable characters for the skirmish mode. She's mostly just here to be helpful, pleasant and ensure that Orange Star doesn't get its ass beaten. She also has some history with some of the folks we'll meet on the battlefield, but more on that later.

Translation Fun Fact: Japanese Nell was called Catherine and had a shorter skirt and no sleeves.



Also, Orange Star was actually called Red Star, something Nintendo of America felt was iffy for the America stand-in nation.



No idea why.

[Fontra]

okay so how do i have my player avatar bang her and what are her kids' stats?

[Perrydotto]

okay so how do i have my player avatar bang her and what are her kids' stats?

Advance Wars 1 does something the later games don't - Making the player an actually involved person in the story. The characters adress you by name and interact with you. However, you don't have your own avatar or unit to represent you, you're just a nebulous "advisor" who assists the COs on their missions.

You also cannot bang anyone or have kids, unless you count shooting them with tank cannons "banging". Definitely no kids, though. Some of the characters we'll meet have kids who are a pain in the ass, but again, more on that later.

[Fontra]

...what the fuck is the point of strategy games if i cant fuck every character?

[Perrydotto]

I select No, simply because it gives us more options on how to proceed and because I wanna feel cool and experienced. We can actually revisit the tutorial missions at any time, which is nice, because the tutorial missions also have some story content. Experienced players can skip the tutorial by just playing and beating the final tutorial mission, Fog of War, which is quickly done.



So what would we like to do, thread? Start with the tutorial or dive right into the campaign? Note that I can revisit the tutorial at any time, and that I will not be going into 100% full detail on rules and text but rather summarize. (If you want the complete experience, really just read this LP or play the game yourselves, both options are very good)

It's up to you what we try first!

[Fontra]

CAMPAIGN, MY DUDE

[MetalSonic]

We need to see Andy asap, so do the campaign

[Fizzbuzz]

Also, Orange Star was actually called Red Star, something Nintendo of America felt was iffy for the America stand-in nation.



No idea why.

I was going to say that since it was a 2001 release, maybe NOA got scared due to the hyper-patriotism of the era, but I looked up the release date and it turns out it dropped over here on September 10. You'd think we would've been over that Red Scare stuff at that point, but oh well.

[Vivianinatoga]

...what the fuck is the point of strategy games if i cant fuck every character?

Every single map is a puppy mill, we're good

[Blarghalt]

I know it's probably too soon, but could you explain why the AI goes after APCs literally over everything else? It was always a mystery to me as a kid.

[Aria Genisi]

what's an airport again?