Airport Enjoyer™

My last deep dive was last night from around 11pm to 1am, where I looked around mainly on internet archive through some of the magazines and frantically searched keywords in browser

I wonder what my FBI agent was thinking as I typed “Japanese nintendo magazine may 1998” into my search bar for the 3rd time at 1am. These aren’t even all of the tabs I had open at the time, just the ones I was using.

Eventually after not finding anything, I remembered that the Satellaview had some magazines that were broadcasted that might have something and I found one called “BS Nintendo HP” which I thought I’d give a shot.

The reason I was interested in this specific one is because “BS” I believe stands for “broadcast satellaview” and was put at the beginning of some of the games broadcasted, including Super Famicom Wars.

I was able to find a video of one of the magazines on YouTube and sure enough, there was actually something there.

The text in red, according to Google translate, says “The page for Super Famicom Wars has been updated” and led to a page talking about it releasing on the Nintendo Power Cartridge service.

I was really excited that I might have found something new, but then I realized that it just says the same things as it’s page on the official Nintendo of Japan website. It even has the same screenshots, just much crustier then the even the ones on the main site.

There’s also the same note at the bottom of the page from the head developer.

Even though it’s just the same thing, I still feel like it’s important to know this exists, because that means that there might be some other stuff in other broadcasts. But unfortunately, alot of the satellaview magazines are lost. The uploader in the comments said that they could only find 2 of this specific magazine (this being one of them.) And I remember skimming through the other and not finding anything.

It’s sad to see how much satellaview stuff has been lost, it seems like there was alot of cool behind the scenes stuff for alot of games.

All of this is making me wonder why SFW, or really any satellaview games were just, not advertised anywhere. (The only thing I’ve found for SFW was an ad for it on the virtual console on Nintendo of Japan’s YouTube) Maybe I just didn’t see it in the magazines I looked through, it is hard to find specific things while looking through walls of text in a language you don’t speak, but it’s still weird.

I personally think the game wasn’t really documented because of the way it released, it was first released on an expensive add on for an outdated console nearing the end of it’s life cycle, then fully released on an on demand service with the only ads for it being on said add on, with no plot or character depth for it to stand out. Though that’s just from what I’ve been able to find. Maybe it was really popular and loved and I’m just missing something, but if so, I’m still unable to find it. If someone out there has anything about this game I’m missing, I’d like to know about it.

If it did, it would already be on the official website. There’s little reason to not feature fully done promotional art in gaming magazines and not reuse in other official capacities. It’s disappointing but it’s safe to assume that, then, that no full art of the characters exist, except maybe as concept art during game development like Hirata showed on his twitter for Advance Wars.

There are several in-game art that appears in Dual Strike that never had full hi-res art, like the full art of the logo of the combined Allied Nations-Black Hole Dual Strike or the staff credit roll with Colin and Eagle, and what seems to be Rachel and Jake riding a motorbike.

Presumably they made full art and they might exist somewhere in Intelligent Systems’ vaults but will we ever see them? Unless a staff unveils them, probably not.

Here’s an example of art hidden in AW2 that must have had a full illustration but does not exist in hi-res out here in the wild internet.

There’s also a good chance that Super Famicom Wars never needed full character illustrations. The use of different Commanding Officers as separate playable characters may have started with SFW but the game itself was mostly a better remake of Famicom Wars. When I think about SFW’s game development, I think of how Kazuma Kaneko started making the sprite art for the Shin Megami Tensei and only did the illustrations later, drawing from the sprite art he himself made. I can easily guess the SFW development gang made the sprite art first, maybe doodling how they’d like the characters to look like but never keeping records. In his tweet, Hirata seems to suggest something similar, where he created the battle sprite art based on a certain Mr. H’s prior sprite designs.

Again, this is all guesswork but consider when, how and where SFW was made. Consider how Super Famicom Wars only existed as a digital download and wasn’t released for any console, thus didn’t need box art, cover or a manual. At that point, they probably thought of the playable COs as novelties and not really the “point” of the game. The Commanding Officers were in play but certainly not the focus. Famicom Wars’s box art features a fairly generic picture of what seems to be realistic American marines shouting to the void. Pretty much all the Wars’ games that were released in Japan never really featured a CO on the cover: it’s either soldiers, unit art or a generic camo style. Character-focused covers seem to be exclusive to international releases.

But it’s why Gameboy Wars Advance 1 + 2 (or simply Advance Wars internationally) was such a game changer. The maps from Famicom Wars were still in the game but now there were playable COs with dialogue, backstory, different powers and music and even a campaign mode where you can play them through. 

Gameboy Wars Advance 1 “Character Intros”

Famicom Wars DS Characters

This seems obvious to point out but their character art is prominently displayed in the website. Reiterating the point that if SFW ever had character/promo art, it would’ve featured on the website. There was no reason not to. The only other possibility is, unfortunately, the sprite art is all there is.

Now this is where things get interesting:

About its sales and reception: this is what the Game Catalog wiki says: 

There weren’t many sales due to the difficulties getting to play the game. As noted, you’d have to jump through so many hoops to download a game. Via Google Translate: “It was a hassle…to operate…and difficult to understand at first glance. Lawson itself also showed little willingness to respond depending on the store.”

Just like how the Western fanbase has shared fandom jokes and memes such as Andy’s line  “What’s an airport again”; the Japanese fanbase has one of their own: a commercial for Famicom Wars parodying the movie Full Metal Jacket.  It’s probably the most iconic thing about Wars in Japan – a quick search on twitter for Famicom Wars will have, within a few tweets, fans referencing the quirky military cadence or the tagline “Don’t tell your mom!” Gameboy Wars and Famicom Wars DS both got commercials riffing on the original meanwhile Gameboy Wars Advance 1+ 2 have commercials showcasing gameplay. The most Super Famicom Wars got in advertising was a mention  as one of the titles available when using Loppi (online shopping) at Lawson. Getting to play Super Famicom Wars was “limited to a very small number of enthusiastic fans” and “many people didn’t even know it existed until it was distributed on Virtual Console”.

Advance Wars is a critically acclaimed series but it can’t claim to have overwhelming popularity, even outside Japan. I’m saying it doesn’t sell, certainly not enough to make Nintendo nor Intelligent Systems pay attention to it. It’s very much beloved and I’m sure there are developers who would love to focus on it but at the end of the day, Nintenlligentsystems are companies and they go where the money is (hint: It’ starts with an F and ends with ire Emblem).

What would Super Famicom Wars have been like without Advance Wars? That actually has a very obvious answer. It would have been a footnote to Famicom Wars and Fire Emblem instead. 

If nothing else, Super Famicom Wars was an enhanced remake ten years after Famicom Wars, which was a critical hit and a certified Japanese gaming meme. The making of Famicom Wars was the turning point of Intelligent Systems as the company began to focus on game development. SFW was also one of the last games worked on by Shouzou Kaga for Intelligent Systems. Kaga is “widely recognized as the mind behind the creation of Fire Emblem”. There are also a bunch of developers shared between Fire Emblem and the Wars series–I personally recognized in SFW’s ending credits, Sachiko Wada, who worked on the game as a graphic artist, together with–of course–Ryo Hirata. Hirata mentions in his development tweet working with an W-san, who I’m pretty sure must be Wada. However, SFW isn’t listed in Wada’s FE page lol. Hirata doesn’t even have a page, just a mention in this credits page for Path of Radiance. Shows how much Wars mattered in FE history. Still. It’s important to note that Intelligent Systems released three Fire Emblem games for the Nintendo Power service: two were previously released games and one developed for the service, Thracia 776. 

Now check this out:

“Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 is one of the lowest-selling entries in the franchise. This can be partially attributed to its unusual release, first on the Nintendo Power service in 1999 and as a boxed retail product in 2000, as well as its status as a new Super Famicom title released well into the lifespan of the Nintendo 64 and competing consoles of the era.”

Sounds familiar right? The only difference is Thracia 776 actually got a physical release while Super Famicom Wars never did. This is also the character page of the game website, in which pretty much a bunch of characters got a full illustration, some who weren’t even playable. That just proves to me that if they went all that way for a similar game then there really would have been no reason NOT to include illustrations for the SFW COs. If they existed. 😔😔😔

First and lasts are important milestones so despite the difficulty of actually getting and actually playing the game, I do believe, yes, Super Famicom Wars would have been remembered. Mostly trivia as a follow-up for the more famous Intelligent Systems games within Japan, instead of a predecessor to the beloved but released-troubled Advance Wars. Really not much of a difference.

Just a bit more:

 So there’s this Japanese fansite: Gameboy Wars Network, which has all sorts of information about the Wars games. It’s also existed for a long time, back in the days when it’s hip to have your personal site and link to other fansites–it’s outlasted a lot of the other fansites on that page. It’s a bit melancholic to think about. Now, for many years I’ve referred to this site and wondered where exactly they got some of the more interesting info–like the ages of the characters only existed for the first AW game. Now, this was through Google translate, but a lot of the description came across as jokey and peppered with the writer’s personal opinions so I was wondering if it was just something the writer was making up as jokes–basically fanfic. But, no, the ages were based on actual info found in an official guidebook. 

I bring this up specifically because for the CO commentary, they say (via Google Translate) that “ヤン　デルタ (Gonna use the fanslation name Yuan Delta) was the former commander of the Red Star army. He decided to retire due to his age and in order to nurture his successor, he created Famicom Wars, which makes him the founder of the Wars series.”

SFW did not have story mode and this was never mentioned in his profile ingame or on the website. Yuan Delta created Famicom Wars? He retired from Red Star? How? He was obviously still commanding the armies in the game? When did he retire? How did he create Famicom Wars? Where did THAT info come from? Was this the writer’s personal joke? None of the other COs had outrageous backstories so why put that there?!

And the answer was…to look back.

The back cover of the FW game box had a picture of a general addressing you, the player:

“My name is Yuan Delta. I have fought in a number of battles as a strategist. It’s about time I raised my successor, and here I have prepared one of my games. Young COs, now is the time for me to test your abilities. The road to becoming a great strategist is to win this game.”

Amazing–the character Yuan Delta in SFW was someone taken ten years before from Famicom Wars! The apparent conceit of Famicom Wars was it’s an actual game to train future shoguns (COs). That’s a cute if obscure callback.

Now back to GBWN fansite, skipping down to the last commander, we’ve got Mister Yamamoto. Unlike Yuan Delta, the reference here is more directly written: “On the back of the Game Boy Wars box, there is a mysterious lookalike commander”.

They do look very similar but there’s obvious differences. There’s no direct reference like Yuan Delta pretty saying “It’s me, I’m Yuan Delta”. There’s too much similarities here to be just a coincidence, however, so unless they were referencing someone else who looked like this, it’s meant to be a visual callback, like how Caroline is with Catherine/Nell.

I do think the style of the cover art for Gameboy Wars is similar to the art featured in the Super Famicom Wars site. Probably not the same artist but maybe the cute chibi style was trendy at the time.

One last piece on Yuan Delta:  The twitter FCWarsMTbot posted two tweets that mentioned him:  Yuan Delta’s profile and Hachi’s profile. Both mention the same thing: that a person who looks like Yuan Delta appears in the strategy guidebook on Hachi’s page. That got my attention for sure. Nell was obviously based on Caroline and the countries shared the same names but as far I could tell there was no direct connection between the games. But if Hachi and Yuan Delta and Red Star were linked, did that mean there was info in a book somewhere that could irrefutably prove that Super Famicom Wars and Advance Wars did in fact take place in the same universe and had a shared history?

This year I finally got my hands on the Mediaworks book and excitedly pored through the pages, finding…nothing. I am not proficient in Japanese but there were absolutely no extra pages of lore or any mention of previous games. It’s a fairly standard guidebook. Where was the Yuan Delta and Hachi connection?

Now, this book, like a lot of books from Japan, had a slip cover. For most of the other guidebooks I have with me, the cover underneath was just the book cover but in monochrome, however, the Mediabooks guide was different. I’ve searched throughout the book except under the cover. Slipping off the book cover, there were

sketches by Ryo Hirata, concept art of some units and COs. He has posted some of them on his twitter. On Hachi’s concept page is a face of a man who looks a lot like Yuan Delta.  My interpretation of this: In Famicom Wars Yuan Delta is a retired commander for Red Star, looking for a successor, but in Super Famicom Wars, he still leads the Red Star army. Hachi is rumored to be the former Red Star commander-in-chief but by the start of the game has definitely retired. Advance Wars also starts with training a new Advisor, the player, to be part of the Red Star army. At some point in Advance Wars development, the leader of Red Star might have been Yuan Delta again or someone who looked like him, as part of a callback to the original game. At the very least, with doodling the character that would become Hachi, that concept was on Hirata’s mind.

So that’s the kicker for the whole essay–partial concept art for two of the Commanding Officers from SFW do exist, but were made way before the game even existed! In fact, it’s more like Super Famicom Wars made it a point to put in Yuan Delta and Mr. Yamamoto as callbacks to the earlier games, especially with Yuan Delta being the creator of Famicom Wars. Meanwhile, while developing the game that would become AW, Ryo Hirata doodled Famicom Wars’ main man as concept art that was featured in a gaming mag as promo material, which were later reprinted on the cover of one (1) guidebook. The concept art of Catherine and Domino shown on that page matches the ones on the book. It’s the same one with Ryo/Andy but Hirata put that up on his twitter. A lot of the concept art on the guidebook was already posted by him but I’d really love to get my hands on that magazine, especially to see Hirata’s comments.

To end this, here’s a short twitter discussion about the boxart and name “Famicom Wars DS”. A couple of Japanese fans find the choice for the Japanese box art rather odd. 

Instead of following past box art of the early games that had realistic military men or cartoony vehicle art, FWDS features toy soldiers. One fan speculated that idea at the time was to emphasize the connection to the original “Famicom Wars” game. Up to that point all the games followed the title of the game console adding the word Wars (Famicom Wars, Gameboy Wars, Super Famicom Wars, etc.) however, breaking the tradition, the game’s title now takes the original Famicom Wars and adds DS. Even the commercial is a throwback to that first memetic parody. The overseas version had a similar branding decision: despite not being on the Gameboy Advance, the title of the is now “Advance Wars: Dual Strike”. From that moment on, the Nintendo Wars series would become more commonly known for its most iconic game: for Japan, that’s Famicom Wars. For everywhere else, the series is most famously known as Advance Wars.

For Super Famicom Wars, the bigger case for being totally forgotten was if it was never put on the Virtual Console. Ironically, with Virtual Console ending that means there will be once again no legal way to play it. For all the other games, you could still find physical copies. The only Wars game with a sadder fate is Famicom Wars DS Ushinawareta Hikari aka Advance Wars Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict, which was only released as a Club Nintendo reward…at the tail end of the DS’s lifespan. There’s no way to legally play it if you’re Japanese. At least Super Famicom Wars will continue to exist until March 2023.

Was Super Famicom Wars popular and loved? No, it was difficult to obtain in the first place, especially if you were a kid, and was hardly advertised. Very few fans could get their hands on it and it never got a physical release. “If you downloaded the game, it took most of the disk’s memory and would have to give up on getting other games.” Despite all that, fans did get their hands on it, even before it was added on Virtual Console.

Could there be character art hidden away in gaming magazines somewhere? No, because if promo art were produced for the series, it already would have been added to the website. If at some point, it was something that actually printed either physically or digitally, then it must mean at some point, someone must have set eyes on it. No matter how obscure, there should be some whispers that it existed. Consider the canceled game, 64 Wars. This site managed not just post personal scans but also put up a magazine article. Yuan Delta’s connection with the original Famicom Wars and Mr. Yamamoto’s lookalike were documented by dedicated Wars Japanese fans so if full SFW art existed at one point, physically or online, surely the same kind of fan would have got winded of it. They’d have more time and opportunity to track that kind thing down, rather than fans like us, who sadly got into the series long after sites, videos, and physical mags have vanished. 

The simplest answer is that the art never existed. Which is a shame because the SFW art style is so adorable. You can’t help looking at the existing Yuan Delta and Mr. Yamamoto art and imagine what the other commanders would have looked like, with that adorable 90s watercolor chibi look.

“It is not an exaggeration to say that (64 Wars) is less than Super Famicom Wars.” 

RIP

The only official art that really exists are the graphics on the website. Here’s the BG stuff.

I just wanna circle back to what the Game Catalog wiki had to say about SFW: “the user(base) was limited to a very small number of enthusiastic fans”. The only reason I know the trivia of this game and pretty much any sort of knowledge of the Wars series is because of those kinds of fans, the kind of retro gaming enthusiasts who’d keep up wikis and fansites. The English translation came out on 2018 but years and years before that, fans were already asking for a way to play it. Comparatively speaking, Advance Wars is an unpopular and overlooked series and, yeah, Super Famicom Wars is an even more obscure and unnoticed part of that history, but I just wanna say, despite all that, there are people who do remember and tried for so many years to make it playable. 

That’s love.

Also, the reason why Google Translate changes Famicom to Nintendo or NES is because that’s what the Famicom is known in English. 

I tried looking for Super Famicom Reviews in Japanese, like with Famitsu, but I also got nothing. Mobygames does link one (1) review from a French website specializing in retro games. It came out in 2002 so a year after Advance Wars but still, that’s pretty early on.

(Via Google Translate)

Make War, not Love!

In Super Famicom Wars as in Advance Wars, you play as a general who leads an army and tries to defeat another character in various locations. No Andy, Max or Sami here, the 7 generals are named: Ian Delta, Rojienski, Von Rosso, Hitler (but yes, the real one), Caroline, Billy Gates (!) and Mister Yamamoto. But the stars of SFC Wars are not them, they are the little soldiers. A kind of revenge on history, the true one, which of wars retains only the names of generals.

That does highlight the point that playable COs were a thing, the “star” of the gameplay is still all about the rank-and-file soldiers doing the fighting.

How did I even find your post? Sometimes I search for stuff on google and that’s how I found that Billy Gates post by your friend–this post was on their tumblr first page at the time which is how I first read it. Your Advance Wars art is pretty funny.

Please re-read this again with me, again.

I'm still slightly embarrassed me 3 years ago spent so much time looking into this subject, sometimes staying up until 1 or 2 in the morning Googling things and just... never looked at the back of the box of arguably the most popular game in the series, and that Super Famicom Wars is a re-make of. Oops.

Also, the condensed AO3 version of this write up got sourced on the Wars wiki for a few pages. So that's pretty cool.