Category:Game Boy Wars

During the 1990s, Nintendo released a series of Wars games onto its Game Boy handheld system. These differed from Famicom Wars in that Famicom Wars was played on a square grid while Game Boy Wars was on a hexagonal grid. The Game Boy Wars subseries differs from the Intelligent Systems-developed games, including (Famicom Wars and the subsequent series), showing signs of being influenced by a similar strategy game, Military Madness, developed by Hudson Soft (the company behind Game Boy Wars TURBO, Game Boy Wars 2 and Game Boy Wars 3). These similarities including its use of a hexagonal (instead of square) grid, and greater emphasis on rock-paper-scissors-like gameplay (where unit A defeats unit B, unit B defeats unit C, and unit C defeats unit A).

There is also a greater emphasis on control of territory in addition to head-to-head unit matchups. Each unit has a "Zone of Control" extending to the six adjacent spaces, and in this zone the attacks of allies are incrementally more powerful and the attacks of enemies are incrementally less powerful. (Certain units, including the Bomber, have attacks that affect all of the enemies in their zone of control; these attacks, known as Anti-Land weapons, represent saturation or suppression attacks instead of direct fire.) Units also have "Initiative" ratings: instead of the attacker always striking first, the unit with the higher initiative rating strikes first, often granting the advantage to the defender, which also encourages movement in groups and control of territory.