Finally, Western gamers are once again getting the pleasure of playing some of the excellent quality titles that Intelligent Systems can produce. Once again showing that they can still make an incredibly polished AAA title with Mario Kart Super Circuit, Intelligent Systems keeps the hits coming with Advance Wars.

The latest installment in the long running Wars series, which stretched out from the original Famicom Wars to the SNES Super Famicom Wars, a N64 version called 64Wars, and a popular Game Boy Color series called GameBoy Wars, Advance Wars is taking a gigantic leap with the Game Boy Advance version -- now back under the Nintendo banner, the game is looking like a romanticized and exuberant strategy title in top form, with more graphic representations of battles and a slew of commander characters to flesh the game out. Sporting a spiffy new anime style, the game goes that extra mile in the cool details department. One such feature is watching the leader of each army taunt his/her opponent as they attack, while their opponent winces accordingly.

Advance Wars is a turn-based strategy game that has been likened to crack by many, including our friends down at Nintendo Gamer Magazine. Sporting over fifteen units to fight with, more than a half-dozen commanders to choose from to lead your army, and over 150 single-player missions, playing this game seriously means that you’re in it for the long haul. On top of all that, the game fully supports 4-player multiplayer, allowing certain maps to be played off of one cart, while all maps are available when every player has a copy of the game. Oh yes, and the best feature of all? Even with all 150+ maps to play with in multiplayer, Intelligent Systems figures you may get bored with them all, so they have added in a fully-functional map editor, so that you can create your own maps and play them against your friends!

Advance Wars should be in North American stores within a day or two. Now lets all just hope that Nintendo decides to release Intelligent Systems’ Fire Emblem: Fuuin no Ken in the US as well.

Special thanks to Max Lake for major help with the preview.