Advance Wars (2001) for Nintendo's Game Boy Advance is one of my all-time favorite games in the universe, alongside it sits its equally impressive sequel, Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising. Those two games are as close to perfection as any game developer can hope to attain with their design. At the time of their release the franchise was healthy and strong, they found a winning formula and the future looked bright... and then it all changed. With the release of Nintendo's DS came new titles in the Advance Wars series. Those game suck. Okay, suck might be a bit strong but the new games don't garner the same acclaim as their predecessors did. They changed too much. Since Advance Wars 2... there have been two more Advance Wars titles released under the DS banner, the first made some noticeably minor changes while the second is almost a complete overhaul of the franchise. I won't get too geeky about those changes... most of them are artistic; graphic and narrative. The point is that the developers cocked up something beautiful. They had it! They had it and they pissed it all away with some bonehead moves. And it shouldn't be misconstrued, my anger isn't directed toward change or the idea of change... but toward unnecessary, drastic, fundamental change. If something is working... well you've heard it before, If it ain't broke don't fix it. Well it wasn't and they went ahead and broke it anyway. It's so crushing and disappointing to something so perfect fall apart. Usually it's the things and the people that need to make change that are resistant to it, you don't see it enough... but with the things that don't need to change, well change is the watchword. I wish more people had the awareness to know when they have something great in their hands. It's horrible to see it fall apart.
DS333, lamenting.
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