Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising

Overview

Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising arrived in June 2003 in North America, developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy Advance, and immediately established itself as one of the most accomplished strategy games ever released on a handheld platform. Building directly on the foundation of the original Advance Wars — itself a game that had arrived in 2001 to near-universal acclaim after a decade of Japan-only releases under the Famicom Wars series banner — Black Hole Rising refined, expanded, and deepened almost every system its predecessor introduced, producing a sequel that many players and critics consider the definitive entry in the series. Where the first game introduced Western audiences to the clean elegance of tile-based, CO-driven warfare, this follow-up arrived already knowing its audience and immediately set about pushing the design further.

The game’s visual presentation represents a meaningful step forward from the original, with more expressive CO portraits, sharper battle animations, and a color palette that feels richer and more deliberately stylized. The pixelated tank explosions and infantry scrambles retain the charm of classic sprite work while conveying genuine tactical weight — when a Md. Tank obliterates an infantry unit, the screen communicates the lethality with satisfaction. The soundtrack, composed by Yoshito Hirano and Shinji Hosoe, delivers a memorable collection of militaristic themes and jaunty map jingles that burrowed into the consciousness of anyone who spent hours in the War Room. Each CO has a distinct musical identity, and the shift to battle themes during combat reinforces the game’s personality.

Critically, Black Hole Rising was met with strong reviews across the board, earning scores in the 85–92 range from major outlets and securing a place on numerous year-end best-of lists for 2003. Nintendo’s marketing leaned into the GBA’s installed base, and the game sold well enough to cement Advance Wars as a genuine franchise rather than a one-off curiosity. IGN and GameSpot both praised its depth while noting its accessibility, a balance that remains the series’ signature achievement. The game received a European release in January 2004, where it similarly found an enthusiastic audience.

Today, Black Hole Rising is remembered as a high-water mark for portable strategy games and a defining title of the GBA era. The 2022 Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp remake for Nintendo Switch, developed by WayForward, reintroduced both games to a new generation with updated visuals — a testament to the enduring relevance of the design. The original cartridge maintains strong collector value, and the game is regularly cited in discussions of the greatest strategy games ever made.

Gameplay

At its core, Advance Wars 2 operates on the same fundamental loop that defined the original: two opposing armies deploy unit types across a grid-based map, capturing properties to fund production, and maneuver toward the destruction of all enemy forces or the capture of the opponent’s HQ. The unit roster — infantry, mechs, recon vehicles, APCs, artillery, tanks, medium tanks, Neotanks, rocket artillery, anti-air units, bombers, fighters, battle copters, transports, battleships, cruisers, submarines, and landers — each occupy a distinct tactical niche, and mastering the interplay between them is the game’s central intellectual pleasure. Infantry remain the backbone of any campaign, capable of capturing the cities, bases, airports, and ports that generate daily income (measured in G, or Gold), but they are fragile in open terrain and depend on armored support to survive.

Black Hole Rising’s most significant mechanical addition is the Super CO Power, an upgraded version of the CO Powers introduced in the first game. Each Commanding Officer possesses two abilities: a standard CO Power that charges through dealing and receiving damage, and the new Super CO Power that charges more slowly but unleashes dramatically more potent effects. Sami’s Double Time CO Power already made infantry movements devastating in the original; her Victory March Super CO Power allows capturing units to instantly seize any property they stand on, fundamentally reshaping how an opponent must defend territory. Andy’s Hyper Upgrade becomes Hyper Repair, restoring five HP to every unit on the field. These powers introduce a risk-reward tempo layer — do you fire off a CO Power early to press an advantage, or hold for the Super to potentially end the engagement outright? The answer varies by map, opponent, and army composition, creating genuine decision depth on every turn.

The campaign structure follows Black Hole commander Sturm’s renewed assault across four nations — Orange Star, Blue Moon, Yellow Comet, and Green Earth — each defended by its own set of COs. Players work through mission sets for each nation before a convergent finale. The difficulty curve is notably steeper than the original’s campaign, particularly in the later Blue Moon and Yellow Comet missions, where the game introduces pipe segments as new terrain. Pipes block unit movement and can only be destroyed at their seams, forcing players to manage chokepoints and rethink standard advance strategies. These pipe junctions create natural defensive lines that reward patience and punish headlong assaults, adding a small but meaningful layer of positional thinking to an already tactically rich system.

Beyond the campaign, the War Room presents standalone maps with S-rank scoring systems that evaluate completion speed, power (damage dealt versus received), and technique (units lost), demanding genuine optimization rather than mere victory. The Map Editor allows players to construct custom battlegrounds with surprising flexibility given the hardware constraints, and two-player link cable battles extend the game’s life considerably. The total package — campaign, War Room, editor, and versus — represents extraordinary value on a single cartridge.

Why It’s a Classic

Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising earns its classic status through the same quality that defines all enduring strategy games: a ruleset simple enough to internalize in an hour but deep enough to reward hundreds of hours of refinement. The CO system is the engine of this depth. With thirteen COs across the four Allied Nations and five Black Hole commanders — including the new Flak, Lash, Adder, Hawke, and the returning Sturm — each with distinct stat modifiers and Power abilities, the game presents a matrix of matchups that competitive players still analyze. Lash’s terrain-cost indifference and her Ground Forces Super CO Power, which doubles terrain stars’ combat contribution, completely changes how her opponent must position units. Hawke’s Black Wave drains all enemy HP while healing his own forces, functioning as a momentum reversal capable of deciding engagements. This asymmetry, carefully calibrated so no single CO is unambiguously dominant in all contexts, gives the game a competitive texture rare in single-player-focused titles.

The game also demonstrates how a sequel should work: it does not reinvent but refines. Every addition — the Super CO Powers, the pipe terrain, the expanded CO roster, the harder campaign — slots naturally into the existing architecture without disrupting what made the original work. This design conservatism is itself a form of mastery, recognizing that the systems were sound and that the job was to deepen rather than discard. The influence of this approach echoes through the series and through the broader portable strategy genre; games like Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones and later entries in the Disgaea series owe something to the clarity of Advance Wars’ unit economy thinking.

Decades after its release, Black Hole Rising holds up with almost no caveats. The interface is precise, the maps are well-constructed, and the strategic problems it poses are as genuinely challenging today as they were in 2003. There are no load screens to speak of, no systems that require external reference, and no difficulty spikes that feel unfair rather than instructive. For players encountering it through Re-Boot Camp or a flash cartridge, the game delivers the same reward loop it always has: the slow tightening of a well-executed encirclement, the satisfaction of a timely CO Power activation, and the clean cognitive pleasure of a turn-based system running exactly as designed.