This all sounds great, but why should I care?

Well, Advance Wars, and technically speaking, Famicom Wars, is an important backbone to one of Nintendo's most beloved series, and that series is FIRE EMBLEM. Famicom Wars helped solidify the turn based strategy that would eventually turn into Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, but Advance Wars was really the key to getting Fire Emblem into the West, and many people look over this. You see, back in the day, Nintendo wasn't sure if the west could handle turn based strategy games, so Intsys put out Advance Wars with a very detailed tutorial so that the player didn't even have to read the manual to understand how it played.

Now, I don't like Fire Emblem. All of the individual characters just kinda blend together for me, and I don't like it's focus on individual units, to the point if you lose one, you have to reset the level. HOWEVER, there's somewhat of a notion amongst Nintendo fans that Fire Emblem is the best turn based strategy RPG series Nintendo's ever published when most haven't even HEARD of this series, and I think that's a shame because this is a really great series. Yes, it's been plagued with the worst luck, with the first Advance Wars released on 9/10/2000 and the remake almost delayed indefinitely due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but I don't think that should be the entire reputation of this series.

Advance wars has a unique spin on the strategy RPG formula, and there's even a website called Advance Wars By Web, or AWBW for short, where you can basically play it online in a way styled after chess by mail, where two players play a game of chess by sending their moves by the mail. It's styled after AW2 with some elements and the COs from Dual Strike added in, and even support for up to 16 players. It's genuinely an outstanding website, with user made maps that even go so far as replicate actual real life cities, sprites, or even make entirely different games. This is what I'd consider the textbook definition of a passion project, and this shows that Advance Wars can stand on it's own and be something other than "Fire Emblem but military themed."

Also, there's no Three Houses discourse in Advance Wars.