Video Game / Advance Wars Story

Advance Wars Story is a hack of Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising made by PlatinumSkink. It can be called "Advance Wars Fanfiction" but that, while accurate, sounded bad to the modder. It features a full custom normal campaign comprised of 34 missions, some CO balancing, and a couple of new/modified units such as the naval Destroyer, the naval Dreadnought. No other part of the game was touched.

The story takes place after the events of the second game. Peace reigned after Sturm's defeat, and Wars World began its recovery. However, one girl, Yellow Comet CO Sonja, remained shaken, Lash's last words with her after the mission "A Mirror Darkly"—where she stated the two aren't so different—haunting her even after the war was over. As a result, she's started engaging in practice matches, not wanting to be caught by surprise like last time ever again. In fact, she's been doing it with so many COs across the world and so often that they're starting to get worried. Eventually, she decides to deal a preemptive strike against Black Hole with support from her father, which leads to them fleeing to Orange Star. And before anyone knew it, the whole world was now against them.

Word of God has stated that Dual Strike won't be canon to this story, but that doesn't mean its characters aren't.

You can find out how to get the hack for yourself here.

This fan game provides examples of:

• Achievements in Ignorance: In this hack, Flak's powers are changed somewhat, wherein his CO Power allows his naval units to cross land for 2 movement cost, and for his direct attack units to have +1 range using his Super CO Power. This is why Hawke promoted Flak to CO, because he knew there was something special about him.
• Ambiguous Situation: Mission 2, "A Mirror Hauntingly": Did Lash really show up to torment Sonja again? Or is this all in Sonja's head as she starts mentally breaking down?
• Armor-Piercing Question: In "Landfall", before he's forced to square off against Kanbei, Andy asks Sonja the "REAL reason" she's doing all this. She gets paranoid and worries that he might actually be onto her, but in reality he's just parroting what the others asked him to ask.
• Bait-and-Switch: At the start of the mission "Master's Warning", Sensei has his misgivings with waging war against Orange Star while he was supposed to be enjoying his vacation, and disagrees with his student's (and his daughter's) reasoning even less. Sonja tries to assure Sensei that they can do this without him, but he decides he's going to step up and fight… against Yellow Comet. But this isn't because he snapped, but because of an old promise he made to Kanbei. He despised imperialism, but didn't overthrow YC back then because he was given the then-young emperor as his student..
• Big "NO!": Colin at the end of "A CO's Resolve", upon realizing he had to abandon Blue Moon because of Olaf, and that he's failed the army, his family, and his destiny.
• Blood Knight: In the aftermath of the first Macro Land conflict, Sonja is revealed to have been becoming this, and she all but confirms it to herself after a bout with Lash. In fact, on Mission 4: A Desperate Plea, when Black Hole forces escape to Orange Star (after being forced out of their territory at the end of "Mission 3: Transgressions") for asylum, when Andy refuses to hand them over to Sonja and wishes for everyone to wait 10 days for Nell to sort this out, she actually smiles (to Andy's confusion) and decides to attack Orange Star to seize the escapees.
• Body Horror: Happens late in the story. Sonja has Lash inject her with something that helps sync up with Sturm's spaceship. This gives her sickly green tron lines and greatly enhances her powers.
• Cool Old Guy: Sensei and Hachi, as they work together to topple Yellow Comet.
• Deal with the Devil: We know Olaf had conspired with Sturm back in Cosmo Land before getting hit with a case of You Have Outlived Your Usefulness, but it turns out the Black Hole CO is how Olaf managed to become Blue Moon's Commander-in-Chief in the first place. Nell knew he was born in Blue Moon, but that shouldn't have been enough for an Orange Star defector to make it up there so quickly. This deal also came with another condition however: invade Orange Star, which is what he did in the first game. Due to having faced prejudice back there, Olaf accepted the deal. He later learned that Sturm had just been using him and all of Blue Moon for his own agenda. Still, with Sturm's defeat, Olaf got what he wanted anyway.
• Disproportionate Retribution: In A CO's Resolve, Colin starts to question the war against Orange Star, not that he thinks Black Hole doesn't deserve to be punished. When he voices these to Olaf, he decides to hunt him down with his entire army, forcing the young CO to escape.
• Dumb Is Good: In "Mission 4: A Desperate Plea", Andy finds himself having to defend against Yellow Comet (Sonja) trying to seize the Black Hole refugees. He wasn't exactly eager to just attack her forces (in fact, he just wanted everyone to wait for 10 Day for Nell to come back and settle the whole mess diplomatically), but it was Sonja who decided to strike them.
• Enemy Mine: Due to the misunderstanding situation, Orange Star finds itself without any allies, and their only available help is... the Black Hole COs they've sheltered, as well as any possible COs in the other nations who aren't receptive to the current war (Colin, Sensei, and Jess).
• Fragile Speedster: In this romhack, Adder's units all have +1 movement at the cost of -20 to defense. His COP and SCOP continue to raise his movement as usual. In addition, his meter is now 4 stars total,with 2 stars for COP and the last two for SCOP.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Andy. His classic phrase "I can fix anything!" is taken to the extreme at the end of the final mission. When Sturm's ship is wrecked and Sonja is dying as a result, Andy uses "Hyper Upgrade" to completely repair it. Just prior, Lash, herself a skilled engineer and technician, could barely understand the ship's advanced alien systems or even repair it.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: At the start of the mission "Spark to Fire", Drake tries to calm both Eagle and Jess down with a Tsunami, and when that doesn't work and they decide to settle their score in battle, every unit is in 9 HP, as if they were hit by the CO Power.
• Heel–Face Turn: After denouncing Hawke's plot to backstab the rest of Wars World after Orange Star took them in, Adder makes a heartfelt decision to become Sensei's pupil, and this is symbolized with the text box when Adder speaks turning from Black Hole's to Yellow Comet's.
• Heel Realization: After the second mission, Sonja realizes she is obsessed with war.
• Honor Before Reason: Flak has a warped sense of this. When Hawke suggests backstabbing all of Wars World in the midst of Orange Star fighting all the other factions, he isn't having any of it, and won't accept the use of such tactics, preferring to take his foes head on. He comes to blows with Hawke for this in the mission "Former Foe".
• I Just Want My Beloved to Be Happy: In the mission "Sweethearts", Nell reveals this is Grit's reason for leaving Orange Star; he didn't want to end up in a Love Triangle between Max for Nell. After hearing all that, Max was absolutely peeved at this reasoning. Grit didn't feel like he deserved Nell, and really hoped she and Max would get married after he left. After the mission, Max revealed that he wanted this for Nell and Grit. They were concocting a plan on getting him to ask the long-range CO out, but he just drew the wrong conclusion, and instead of talking about it like a normal person, he decided to leave. Neither Nell nor Max were happy with that.
• Interface Spoiler: Averted on the campaign map, since the portrait of the next opponent is glitched if it's someone not from Black Hole. While this bug can be fixed, the modder decided not to in order to preserve the mystery of who's next.
• Just Friends: Nell and Max. In fact, they were about to plan to have her ask Grit out before he misinterpreted the situation and left Orange Star.
• Literal-Minded: After getting Lash in line at the end of "Freedom to Think", when Max asks her to throw him a bone and behave, she actually has a bone to throw him.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Obviously, only Sonja knows her reasons for fighting Orange Star, whose COs are still wondering why.
• Might Makes Right: According to Flak, back in Black Hole before Hawke's takeover, power meant everything, and thus he understands Nell's unease around him. In fact, he used to be in gang wars before he became a soldier, then a CO.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The second mission is called "A Mirror Hauntingly", a Call-Back to the mission "A Mirror Darkly".
  • At the end of "Once Again", after seeing the complexity of the relationship between Sami and Eagle, Nell wonders what's with Orange Star women and complicated relationships with foreign COs and decides to call her sister just in case. Said sister is Rachel from Dual Strike, though ironically it would not be her who has any Ship Tease with foreign COs, but Jake.
  • At the beginning of "Old Lessons", after Nell decided she would face Olaf's forces once again, the Advisor from the first game whom she trained back in the first game is referenced, and is said to be currently holding down the fort in Cosmo Land, which explains their absence in Macro Land. Nell says they should visit sometime after all this.
  • At the start of the ninth mission "Landfall", the Orange Star COs reference the time Sonja clashed against them back in Cosmo Land, making those scenarios canon to this game's timeline, and wondering why she did them. Sami assumes it had something to do with Sturm.
    • It's also a throwback to the AW 1 Yellow Comet missions, in which the Emperor has no bases to deploy more troops (plus no infantry to capture more with), and Andy finally learning what an airport is (since he allegedly didn't know them back then). When asked by Kanbei what he thinks of Sonja, Andy even mentions the new tools she gave him (which she told Sami were used to lure him back in the AW 1 mission "Sami Marches On!")
  • References to Flak having a Battleship in the middle of a lake in his Lab Mission and his mistaken idea of "indirect bombers" back in AW2 are seen in his altered CO Powers, where he can make these actually a reality, even if just for a turn.
  • One of Colin's CO Power quotes is "If only my sister could see me now!" Said sister is Sasha from Dual Strike.
  • During the mission "Pretty Fears", while Hawke is talking about his plans to take over all the other nations, he names them in the following order: Orange Star, Blue Moon, Green Earth, Yellow Comet. Just like how their turn order goes in the games whereas most scenarios and dialogs have the last two swapped in their places.
• "Not So Different" Remark: At the end of "Twisted", Sonja tries to do with Sami what Lash did to her last war and tries to invoke this. The Orange Star CO however was having none of it, realized that Lash has brainwashed Sonja, and intends to spread the word. But the YC CO says this will just reinforce both their sides and change nothing. Sami then realizes she has to convince Sonja to stop this madness in order to stop the war.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Sonja starts getting paranoid and wonders if Andy is scretly this. This is a hint to her deteriorating state of mind.
• The Promise: Long ago, Sensei had made a promise that if Kanbei ever strayed from the way of the samurai, he would topple Yellow Comet once and for all. And when Yellow Comet decided to take out Black Hole, then invade Orange Star when it gave sanctum, Sensei decided to make good on his promise. Kanbei argued that he was acting out of national interest to prevent a future threat, but Sensei chides him for not expecting the entire continent to be plunged in war because of this, and that such logic ceased to apply when Orange Star got involved.
• Sanity Slippage: When Adder realizes he's in support of Sensei because he's strong, and because of that opposes Hawke's underhanded plot to take over all the other nations.
• Secret Test of Character: Downplayed in that it's not a secret at all, but at the start of "Mission 5: Verdict", Nell wants a practice match with Andy to prove his resolve to protect the Black Hole refugees (COs and civilians recently freed from Sturm's tyranny). An extra kicker however is that Andy must not lose five or more units. The kicker is that win or lose (but you have to win anyway to proceed with the story), Nell always intended to protect the refugees. However, Sonja overhears this, and uses it as a reason to not only wage war against Orange Star, but to involve Green Earth and Blue Moon as well, given their grievances with select Black Hole COs and that Orange Star wishes to protect them.
• Shipper on Deck: Because Kanbei sees her gazing at Andy's CO profile, and her hiding it upon him asking, he misunderstands the situation and starts to assume she's falling for Andy. But he's not opposed to it, though. In fact, he's actually looking open to the idea of them being a future couple for Yellow Comet, misinterpreting him as a brilliant CO from their battles (even though it's more from Kanbei's blunders).
• Star-Crossed Lovers: With his boneheaded decision to leave, not to mention Blue Moon's past and current conflict with Orange Star, it is far too late for Grit and Nell to ever be together. And he figured as much when he asked Nell after the secrets in "Sweethearts" were spilled.
• Tron Lines: Sickly green glowing lines are applied to one character late in the story, but only on their skin and eyes. Sonja is that character after syncing up with Sturm's spaceship, and it's played for body horror.
• Verbal Tic: Adder tends to hiss a lot, especially in Sensei's presence, which he does find a bit annoying.
• Victory Is Boring: The entire story begins as a result of this feeling from Sonja. So much so that she decides to attack Black Hole first. And when they seek asylum in Orange Star, rather than negotiate, she not only attacks Andy's troops when he passively gets in the way, she also convinces the other nations to enact their vengeance on Black Hole.
• Villains Act, Heroes React: Inverted for once; Sonja convinces her father that they should strike Black Hole first after the war in order to stop them from rising again, and they're forced to retreat... to Orange Star, to ask Andy for asylum. And being the dumb hero that he is, he grants it, though he makes it clear he's not doing this out of impulse.
• Villain Episode: The game guarantees you get to play as every CO in the game throughout the Campaign. Including Black Hole COs. You play as Hawke in Mission 3: Transgressions against Sonja's pre-emptive attack on his territory.
• You Are in Command Now: In the start of the mission "Old Lessons", Nell reveals that after Olaf's defection (back) to Blue Moon, she had been promoted to commander-in-chief out of nowhere. Despite all the insults she made towards him during the Advisor's Field Training in the first game, she was actually terrified of him.