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The past week has been chock-full of new announcements and reveals from Gamescom 2024. Despite not having a large presence, even Nintendo has been showing off its upcoming titles, including a new trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. For the most part, the big N has been winding down the output of flagship franchises for the Nintendo Switch (presumably because a successor is supposed to be dropping next year), and most of the publisher’s lesser-known IPs have fallen off the face of the earth. Enter, Warside.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably given up hope that developer Intelligent Systems would return to their cult-classic Advance Wars series, especially since the team seems to have been focusing on Fire Emblem, WarioWare, and Paper Mario for the past decade. Thankfully, developer LAVABIRD is picking up the baton and running with it. Their newest title, the aptly named Warside, looks shockingly similar to the Advance Wars games on GBA, right down to the choice in faction colors; infantry, and vehicle design; and the battle screen, complete with a portrait of your team’s commander.
A Storied History
If you’re reading this and scratching your head, wondering what exactly Advance Wars is, we wouldn’t blame you. While the franchise dates back to the original Famicom, the series didn’t get a proper introduction to the West until the turn of the century, with Advance Wars releasing on the Game Boy Advance a few months into the handheld’s lifecycle. It was an instant hit, garnering rave reviews across the board (to this day, it’s still the 5th highest-rated game on the platform), paving the way for a sequel that launched in 2003.
The series eventually made the jump to the Nintendo DS, with Advance Wars Dual Strike introducing… well, dual-screen gameplay, as well as online multiplayer, to the franchise. A follow-up to Dual Strike, titled Days of Ruin (or Dark Conflict, if you happen to be living in Europe), launched a few years later in 2008, moving away from the bright and colorful battlegrounds fans knew and loved to a much more bleak post-apocalyptic world, complete with a more muted color palette and a grim storyline.
The Dark Ages
While Advance Wars‘ seven-year reign of dominance is still fondly remembered in my eyes, it’s safe to say the series has fallen off the map since. In fact, after the release of Days of Ruin, Intelligent Systems began to focus on other franchises, eventually propelling another one of their franchises, Fire Emblem, into the mainstream with the 2012 release of Fire Emblem Awakening.
For a whopping 15 years, Advance Wars went without any new titles, save for some re-releases of old entries through Nintendo’s Virtual Console service. Last year saw a glimmer of hope with Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp, a remake of the two Game Boy Advance titles for the Nintendo Switch. While this new bundle received favorable reviews from critics, it was not as beloved by longtime fans, especially due to the shift in art style (moving from pixel graphics to a Saturday morning cartoon aesthetic) and the severe lack of online multiplayer options. Nintendo has never really acknowledged this particular entry post-launch, largely because its original launch date was pushed from 2021 to 2023 due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
A New Hope
Thankfully, in the past few years, several indie developers have taken it upon themselves to pick up where Nintendo left off, with titles like Wargroove, Tiny Metal, and Aethena Crisis heavily leaning into the core mechanics that made Advance Wars so popular back in the day. If you couldn’t tell from the reveal trailer and screenshots, Warside is very much treading this same path, complete with a single-player campaign, local and online co-op and PvP, and a very familiar art style.
You’ll be able to put Warside through its paces when it launches later this year on PC, via Steam.
