10 Beloved Gaming Franchises That Just Disappeared

10. Advance Wars

The Nintendo franchise that has been going a lot longer than most westerners think (the first game to hit Europe and the US was Advance Wars in 2001/2002, but the Wars series had been going strong in Japan since 1988), Advance Wars is a favourite of many a strategy nut, its deceptively simple brand of turn-based combat hiding-games that are both incredibly addictive and fiendishly difficult to truly complete. Each game sees you taking command of an army trying to defend a nation (and sometimes the world) and could seem rather dry were it not for the colourful COs you get to play as and the crucial addition of CO powers that dramatically affect the game mechanics. Nintendo and developer Intelligent Systems had a good run of handheld sequels and even a console spin-off, Battalion Wars, but the franchise seemed to run aground when it tossed out its established characters and world with Advance Wars: Dark Conflict (or Days of Ruin in some territories), replacing them with a radically pared-down game and a bleak story to match the new title. That was in 2008, and there hasn't been a new Advance Wars since. Perhaps it was that the dreary post-apocalyptic setting of Dark Conflict didn't go down well - so why not just change it up for the next game, or bring back the world of previous games? It seems a shame to throw the baby out with the bathwater, especially with one of the world's leading strategy franchises.