Advance Wars: Dual Strike

Advance Wars: Dual Strike
Also known as: Famicom Wars DS (JP) Developer: Intelligent Systems Publisher: Nintendo Platform: Nintendo DS Released in JP: June 23, 2005 Released in US: August 22, 2005 Released in EU: September 30, 2005 This game has unused areas. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused abilities. This game has unused text. This game has regional differences.

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Advance Wars: Dual Strike concluded the storyline from the Game Boy Advance games...by focusing largely on its new characters. The Japanese version's dissimilar name doesn't make even that connection readily apparent.

Unused Text

Text for "Test Island 4" through "Test Island 8" remains, starting at 1CC7D4 (US version).

Unused Equippable Skills

In addition to the standard 43 equippable skills for each CO to use, the game has data assigned to support up to 95 skills. These skills are normally equippable (through the use of memory editing) and function normally in the menus. Each one is allocated equipped flags in RAM, two text table string pointers, a name string and a description string. Each skill also has an entry in the Skill equip table that assigns the Text IDs and rank unlocked of every skill. Each also has a generic numbered icon. None of the unused skills have any in-game effect - they are not referenced by any of the game's checks like the skills that do actually have effects.

The icons are contained as part of the uncompressed graphical data in the "res/res_skill" file

The text is located in "Overlay9_0000.bin".

Every unused Skill has a name string and a description string of "Blank" in the US English version.

Regional Differences

To do: Any renames of interest, like CO powers?

The Japanese and international versions have several differences.

Japan	US

Aside from the logo and copyright symbol, "TOUCH START!" became "Touch to Start".

Japan	US

Various English was rewritten to flow better, notably during the intro sequence. "Farthest bounds of the ocean" became "A world under siege".

Japan	US

More wording changes. The menu button icons also now resemble the DS' controller buttons.

Japan	US

The bonus map, accessible by holding L + R while entering the map editor, is very different.

COs

Designs

Olaf, Grit, and Sonja retain the previous game's international design changes.

Names

Kindle and Koal in the US version, are named Candy and Zak in the European version.

However, the EU English translators missed a few instances of "Koal" in Hachi's shop dialogue. All other languages corrected this.