Game:

Advance Wars (2001)

Duration: 20:46

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4

Surprise! You get an extra helping of Advance Wars today! ...mostly because it wouldn't feel at all right to expect you to put up with this video on its own on a separate day, since it's basically just an offshoot of the regularly-scheduled upload... an offshoot that's longer and more involved than the initial training mission it came from. Sure!

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The OTHER thing that makes this even a thing at all is that I decided to get a bit... experimental. The Game Boy Player has two levels of zoom for the active area... neither of which is exactly "right" for converting the tiny 1:1 (usually) 60fps progressive image into an interlaced 480-line video signal through the GameCube. (I'd be very curious what the result would look like if you could use the component output on the initial hardware iteration of the GameCube... but the cables are so rare and overpriced due to proprietary technology within them and incredibly low production runs that they might as well not exist in the first place.)

However, before I sound like I'm too down on the piece of tech, the Game Boy Player is quite good at its job. The math is painful and hurts my head, but somehow it manages to have TWO sizes of output for all then-existing Game Boy Games that BOTH look nice... and if the nonsquare pixel rendering to a 4:3 screen wasn't annoying enough a prospect to consider, making me want to give up partway through figuring out how they came up with a precise viewport width to keep the aspect ratio correct, there's also the zoomed version that... by all rights, not even the vertical component should work... but it does?!

Anyway, to be absolutely sure, you have to TRY and DO (mad) SCIENCE! This is what you've been missing out on based on my tinkering and deciding without your input... the smaller display area is sharper, but because YouTube resizes things itself, the gains in clarity are minimal and the upscaling done by YouTube itself actually seems to somehow harm the image quality more than the internal upscale to the wacky higher zoom that by all rights should NOT work but somehow does... so... that's why I chose the settings I did, but it's highly unscientific and as such, I'd welcome any and all feedback on this note! (I might have zoom tunnel vision!)

I've even tried doing some by-hand upscaling of the closest-to-native resolution I can get because of the signal with which I'm presented... but... it doesn't come out looking very good, no matter what scaling method I try...

You can see the results of THAT here (but I really don't recommend it):
https://youtu.be/r_ojI9N7B4s

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Lesson 7: Copter Tactics
(Alternate Victory Conditions)

Anyway, the only REAL reason why I even had this alternate video to even do my mad science on is because there's more than one way to shear an old man's beard off! ...wait, what? I never agreed to that!

More relevantly, though... while Nell will stress that there's only one real course of action to be followed, you really CAN make do with what you've got, assume a defensive posture, and fight tooth and nail to dismantle that war machine Olaf's so proud of. Think of it as an extension of the principle that allows us to wipe out that Md Tank last time... but more extreme.

I suppose this DOES make me a bit of an overachiever, but what sets this one apart from say... trying to rout the four tanks that couldn't reach the HQ even if they wanted to in the Base Capture lesson, the game will actually recognize what you've done here! So... that alone is a good enough reason for me to explore that option for you and show you what happens. Otherwise, it's utterly meaningless AND will doom you to a C Rank victory even at your best, I think... I'm totally up for being corrected on that note, too, though!

I've skipped out of the briefing and will be cutting Nell off whenever she'd have something to add... but I AM still expected to follow her instructional commands, even if I'm not entirely sure what they were. Kzzt! Nell! You're breaking up! I can't hear you! What was that last order? Engage at will! Roger!

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