Hacked By: RadioShadow
Rom To Patch: 0263 - Advance Wars (E).gba
Download: IPS Patch – 1.0l
Description: In the Japanese version of Advance Wars (known as Gameboy Wars Advance), six of the current COs sprites are different. They were changed in the USA/Euro version to avoid racial/ethnic stereotypes and not to depict Christianity. This hack however allows you to play the European version of Advance Wars with the CO sprites from Gameboy Wars Advance.
Screenshots: The Japanese sprites are the ones on the right.




Reasons for Changes:
When ‘Gameboy Wars Advance’ was getting translated into English which today is known as ‘Advance Wars’, a couple of changes had to be made to six of the CO’s sprites. The reasons why they were changed are mentioned below.
Nell’s Changes:
There isn’t really much to say about Nell’s Japanese sprite. In Gameboy Wars Advance her uniform is a bit more revealing since her skirt is shorter and she wears a sleeveless top. It seems the idea was to make Nell look like a pretty/sexy instructor.
While Advance Wars was getting translated, they decided Nell’s uniform was a bit too revealing and due to laws about what characters can wear in games rated E/+3, Nell’s skirt length was increased and her sleeveless top now has sleeves. These changes may also have been made to make her military uniform look more formal.
Olaf’s Changes:
Olaf’s original sprite is very amusing to look at since he is sitting in a chair, is fat, has a white beard and wears a woolly hat which has lead to a lot of people from the west to refer to him as Santa Claus since he looks very much like him. Since Santa Claus does not exist in eastern countries, Olaf is taken more seriously in Japan.
Now most western games aren’t allow to have anything related to Christianity. A perfect example of this are the Castlevania’s releases in the west where crosses were removed and the walls are now bare. Due to this reason the grumpy people who were localizing Advance Wars weren’t in a Christmas sprite mood and decided his sprite needed editing so people in the west would take Olaf seriously and to remove the Christianity reference.
In Advance Wars, he now wears an army cap instead of a woolly hat which makes him look more like a Russian officer. To get rid of the Santa reference, his beard was changed from white to brown.
Grit’s Changes:
Grit’s original sprite showed him as a typical American cowboy. When Advance Wars was getting translated, they decided Grit shouldn’t be shown as a typical cowboy as you don’t see many cowboys in Russia. He was also called ‘Billy’ (after the fiction character Billy the Kid) in Gameboy Wars Advance which makes it obvious he is an American who has defended to Russia.
Remember the Cold War, where the Americans suspected and accused people in the government of being Communists? Grit was found as a conspirator of Olaf, trying to hound information out of Nell. He had to find a way out of there and so he sided with Olaf, another former Orange Star citizen.
In order to make his sprite look more Russian, his cowboy hat was replaced with a Russian Style Headgear (Hat). This also meant the Cold War reference has gone since the game is referring to Grit who is a Russian who went to Orange Star (America) and later on joined Blue Moon (Russia).
In one of the early Japanese screenshots of Gameboy Wars Advance, Grit was shown smoking a cigarette. When the game finally got released in 2004, it seems they decided against the idea of having Grit smoke in the game. Of course, the cigarette would have been edited out in Advance Wars anyway as you can’t have smoking references in E/+3 games.

Kanbei’s Changes:
Kanbei’s original sprite is interesting because he is typical stereotype character. However, not many people would understand what the sprite was based on because his character motif is based off a Japanese movie. Now all Advance Wars fans will know Kanbei is portrayed as a wannabe samurai. Well funny enough, that’s because he is. There is an extremely popular film known as ‘Shichinin no Samurai’ (The Seven Samurai). The film is about seven samurai who save a village from a group of bandits. However, there are only six samurai in the group; the seventh one never gets invited to join the group. The seventh samurai is named ‘Kikuchiyo’ (Kanbei’s Japanese name in Gameboy Wars Advance) who goes out his way to become a samurai (including faking his birth certificate to show he’s “of noble blood”) who later on proves his worth. Kikuchiyo is a constant show-off and carries the biggest sword out of the seven samurai.
Going back to Kanbei (Kikuchiyo) in Gameboy Wars Advance, he is very similar to the seventh samurai in the film since he goes out of his way and speaks as if he’s of noble blood. In addition to this, he gets an extremely goofy looking samurai outfit to extend the joke. Now not many western people are going to get this joke and to prevent getting in trouble from stealing names, they based Kanbei’s name after ‘Kambei Shimade’, the leader of the mercenary samurai in the movie.
Now Kanbei’s sprite needed to be changed and the editors went to work in redesigning his outfit. In Advance Wars, Kanbei is referred to as a ‘modern samurai’ so they went and made him look like one by making him wear more modern style samurai cloths. If you compare Kanbei’s Japanese and USA sprite, you will notice that Kanbei is taller and skinner compared to his Japanese sprite. His ponytail was also removed as it seemed he looked silly with it.
Sonja’s Changes:
Before you read on, there was one main change that was made when Advance Wars was released. The below sentence will give you a better idea on why Sonja’s sprite was changed.
The main change that was made was the first coloured army was originally called ‘Red Star’ and has been called that in other Japanese versions of the game such as such as ‘Famicom Wars’. The ‘Red Star’ army style and the COs are based on the Americans. The red star is a symbol of communism and the ‘Red Star’ and the ‘Americans’ combined together is not a good thing to refer to in the west since we don’t want the communist in charge of the Americans. To solve this issue, the army was called ‘Orange Star’ but the palette of the army and buildings were not edited. So the armies were technically still red but were referred to as orange.
Sonja has to be one of the most interesting reasons why her sprite was changed. The first thing you will notice about Sonja is she originally wore red but it got changed to green instead. But why the colour change you ask? Well it’s a long story.
If you have played Advance Wars, you will have noticed the storyline in Advance Wars mentions Nell, Sami and Sonja were in the military academy. Now the one thing that a lot of people forget is Sonja is from ‘Yellow Comet’ while Nell and Sami are from ‘Orange Star’. So how can they have studied if they lived in different countries? Well Advance Wars doesn’t explain much but Gameboy Wars Advance explains Sonja’s history in more detail.
While Sonja was growing up, she was ahead in all her classes and constantly pulling off A’s! Her oh-so-proud father Kanbei, Emperor of Yellow Comet noticed Sonja doing well in Yellow Comet Military Academy and this is when Sonja told her father “Father, I'm bored of Comet school. I'd like to go to Red Star Academy!” (She wanted to go and study in America).
When she attended the Red Star Academy, she ended up in the same class as Nell and Sami. Nell and Sonja constantly hit the books while Sami did as little as possible. However, Sonja excelled above her classmates and was able to skip to the next grade! Hence, Sonja was a year younger and also a year smarter than Nell. After Sonja finished academy, she went back to Yellow Comet out of loyalty and to command her father's armies. From constantly reading whenever she gets the chance, she does come off as a nerd and thus, is an Intel geek from knowing so well about terrain and such.
As for the colour change made to the sprite, Red is the colour of the Red Star military's school uniform and she wears red to symbolise she studied at Red Star Military Academy. They already got rid of the Red Star reference in Advance Wars so it wasn’t a great idea to have Sonja refer to Red Star as well so they changed the colour to green which is a more typical colour seen in the army.
She originally wore glasses in Gameboy Wars Advance to simply to show she is the stereotypical anime glasses girl, the one who looks like a nerd with them on, but when they come off she is one of the most beautiful girls of the group. They got removed in Advance Wars to prevent people from calling her a nerd even though in my opinion, she looks cute with them on. They may also have been removed since how can she be a vision expert if she has bad vision herself? So to make her seem more suitable to be an expert in that area, they were removed to show she has perfect eyesight.
The last change that was made was Sonja wears a garrison cap in Advance Wars. This was probably added to make her look less like a typical nerdy school girl and to make her look more like a military CO.
Drake’s Changes:
In Gameboy Wars Advance, Drake was designed to look like a pirate. In Advance Wars, Drake uniform was changed to make him like look like a sailor.
The army is made up of three types of units, air which is controlled by the air force, sea which is controlled by the navy and ground which is controlled by the army. Eagle, the leader of Green Earth is best with air units so Drake is the opposite and is best with sea units.
In western countries, it would be silly for a pirate to join the navy and it would be even stranger that Eagle is a pilot in charge of the air force while Drake is a pirate in charge of the navy. Due to this reason, Drake’s sprite was edited to make him look like a sailor to make the situation more believable.
Credits:
RadioShadow – Well I did make this hack
Solid One – For giving me information about the tool, unlz.gba
Odin_Knight and labmaster – Helping me find a graphics offset
Kosheh – For the information about Sonja’s changes
Kosheh – He gets credit twice for explaining the changes better
The following websites:
- http://www.warsworldnews.com
- http://www.advancewarsnet.com
- http://www.customwars.com
- http://www.romhacking.net
- http://aw-experience.com/



