Famicom Wars

The first game in the Wars series was the game "Famicom Wars," released for the Family Computer on August 12th, 1988 (pictured right.) The game was programmed by Toru Narihiro of Intelligent Systems and otherwise developed by Nintendo.

Before the release of the game, Intelligent Systems mainly helped Nintendo with software development, though after the success of Famicom Wars and Narihiro's next game "Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light," also for the Family Computer, they would hire artists and programmers to branch off into developing games on it's own.

Despite being released so late into the Family Computer's life cycle, the game still did incredibly well; winning multiple awards, notably for "Best commercial;" the game having a commercial so iconic that it's still referenced among the Japanese fan base to this day. The game can currently be played via the Japanese Ninendo Switch Online Family Computer application on the Nintendo Switch.

The games' premise was that it was created by the very succsessful --and soon retiring-- military strategist Yuan Delta (pictured left) as a program to train his coming successor.

The game itself was a turn-based grid-based war strategy/simulation game where you play faction-wise as either Red Star or Blue Moon. Each faction has an HQ and starts out with a few properties. You use Infantry units to capture properties which give you more money per day, which you can then use to build more units to fend off the enemy. The end-goal of the game is to either capture the enemy HQ or destroy all of the enemy units.

In an official poll for the Famicom's 40th anniversary, Famicom Wars was ranked #1 under the simulation games catagory and ranked #3 - tied with Dragon Quest 3 - in general. Mario Bros and Super Mario Bros being #2 and #1 respectivly.

Following Famicom Wars' successful release, many more games would be produced. Next in the series was Game Boy Wars, which was developed in-house, then Game Boy Wars Turbo and Game Boy Wars 2, developed by Hudson Soft; the developers of Bomberman. Though the next game to release under the Famicom Wars name was Super Famicom Wars in 1998.

Super Famicom Wars

Super Famicom Wars was released on May 1st, 1998 for the Super Famicom. It was a remake of the original Famicom Wars with many additions such as playable characters, 2 new factions (Green Earth and Yellow Comet,) more 2-player maps, 4-player maps, fog of war, and much more.

There was a version of the game named "BS Super Famicom Wars Ban" released for the Sattellaview, an add-on for the Super Famicom that would download magazines and games via sattalite boradcasts, that would act as a sort of demo version of the full game. It only had 2 of the 7 playable characters, lesser AI, less units, and so on. Each broadcast was a different map. There is currently no legal way to obtain this version of the game besides finding a memory cartridge that still has it due to the Sattelaview's commercial faliure and lack of accessibility on Nintendo's part. Though, all broadcasts have been preserved by fans and can be found online.

The "full" version of the game was exclusively released for Nintendo Power. Not to be confused with the Ninendo Power magazine, this Nintendo Power was a service exclusive to Japan that Nintendo launched in collaberation with the convenience store Lawson.
(Fun Fact! If you've ever had Lawson branded chip dip in Ohio, It's the same Lawson as the Japanese one! Lawson was founded in Cuyahoga Falls! Though because of corporate whatever-it's-called I don't think it isn't controlled by the Japanese branch.) With the service, you would buy an empty game cassette and re-write roms on to it using Lawson's Loppi terminal (pictured right) for a fee. The service was launched in 1997 and closed in 2007.

Many of the games released for the service were re-releases of older games or games that were hard to come by in stores in an attempt to make then more accessible. According to the Nintendo Online Magazine --also known as N.O.M-- Super Famicom Wars was the 9th best selling game for the service as of October of 2000. The best selling game at the time was Fire Emblem: Thracia 776, which released in 1999.

Much like Famicom Wars, Super Famicom Wars was released very late into it's home system's life cycle, though Super Famicom Wars wouldn't be as lucky as it's predecessor. It lacked marketing, the only substancial known marketing being it appearing at the very end of a TV ad for the Nintendo Power service, and an ad in an unknown magazine (most likely Ninendo Dream or Famitsu.) Any other known marketing (At least that I know of) was done either through the Satellaview, N.O.M or it's own website. Not helping was the fact that being this late into the Super Famicom's life cycle, the Nintendo 64 had taken most of the spotlight in the public eye. Being Nintendo's newest console and sporting fancy groundbreaking 3D graphics, interest in the Super Famicom was really only dwindling in comparison.

Even Nintendo Power itself struggled with marketing. it also being noted by users that the Loppi terminal was "Hard to use." Remember when I mentioned Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 as being the best selling game for the service? Even after it later got a full release in stores and had it's own dedicated commercial for Nintendo Power, it still turned out to be the worst selling game in the Fire Emblem series by a long shot.

Super Famicom Wars as a result was only really known amongst the Wars series superfans. The game would eventually be released onto Japanese Wii Virtual Console, and later Wii U and New Nintendo 3DS VC. But with the closure of the Wii U and 3DS E-shops as of recent, there is currenrly no legal way to obtain the game besides finding one of the rare original Nintendo Power cassettes.

Though the game was a commercial faliure, it left a very notable imprint on the Wars series as a whole; introducing many of what would become core mechanics and features to the series.

Actually the stupidest character cast of all time

(Above sprites taken from The Spriters Recource)

I mentioned earlier that this was the first game in the series to have proper playable characters, right? I never said they were good though.

This game has become a bit infamous in the Wars fanbase not for it's important controbutions to the series as a whole, but for having the least marketable cast of characters ever seen in a Nintendo game.

Going off of the sprites above, the characters are, in order:

• Yuan Delta: Actually returning from the first game; probably the most normal character of the bunch. Doesn't really have much going for him besides being pretty ok. He has no gameplay quirks or special AI and represents Red Star.


• Rojenski: Also pretty basic besides the fact that he sucks at his job. Also has no special gameplay quirks but does has a special AI specifically to make him play like dogwater. Represents Blue Moon.


• Von Rosso: It's pronounced "Fon" by the way. Supposedly really aggresive, that's it. He's the only character of the bunch that has absolutely no flavor text on the wiki. It's really sad actually. No quirks, AI is really offensive but lacks defense. Represents Green Earth.


• Hetler: Exactly what he sounds like. Resident coward of the group and the only character that they went remotly scary with when making sprites for. no quirks, AI is very defensive and hard-wired to spam infantry units, probably single-handedly making the game a hostage situation and keeping it from being re-released, every person I've met who has this guy as their favorite character has been really annoying, represents Yellow Comet.


• Caroline: Nicknamed "Lucky Girl" due to her ability, She has normal AI but has the chance to hit other units with more damage than usual. Probably the character with the most fanart. Works freelance.


• Billy Gates: The BEST worst character of the bunch. Rich kid with a baby face and a trust fund he spends on war games. Looks stupid in every sprite he has. I'm biased BTW. No special AI, but gets an extra 10,000G (ridiculous amount of money) per day. Works freelance.


• Mr. Yamamoto: Legendary commander, better than everyone else. Has a monocle that I didn't notice for like, 3 months, because you can barely see it on any of his sprites. Units start at level 2 even if level up mode is disabled, but has no special AI. Works freelance.

None of these characters ever came back after this. Their existance has been implied in Advance Wars: Reboot Camp in Hachi's shop, specifically Caroline, but anything else has been fandom conspiracy theories.

Personal Feelings

I don't have too much of a personal attchment to Famicom wars specifically, but Super Famicom Wars is probably the game is the seires that has had the most affect on me, as I'm sure you can tell by how much longer it's section is. SFW captivated me from the moment I found out about it with it's stupid characters and how much of a quiet disaster it's release was. I think I first found out about it when looking at the Fandom wiki page for Colin, which had Billy Gates linked at the time, and I just couldn't get the concept of why a company under Nintendo would put a Bill Gates parody that looks like a cute anime boy in their military simulation game. thus, I eventually looked into it more and the rest is history.

I used to write long write-ups on my Wars Tumblr fanblog about the games history and trying to find the elusive full artwork of the SFW characters. I'd stay up until 1 or 2 in the morning searching through magazine scans, the Wayback Machine and YouTube videos trying to find really anything. I found so much about the game but I never did find the character art. In fact, it was concluded that it probably doesn't exist. My searching for it did result in Askadvancewars making a write-up on the subject and posting it to AO3, which was later sourced on the Wars wiki on Yuan Delta's and Mr. Yamamoto's pages, so at least something came out of it.

Super Famicom Wars really does hold a special place in my heart, though I'd really like to get into the history of Famicom Wars more in the future. I feel like a bit of a poser to know so much about the remake of a game and so little about the original. Plus it's just a game that has so much history and such a legendary status on it's own.