Nintendo Delays Switch Game Release After Ukraine Invasion

Nintendo finally releases Advance Wars: 1+2: Re-Boot Camp after the Switch remakes were suspended for a full year following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

News of this broke during today’s Nintendo Direct, where the company re-introduced the strategy game remake collection with a new trailer and release date. The Switch games launch on April 21st.

Curiously, the presentation didn’t mention the company’s reasons for the initial delay, even though it was the conflict that put the game on hold in the first place still very much in progress. Instead, the new trailer was part of a montage that took place in the middle of the Direct presentation. That seems like the best way to bury something like this so you don’t really have to go into the specifics of why it’s acceptable to release the game now versus a year ago. The pre-wars The series has a faction called Blue Moon that’s based in Russia, so it makes sense that the company would want to get some distance from current events before launch. But these current events are still current.

The initial delay happened already in March last year, with Nintendo saying it made the decision to shelve the game “in light of recent world events.” This came about two weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine and about a month before the game was originally scheduled to launch on Nintendo’s handheld/console hybrid.

Advance Wars 1+2: Reboot Camp contains a remake of both the original pre-wars and its continuation Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising. Both games were originally released on the Game Boy Advance in 2001 and 2003 respectively and were developed by Intelligent Systems. The remakes are being developed by WayForward.