Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising

Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising
Developer	Intelligent Systems
Publisher	Nintendo
System	Game Boy Advance, Wii U Virtual Console
Release Date	Game Boy Advance US June 23, 2003 EU October 3, 2003 Wii U Virtual Console US/EU April 3, 2014
Gallery	GH Gallery
Rating	ESRB: E

Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising is the second of the Advance Wars series and eight in the Famicom Wars series.

Story

While the allied nations recover from the devastating war wrought by Sturm, the Black Hole army has already rebuilt its strength with a number of new COs and powerful weapons. Black Hole leads a simultaneous strike on all the nations of Wars World, causing the recovering nations to mount a resistance against the alien invaders.

Gameplay

Advance Wars is a turn-based game, much like the Fire Emblem series. The player takes control of a CO who each have a special influence on the effectiveness of their units. Some units increase the air or naval support of their units, others specialize in direct or indirect units. A crucial strategy is CO Powers and the new Super CO Powers.

The gameplay is little changed from Advance Wars, but new features include the aforementioned Super CO Powers which are more powerful than CO Powers, but take longer to charge. Other notable additions are the new Neotank unit, the powerhouse of land units. Maps in Campaign Mode also include Black Hole weapons such as Mini-Cannons, Black Cannons, and the unit-deploying factories.

The game also gives every nation new COs to command. Yellow Comet gets Sensei, Green Earth gets Jess, Blue Moon gets Colin, and Orange Star finally allows Hachi to be playable. Black Hole's roster is expanded to include Flak, Adder, Lash, and Hawke. COs from Advance Wars all return, only now all with new Super CO powers.

Release

Because Advance Wars was never released in Japan, the sequel was never released there either. In light of this many of the Japanese character differences, such as Olaf's Santa Claus motif, was not used in any version of the game. This was ironic, given that the game was designed in Japan.

Legacy

Sequels

Advance Wars 2 was followed up with Advance Wars: Dual Strike for the Nintendo DS.

Ports/Remakes

• In Japan, the game was bundled with the sequel in the Game Boy Wars Advance 1 + 2 compilation. This was released shortly before Advance Wars: Dual Strike since the first two Advance Wars games had not been released in Japan as stand alone games.
• In 2014, both Advance Wars games received simultaneous release for download on the Wii U as part of the Wii U Virtual Console. In Japan, the Game Boy Wars Advance compilation was released on the same day.

See Also

• Units in Advance Wars 2