Advance Wars: Dual Strike is celebrating its 20-year anniversary today, August 22, 2025. Below, we revisit the user-generated-content features of the game that were ahead of their time.
The rain drenched my infantryman’s helmet as he marched forward. He could barely make out the jagged silhouettes of the grey buildings 100 feet ahead, but it would only be a moment until he reached them. Or so he thought–until the ambush fell. Tanks, recon trucks, and bazooka-wielding foot soldiers poured out of the fog and into my trenches, cutting through my defenses before I could even get my bearings.
For me, Advance Wars: Dual Strike was a grid-based chess match where every piece could explode, but the single-player campaign felt like squaring off against a row of toddlers still figuring out how pawns worked. The missions were charming, but I wanted something sharper. Dual Strike’s other modes, especially Versus, were where the real battlefields waited, ready for me to customize my way into intense engagements–including horrific defeats like the one I just described. This mode was both a canvas for my tactical creativity and an early sign of where the game industry would go in the future.
I was barely 12 years old when I first shoved the Dual Strike cartridge into my Nintendo DS. Even then, I knew I wanted strategy, not just spectacle. I’d already poured dozens of hours into Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, carefully ensuring every character survived the campaign. I liked the pressure, the mental math of predicting enemy movements three turns ahead. I was also more than familiar with the bright battlefields and deceptively complicated tactics of earlier Advance Wars games.
But those early missions across Omega Land? They didn’t exactly test my mettle. Even at higher difficulty settings, I could route the Black Hole Army without much of a plan. The introduction of CO skills–special powers like giving units a second turn or buffing their attacks–was fun at first, but it felt like cheating. Omega Land would always be safe as long as Max and I stood watch. I craved scenarios where I wasn’t the unstoppable force.
That’s when I spent time with Dual Strike’s other modes, including the War Room and, most importantly, Versus mode. Versus was my laboratory. Here, I could disable Max’s abilities, strip away my enemy’s usual restraints, and see what I was really made of. I’d set the weather to a downpour, throw in dense fog so I couldn’t see beyond a few tiles, and pit myself against my most respected rival–Hawke–on a map that demanded mastery of all three battlefronts: air, land, and sea.
Once the match began, there was no hand-holding. It was pure tactics. Every turn was a test: What units should I build? Where should I send them? Which front should I reinforce, and which should I risk leaving vulnerable? Sometimes the game settled into a tense stalemate, each of us probing for weaknesses while building up our forces. Other times, it became a frantic race to outmaneuver the other before the tide of battle turned. And yes–more times than I’d like to admit, my entire army was steamrolled into the dirt.
It wasn’t unlike Garry Kasparov’s famous chess matches against IBM’s Deep Blue in the 1990s–me, the human mind, versus an unflinching machine that never made an emotional move. Except in this match, Deep Blue could churn out an endless supply of bomb-dropping bishops.
What kept me coming back wasn’t just winning. It was the process of working through each scenario’s puzzle. Defending a capture point against an overwhelming air assault. Outmaneuvering infantry hidden in dense forests. Timing a naval invasion to coincide with an armored push on the opposite flank. The game rewarded patience and punished arrogance.
And when I got bored of the game’s prebuilt challenges? I made my own. Dual Strike’s map editor was a treasure trove. I’d design elaborate island chains where naval control decided the war, or create resource-starved wastelands that forced both sides to make desperate, high-stakes gambles. Sometimes I’d stack the deck against myself on purpose–giving the AI extra funds, advantageous terrain, or even a head start in unit production–just to see if I could claw my way back from the brink.
There was a special satisfaction in winning those battles. Not because the game told me I was good, but because I knew I had beaten something I built to be unfair. It was like crafting my own tortuous obstacle course and then daring myself to survive it.
The War Room offered its own brand of joy. These standalone missions were more polished than my homemade ones but still gave me freedom in how to approach them. I’d replay certain maps over and over to test new CO pairings and figure out the absolute most efficient way to dismantle the enemy’s plan.
Looking back, I realize Dual Strike made me comfortable with failure–because I failed a lot–and it made the eventual victories that much sweeter. It also planted the seed of creativity in my mind. This edition of Advance Wars was one of the few games, and one for DS no less, that offered user-generated content tools decades before they would shape the future of gaming. That early experience is part of why creation tools–like Fortnite Creative or Battlefield Portal–have become a central focus of my career. One of the greatest ways to empower players is to give them the tools to build the experiences they want.
Even now, I gravitate toward that same custom-built chaos when I revisit Advance Wars: Dual Strike. The campaigns are fun for nostalgia’s sake, but I’m happiest when I’m staring down a near-impossible map I’ve cobbled together, wondering if I’ve created a monster I can’t beat. The rain is still falling. The fog is still thick. Hawke is still somewhere out there in the mist. And he’s probably going to beat me.
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