We had a great time with Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp when it finally marched onto Switch last year. The wait for this military tactics series’ return had been a long one (15 years, to be precise) but for developer WayForward, the chance to work with Nintendo also felt like a long time coming (thanks, Nintendo Everything).
In a recent interview on the Fragments of Silicon podcast, WayForward’s James Montagana revealed how last year’s collaboration came to be, stating that the team had been meeting with Nintendo at every E3 for seven or eight years.
“Every year we’d come with a new proposal to delight, entertain, and impress them, and we’d make sure the meeting was always something where we’d have a lot of fun together,” Montagana noted. “They’d associate us with having a great time laughing and chatting about games, and just appreciating games as the art form that it is.”
These meetings continued for years, says Montagana, with WayForward managing to build up a “genuine connection” with the Big N. This clearly left the development team in a good position to take on the mantle of Advance Wars, with Nintendo offering WayForward the project and the developer quickly accepting.
You can listen to Montagana’s answer in the above video (starting at around 00:23:20) or we have provided a transcript below for those who’d prefer to see it written out:
[Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp] was something that started because we’d been talking to Nintendo for many, many years. I think it might have been something to the tune of seven or eight years, where every E3 (RIP to the Electronic Entertainment Expo, by the way) we would make it a point to meet with Nintendo and just chat with them and talk about potential things we might be able to do together. Every year we’d come with a new proposal to delight, entertain and impress them, and we’d make sure that the meeting was always something where we’d have a lot of fun together. They’d associate us with having a great time, laughing and chatting about games, and just appreciating games as the art form that it is.
After many years of this sort of interaction with Nintendo, they came to really look forward to the ‘WayForward Meeting’, as they put it, and we would keep that going and bring something interesting for them, just building a really genuine connection. They’re such awesome people and they have such a passion for games and you can just feel it talking to them. We were able to meet them in that passion because, at WayForward, we love games too — you do what you love, right? It was just a really good match and a good fit for us to do something together. And so, when the opportunity came around when they were thinking about creating something like Advance Wars and bringing that back, they thought “who could we do this with?” and they reached out about it.
It was something we all love very much. I grew up playing Advance Wars myself. I played it in high school, it was the thing to do on our lunch break with the Game Boy Advance Link cable. That was just the sort of thing we enjoyed doing back then, so the moment they brought it up, my jaw hit the floor, like “of course, yes! We’d love to help you create a reimagining of Advance Wars!” So that’s kind of what got the project started and it was an incredible experience.
Well, there you have it. It just goes to show, if at first you don’t succeed, try and try (and try, and try, and try) again.
We awarded Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp a 9/10 in our review, calling it “a delightful reimagining of two classic GBA strategy titles”. You can find our complete thoughts below.
