How Advance Wars Fixed Nintendo's America Problem
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- Опубликовано: 17 авг 2023
- Advance Wars 1+2: Reboot Camp is an attempt at revitalising one of Nintendo's only English-first franchises. Without Advance Wars, many of Nintendo's most popular games would never have been released in America and across the world.
The original Advance Wars, itself the latest in an already established franchise in Japan, released to Westerners first, and Japanese audiences second. In doing so, it showed Nintendo that Western gamers were interested in more than just action games, and it paved the way for other strategy games, such as Fire Emblem, to be localised outside of Japan.
This is a tale of preconceived assumptions, and how developers at Intelligent Systems' managed to create a game that defied all conventional wisdom regarding what games sold well in the West.
Sorry this one has taken a long time, this type of video takes absolutely ages to make.
Lots of love,
BretonStripes and Kotor
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Игры
It's very interesting how "recent world events" somehow got in the way of the Advance Wars series on multiple occasions.
War. War never changes.
@@myboatforacar| Exactly. There's quite literally ALWAYS a few wars happening somewhere. It's a little odd that two high-profile ones started directly before the game's release, though.
@@PotatoPatatoVonSpudsworth True. Also an overused and dubiously appropriate Fallout reference, though. 😁
I don’t know much about Advance Wars, so I thank you for the history lesson.
"Westerners don't play RPGs because they're impatient" sighed the Japanese developer, as he translated a complicated narrative into broken English.
localizing a Japanese game is very difficult
@@GiordanDiodato *localizing any game is very diffucult.
Always happy to see a reference to the underrated SNES FE games! Hope we get Shadows of Jugdral before too long...
And yeah, translating RPGs back in the day was a huge task, which is why even Final Fantasy 2, 3, and 5 didn't even make it across the sea until the PSP era (and Fire Emblem didn't even cross the sea until The Blazing Blade on the GBA).
Super Mario RPG, however, did a LOT to open up the Western market to the JRPG genre, and I think even Advance Wars owes its availability in the West to it.
As a D&D gamer, it was great to see Nintendo fanboys finally catch on to the fun the rest of us experienced in Ultima and Phantasy Star. And Shining Force. And Lunar. Etc.
Why were you guys holding out, again?
@juststatedtheobvious9633 I don't know. I didn't even know JRPGs existed until my brother-in-law introduced me to the genre via FF8, back around 2000. Only gaming machine I had before then (aside from getting an N64 a year before) was my dad's Commodore 64.
*shrugs*
Isn't Genealogy still considered the best in the series by most fans?
FF3 Famicom didn't even see an official localization until the Pixel Remaster release in 2021, 31 years after the Japanese version
@@juststatedtheobvious9633 Nintendo did try to push for RPGs during the SNES era like localizing Illusion of Gaia for Enix since their NA division had recently closed.
heck even during the 00s and 10s Nintendo either localized, helped localize, or published a number of RPGs for their systems like Bravely Default and Bravely Second, Dragon Quest IX on DS, Dragon Quest VII remake and VIII's port on 3DS, Tales of Symphonia on the Gamecube (which they also published in Europe), and many more.
I definitely don’t regret getting AW 1+2 on launch. I wanted to support it and love the reimagined art style/direction and I know I’m in the minority for that
it's sad. people want these games? buy the rerelease, then. otherwise Nintendo will just not make them.
This game must be WayForward biggest game to date. As developers.
Not really. Shantae and River City Girls saw way more success.
@@virusanity4168is Nintendo official game you would think that itself would be important to the devs
@@Yoshizuyuner yet they never even bothered to promote the game leading up to and after launch.
So many things I didn't know before.
Love the video.
Thanks for making Advanced Wars a better known saga.
amazing! never thought long form content would return.
This was an excellently researched video, as always.
I love the art style of the game
Releasing a war themed game on September 10th, 2001? Wow, talk about lucky timing. One day later and they'd have to delay it.
I really gotta pick this game up. I've heard good things about it, I enjoy WayForward's work, and I like showing support for IP's that seem to not get enough love. I'm hoping this game doesn't fall to the wayside.
Despite the lacklustre online functionality, it also has a passionate fanbase. Moreso on the Advance Wars By Web side, but still!
It's not worth $60.
It’s worth picking up
Got to say, I really appreciate this series of “Why xxxxxxx matters”. So neat!
So when are they going to translate mother 3?...
As soon as fans are okay with half the soundtrack being replaced for copyright issues as well as tons of controversial characters are replaced. In other words: A western release that pleases fans is impossible.
@@Lugmillord nintendo still own the copyright to the audio, it's not like somebody licensed some snes beeps that now expired
@@weshuiz1325 A ton of mother 3's songs parody pop songs so closely that they would have to pay licencing fees. And there's extremely expensive stuff in there, like a song by the beatles. So no, they actually don't have the full rights to the music. Japan's copyright law is very different so it's basically only viable to release thte game there.
@@Lugmillord i dont remember the snes able to do full songs, also nintendo does everything in house
@@weshuiz1325 No, it's about the melody. Many songs in the game copy pop song melodies exactly. Nintendo once tried to ship through the dangerous sea of copyright laws by releasing two Mother 3 soundtracks. But even without the Beatles song, it still had to be taken down entirely. Check out the video "The Legal Reasons Why Mother 3 Will Never Be Localized" for more details.
It seems like Reboot Camp hasn’t hit a million copies yet, which is a shame. Here’s hoping Nintendo and IntSys don’t get discouraged about continuing the IP going forward.
We don’t know that this is still the case things could have changed since then I do occasionally still see the game on the Amazon sales charts and the eshop charts
"Turn-based games aren't appreciated outside of Japan."
*Laughs in Civilization, Heroes of Might and Magic (and the original Might and Magic series!), X-COM, Space Empires, Ultima, and many more.*
See also the once great divide between PC and Console games. Everything you mentioned were PC titles and the target audience of the PC was much different then the console market.
The closest we have now a days is Xbox vs Playstation and they type of players each is trying to recruit/maintain. But even that fails to express just how different things used to be
@@christracey5813 Civilization and HoMM were primarily PC titles, but they did have some console releases. Civ in particular had I on the SNES and II on the PS1, while HoMM released King's Bounty on the Genesis and HoMM1 and 2 on the GBC.
@@AdamTheFanatic and those versions didn't sell all that well at the time.
On the subject of Civ, Faraxis would release Civ Revolution on consoles rather then port civ 3 or 4 during the Xbox 360 PS3 generation because of the same "Too complicated for console players" attitude.
That isn't the case too much anymore as we do see deep tactical and strategic games on consoles now, but until 2012 or so, with only a handful of exceptions, they were watered down compromises or just weren't ported at all.
You realize that Civ VI- the most complex game in the series- is on not only consoles but even phones, right? This idea that just because someone is using a console means they don't want complicated games is outdated and ignorant. There was never any real evidence of it to start with.
@@AdamTheFanatic
Who are you talking too? The person you were talking to never said anything about the mindset referring to today. Hence "That isn't the case too much anymore as we do see deep tactical and strategic games on consoles now".
Your original comment references franchises that are either old enough to have skipped older consoles, or new enough that they never had to deal with the old strategy console game wisdom. You say that there was never any real evidence of console players not liking complicated games, but look at how you're referencing Civilization. The first one came out to a lot of consoles, but its sequel only came out to Playstation. The main Civ games would be absent from consoles until Civ VI. I wonder why?
Do The Croc From Croc Legend Of The Gobbos & Croc 2, Please?
Thanks for the vid
Don't mind turn based, hate the text.
"Turn based games aren't appreciated outside Japan"
Warcraft and Starcraft: Are we a joke to you??!!!??
In all seriousness my brother loves those games which is why he got into Fire Emblem
in the first place during the Wii era. While I got into Fire emblem during the 3DS era.
Perhaps some day one of us would get into Advance Wars.
any1 else get sleepy watching these kinds of vids?
No
Advance Wars is cursed to be followed with crisis as usual
I am thankful for what the series did for Fire Emblem, but it really sucks that reboot camp was released at such a poor state. It could have done so well if it was never delayed, had actual online (This is more of a Nintendo Issue) and had hints for future content.
7th
“Turn based games weren’t appreciated outside of Japan.”
This is your reminder that *Pokémon* is a JRPG with turn based combat. How could they forget the largest grossing media franchise of all time? Seriously, how?
Pokemon got its US release in 1998. A year after Final Fantasy VII blew up on Playstation. Way too late for the SNES and its many unlocalized RPGs.
It’s funny how the general mentality of American gamers, or the perceived mentality of American gamers effect and still effect decisions like this to this day. When people talk about what games are popular in the west, the dislike of logic games, the lack of attention spans or the like, they really only apply to the US cultures as things like turned based tactical or logical games have existed in Europe for years. The “dude bro” game culture and Xbox similarly only really applies to the americas in any major way.
It’s interesting to see how they thought a turn based game wouldn’t go well in the west when the UK was perhaps the biggest spot for chess in the world.
Same for travelling. They hear you speak English and assume you’re American, likely rude loud and going to sue them. I will always remember the day I was at a theme park and denied on a ride for being a centimetre too short, when a shorter boy just went on. And the guy said “you English. You sue”
I assured them, that’s an American thing.
I did not have any idea that other countries have a stereotype that Americans are all very quick to sue. Very interesting and strange. Never lived in an area where people were quick to sue in my time in both Alabama or Michigan. As for being rude and not liking strategy games, I definitely do not think that is an accurate portrayal of America. Small percentage differences in these categories compared to other countries does not accurately represent the millions of people who do love strategy games in America or are not generally rude. But we are definitely loud. There is no question about that.
First comment!