"Advance Wars" was first announced in January 2001, when Nintendo France gave new Game Boy Advance screenshots exclusively to French gaming sites, which included screenshots of this game, titled "Game Boy Wars Advance". At the time, very little information was given. It was developed by Intelligent Systems, and eventually published by Nintendo. Four player mode was confirmed before E3 2001 and with it a US release date of September 10. The Japanese version, titled "Game Boy Wars Advance", was originally scheduled for an October 12, 2001 release, a month after the North American version. However, in order to avoid competing with "Game Boy Wars 3" (released for the Game Boy Color in the same year), Nintendo canceled the originally scheduled Japanese release of the game. It was eventually released in a two-in-one compilation in 2004 with its sequel, "".