Advance Wars

Advance Wars, known in Japan as Game Boy Wars Advance (ゲームボーイウォーズアドバンス, Gēmu Bōi Wōzu Adobansu?) is a turn-based tactics video game developed for the Game Boy Advance (GBA) by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo. It was released in North America on September 10, 2001, but put on hold in Japan and Europe due to the following day's terrorist attacks in the USA. Although released in Europe in January 2002, neither GBA game was released in Japan until the Game Boy Wars Advance 1+2 compilation on November 25, 2004.

Advance Wars is the first game in the Advance Wars series of video games, followed by Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising (also for the Game Boy Advance), and then by Advance Wars: Dual Strike and Advance Wars: Days of Ruin for the Nintendo DS. These games form a sub-series of the Nintendo Wars set of games.

The game was originally intended to remain exclusive to Japan, like the previous entries in the series, which were kept in Japan due to Nintendo feeling that consumers would not be interested in turn-based games, or in such complicated games. In order to alleviate this, the developers made the mechanics easy to understand, adding in an in depth tutorial that didn't require players to read the manual. Designer Kentaro Nishimura commented that "Advance Wars' success shifted Nintendo’s attitude over western tastes."

The story involves Orange Star Army's efforts in battling the other countries armies, where Orange Star commanding officer Andy is accused of attacking the other countries' troops for no reason. The game has been well received, gaining an average score of 92/100 on Metacritic, and an average score of 93% on GameRankings, the highest for any Game Boy Advance game. It was rated the 26th best game made on a Nintendo System in Nintendo Power's Top 200 Games list.