Line #9 Fridge/NintendoWars


1	[[AC:FridgeBrilliance]]
2	* In the first ''Advance Wars'', the Black Hole troops are merely [[PaletteSwap recolored]] Orange Star units. It may seem at first that Intelligent Systems simply didn't think to create unique unit graphics for them the way they would for the next two games and just went with a lazy palette swap... until you remember that, in this game, Black Hole was trying to pass itself off as Orange Star to get the four nations of Cosmo Land at each other's throats. The black color can then be seen simply the [=COs=]' way of noting which troops are theirs and which are the enemy's, because otherwise they'd be virtually indistinguishable from one another.
3	* Koal in ''[[VideoGame/NintendoWars Advance Wars: Dual Strike]]'' is very young looking, but seems more mature than the other various [[KidHero Kid [=COs=]]] in the game (Andy, Colin, Jake, and Lash), excepting Sonja, who also acts mature. Even Max, the DumbMuscle of the Orange Star [=COs=], picks up on it, calling Koal a "small man". Then you remember [[spoiler: that Kindle and Von Bolt drained the energy from Omega Land to keep themselves from aging]]. It seems very likely that this is why [[OlderThanTheyLook Koal looks like a child]].
4	* Von Bolt's BreakingSpeech to Jake sounds self-defeating and stupid to many players, but to ChildSoldier Jake, who quite possibly has never had to really face the fact that his decisions lead to the life or death of his underlings and enemies, and certainly never on such a personal scale? Maybe Von Bolt was better than we give him credit for...
5	* One of the main aspects of gameplay that changed from DS to ''[=DoR/DC=]'' was how the CO power system is almost completely reversed. In ''DS'' and the games before, the main way to charge CO powers was to lose units, while the new system works by fighting inside the CO zone and preserving your CO unit (your power progress is lost with the unit). This fits the DarkerAndEdgier story very well, placing importance on keeping units alive when so few people survived the apocalypse (as opposed to getting stronger by throwing units into the meat grinder) and the impact the CO can have when so much is at stake.
6	* Why is the credits sequence in ''Advance Wars'', as well as the CO select and menu headers in ''Advance Wars 2'', shaped like a film reel? It's the [[{{Pun}} Theatre of War!]]
7	* As noted on the YMMV page, Olaf's CO Power hurts teammates more than it helps. One could blame it on winter affecting everyone caught in it, but other CO Powers that rely on natural powers/disasters (i.e. Drake's typhoon and Sturm's meteor) don't hurt allied units caught up in them, only Olaf's does. This makes sense when you consider that he hates teaming up with fellow friendly nations, even to drive off the villains.
8	** Rain (Drake) is generally much easier to adjust to than snow (Olaf). Olaf's units most certainly have the gear and training to handle sudden snow and ice (thicker clothing, snow chains, etc.) even if the game doesn't show it, while his allies probably don't. Why Olaf doesn't share his snow supplies could be due to scarcity, a lack of time, or Olaf not wanting to potentially leak part of Blue Moon's military secrets to other nations.
9	** Interestingly enough, the only CO who doesn't get particulary harmed by Olaf's snow powers when team-up is Grit. Since Indirect combat units cannot move and attack on the same turn, Grit can just use the snow to turtle on his position by shooting at enemy units with impunity, and while his infantry and direct combat units might suffer a bit, is not too bad since Grit's speciality makes him already slow to advance anyway, plus, the snow might be helpful for the artilleries and rockets as they can make it difficult for enemy units to close the gap when moving. No wonder Olaf never demotes nor punish Grit for his insubordination, [[WeWorkWellTogether for all their bickering both of their powers can actually compliment each other succesfully.]]
10	* In ''Days of Ruin'', both Forsythe and the Beast end up dying in the story before CO abilities are brought into play. Forsythe does appear in Vs. Mode with CO abilities there, but the Beast doesn't, despite being more prominent in the story before his own death. This does make sense, as in both the NTSC and PAL versions, it's mentioned he was a sergeant before the meteors struck. Sergeants are below the ranks that one is considered an officer. The Beast doesn't get CO abilities, because he never was a CO in the first place.
11	* In ''Days of Ruin'', 90% of the population was lost to the meteor strike. Area of Effect attacks like missile strikes cannot kill an enemy, they can only after repeated attempts bring units' HPToOne from 10 HP. GameplayAndStoryIntegration at its finest.
12	* ''Days of Ruin'' again. In previous ''Advance Wars'', there were 5 factions with visually distinctive equipment. In ''Days of Ruin'', there are 5 factions, but only 2 models for each unit. The 12th Battalion and New Rubinelle Army were part of the same military before the meteor strike so it's logical they use the same equipment. As for the [[RapePillageAndBurn Raiders]]/[[DubNameChange Bandits]], Lazurian Army and [[NGOSuperPower IDS]] using the same gear... Caulder and by extension IDS acted as a supplier to both the raiders/bandits and the Lazurian Army.
13	* The Nintendo Wars series was very successful because the simple strategy gameplay gave it an easy and fast learning curve that allows anybody to pick it up and play it for a good amount of time. Also, it's a thorough and genius application of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanchester%27s_laws Lanchester's Laws]] in a fun format.
14	* Look at the directions of the pipes for the first three factory missions in the second game. Leading out of the massive factories, respectively they then head east (Orange Star), north (Blue Moon) and west (Yellow Comet). This happens to match the location of the Black Hole island relative to these nations on the main map exactly. The only nation which doesn't follow this pattern is Green Earth, but this may be justified as the pipe appears to loop back offscreen (which also creates a larger physical gameplay barrier for this very difficult mission). So, perhaps a particular geographical feature which we don't see meant Black Hole had to build the pipe around it and after the pipe cuts past it, perhaps then it folds back to a westward direction (before going underwater like the others).
15	* Fridge Humor: Jess is visually based on widely broadcasted musician David Bowie, but her specialty is armor. Javier wears armor and is based on knights. Specifically, he's based on Don Quixote, who was archaic for ''his'' time (Late Renaissance/Early Modern Period), much less a setting loosely based on the 20th century. But Javier's specialty is cutting-edge technology: comm towers. It's like each has the specialty you'd expect from the other one.
16	* Each Black Hole CO is in charge of hiding the Neotank blueprints in each continent, which inevitably gets discovered by their natives...except Hawke in Green Earth. Lash is responsible for stashing away the blueprints in "Sinking Feeling". Of course Hawke himself would never make the rookie mistake of leaving important blueprints for the enemy to take. Someone less competent would end up allowing Green Earth to produce Neotanks instead.
17	* Black Hole's second defeat was partially self-inflicted. In the first game, Orange Star was the nation the player has been following during the whole game's campaign and so they're the nation who always win in each battle they get into. During the second game, the Black Hole CO's have been taking over each nation in Macro Land, some with different degree of success, Lash and Adder manage to put a dent into Blue Moon and Yellow/Gold Comet respectively and Hawke has taken over half of Green Earth. However, not only they finally get beaten continuously in the end, but in each of their ultimate defeats during the factory mission the local country is being always supported by Orange Star, so naturally Orange Star is the strongest and most powerful nation out of the 4. Black Hole ultimately lose because instead of putting the invasion on charge of the very competent Hawke or even the savvy Lash or sneaky Adder, they decided to delegate the job of conquering the most dangerous threat to Black Hole to [[DumbMuscle Flak]] who basically just kicked down the door and alerting the Orange Star army causing them to be proactive and send reinforcements to the Allied Nations.
18	* Max has blue pants and hair, and his missions against Blue Moon are centered about his beef with Grit regarding his defection after a love triangle. Sami has green pants and headband, and during the Green Earth missions she gets at odds with Eagle and their conflicting feelings. The Orange Star CO's clothes represent their most important character interactions outside of their own nation. It's also why each of them ends up as the "default" ally for Andy during the final battle of the first game, only being replaced if certain conditions are met.
19	* It confused me for a while why Sonja's weakness is poor luck. It's not like other CO's don't get unlucky and this doesn't affect Sonja story-wise as she's always the go to girl for any intel or important facts. If anything else, she would work around her bad luck if she knew about it. And then it hit me when she gets captured by Sturm, Sonja has trouble adapting to sudden situations. This, ironically, makes her easier to read and strategize counters against. Her intelligence also inadvertently makes her cocky when she doesn't mean to be. She even poses a challenge to herself against Lash, the second most intelligent CO in the game canonically, that she only needs to reach (not capture) her HQ to win. Her inability to be flexible means that when things go wrong, she doesn't adapt, assuming things are supposed to happen when in reality, things don't always go the way they mean it to.
20	** Credit to Sonja though, she does patch up her combat skills to compensate in later games. In the second game, she has a stronger counter attack, meaning she's learned to make more of a bad situation; Sonja even fires back first during her Super Power, showing that she's not willing to hesitate shooting first if it calls for it. In ''Dual Strike'', she has a bit of an extension of her extra sight in fog of war by negating defensive stars, showing that she can even see through cover and start picking optimal shots (and/or can estimate the enemy's position behind cover). She still has bad luck though which can now be seen as information overload. Because she's calculating so many variables now, she thinks too hard about the situation at hand and experiences oversights, meaning she's more likely to miss important details and run into problems when reality doesn't match her hypothetical models.
21	** This extends to Flak and Jugger in the opposite spectrum. The former is probably the least intelligent CO, while the other only thinks in binary (1s and 0s). Flak takes no time to calm down and he's firing his shots wildly, leading to even less chance of hitting... so his logic (for as little as he has) is that shooting many bullets will ''eventually'' result in a good shot. The opposite happens with Jugger, since Jugger assumes that if he puts more force into the attack, it will hit better, and is unable to register ''why'' it doesn't hit while following an "optimal" firing solution. Compare this to Max who has a similar mindset, to the point where his indirect units face a one range penalty. Max may go full force, but he's smart enough to know when that mindset doesn't work. Flak and Jugger may not have the indirect range penalty, but at least Max's indirect units will usually do its intended damage.
22	** Interestingly, the tutorial missions usually involves Nell as the advisor. Nell constantly gives the CO's under her command the strengths and weaknesses of each unit, the win conditions and is always noted to be a very experienced commander who often has to adapt to different circumstances, in one tutorial mission even mentioning her superiors dropped the ball and now she had to win in subpar conditions. This adaptability is probably the reason why Nell's powers involve sudden bursts of good luck, Nell's [[XanatosSpeedChess adaptability]] [[AwesomenessByAnalysis and intelligence]] means that she can occasionally pull surprising victories by just simply reading her environment and quickly finding sudden openings in the enemy's defenses other CO's might often ignore or fail to notice. Or so to say, like [[WesternAnimation/DuckTales1987 Uncle Scrooge]], she actually makes her own luck.
23	* In Black Hole Rises, Hawke's interactions with fellow Black Hole CO's are not too positive. Sturm values his competence but demonstrates no hesitation at threatening Hawke if he fails to protect the Green Earth factory, while his interactions with Flak and Adder are also notably one-sided, with Adder being on the receiving end of Hawke's disappointment and Flak getting accused of being selfish when questioning Hawke's plan to fight near a volcano. The only exception however seems to be Lash, at worst Hawke merely rejects her idea of adding weird features to an airport while Lash is merely unamused by the rejection, but otherwise seems fine letting out her thoughts to Hawke with impunity. This seems to imply Hawke might hold Lash in a higher regard and Lash also does seems to respect Hawke enough to go along with his ideas in spite of her ego. At the end of the second game, Lash is the only one who's actually giddy at the idea of Hawke taking over while Flak and Adder merely seem to be following the stronger side (and probably trying to protect their own skins from the new leader). Suddenly, it makes sense that when Von Bolt tries to get Hawke executed in ''Dual Strike'', during his escape Hawke only stops for a little bit to rescue Lash from the same fate.
24	* In ''Duty And Honor'', Adder's plan is a SadisticChoice between setting a trap to destroy the Yellow/Gold Comet army or let them ignore the cities and use the destruction of those as propaganda to destroy the morale between the Yellow/Gold Comet army and the rest of the Allied Nations. Sonja almost falls for the full trap but Kanbei refuses to abandon his people and manages to fend off the invasion. At the end of the battle, the citizens write a letter demonstrating their gratitude to their emperor and even Sonja realizes the importance of helping the people regardless of how "inefficient" it might be. In other words, Kanbei's actions caused a Morale Boost to Yellow Comet.
25	* In ''Advance Wars 2'', the only new unit introduced into the game was the Neotank. Considering that their enemies might make more weapons in between 2 and ''Dual Strike'', the latter game introduces the Allied Nations developed weapons, the Megatank, the Carrier, and the Stealth Plane. This of course works both ways, while the Allied Nations each started to work on their new units, the Black Hole army develops the Black Boat, the Piperunner, and the Black Bomb.
26	* In Advance Wars Dual Strike, Lash's intro quote if you pick her along Hawke in the mission "Ring of Fire" is: "I haaaaaaate volcanoes! They think they're so hot! Nature only exists so we can conquer it with science!" Lash's CO powers perfectly sums up this quote all too well, Lash gets firepower bonuses for each terrain star she gets, meaning Lash is always using the earth's resources to power her own troops. Each plain, shoal, mountain and forest are additional natural resources for Lash to exploit.
27	** This might be a bit odd however if Lash uses the terrain stars from urban tiles. That being said, it could be argued Lash merely starts plundering and getting all the materials she can get from those places as well to increase her power to inflict damage. It also explains why cities give her additional power: she doesn't need to refine the materials she finds at these places, she can just just simply find better ammo and machines at the stores and factories instead of using and refine natural resources.
28	* Sturm manipulating Olaf in the first campaign and trying to make him work for him is actually rather clever. Sturm as a boss and playable CO, specially in the second game, is terribly broken. His skills grants him both high firepower and defense to his units as well as a complete way to bypass terrain without any problems. Usually, some of the best ways to deal with high firepower CO's and defense is to use global damage powers since it lowers both the survivability and the firepower of said CO's in a pinch, and the only thing that can actually slow him is snow, meaning in a 1v1, Winter Fury is a pretty viable power to use against him. Sturm wanted to manipulate Olaf into his side precisely so he wouldn't have to fight him, probably knowing if he let his powers grow, he could become a huge threat against him.
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30	[[AC:FridgeLogic]]
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Context Fridge / NintendoWars