Charming Rest of "Cannon Fodder" Games

Cannon Fodder (Amiga) Screenshot. Taken from MobyGames.

In my previous attempts to cover older games that's not particularly popular nowadays, I've remained strictly within MS-DOS & Windows territory when it comes to PC titles. Now I would like to change that by expanding my scope for one more family of computers. Thanks to one good friend of mine and my desire to further explore the wonderful world of retro games, I've finally witnessed the greatness of Amiga with its multimedia capabilities.

However, I didn't knew where to start until I recalled the Cannon Fodder series. Seeing Russian Geek's reviews of its games was probably the first time I took a proper look at Amiga titles, besides the third one. As before, I would go over the things that interested me in the 2/3 of Cannon Fodder series, why the last title of the series isn't included there and what could be the current status of this franchise.

War is Fun Only in Games.

As I've mentioned before, it appears that Cannon Fodder is one of a few definitive Amiga titles for people out there and it's easy to see why. From gameplay standpoint, I'm curious about this take on a strategy genre that was released on March 24, 1993. Although Wikipedia refers to games of the series as "shoot em' up" (which isn't really wrong), to me it always felt like tactical real-time strategy first and foremost. Every soldier is valuable and you need to stay caution in order to successfully finish your mission.

You can't build a base like in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, but Cannon Fodder makes up for that in other places. Sensible Software managed to offer player a control up to six units instead of four in Warcraft, but their controls are fairly different. You can divide your troops into three different squads, which means that you can't control each unit separately if you have 4-6 of them. However, you can drive vehicles like tanks and helicopters. Not to mention the ability to destroy building by shooting conveniently placed crates. Parts of exploded structures can kill your troops if you're not careful, which is evil and funny.

Cannon Fodder (GBC) Intro Screenshot.
Taken from MobyGames.

Speaking of which, the series (at least first two games) have some nice elements of dark comedy in it that obviously caused some controversy from the public. Personally, I don't have much issues with that, but maybe I'm not the one to judge. Even though mostly I'm more of a polite person in public, but in circle of friends I can just go in opposed direction. But it's not like that's all there's to Cannon Fodder. It wasn't Sensible Software's intent to offend someone, but instead to send an "anti-war" message. And I'm one of those people who thinks that they actually managed to do that just right. You can probably write a dedicated post about that, now that I think about it.

Before moving forward, I must mentions some of the ports that the original game got. Cannon Fodder was fortunate enough to three more computer platforms and six consoles. While Super Nintendo version actually supports Super NES Mouse, Game Boy Color port of the game is pretty damn impressive. The game itself doesn't look too bad and its intro is something I would've rather foolishly expected to see on Game Boy Advance instead. It's nice to see what these older devices can pull off in the right hands.

Unto The Breach.

There's nothing much to say about Cannon Fodder 2 as it's one of those sequels that basically offer you more of an original game, but in new locations and increased difficulty. However, that's not the only reason why it's not as well-known as the first game. Even though the sequel was ported to MS-DOS, to me it seems like that Cannon Fodder 2 might've as well been one of many casualties of gaming scene of that era. With legendary games like DOOM & Myst being out there, it was a great time for PC gamers as a lot of great titles were releasing at that time. However, the Amiga was one of the platforms that was reaching the end of its life cycle. Even though that's an entirely different story on itself.

Cannon Fodder 2 (Amiga) Screenshot. Taken from MobyGames.

While the development process on itself doesn't seem to have been problematic, the fate of sequel's narrative was pretty rough. There's not much of it in both games due to their simplicity, but Cannon Fodder 2 supposed to change that with the help from Stuart Campbell. He went to Sensible Software after leaving Amiga Power magazine some time after the controversy surrouding the original game took place. He worked there as a designer and took upon himself to expand the plot through novella of sorts within the manual. As I've mentioned before, Amiga was at the end of its commercial existence and Virgin Interactive (game's original publisher) deemed this idea too expensive at that time.

Instead, they've decided to take care of manual themselves. That resulted in a dumped-down version of the narrative in an attempt to maximise the income. Thankfully, later now Stuart has shared the original storyline of Cannon Fodder 2 through Internet: on his old blog page you can read about "the lost plot" and some other stuff for each mission. Perhaps it hasn't exactly achieved the things it could've, but the sequel is just decent enough for what it ended up being. A decent endpoint.

Conclusion.

Although Sensible Software stuck around for a few more years, all things must come to an end. Founders of the company, Jon Hare and Chris Yates, sold it to Codemasters somewhere in 1999. While it is sad on itself, from what I understand, their story ended largely on a good note and it was worth it. Unfortunately, you can't say the same about Cannon Fodder 3. Codemasters didn't seem to be interested in that series, so they sold the licence for a third title to Russian company Game Factory Interactive. And, well... Did you know that the developers of Cannon Fodder 3, Burut Creative Team, were also responsible for Kreed? You might be aware of this game from Civvie 11's video.

I can't really say anything about the third title though. They just didn't get the franchise and largely you would be better off skipping it. Thanks to GOG, you can purchase DOS versions of the first two Cannon Fodder games. Considering that Codemasters is the publishing them, its fair to say that the franchise is still in their hands. And they are now part of Electronic Arts after they trumpted Take Two's offer. Lesser evil has won here, that's for sure. Considering that Commander & Conquer Remastered Collection was released and good, perhaps the time comes for both Cannon Fodder to get proper re-release. There's slim chance of it, however, considering how niche the games are and the amount of controversy some "strange people" would likely try to raise, leading to unnecessary censorship that would only hurt the games... Don't think we need a "proper third instalment" or any kind of continuation for this franchise. 

You know, it's in good spot as is. Just bring back original Amiga versions, Codemasters.