Advance Wars and its sequel, by a country mile. Someone recommended it to me about 20 years ago. Since I didn’t have a GBA, I downloaded a relatively early emulator that barely ran on my PC at the time. It had some sound glitches and performance issues, but otherwise, it worked just fine. I was initially put off by the anime presentation (since I associated it with kids shows back then, I had no love for anime - be kind, I hadn’t seen a single Studio Ghibli film yet) and it didn’t look particularly great blown up on a 17" CRT either, but the outstanding gameplay and fun campaign quickly pulled me in. Who knew war could be this lighthearted and at the same time so devilishly hard? Within ten minutes, I was hooked and it quickly became one of my favorite strategy games of all times, right up there with the likes of Age of Empires II (and the incredibly obscure Blue Empire II - I doubt there’s anyone here who has even heard of it).
Since then I have revisited AW every few years. It was one of my most-played games on my first Android smartphone (2010) and once again, the emulator barely ran on the device. Oh, and that phone didn’t have multitouch yet, which however wasn’t an issue with a turn-based game. A couple of years later, I bought a PSP, relatively late into its lifecycle - and instead of using it for PSP games, it became an emulation machine, by which I mean that I primarily played two games on it: Advance Wars and, for some reason, Activision Tennis for the Atari 2600/VCS from the lovingly made Activision Hits collection. One of the best tennis games of all time, even though it’s what feels like two dozen pixels in total, including animations.
Soon after, I discovered Advance Wars By Web, which is an unauthorized browser-based online multiplayer clone of the entire Advance Wars series that is still around. I have no idea how they have managed to survive Nintendo’s wrath. There are no animations nor sounds, which did put me off though. My old account is still alive, so I might get back to it though.
I finally bought something resembling an actual GBA as my Xmas present to myself, the rather nice Anbernic RG35XXSP emulation console, which is an affordable and completely open copy of the Advance SP - based on an ARM CPU and running Linux. If anyone else is looking for a decent replacement/supplement to their original GBA SP or just a neat little emulation system that fits into a (men’s) pants pocket, one can do much worse, especially given how remarkably good IPS screen, buttons and battery life are. Guess which game I’ve been playing on this device the most? Good guess, but no, it’s a port of 2048, which feels awesome with physical buttons, but Advance Wars will probably take its rightful crown back soon. The one downside of this system I’ve discovered so far is that annoyingly, ROM hacks rarely work, no matter the emulator.
After this needlessly long text on my boring emulation journey with AW, you might be wondering what other Game Boy games managed to pull me in? Barely anything. I’ve tried a few, but none of them got me hooked, with the sole exception of what only called the official demake of Max Payne for the GBA, which is shockingly competent. Who knew that the iconic third person shooter actually works as an isometric title on the GBA of all systems? It’s not some cheap knock-off that has the same title as the big PC and console title, like so many other mobile games over the years, but a truly faithful replica of the PC classic that actually feels like Max Payne, down to the most minute details. Even level design and comic book cutscenes are mostly preserved - with voice acting! The isometric presentation does sometimes result in invisible enemies shooting at you, but that’s pretty much the worst I can say about this title. Here’s a video of it in action.
As for the rest, I was excited for Golden Sun after all of the praise it’s been getting over the years, but so far, the annoying to navigate introduction managed to scare me away every single time - and it’s close to doing the same this time again. Someone please tell me to hang on. I think I tried Metroid: Zero Mission ages ago, but it didn’t click, just like every other Metroid and every other metroidvania, with the sole exception of VVVVVV (PC, but open source), which remains the best metroidvania in my humble opinion, in large part because instead of collecting items that unlock previously inaccessible areas, it’s the player getting better at playing the title that achieves the same thing. I’ve never seen any other game doing it this well. Not a Game Boy title though, so I’ll stop gushing about it.
I randomly tried out Super Mario Land for the original Game Boy yesterday, primarily to toy around with shaders that simulate the handheld’s terrible screen - and surprisingly, I really enjoyed it for a few levels. This is an excellent 2D Mario that feels absolutely perfect to play, despite the limited hardware it was originally developed for. What’s weird is that I don’t actually like 2D Mario games, but this one has somehow managed to endear itself to me. I’ve also played a few minutes of a ROM hack that colorizes Pokémon Red, which is neat, and randomly tried out Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance for the GBA. This probably forgotten RPG (I’ve only ever heard people talk about the totally different PS2 version, which was a technical marvel) oozes atmosphere, but I can’t tell for how long I’ll play it yet.
Not a bad guess, but this is actually a freeware turn-based strategy game from ~2004 (at least version 1.1 is from that year, according to file dates).
Essentially a slightly enhanced computer version of Risk, set in Europe and played against three other human or AI players, the former either in local hot seat or e-mail multiplayer. You conquer countries with your troops (there’s only one type of unit). Larger countries provide more funds per round, which are needed to maintain your existing troops (a large army can quickly drain your coffers), train new ones and build factories in countries so that you can troops closer to the front lines. The unique mechanic is that the success of your troops in battle is determined not just by numerical superiority, but also by how much support they are enjoying in the country where the fighting is happening. You start out with 100% support in your starting alliance of countries, but every other country will have 0% support for your noble cause at first, which means your troops will suffer high losses against the entrenched neutral (don’t attack, don’t replenish their troops) and AI players. Only after you have conquered a country (by reducing its defenders to 0), you can slowly increase your popularity through occupation - the more troops there are in the country, the quicker your population will grow. Hearts and minds and all that. What you end up doing is forming chains of troops marching from one country to the next each round (visible as arrows in the screenshots below), because factories are expensive and also because you want to maintain a large number of troops in countries close to the front lines. You’ll primarily produce in your starting factories in the beginning and then send them from e.g. France to Germany, Germany to Poland, Poland to then maybe a few other European countries you’re defending or attacking.
It’s simple, yet addictive. The AI is just competent enough at the highest difficulty to not be a complete pushover. If you’re anything like me or my friends back in the day, you’ll want to play “just one more round” a few times in a row. Blue Empire II was developed by a young brother-sister team. It was only ever available in German (hardly an issue, given how self-explanatory the game is) and primarily distributed as a free bonus on gaming magazine discs - at least that’s how I got it.
Here are two playthroughs, a single- and a multiplayer game, documented on a German Civilization forum (with screenshots):
I have seen it offered on freeware games sites in its heyday, where it used to occupy top spots with tens of thousands of downloads (the Internet was small back then), but those appear to be all down at this point. Since there are literally no downloads of it available anywhere anymore (the above two playthroughs are the only mention of the game I could find - and not even with all search engines), I’ve decided to uploaded it to the Internet Archive for preservation:
In order for it to run on operating systems newer than Windows XP, enable compatibility mode for Windows XP SP2. Don’t be alerted by your task bar briefly flickering on startup - that’s “normal”. It should work on Linux through Wine, although I haven’t tested it. Inside the zip file, there’s a “spielregeln.htm” file that explains the rules and provides helpful hints. Use a translation service of your choice, if necessary.
Awesome work on archiving it! I guess it not having an english version, even if there isn’t much text, makes it significantly harder for non german speakers like myself to have heard of it.
I see that the game was made using Delphi/Pascal, as there’s a number of .bpl files, so maybe it’s possible to attempt a translation using Lazarus. This also probably explains why I could run it straight away on Windows 10, no need to turn on compatibility mode.
Since my last experience with anything Pascal was decades ago and hardly in-depth, please excuse the noobish question: Would it be as simple as modifying the files with the right IDE or is there more to it? I’d totally be down to translating the game.
I’m not the best person to answer, as although I have programmed in Pascal a decade ago, I also never really fiddled with anything outside school. I do have a interest in the language, given it tends to be as fast as C, has object orientation and other goodies, and seems to be able to compile to just about any architecture with minimal fucking around or code wrangling.
Anyway, according to the Freepascal wiki, “The compiled file is called .bpl in Delphi. This is effectively a (special) DLL. In other words its linking is finalized. The needed metadata (.ppu, inline function and weak packaged units (see next point) go into a .dcp file.”
According to Embarcadero Delphi’s help page, the .bpl is a binary file built from source, so it’s probably not a simple matter of just telling Lazarus or Delphi to open it.
Advance Wars and its sequel, by a country mile. Someone recommended it to me about 20 years ago. Since I didn’t have a GBA, I downloaded a relatively early emulator that barely ran on my PC at the time. It had some sound glitches and performance issues, but otherwise, it worked just fine. I was initially put off by the anime presentation (since I associated it with kids shows back then, I had no love for anime - be kind, I hadn’t seen a single Studio Ghibli film yet) and it didn’t look particularly great blown up on a 17" CRT either, but the outstanding gameplay and fun campaign quickly pulled me in. Who knew war could be this lighthearted and at the same time so devilishly hard? Within ten minutes, I was hooked and it quickly became one of my favorite strategy games of all times, right up there with the likes of Age of Empires II (and the incredibly obscure Blue Empire II - I doubt there’s anyone here who has even heard of it).
Since then I have revisited AW every few years. It was one of my most-played games on my first Android smartphone (2010) and once again, the emulator barely ran on the device. Oh, and that phone didn’t have multitouch yet, which however wasn’t an issue with a turn-based game. A couple of years later, I bought a PSP, relatively late into its lifecycle - and instead of using it for PSP games, it became an emulation machine, by which I mean that I primarily played two games on it: Advance Wars and, for some reason, Activision Tennis for the Atari 2600/VCS from the lovingly made Activision Hits collection. One of the best tennis games of all time, even though it’s what feels like two dozen pixels in total, including animations.
Soon after, I discovered Advance Wars By Web, which is an unauthorized browser-based online multiplayer clone of the entire Advance Wars series that is still around. I have no idea how they have managed to survive Nintendo’s wrath. There are no animations nor sounds, which did put me off though. My old account is still alive, so I might get back to it though.
I finally bought something resembling an actual GBA as my Xmas present to myself, the rather nice Anbernic RG35XXSP emulation console, which is an affordable and completely open copy of the Advance SP - based on an ARM CPU and running Linux. If anyone else is looking for a decent replacement/supplement to their original GBA SP or just a neat little emulation system that fits into a (men’s) pants pocket, one can do much worse, especially given how remarkably good IPS screen, buttons and battery life are. Guess which game I’ve been playing on this device the most? Good guess, but no, it’s a port of 2048, which feels awesome with physical buttons, but Advance Wars will probably take its rightful crown back soon. The one downside of this system I’ve discovered so far is that annoyingly, ROM hacks rarely work, no matter the emulator.
After this needlessly long text on my boring emulation journey with AW, you might be wondering what other Game Boy games managed to pull me in? Barely anything. I’ve tried a few, but none of them got me hooked, with the sole exception of what only called the official demake of Max Payne for the GBA, which is shockingly competent. Who knew that the iconic third person shooter actually works as an isometric title on the GBA of all systems? It’s not some cheap knock-off that has the same title as the big PC and console title, like so many other mobile games over the years, but a truly faithful replica of the PC classic that actually feels like Max Payne, down to the most minute details. Even level design and comic book cutscenes are mostly preserved - with voice acting! The isometric presentation does sometimes result in invisible enemies shooting at you, but that’s pretty much the worst I can say about this title. Here’s a video of it in action.
As for the rest, I was excited for Golden Sun after all of the praise it’s been getting over the years, but so far, the annoying to navigate introduction managed to scare me away every single time - and it’s close to doing the same this time again. Someone please tell me to hang on. I think I tried Metroid: Zero Mission ages ago, but it didn’t click, just like every other Metroid and every other metroidvania, with the sole exception of VVVVVV (PC, but open source), which remains the best metroidvania in my humble opinion, in large part because instead of collecting items that unlock previously inaccessible areas, it’s the player getting better at playing the title that achieves the same thing. I’ve never seen any other game doing it this well. Not a Game Boy title though, so I’ll stop gushing about it.
I randomly tried out Super Mario Land for the original Game Boy yesterday, primarily to toy around with shaders that simulate the handheld’s terrible screen - and surprisingly, I really enjoyed it for a few levels. This is an excellent 2D Mario that feels absolutely perfect to play, despite the limited hardware it was originally developed for. What’s weird is that I don’t actually like 2D Mario games, but this one has somehow managed to endear itself to me. I’ve also played a few minutes of a ROM hack that colorizes Pokémon Red, which is neat, and randomly tried out Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance for the GBA. This probably forgotten RPG (I’ve only ever heard people talk about the totally different PS2 version, which was a technical marvel) oozes atmosphere, but I can’t tell for how long I’ll play it yet.
Google only shows Age of Empires 2, trying
"blue empire" gamegives unrelated results. Couldn’t find anything on Mobygames either. Was that a mod?Not a bad guess, but this is actually a freeware turn-based strategy game from ~2004 (at least version 1.1 is from that year, according to file dates).
Essentially a slightly enhanced computer version of Risk, set in Europe and played against three other human or AI players, the former either in local hot seat or e-mail multiplayer. You conquer countries with your troops (there’s only one type of unit). Larger countries provide more funds per round, which are needed to maintain your existing troops (a large army can quickly drain your coffers), train new ones and build factories in countries so that you can troops closer to the front lines. The unique mechanic is that the success of your troops in battle is determined not just by numerical superiority, but also by how much support they are enjoying in the country where the fighting is happening. You start out with 100% support in your starting alliance of countries, but every other country will have 0% support for your noble cause at first, which means your troops will suffer high losses against the entrenched neutral (don’t attack, don’t replenish their troops) and AI players. Only after you have conquered a country (by reducing its defenders to 0), you can slowly increase your popularity through occupation - the more troops there are in the country, the quicker your population will grow. Hearts and minds and all that. What you end up doing is forming chains of troops marching from one country to the next each round (visible as arrows in the screenshots below), because factories are expensive and also because you want to maintain a large number of troops in countries close to the front lines. You’ll primarily produce in your starting factories in the beginning and then send them from e.g. France to Germany, Germany to Poland, Poland to then maybe a few other European countries you’re defending or attacking.
It’s simple, yet addictive. The AI is just competent enough at the highest difficulty to not be a complete pushover. If you’re anything like me or my friends back in the day, you’ll want to play “just one more round” a few times in a row. Blue Empire II was developed by a young brother-sister team. It was only ever available in German (hardly an issue, given how self-explanatory the game is) and primarily distributed as a free bonus on gaming magazine discs - at least that’s how I got it.
Here are two playthroughs, a single- and a multiplayer game, documented on a German Civilization forum (with screenshots):
https://www.civforum.de/showthread.php?69914-Blue-Empire
https://www.civforum.de/showthread.php?66664-Blue-Empire-II
I have seen it offered on freeware games sites in its heyday, where it used to occupy top spots with tens of thousands of downloads (the Internet was small back then), but those appear to be all down at this point. Since there are literally no downloads of it available anywhere anymore (the above two playthroughs are the only mention of the game I could find - and not even with all search engines), I’ve decided to uploaded it to the Internet Archive for preservation:
https://archive.org/details/blue-empire-2
In order for it to run on operating systems newer than Windows XP, enable compatibility mode for Windows XP SP2. Don’t be alerted by your task bar briefly flickering on startup - that’s “normal”. It should work on Linux through Wine, although I haven’t tested it. Inside the zip file, there’s a “spielregeln.htm” file that explains the rules and provides helpful hints. Use a translation service of your choice, if necessary.
Awesome work on archiving it! I guess it not having an english version, even if there isn’t much text, makes it significantly harder for non german speakers like myself to have heard of it.
I see that the game was made using Delphi/Pascal, as there’s a number of .bpl files, so maybe it’s possible to attempt a translation using Lazarus. This also probably explains why I could run it straight away on Windows 10, no need to turn on compatibility mode.
Since my last experience with anything Pascal was decades ago and hardly in-depth, please excuse the noobish question: Would it be as simple as modifying the files with the right IDE or is there more to it? I’d totally be down to translating the game.
I’m not the best person to answer, as although I have programmed in Pascal a decade ago, I also never really fiddled with anything outside school. I do have a interest in the language, given it tends to be as fast as C, has object orientation and other goodies, and seems to be able to compile to just about any architecture with minimal fucking around or code wrangling.
Anyway, according to the Freepascal wiki, “The compiled file is called .bpl in Delphi. This is effectively a (special) DLL. In other words its linking is finalized. The needed metadata (.ppu, inline function and weak packaged units (see next point) go into a .dcp file.”
According to Embarcadero Delphi’s help page, the .bpl is a binary file built from source, so it’s probably not a simple matter of just telling Lazarus or Delphi to open it.
Maybe, and this is me being hopeful, using something like this, IDR, will make things simple and straightforward.