August 29, 1989 is a date that no one gives a flying crap about. This was the date that Hudson released the TurboGrafix-16, a would-be competitor to the NES. Despite featuring support for up to 5 players and superior graphics to other consoles of the time, the console never sold more than a couple million units in the US. Despite this, a number of fantastic games were released for the system over the course of its short lifespan. Games like Bomberman '93, Battle Lode Runner, Neutopia, Populous, Dungeon Explorer, and Military Madness are, more often than not, still extremely playable to this day.
One of the greatest games from the above list, Military Madness, will be recreated for Xbox Live Arcade, WiiWare, and PSN, renamed as Military Madness: Nectaris. MM is a turn based strategy game in the vein of Advance Wars. In fact, Advance Wars is pretty much a blatant, shameless ripoff of Military Madness. There are a few key differences between the two games, such as MM featuring a hexagonal grid instead of a normal square grid like AW, but other than that it's hard to find anything but similarities.
While I'm not hesitant to accuse the Advance Wars team of taking a lot of their ideas from Military Madness, I'll give it to them that both games are fantastic. Obviously, many more people have played AW than have played MM, and if you like the GBA/DS war series, I can assure you that you'll love Military Madness when it comes to a downloadable service near you.
Hudson has a lot of confidence in the release. “Since its original release on TurboGrafx-16 in 1989, Military Madness has stood the test of time as one of the longest-lived turn-based strategy games in history,” said Sabine Duvall, Vice President of Product Development at Hudson Entertainment. “The new Military Madness will give fans of the original a modern version of this classic strategy game, while gamers new to the series will get to enjoy being armchair generals for the first time.”
That's clearly a corporate line, but I have to stress that this WILL be a complete game that COULD be sold on a disk if Hudson wanted. The update will include new graphics, plenty of new playable units, online co-op and vs modes, and several other unannounced things. Clearly, I'm happy about this, and you should be too. Stay tuned for more coverage of the game.
