Nintendo of Europe has today announced the release date for Battalion Wars on GameCube as December 9th 2005. The game, set in the Advance Wars universe immediately after Dual Strike on DS, follows the events at the end of a fictitious 21st Century war between the Western Frontier and the Tundran armies. Taking advantage of the situation that the two sides find themselves in, Kaiser Vlad (leader of a third country) begins an offensive on both countries, leading to an uneasy alliance between the Western Frontier and the Tundran army.

The game is set across twenty huge missions with a variety in the missions from single-soldier recon objectives right through to all-out battles, with an intuitive control system that allows gamers to rapidly adapt to the real-time battle.

What’s particularly surprising about the game is that though it forms a part of the Advance Wars franchise (indeed following on from the Nintendo DS’ Dual Strike), it’s been given a name change - it was originally entitled Advance Wars: Under Fire when it was first announced in 2004 - especially since the series has become stronger for Nintendo in recent iterations…

We’ll have more on Battalion Wars shortly.