gamesbriefs
10:16in productionCh. 1 · Win Conditions Are Literal/ 10:16 · ceiling 15 min
Strategy · Retro

Advance Wars

Intelligent Systems · 2001

Advance Wars is not about war — it’s about the arithmetic of advantage, played on a grid where every tile, weapon, and HP point has a known value.

Advance Wars is a deterministic, grid-based strategy game where victory is defined by elimination or capture — never story, never spectacle. Its rules are tight, its feedback immediate, its constraints absolute. It runs on the Game Boy Advance. It was made by Intelligent Systems. It came out in 2001.

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Chapters & takeaways4
  1. 1:02
    Win Conditions Are Literal

    Victory is binary and explicit: eliminate all enemy units or capture their HQ — unless the mission says otherwise.

  2. 2:14
    Combat Is Deterministic

    Every attack is governed by weapon type, range, adjacency, and counterattack rules — no hidden dice rolls, no RNG.

  3. 3:45
    Everything Is Accounted For

    Damage, defence, and movement are all modified by terrain, HP, and weapon availability — nothing is abstracted away.

  4. 5:33
    A Lineage, Not a Leap

    This is Intelligent Systems’ third iteration of the same core design — refined, not reinvented.

Worth your time?

Yes. Play the whole thing.

4.5/ 5
What works
  • clear-win-conditions
  • terrain-as-defensive-layer
  • dual-weapon-system-enforcing-unit-roles
  • co-power-meter-tied-to-combat-engagement
What does not
  • online-play
  • narrative-depth
  • asynchronous-multiplayer
Play it if
  • players-who-enjoy-deterministic-systems
  • players-who-prefer-tactical-over-strategic-scale
  • players-with-access-to-a-gba-or-emulator
Skip it if
  • players-who-need-fast-paced-action
  • players-who-dislike-tracking-per-unit-states
  • players-seeking-modern-qol-features
The written brief2 min read

What the game is

A turn-based strategy game for the Game Boy Advance, developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo in 2001. It is the first Advance Wars title and a direct evolution of Famicom Wars (1988). It features grid-based combat, faction-specific Commanding Officers (COs), and win conditions including enemy routing, HQ capture, city capture, or survival.

How it actually plays

Players alternate turns on grid-based maps. Each turn consists of unit deployment, movement, attack, defence, and property capture. Attacks are either direct (adjacent, triggers counterattack) or indirect (immobile, line-of-sight range). Damage depends on attacker HP, weapon status (primary vs secondary), unit types, and defender terrain — and the same factors govern counterattack damage. Most units consume finite ammunition for primary weapons, falling back to secondary weapons until resupplied. Terrain modifies movement, vision, and defence. Air units ignore terrain effects. All units consume fuel per turn; ground units immobilise when exhausted, air units are destroyed.

What works

The dual-weapon system creates clear tactical asymmetries: tanks cannot hit helicopters, artillery cannot hit infantry at close range, and anti-air units have no effect on tanks. Terrain defence modifiers force deliberate positioning — forests and mountains boost infantry, cities protect all units. The CO Power meter rewards engagement without punishing caution: it fills only through combat, not idle turns. Fuel and ammo constraints make every move accountable, not just every attack.

What does not

It does not support online play. It does not scale difficulty meaningfully across early missions — many rely on identical terrain layouts and predictable AI behaviour. It does not abstract away resource management: fuel, ammo, and HP are tracked per unit, but no macroeconomic layer (e.g., production queues, research trees) exists to deepen strategic pacing. CO Powers feel like scripted events rather than player-controllable levers.

Who it is for, and who it is not

It is for players who enjoy discrete, bounded decision spaces and systems where cause and effect are legible and repeatable. It is not for players who need narrative momentum, emergent chaos, or asynchronous or online competition. It is not for players who dislike tracking per-unit states across dozens of units.

Is it worth your time

Yes — if you want a tightly scoped, rule-driven strategy game that demands precise calculation and rewards pattern recognition over reflexes. It asks for patience, attention to unit synergies, and tolerance for repetition in early missions. It does not ask for speed, improvisation, or narrative investment.

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Advance Wars: Days of RuinIntelligent Systems · 2008Advance Wars: Days of Ruin is a 2008 turn-based strategy game developed by Intelligent Systems for the Nintendo DS. It departs from earlier entries with a darker tone, toned-down CO powers, no Tag powers, and new units and terrain effects. Players command military forces on grid-based maps to defeat enemies by destroying all units or capturing their headquarters. Fog of war, weather, and terrain shape tactics. The campaign contains 26 story-driven missions. Multiplayer supports local hot-seat and online play via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.
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Up next in Games

Advance Wars: Days of Ruin

Intelligent Systems · 2008 · 10:18

It strips away the spectacle to expose the cold arithmetic of war — and leaves nothing behind to warm you up.

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