Advance Wars

2026-09-28
I have a vivid memory of taking a trip down to San Antonio, just me and my mom, back in 2002. The River Walk, seeing the Alamo, and trailing my mother as she did her shopping. Inhabiting my then-10-year-old mind, I know that last bit would have been torture. Only it wasn't. Because I had slotted in my Indigo Game Boy Advance the best handheld strategy game ever made: Advance Wars.

Don't get me wrong, as a kid who grew up in Texas, it was cool as hell to walk in the hallowed halls where our heroes Davy Crockett, James Bowie, and William B. Travis made their last stand. And yet I was infinitely more interested in my new heroes: Andy, Sami, and Max. And that's the first genius bit of the game, the Commanding Officers (COs) at the core of it.

Not the story, which is just fluff about countries on a planet called "Wars World" doing wars on each other because an alien false-flagged them with clones (actual plot). No, it's the roster: a strategy game ice cream shop of characterful flavors. You want the good ol' Southern boy whose ranged units get extra range and extra kick to boot (but who shits his pants in direct combat)? You'll be wanting Grit. How about the opposite: no range to speak of but a punch that could floor Goliath? Then you'll want his blue-haired, ape-like counterpart, Max. Sami's your infantry-nut, capturing cities like no one's business and drowning the map in her legendary Mech Spam. And then there's Kanbei, whose units cost more but hit harder. You'll field fewer of them--Kanbei is a sushi guy, he doesn't fuck with Spam--but when they scrap, they win. Brutally. I revered him as a child and worked tirelessly with my small thumbs to unlock him.

Even if you somehow removed the COs--and I know this is the most boring thing to say--it is so fucking balanced. Every unit from the lowly Infantry to the hulking Battleship has a place on the battlefield. Well, except for the Recon, which is a waste of 4,000 funds for brainlets. Or sickos who enjoy Fog of War maps. Shudders. Importantly, the AI is also intelligent enough to do things like use chokepoints and stop flanks. And yet it's still pleasingly gameable. The AI will always go for dirt-cheap Infantry over pricier targets, since Infantry capture cities--so dangle a single 1,000-cost grunt like a red flag in front of the enemy's 16,000-cost Medium Tank bull and watch it charge off instead of touching your Rockets rolling in to bust their shit up.

Balanced doesn't mean there isn't cheese to be had. Sure, Sami's got her Mech Spam, but Max is just broken. Motherfucker's non-infantry, direct-combat units hit for 150% of normal attack. The best you'll find otherwise is Kanbei at 120% or Sturm--the literal boss of the game--also at 120%. In a game where damage values are precisely tuned such that only the uber-expensive units can one-shot anything, that 50% sends the whole spreadsheet into fits: a basic Tank, a unit that normally one-shots exactly zero things, under Max's muscly command suddenly one-shots seven. If you see a crop of blue hair cresting a hill, you're already fucked.

What you really want to hit from the main menu is the War Room, a batch of 20 self-contained skirmish maps. In the campaign we're stuck with whatever COs they gave us for the mission, but in the War Room we blow this whole bitch wide open. You wanna play as Nazi Alienboy, Sturm? Go for it, you little freak. You wanna rock Eagle with his "I get two turns cause I got a cool aviator jacket" CO power? We all need a little meth to stay flying nonstop--go nuts! And not only that, but you start with NO units. That's right, baby, every map plays out how you want. Recon spam because you were dropped on your head as a baby? Hey man, god bless. But the best part is the way the difficulty ramps up across the maps. The initial ones are a warm-up, but soon you're starting gimped with a piddly economy versus an enemy with twice the resources. After you master that, then you're fighting multiple COs at the same time. Welcome to the fight club, baby.

Oh god, and don't even get me started on the spritework. Each chibi-soldier walking to their cartoon death is the perfect blend of adorable and cool. Medium tanks with barrels the diameter of a sequoia tree. The animation of each of those rockets firing out of rocket artillery to send a hapless Recon unit to Nintendo Heaven. Each unit has a variant for each of the five armies, and I swear to you it never gets old watching them pop up on the screen to have yet another scrap.

It's damn near a masterpiece, and in most ways it hasn't aged, but in others it absolutely has. The real bugbear is the campaign. It's got two problems. One: Fog of War maps. This is the classic complaint everyone is in fact correct in making. Even if we ignore the fact that the enemy cheats, knowing exactly where you are inside forests and reefs, which are supposed to make you invisible--the reality is it's all trial and error. You'll be up against Grit pummeling your hole with hidden ranged units or Eagle pummeling your hole with hidden bombers that one-shot land units and hidden fighters that one-shot air units. Make the wrong move and you've basically lost, and it's time to start again.

And the second campaign problem, which I didn't appreciate until this playthrough, is that the unlocks are FUCKED. All those cool COs I mentioned are locked behind hidden campaign conditions. Sonja? Beat three of Kanbei's missions within a secret time limit. Drake and Eagle? Fight them with specific COs every single time or no dice. Sturm? Unlock every other CO.

Going in, I had every CO except Drake, making him the last stop before Sturmwind City (I’m so sorry). Remember when I told you to go play Nazi Alienboy in the War Room? Yeah, I've never done it in AW1. So this replay had one purpose: reunite Drake and Josh (Sturm's first name). I looked up the exact recipe for our favorite "fat guy who forgot to pull down his shirt" sea captain and followed it to a tee. And because I'm a genius, I also did the reqs for Kanbei so he'd bump Drake from the final battle (who wants the fucking Sea Guy on an entirely land and air map?). I blitz the campaign, dunk Sturm, excitedly head to Battle Maps to buy O Captain! My Captain! and there's nothing there. Huh? HUH?! Near as I can tell, bumping Drake from the final battle also bumps him from the unlock, and at no point does the game tell you either of those things. Brother, I love a secret unlockable as much as the next guy, but you have to communicate something. Don't make me play a multi-hour campaign only to find out at the end that I didn't jump through your invisible hoops in the correct order.

When I loaded up my ancient copy of Advance Wars, I was somehow already on the final mission with the one CO lineup everyone complains about: Grit, Andy, and Sami. I looked at those three stooges and said "Fuck…” And then played the map anyway. Sturm's initial wave was devastating. Andy was gone, obliterated, vaporized in like 5 turns. I didn't even fucking know you could keep playing after you lose a CO, but you can on that map. I locked the fuck in. Alright, Grit just has to hold off the air units on his side while spamming Artillery. Get enough of those and you can make your own chokepoint and anyone who comes near gets rocked. Sami, well, we all know what I did with Sami. Those Mech Infantry started and they never ended. Eventually I got a foothold over Andy's graveyard and was looking at a map like this. And in classic Advance Wars fashion, once the party starts it don't stop. The feeling of turning around a battle against odds that seem insurmountable is why we kneel at the altar of Advance Wars.

It's rare you crack open one of those sacred childhood texts, blow off the dust, and find it's every bit as brilliant as you remember it. As I watched one of Max's Medium Tanks blow out yet another CO's asshole, I was reminded the core Advance Wars formula is as perfect a game design as I've ever witnessed. And fuck me if it isn't great to know that the little shit glued to a tiny screen on vacation in San Antonio was kind of justified. Thanks for the trip, Mom. I'll never forget you, Kanbei. Get fucked, Davy Crockett.