Mission 18, and it’s another double front mission. At first, it seemed impossible, but thanks to some Stealth Fighters it was soon made much easier. I also got aircraft carriers on this level, which were useful for firing at helicopters as well as for re-supplying my flying units. S-Rank GET!

Took a short break from the main story mode to have a go at one of the War Room maps – Spann. It was after about 15 moves that I realised I’d played that map before – in the original Advance Wars. Took a good 30-odd days to win though, even though I started off with the advantage. C-rank == RUBBISH.

A few more (lengthy but pretty easy) missions, including one against Green Earth and a Megatank (which took some 6 rockets to destroy) and another with some Black Bombs that were under my control. Stupidly, I destroyed two trying to figure out what to do with them, and then the others ran out of fuel. I did get one to detonate near some baddies anyway.

“Chris! Chris! Good boy! Sit! Sit! No, Sit! Sit! Sit dammit! Sit! No, not Roll Over, Sit! No! Come back! Chris! Chris! Chris! Gah!” And so on. I did teach Chris a few more tricks (Lie Down and Roll Over), but he doesn’t seem to respond to “Sit” anymore. Maybe my voice broke last night or something. Took him for a walk, which he didn’t seem to enjoy as I kept having to yank his lead to keep him moving. …

Missions 10-13. One of them, 11, against Yellow Comet was a bit tricky, until I found the obvious weakness and stormed it. It didn’t seem to matter that I was hopelessly underpowered in the end. There was a Fog of War one too, which I almost lost due to not realising that under the fog, there might be ranged weapons. There were, and they wiped out my infantry. With no factories, I couldn’t create more, and, even though there were …

Mission 9, and it’s the first one with a “war on two fronts”. As such, it was a bit confusing to start with, but in fact the second front (on the second screen) kind of takes care of itself for the most part. I just had to send up reinforcements every so often. This mission took ages, but was pretty simple. I think I overdid it buying millions of missile launchers, when Neotanks were much more useful. Destroyed the “Black …

A few more missions, and my first DS game crash! Part way through the first Fog of War mission, I attacked an enemy tank, and the bottom screen went black and the game crashed. The music was still playing in the background though. Had to power off and try again. Also had a play on Combat Mode. It’s great – kind of like a cross between Atari’s Combat for the 2600, and Gauntlet. You have one unit at a time …

Just a quick go to pet Chris some more, and water him again. Bought him a frisbee (sorry, “flying disc”) and we had a play with that for a bit too. Also bought a rubber brush, and it made me giggle when I used it and it said “Chris is clean now!” when the “real life” Chris is anything but.

It’s just like the GBA game! Only, better. In some non-identifiable way. There’s a new CO, Jake, who is “street”, word, owned, yo, and although others have found him more than irritating, I think he’s ace. Played through to Mission 7. There’s not really much to say, except it’s great.

YES YES YES! Puppy pwnage! Set it up, and played with some of the puppies in the kennels, then picked out a male Yorkshire Terrier. My plan is to make him gay. Called him Chris, after one of my friends. It does seem a bit disturbing shouting “Chris! Chris! Good boy!” at my DS though. After teaching him his name, I petted him a bit and bought some food and water for him. Then I taught him “Sit!”, and then …

Well duh. You’re supposed to collect the fried egg things first, and then you can get into the gun thingy much more easily. And you get energy back that way too. Note to self: Next time, read the instructions.

The rllmuk forums have suggested this Spectrum game as a game to play this month. Oh dear. I’m a bit pants at it. I’ve figured out how to teleport, and how to kill the gun placement wotsits, but the guns keep firing at you as you try and get inside them (like you need to do) and my energy drops and then I die. How, exactly, are you supposed to do it?

Well, the walls were easy today. Stupidly. I used, erm, Bloke From Dragonball in the end, destroying all the walls with 30 seconds to spare. No idea how I was going wrong previously. And now I’m stuck again. I did some more “missions”, killed some people, etc, but I’m on another mission with no idea what to do. Looks like it’ll be back to GameFAQs to read up on what to do this time…

Aha! Thanks to the wonderous magic that is this page on GameFAQs, I found out what I was supposed to do and worked my way through the missions some more. The path between them branches a bit, it seems, but you still need to do them all to progress – I’ve completed Grassland 2-1, but I can’t move on to 2-2 until I finish 1-7. Which isn’t going to happen any time soon, since I have to destroy all the …

Another island, only with the Scots theme on. “It’s mine noo!” and “Och!” abound. I won, of course.