Advance Wars Devs Talk Enthusiasm And Challenges Of Making A New Entry

The Advance Wars series has been dormant for nearly a decade, with no sign of a revival happening anytime soon. Some developers who previously worked on the games were recently asked about the franchise, and while their answers may have been somewhat encouraging, it doesn't sound as if a new game announcement is imminent.

Speaking with Eurogamer, Nintendo's Hitoshi Yamagami, who was a producer on past Advance Wars titles, said, "Personally, I'd love to do Advance Wars, but since it's harder to create relationships between its characters compared to Fire Emblem, I don't have a clear idea of what kind of setting it could have."

Fire Emblem is another series handled by Advance Wars developer Intelligent Systems. Whereas Fire Emblem's characters are the units you use in battle, Advance Wars' characters only served as leaders for the respective armies; on-field units are all generic.

Masahiro Higuchi, who worked on the original Advance Wars, told Eurogamer, "The Advance Wars series is one that I personally have a lot of interest in. I hear some of the staff here saying that they want to make one too, so if we have a chance it's something I'd like to do!"

The most recent game in the Wars series was 2008's Days of Ruin for DS. The franchise dates back to the NES, although it gained prominence with the 2001 GBA game Advance Wars, which was the first to be released outside of Japan.

Intelligent Systems is at work on at least one new Fire Emblem game, which is coming to Switch, and Nintendo has not signaled any intention to revive Advance Wars. Luckily, Starbound developer Chucklefish has a new game on the way called Wargroove that strongly resembles the series. Among other platforms, it's headed to Switch later this year.