The Let's Play Archive

Advance Wars

by Paul.Power, Sockerbagarn

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Original Thread: What's an airport, again? Let's Play Advance Wars!

 

Introduction



Table of Contents

Units, COs and Fanart

Blue Moon (and Field Training)
Campaign Mission 1: It's War! (or "An Arrowing Experience")
. Field Training Missions 1 to 3 (or "No use crying over spilt blood")
Campaign Mission 2: Gunfighter! (or "Time for some ACTION")
. Field Training Missions 4 to 6 (or "I've got a 10-year-old ghost to exorcise")
Campaign Mission 3: Air Ace! (or "They gave their lives so that we might cheese the mission with an HQ capture")
. Field Training Missions 7 to 9 (or "OLAF WENT FIRST???")
Campaign Mission 4M: Max Strikes! as Max (or "I have so much more power!")
. Field Training Missions 10 and 11 (or "You might enjoy the challenge!")
Campaign Mission 5M: Sniper! (or "Max vs. Grit: Round 1")
. Field Training Missions 12 to 14 (or "Neither rain, nor snow, nor gloom of night...")
Campaign Mission 6M: Blizzard Battle! (or "Wait, "he"? Who's "he"?")
Campaign Mission 7M: History Lesson! (or "Max vs. Grit: Round 2")
Campaign Mission 4A: Max Strikes! as Andy (or "A (choke)point to prove")
Campaign Mission 5A: Max's Folly? (or "Max vs. Grit: Round 1... er... 3")
Campaign Mission 6A: Olaf's Navy! HQ Capture Run (or "botes")
Campaign Mission 6O: Olaf's Navy! Rout Run (or "Imagine a rocket launcher stamping on a cruiser's face - forever")
Campaign Mission 7O: Olaf's Sea Strike! (or "The bad news is, we're Max - the good news is, we're Max")
. The Plan (or "Where we've been, where we're going and how we're going to get there") Caution: Massive Spoilers

Blue Moon Campaign in Review (by Alien Arcana)

Yellow Comet
Campaign Mission 8: Sami's Debut! (or "Who needs T copters?")
Campaign Mission 9: Kanbei Arrives! as Max (or "Makes Andy look like Richard Feynman")
. Highlights Reel: Kanbei Arrives! as Andy
Campaign Mission 10: Mighty Kanbei! as Andy (or "Choked to death")
. Highlights Reel: Mighty Kanbei! as Sami
Campaign Mission 11: Kanbei's Error? as Sami (or "Quote Central")
. Highlights Reel: Kanbei's Error? as Max
Campaign Mission 12: Divide and Conquer! (or "Trollface levels of smug")
Campaign Mission 13: Sami Marches On! (or "Can't make an omelette without breaking some mechs")
Campaign Mission 14: Sonja's Goal! (or "Either my imagination's on the blink, or...")

Yellow Comet Campaign in Review (by Alien Arcana)

Green Earth
Campaign Mission 15M: Captain Drake! as Max (or "WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOUR FACE?")
. April Fools 2012
Campaign Mission 16M: Naval Clash! as Max (or "The fated northern shore")
Campaign Mission 15S: Captain Drake! as Sami (or "That Tsunami should be against the rules!")
Campaign Mission 15A: Captain Drake! as Andy (or "The choker outchoked?")
Campaign Mission 16S: Naval Clash! as Sami (or "Now I know how all these enemy COs feel")
Campaign Mission 16A: Naval Clash! as Andy (or "Adding injury to injury")
Campaign Mission 17A: Wings of Victory! as Andy (or "Catharsis")
Campaign Mission 17S: Wings of Victory! as Sami (or "Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results")
Campaign Mission 17M: Wings of Victory! as Max (or "MASTER OF THE SKIES")
Campaign Mission 18A: Battle Mystery! as Andy (or "Hunt the Lander")
Campaign Mission 18M: Battle Mystery! as Max (or "Serious tactical naivety")
Campaign Mission 18S: Battle Mystery! as Sami (or "The Great Escape")
. Highlights Reel: Battle Mystery! as Max (non-derp edition)

Green Earth Campaign in Review (by Alien Arcana)

Black Hole
Campaign Mission 19: Andy Times Two! as Andy (or "EEEAAAGGGLLLEEE ")
. Highlights Reel: Andy Times Two! as Sami
Campaign Mission 20: Enigma as Max (or "Teapot Dome")
Campaign Mission 21AGD: The Final Battle! as Andy, Grit and Drake (or "Operation Nap Patrol Redux") - Part 1
. Campaign Mission 21AGD: The Final Battle! as Andy, Grit and Drake (or "Operation Nap Patrol Redux") - Part 2
. Campaign Mission 21AGD: The Final Battle! as Andy, Grit and Drake (or "Operation Nap Patrol Redux") - Part 3
. Intermission 1: Whistle-Stop Tour, Spann Island Highlights Reel
Campaign Mission 21AOK: The Final Battle! as Andy, Olaf and Kanbei (or "Operation Dunderhead") - Part 1
. Campaign Mission 21AOK: The Final Battle! as Andy, Olaf and Kanbei (or "Operation Dunderhead") - Part 2
. Intermission 2: The Field Training Grudge Match (Advance Wars 2 War Room - Point Stormy as Nell)
. Highlights Reel: Enigma as Sami
Campaign Mission 21AMS: The Final Battle! as Andy, Max and Sami (or "Operation Orange Star") - Part 1
. Campaign Mission 21AMS: The Final Battle! as Andy, Max and Sami (or "Operation Orange Star") - Part 2
. Intermission 3: Hachi Exhibition Match (Advance Wars 2 Vs. Mode - Pointing River, Hachi vs. Kanbei)
Campaign Mission 21AME: The Final Battle! as Andy, Max and Eagle (or "Operation Golden Ending") - Part 1
. Campaign Mission 21AME: The Final Battle! as Andy, Max and Eagle (or "Operation Golden Ending") - Part 2
Campaign Mission 22: Rivals! (or "The Advisor")

Advance Campaign
Advance Campaign Mission 1: It's War! (or "An Harrowing Experience") (with guests SupSuper and Sockerbagarn)
Advance Campaign Mission 2: Gunfighter! AC (or "A Bit of Grit") (with guests Fedule and BrooklynBruiser)
Advance Campaign Mission 3: Air Ace! AC (or "They all gave their lives so we might cheese the mission with an HQ capture") (with guests Seraphroy and Cryohazard)
Advance Campaign Mission 4: Max Strikes! AC as Andy (or "Silly me!" "Silly you!") (with guests BrooklynBruiser and Fedule)
Advance Campaign Mission 5: Max's Folly? AC (or "Max vs. Grit: Round 4") (with guests ScotchDK, Sylphid and alcharagia)
Advance Campaign Mission 6: Olaf's Navy! AC as Max (or "ruvenj of botes") (with guests Alkydere, Fedule, Sockerbagarn and (until a technical problem) Sylphid)
. A Very Brief Intermission (Advance Wars 2 War Room - Mial's Hope as Hachi)
Advance Campaign Mission 7: Sami's Debut! AC as Max (or "Something, something, Sun Tzu") (with guests Krysmphoenix, Sockerbagarn and Assoonasitis)
Advance Campaign Mission 8: Kanbei Arrives! AC as Max (or "A Sting in the Tail") (with guests ScotchDK and SupSuper)
Advance Campaign Mission 9: Mighty Kanbei! AC as Andy (or "Lose the battle, win the war") (with guests Seraphroy and BrooklynBruiser)
Advance Campaign Mission 10: Kanbei's Error? AC as Max (or "What's an airport, again?") (with guests BrooklynBruiser, Sockerbagarn and Sylphid)
Advance Campaign Mission S1: Divide & Conquer! AC (or "Hostile Takeover") (by Sockerbagarn, with guests Paul.Power, Fedule and BrooklynBruiser)
Advance Campaign Mission 11A: Captain Drake! AC as Andy (or "Hope You Like Dissolve Cuts") (with guests Krysmphoenix and Sockerbagarn)
Advance Campaign Mission S2: Sami Marches On! AC (or "Mech Trickle") (by Sockerbagarn, with guests Paul.Power and Sylphid)
Advance Campaign Mission 12A: Naval Clash! AC as Andy (or "Pyrrhic S-Rank") (with guests Seraphroy and Sylphid)
Advance Campaign Mission 13A: Wings of Victory! AC as Andy (or "You're a Loose Cannon, But You're a Damn Mediocre Cop") (with guests Sockerbagarn and Fredrik1/Irregular programming)
Advance Campaign Mission 14A: Battle Mystery! AC as Andy (or "The Mystery of Battle Mystery") (with guests Sockerbagarn and alcharagia)
Advance Campaign Mission 15: Andy Times Two! AC as Andy (or "Hallowe'en Horrorshow") (with guests Sockerbagarn and Assoonasitis)
. Another Very Brief Intermission (Vector Madness)
Advance Campaign Mission S3: Sonja's Goal! AC (or "Miniterrainian") (by Sockerbagarn, with guests Paul.Power and Sylphid)
Advance Campaign Mission 16: Enigma AC as Max (or "Zero Punctuation") (with guests Sylphid and Senerio)
Advance Campaign Mission S4: Captain Drake! AC as Sami (or "That sound Zoidberg makes when he scurries off to the side.") (by Sockerbagarn, with guests Paul.Power and ScotchDK)
Advance Campaign Mission 17: The Final Battle! AC (or "cryingandy.gif") - Part 1 (with guests Fedule and Sylphid)
Advance Campaign Mission 17: The Final Battle! AC (or "Fully Armed and Operational Mech Flood") - Part 2 (with guests Sylphid, Senerio and alcharagia)
Advance Campaign Mission S5: Navel Naval Clash! AC as Sami (or "At least Black Hole keeps their bellies clothed... Until Advance Wars 2.") (by Sockerbagarn, with guests Paul.Power and Sylphid)
Advance Campaign Mission 17: The Final Battle! AC (or "Quick-Time Event") - Part 3 (with guests Sockerbagarn and alcharagia)
. Advance Campaign Credits Roll and Musings
Advance Campaign Mission S6: Wings of Victory! AC as Sami (or "Diplomacy through Shock and Awe") (by Sockerbagarn, with guest Paul.Power)
Let's Commentate Advance Wars by Web! (or "March of the Penguins") - Part 1
. Let's Commentate Advance Wars by Web! (or "My dreeeeeams of CON-QUEST!") - Part 2
. Let's Commentate Advance Wars by Web! (or "whoops") - Part 3
Advance Campaign Mission S7: Battle Mystery! AC as Sami (or "You get an S-rank! And you get an S-rank! And you... did what?!") (by Sockerbagarn, with guest Paul.Power)
Advance Campaign Mission S8: Andy Times Two! AC as Andy (or "How to fail the Turing test. Times two.") (by Sockerbagarn, with guest Paul.Power)
. April Fools 2015
Advance Campaign Mission S9: The Final Battle! AC as Andy, Max and Eagle (or "Speedrun Strats") - Part 1 (by Sockerbagarn, with guests Paul.Power and Slur)
Advance Campaign Mission 18: Rivals! AC (or "Where does he get all these wonderful toys?") - Part 1 (with guests Sockerbagarn and Slur)
Advance Campaign Mission S9: The Final Battle! Part 2! AC (or "Bill Bombers" or "Tragedy" or "How to plan a banana.") (by Sockerbagarn, with guests Paul.Power and Slur)
Advance Campaign Mission 18: Rivals! AC (or "No plan survives contact with the anime") - Part 2 (with guests Sockerbagarn, Slur and Fredrik1/Irregular programming)

Content from other people
Origins of Units Part 1: Ground (by Lord Baxter)
Origins of Units Part 2: Air (by Lord Baxter)
The Design Maps Glitch Part 1: Introduction (by ultimateluigi987)
The Design Maps Glitch Part 2: Maps of all different sizes (by ultimateluigi987)
The Design Maps Glitch Part 2.5: Random Glitch Units (by ultimateluigi987)
Japanese CO Comparisons (by Liebely)

External links
Let's Play Advance Wars 2 (by me)
Let's Play Advance Wars: Dual Strike (by Alkydere, Artix and ZeeToo)
Let's Play Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (by Seraphroy)
Let's Play Military Madness (by Polybius). Sufficiently Wars-y to deserve a mention, also could use more love .
Advance Wars Wiki (shout-out, I've been pinching their maps for this LP)
Advance Wars Net (used their maps for the AW2 LP)
Wars World News (used their maps for the first few missions of AW1 NC, and for the second half of AW1 AC)
Black Hole HQ (used some of their CO portrait graphics)

Oh hey, Advance Wars 1 this time.
Yep, we're going back to where it all started. Well, okay, no, because there's Famicom Wars and Super Famicom Wars and Game Boy Wars and... okay, start over. We're going back to where it all started assuming you aren't from Japan. Advance Wars was the first Nintendo Wars game released outside of Japan, and it was a massive hit, becoming a killer app for the Game Boy Advance. So far it's been followed by three sequels on the GBA and DS. Sadly there hasn't been an Advance Wars game confirmed for the 3DS yet. It's been about ten years now since the first Advance Wars was released in Europe, so in some ways this is something of an anniversary celebration.

What's Advance Wars, again?
The Advance Wars games are a series of turn-based strategy games developed by Nintendo studio Intelligent Systems (Fire Emblem, Paper Mario, Tetris Attack, WarioWare and others. Turns out they also made Golf for the Game Boy, one of the first games I ever owned. Fun times). Unusually for a war game, the style of the games is cute, bright and light-hearted and kind of at odds with the meat-grindery nature of the missions - Cannon Fodder minus the dark streak, perhaps. Unlike Fire Emblem there are no unique units, pretty much everything is disposable and on many maps you can just keep on churning out replacements for anything that dies. On the plus side, I feel that that this gives the games a greater sense of strategy rather than tactics, as with individual units being pretty frail, you have to think about the bigger picture.

An important aspect of Advance Wars is the CO system: armies are led by Commanding Officers (COs) who bring unique abilities to the game: perhaps they are strong with some units and weak with others, perhaps they have an affinity for certain weather conditions, perhaps they can even tilt the balance of luck in their favour. After dealing and taking (especially taking) enough damage, a CO can then use their CO Power, which can again have a variety of effects: it could boost their pre-existing strengths further, give mass healing to their troops or mass damage to enemy troops, or even let the army under their command attack twice in one turn. CO abilities and powers can easily sway the course of battle, often leading to highly game-breaking situations: you'll be seeing some of those situations soon enough.

What format will this LP take?
This LP comes in two halves: the first half is an exhaustive screenshot LP of Normal Campaign (and, briefly at the start of the LP, Field Training), showing off every mission in the various branching paths of Advance Wars' Campaign Mode and four different CO combinations for the final battle (conveniently called "The Final Battle"). The second half (not actually planned out when I started the LP!) is a semi-blind hybrid LP of Advance Wars' notoriously difficult Advance Campaign, with screenshot summaries complemented by post-commentary videos with guests. The Advance Campaign run also has another set of videos labelled with the letter S, showing off an alternate (and harder!) path through AC, played by my friend Sockerbagarn. Although he also plays semi-blind, Socker's just generally a lot better at videogames than I am, so he's perfectly suited to these harder missions. The goal of his run is to set up the even more notoriously difficult final bonus mission so that I have to play through it (oh boy).

It took me about eight months to LP Normal Campaign. And about three years to LP Advance Campaign. Says it all, really...

Any interactivity?
A little. The awkward thing about AW1 is that CO choices you make directly affect who you get to play with in the final battle. I want to try and show all the branching paths off, but I'll let you guys pick what I tackle first. One thing's for certain, I'm going to have to get used to juggling savestates!

Anyway, that's enough questions for now. Let's do as the title screen suggests and Press Start.



Hey, thanks, it's good to be here.



Now here's an interesting thing about Advance Wars 1 that doesn't happen in the other AW games: it asks you your name. In AW1, you actually get to be a character.



Sorry, no, I'm not calling myself Dongs or whatever


I'm Nell. I'm a CO in the Orange Star Army.



No. Sorry Nell, I'm kind of a veteran here by now.

Oh, I see. In Advance Wars, I give game play and strategy advice in Field Training. This includes explanations of all the game rules, too. If you really don't want to, I can teach you a way to pass through Field Training quickly, but...



I screwed up the screenshot a little here, sorry. I selected No.

Very well, let me explain a few things briefly. There are several different gameplay modes. Vs. Mode for multiplayer battle on one Game Boy Advance. To play Advance Wars on multiple systems, link up with friends and try Link Mode. Then there's Field Training, where I give game and strategy instructions. You must at least clear the final Field Training mission, Fog of War. Once you clear it, other modes will open up for game play.
Move out and good luck!



Darn. Looks like I'm going to have to do some field training either way, even if I say I've played the game before. Oh well, I'm going to adopt a two-pronged strategy here. On the one hand, I'm going to clear Fog of War offscreen and then start out on Campaign. But interleaved with that I'm going to be doing the Field Training missions three at a time. Hopefully this'll be a good way to spread the load out.

So yeah. Let's move out!
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