Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising is a turn-based strategy game developed by Intelligent Systems. It is the second entry of a series of games (Advance Wars having come first, Black Hole Rising second, Dual Strike third, with Days of Ruin being the latest entry so far.)

Gameplay is almost identical to Advance Wars, with a few welcome additions - the main one being a "Super CO Power" on top of the normal CO power. You'll find familiar units and hear favorite songs again! The cheesy storytelling is back, too.

While the Allied Nations were still recovering from the war of the previous game, the Black Hole Army had already built back up and launches a large-scale invasion on all four Macro Land nations: Orange Star, Blue Moon, Yellow Comet, and Green Earth. Commanded by Sturm, their armies are sure of their victory! Will you be able to show them wrong?

You play as the Commanding Officer of the army of one of the four Nations. Each turn, you move your units once each and attack. You can also build extra units (one per turn per building) at the harbors, factories and so on, depending on the cash you managed to net from cities you occupy.

This Christmas map pack features reworked/reimagined/AI improved/harder (at least 1 of those apply) versions of Advance Wars 2 maps, and Advance Wars 1's The Final Battle map with Advance Wars 2 COs selectable (each having a custom pre-deployed army).

The AI improvement in general entails:
- MdTanks and Subs attack first instead of last
- Evasive air units (won't always suicide move into your attack range)
- Better unit deployment priorities
- Maps arranged to help the AI (neutral properties not placed in a way to lead the AI away from the important zones, etc.)

The maps reworked are:
- Jet-Black Forest (The Final Battle)
- Orange Dawn
- Toy Box
- Silo Scramble
- To The Rescue (now a Sonja map in fog, replacing Showstopper)
- Sea Fortress (with Drake's navy vs Hawke's air force and navy)

The maps are accessible from Campaign mode. A very special bonus mission unlocks after beating all other maps.

Update 1.1: A tiny mistake on the bonus map was fixed.

rominfo : Database match: Advance Wars 2 - Black Hole Rising (USA)
Database: No-Intro: Game Boy Advance (v. 20210227-023848)
File/ROM SHA-1: 14DD0B22C894865867AFF89E8116B2DFFAE25605
File/ROM CRC32: 5AD0E571

View in The Vault