Part 1: Bean (1 of 2)
Part 1: Bean (1 of 2)
After the title screen, we get a simple prompt to either start a new game or load an existing game. I don't have anything to load, so we'll just go to a new game here.
Music: Menu Theme
Behold, all of the advanced settings of Famicom Wars. If you're masochistic enough you can actually watch two computer players against each other. Having a local multiplayer option for an '80s-era strategy game is a nice perk, though. We can choose to play as either
You can also turn off animations if you have no soul, or switch between two sets of music tracks in the game (or turn the music off entirely). The last option is for difficulty. An IQ of 100 is 'average' and an IQ of 200 is an amazing super-genius. We'll be playing on 200 here but NES-era AI isn't going to give us any problems anyway.
Music: Map Select
The map select screen here is pretty basic. There are 15 maps to choose from and you get a little preview of each one. We'll be starting at the top of the list, with "Bean".
A siren goes off, and we're brought straight to the map without so much as an introductory greeting. On the lower right we can see our Red Star flag, the turn number (1), and our current funds (11000). More on what those are for in a bit.
Music: Mission BGM Type A
We've got a simple symmetric map to kick us off. We control the red buildings on the left side of the map, and our opponent has the blue buildings on the right. There are six neutral buildings in the upper middle area, and a road meandering throughout. There are scattered forest tiles at the top and bottom of the map, and mountains lining the road.
Turn 1
I'll annotate each turn as we go, but first some basics.
Highlighted is a city. Each city under our control grants an extra 1000 G a day, plus allows injured units to recover 2 HP each turn. They also provide defensive bonuses.
The three buildings to the left are the bases. These buildings allow us to build new ground units. Surrounded by the three bases is our headquarters. Typically the HQ provides the largest defensive bonus, and capturing an opponent's HQ is one way to win the map. The other victory method here is to destroy all enemy units.
Pressing the "B" button on any space brings up the menu. "Build" will let us make a new unit, if that space supports that action and there is no unit already there.
A quick shot of the "Units" screen, which as you might expect will list all of our units. Selecting a unit from the list here will actually take us back to the map with that unit selected, which is nice once the maps get busy. A status of "End" on the far right (or just "E" on the map) shows the unit has ended its turn already. All units start with the "End" status when first built - they can't be used until the following turn.
The "Stat" screen here will show the unit count, building count, funds, and income for each player, as well as the number of neutral buildings. There are two other building types shown here that we haven't seen yet. For some reason the base count isn't included though. Income is 1000 G per building owned (including cities, bases, and the HQ). So capturing cities is an important way to progress and gain an advantage during each map.
The second "Stat" screen just shows off how many of each unit type each player currently has. Or possibly has built in total (including losses). I'll let the experienced players salivate over just what unit each icon represents.
The final "Stat" screen displays the number of each type of unit that each player has lost in the current map.
"Supply" does a few things - each unit currently sitting on one of our properties will recover 2 HP and all fuel and ammunition. Future games would automatically supply at the start of each turn, instead of making us remember to press the button ourselves.
Rounding out the rest of the menu: "End Turn" is where we'll end up when we've done everything we can on a given turn, and "Option" just gives us a few more icons we can select.
"Settings" just brings us back to the main menu, but all we can change is the animation and music settings. We can also save our game (which forces us to power off - not to be used as a quicksave option) and surrender the map if we get in over our heads or just get bored.
Selecting "Build" while on a base brings up a list of units we can build. Here we can scroll through all of the ground units in the game, and see the price for each. Everything is unlocked from the beginning - no tutorials or hand-holding here. With that in mind, let me introduce the first challenge of the LP:
Unlock Mode - All units except infantry are locked, and can only be unlocked when the opposing army purchases one.
Infantry are the most basic unit, costing just 1000 G. Infantry are one of the two footsoldier unit types - only the footsoldiers can capture neutral or enemy properties. Otherwise though they're pretty terrible.
All units start with 10 "Life" (HP). Infantry can move three spaces in one turn. Each space moved consumes 1 fuel, though the infantry will never really need to worry about that with 99 fuel total. Each shot fired (in attack or defense) will consume 1 ammo, so the infantry can see 9 rounds of combat (though I've never had one survive that long). Infantry can attack from 1 space away and are produced at the base.
For some reason we're allowed to build units not only on our headquarters (which is normal for this game, but not in later games) but also on the city next to the bases. It's not normal to be able to build on cities; I'm not sure if it's a bug for this map or some kind of weird feature. I guess we'll find out later. No other city allows building.
In fact, trying to build on a space that doesn't support it just produces an error message.
Since I can only build infantry, I stuff one onto each space I can before ending the turn.
Music: End Turn
Ending the turn causes a neat effect where the menu slides over, to be replaced by a nearly-identical menu that has the Blue Moon flag.
Music: Enemy Turn Type A
On every turn, Red Star goes first and Blue Moon goes second. Future games would maintain that approach, with the player army always going first.
Our opponent spends most of his funds on two infantry and a couple of vehicles - APCs. We'll take a look at them in a moment, but they're not what you might expect.
Turn 2
Now that we have some units deployed, each turn starts with a fuel check. I'm not sure exactly what the check does in this game, but in later games certain vehicles would consume fuel on each turn (not just on movement) and a handful of vehicle types would actually be destroyed upon running out of fuel.
Selecting a unit with the "A" button will cause their stat screen to pop up. We can move the cursor from there to select a destination for the unit. The cursor will automatically be restricted to the unit's movement range, but there's no other indication of what that limitation is. Infantry can move three spaces normally, but that's reduced in forests and mountains. I believe how it's calculated is, the infantry has three movement, and most spaces consume one movement each but forests and mountains consume two movement each.
Anyway, we move this infantry over the mountain and pick "Wait Here" to end its movement. It gets the "E" tag on the map to indicate that the unit has ended its turn.
Our first goal is to reach and capture the neutral cities. Whoever gets the extra income from these cities will have the advantage.
Now that they're unlocked for us, we build a couple of APCs. They cost 4200 G each, more than four times as much as an infantry. Are they worth it? Well, as a vehicle they have higher movement, but consume more movement when not on a road and can't pass through mountains at all. APCs can carry a single unit around with them, which matches their behavior from future games. However in this game APCs can actually fire on other units as well, with four ammo.
The enemy phase has a lot of this "thinking" animation on the lower left. Even more so on the higher difficulty. Luckily you all don't need to sit and watch that.
Our opponent advances their units. These maps always start with zero units deployed, so they can be a bit of a slow start sometimes. On the up side, there's no fog of war in this game.
The blue team puts out two more APCs and three more infantry. I thought it was weird that they didn't load any of the infantry into an APC this turn, but I'll show you why that didn't happen next turn.
Turn 3
Moving an infantry unit onto a neutral or enemy building gives us a new option to capture it.
Music: Building Takeover
A cute little animation plays showing a soldier entering a building to take it over. The bar at the bottom represents the capture progress. The bar has 40 lines, and each turn the infantry will fill up two lines for every HP it currently has (so 20 at full health, resulting in a capture after two turns). Future games would simplify the capture bar by making each building need 20 points of progress, with a unit contributing one point of capture progress for each HP instead.
Everyone else just continues to move forward.
No new units unlocked so I just throw out a couple more APCs. At this point I'm not really sure which unit I'd rather have out there, but might as well match what the computer player has.
One infantry starts capturing the right-most neutral building. The lead APCs actually retreated, I'm not sure why. Note how on the lower left the animation changes when the computer player has decided what to do and is inputting the commands.
The lower-right infantry moves into one of the APCs that already moved and loads inside.
Music: Transport Theme
We get another cute animation for that action, with its own music.
Another infantry loads into the highlighted APC. Note how this APC hasn't moved yet.
After loading, the APC's turn is also ended. So an APC can't be loaded and then moved again in the same turn in this game. Later games would allow that tactic. Note also how there is an "L" on the APC icon when a unit is loaded into it.
Our opponent builds two more APCs and two more infantry, but they've lost some initiative by having the APCs retreat to be loaded.
Turn 4
Just assume I do this at the start of every turn from here on out. You can only supply a unit that hasn't ended its turn yet, so there's no point in waiting.
First step is to finish capturing this city.
The animation shows the infantry leaving the building to continue capturing it which is kind of funny. And then jumping up to the roof to celebrate once the capture is complete.
In case you weren't sure, the game explicitly tells us the building is captured and changes its color on the map.
I load up an infantry into an APC here, and discover that the APC can no longer move afterward.
I learn from the mistake and load up the other APC only after it's already moved. The other two infantry start capturing two more cities for us.
I throw out another couple APCs, but don't add any further infantry. I'm pretty sure the five I've got will be enough for now, and I'd rather save some money for when better units get unlocked.
Blue likewise finishes capturing its first new city.
Another infantry starts capturing a city. Two of the APCs move up, but the others are still just hanging around the HQ for some reason.
Finally, we've got a couple new units to play with, as the computer tosses out a tank and an artillery.
Turn 5
I've got a couple of goals for this turn. We need to finish capturing the two cities we're currently occupying, attack the enemy infantry that's trying to capture a city of his own, and get ourselves some new units.
The capture part is easy. There's no reason not to just finish capturing right at the start of the turn, before anything else happens. I totally haven't just forgotten to do that before, no sir.
We also move an infantry up to start capturing the fourth city. Notice the new command available, though - we can select attack when we end a unit's turn in range of an enemy.
The APC moves up to attack the infantry here. There's a targeting reticule showing which unit is being attacked. Useful in case there are multiple units in range. We also get to see the unit description, including current health and what terrain it's currently occupying. Time to see how the APC performs in combat.
Music: Battle Theme
Each battle also plays out in an animation, with some new music. Each unit has a number of icons corresponding to its current life, and the icons are destroyed as the units exchange fire and lose life as a result. You can see the numeric representation up at the top, along with portraits of each commander. These portraits will have different expressions depending on the result of each battle. You can also see the terrain for each unit - a road for the APCs on the left, and a city for the infantry on the right.
In this case, a full health APC takes out 5 HP from a full health infantry on a city. Not too shabby. Not only is that infantry half-dead, it'll now take an extra turn to capture that city.
The other loaded APC moves up and we can now see the option to "Drop" its loaded unit. We can't unload into the mountain, so the infantry is dumped back onto the road instead.
Of course there's another animation for getting out of an APC.
Our other APCs simply move up.
It's time to spend some of those funds we've been saving up. We've got two tanks (6000 G each) and two artilleries (5500 G each) of our own now. And I completely forget to examine them before ending the turn. Oops.
The damaged enemy infantry gives up on its capture attempt to come attack one of our own infantry.
It's almost completely wiped out as a result. It's interesting that the damaged infantry left its in-progress capture attempt. The AI in the later games would prioritize capturing over almost everything else, even if the unit had low health.
A different infantry moves up to try and capture the city, but it has to start over.
An APC moves up to attack our lead APC, which was already slightly damaged from attacking the infantry earlier.
We take another 5 damage, dishing out 3 damage in return.
Here's the enemy tank. One less move than an APC, with a bit less fuel and the same ammo and range. Tanks (and other vehicles for that matter) can't carry units; that's an APC-only ability.
The artillery is the first ranged attack unit we've seen. It's got the same movement as the tank, with less fuel and ammo, but three times the range. These ranged units use indirect fire, which comes with some advantages and limitations. In addition to being able to strike further away, indirect fire results in no damage taken to the firing unit in return. However the ranged units also can't do damage when directly attacked by single-range units. Indirect fire also can't strike one space away, and can't be used if the unit has also moved in the same turn.
Indirect fire units are great for defensive fighting, but if you're fighting defensively in this game you're doing it wrong. They're still useful for firing over the mountains, and I'll throw a ton of the indirect fire units out before this map is over.
The enemy tank starts to advance and the artillery hides behind some APCs. We've got a numbers advantage on the front line for now.
The computer builds another tank and unlocks a new unit for us - the mech, the alternate footsoldier unit.
Turn 6
I start off the turn by taking an APC up to finish off the wounded infantry.
The results are predictable. Notice the enemy commander portrait is different when the unit is lost.
Reducing a unit's life to zero removes it from the map with a minor explosion.
Another APC moves up to attack the capturing infantry again.
I move the damaged APC back and drop off the infantry inside, so that I don't accidentally lose both.
Here I discover another gameplay difference between this game and the newer ones - units inside an APC take the same damage as the APC does. So now my infantry is also down to 3 life. It'll be stuck on that city healing up for awhile (at 2 life recovered per turn, it'll be back to full in four turns).
Armed with this new information, we fire at an enemy APC to further damage both it and the infantry it carries. The battle is more even than I'd like - we only dealt 4 damage, but took 3 damage, even though both units are on a road. There is some variability in battle results where any given attack can do up to 1 extra damage than normal. I'm not sure how exactly that variation works or if it's the same as in later games though.
I almost use this infantry to attack the one next to it, but remember at the last moment that is was in the middle of capturing and instead finish off the capture.
That capture brings us up to four of the middle cities in our camp now. The computer player only has one of them, giving us a 3000 G income advantage every turn. The rest of our turn is just all of our units slowly moving forward. I totally forgot to buy new units this turn, but I think we're a little clogged up in the middle right now anyway.
On the enemy phase, the infantry continues its capture attempt (now at just 75% progress, since it was brought down to 5 life last phase) and a few APCs move up. We also get our first look at the mech unit before it loads into an APC. It costs 2000 G (twice as much as an infantry) and has less movement, less fuel, and less ammo. In theory it should have more firepower to make up for those disadvantages, but I guess we'll see.
The tanks and the artillery start to move up as well. The lead tank is sitting on a city and is going to be difficult to dislodge.
With its accumulated funds, Blue purchases a medium tank. Now we're in trouble.
To Be Continued...