Hadn't heard of it --cool. Along the same lines, Eastern Front[0] was a turn based tactical game about 10 years earlier. I played it in the early 90s on an Atari. The OPs game and advance wars have much more in common, but certainly the derivation goes back a long way. Later on, Japan had a lot of these turn based tacticals that didn't make it to western markets. (Super Robot Wars is a series that had some titles sold in English but not most.)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Front_(1941)