E3 2005: Advance Wars Dual Strike Hands-on

One of the highest rated games of all time on IGN is Advance Wars, a brilliantly conceived turn-based strategy game from Intelligent Systems that offers up a crazy amount of mind-bending gameplay in an extremely small package. The series continued in a sequel that was more of a slight upgrade than an all new experience, and this is exactly what it feels like to play Advance Wars: Dual Strike on the Nintendo DS. It's on the Electronic Entertainment Expo show floor this week, and we've given it as much of a go as we could for a game that needs several hours of gaming investment to really enjoy.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike is more of a conceptual update than it is a graphical one. The game still features the energetic, anime character style and basic sprite animations that spanned across the two Game Boy Advance games. The gameplay is also incredibly similar to the Game Boy Advance titles, but considering just how fantastic the experience was on the handheld, a DS rendition isn't exactly a bad thing.

The development team has updated the gameplay for the dual-screen handheld. Along with having touch-screen functions and moving some of the HUD off the main screen to prevent clutter, the second screen comes into play in some unique missions where players will have to move troops between two different maps that represent both the ground and the sky, which means twice as much resource management will be required in many of the challenges.

The subtitle "Dual Strike" is more than just a clever play on the DS abbreviations. It also refers to the fact that in many missions, you'll have control over two CO characters this time around instead of just one. This means that as you work your way across the map and defeat enemy troops, you'll be powering up two different COs that can affect the overall world with their abilities. Working together, they can even pull off a combined super move that can absolutely devastate the opposition. Players can unlock special colors and outfits for their COs for a bit of unnecessary customization.

Of course, the Nintendo DS version will have as much focus on multiplayer as the original Game Boy Advance version did. And then some. Eight player wireless using one copy of the game is definitely possible in Advance Wars: Dual Strike, and even more campaigns are available in multiplayer when everyone in the chain has a copy of the game.

The touch screen will also come into use when creating maps, a lot easier to do on the dual screen handheld since you now have direct control of where to place each item on the map. These user maps can be saved to cartridge and sent wirelessly to other owners of the DS game.

Don't expect a massive update to the Game Boy Advance game, but do expect something significantly improved over the original two Game Boy Advance Advance Wars games. This DS title hits shelves in August.