Cannon Fodder
Crazy One-Shot #9
Type of Game
A lovely ode to peace by… um, shooting at anything that moves. Great idea.
Release date on our machines
January 1994—it didn't prevent the war in Bosnia, but it could have.
Developer
Sensible Software, which enjoyed a string of successes during the golden age of 2D before being acquired by Codemasters when the time was right.
Publisher
Virgin Interactive Entertainment, Inc. From Command & Conquer to Disney's Hercules, from Cool Spot to… Virgin Cola?
Hey there! Who here loves songs? Let’s go! In the town where I grew up, there was a house. Hiia-hiia-Ho! In that house, there was a bedroom. Hiia-Hiia-Ho! And in that bedroom, there was a cousin. Hiia-Hiia-Ho! And in that cu… uh, no. And never far from this cousin named Walter Valise sat a Super NES, complete with a nearly endless game library full of cartridges, each one more wonderful than the last—ones I dreamed of getting my hands on one daaaaaay. HIIA-HIIA… okay, shush now. And on the new releases shelf during one of my visits to Walter’s place: Cannon Fodder. What does that mean? No idea—I wouldn’t learn the term for at least ten years. But it has the word “cannon” in it, so it’s gotta be super cool. I remember one session in particular—probably the only one I ever got to be a part of. I stayed over, and all we did was grind through that one game. I think we’d made good progress, geeking out like crazy until 4:00 a.m.—which, in real-adult time, was 10:45 p.m. We must not have been far from the end, because it was getting really tough. Anyway, from the little I saw, I really liked it. I loved it, actually. Apparently not enough to realize it was also available on the Mega Drive or PC, and that I could have gotten it just for myself.
Ode to Laziness
How many times have my laziness and lack of curiosity caused me this kind of hassle, seriously? Yet I’ve always wanted to dive back into this game, to once again immerse myself in that incredibly enjoyable—though far too brief—moment when we sent our little squad out to take down their enemies. I never did it, of course, just like with so many other games before it. And after that, too—yeah, right. Toejam & Earl, Streets of Rage 3, Sonic & Knuckles, or even Command & Conquer’s Covert Ops and Warcraft II’s Beyond the Dark Portal. Today, I’m patching up this tank called the missed act of the Offense-upon-Seine. More or less, give or take.
War is bad, m'kay
So… what genre does Cannon Fodder fall under? Strategy (for the isometric view), Action (for the lack of base-building), Real-Time (for the… nah, I’m not even going to explain that one). Let’s throw in “Tactical Shooter” and a little “War” at the end just to sound fancy. A SARTTSW, then. Perfect—MEUPORG can take a back seat (a famous french meme). Believe it or not, we weren’t used to this kind of camera angle on consoles. What does it remind me of, aside from the management aspect of ActRaiser? Syndicate? SimCity? Gauntlet? All the retro Zelda games shot more or less from above—so all of them except Zelda 2? Populous, too. Oh yeah, that’s quite a list. And Worms for the fun brawling aspect. But let’s get back to the SAARTSTEW, we’re interested in here. You lead a cohort of soldiers through a long series of missions, whose objectives range from shooting everyone to leaving no one alive except trees or birds. Our recruits move across terrain that’s often flat but very hostile, fire automatic weapons, and can also throw grenades or launch rockets. Our enemies can more or less do the same, except that they react and fire much more slowly.
To make up for it, they deploy in large numbers and just as easily slaughter our beloved fighters if they manage to hit them. Seeing a brother-in-arms (because I don’t think I’ve seen any female names on the list) die in battle means we’ll never see him again. We’ll have to recruit someone else to take his place on the next mission. No worries—there are plenty of disillusioned rookie soldiers waiting to be drafted between training sessions. As long as we don’t lose too many troops each time, it seems like their numbers are growing pretty quickly. At worst, if you’re afraid of being wiped out all at once, you have the option to split your regiment into smaller groups—or even select a single soldier who’ll take out all the enemies without leaving anything for his buddies, or, on the contrary, get executed right away, but without dragging his allies down with him. It all depends on how easily each player gets the hang of the gameplay, which I found horribly cruel.
Originally developed for the Amiga 500, I assume you controlled the brigade using the keyboard and mouse. Because with a Super NES controller… oh boy, things get a lot more complicated. The directional pad is used to move a cursor on the screen. Pressing a key makes your troops trot toward the cursor. Pressing another key makes them shoot, always in the direction of the cursor. So you can strafe the area while moving, leading to some neat split-screen gameplay sequences. At least once you’ve mastered it—which my cousin Walter and I clearly couldn’t claim to have done. I imagine this dual mechanic becomes necessary to get through the most complicated missions. I remember we really struggled with throwing grenades in particular—the only way to destroy the wooden huts from which enemies kept pouring out endlessly. We’d miss the target two out of three times and end up running out of ammo, unable to complete the mission.
Too bad, because we didn’t get the chance to discover all the little subtleties Cannon Fodder had to offer. And by “subtleties,” I’m of course talking about huge helicopters armed with missile launchers, armored jeeps that can jump, or massive tanks capable of leveling entire bases in less than two minutes. Well, I didn’t see any of that during that frustrating but nonetheless very enjoyable evening. Walter surely managed it later on, all by himself without some noob two years younger than him ruining his games. On the other hand, I didn’t remember the gameplay being that fast-paced. I’d been left with this impression of slowness—at least as exasperating as the apathetic robots in Z—when in reality, it’s nothing like that. In fact, the action moves along nicely! It’s responsive and all, except in the water, where you can’t shoot either; maybe I’d just come to think that all the levels prevented us from moving at a decent speed.
No, they just make things harder for us with their rather labyrinthine layout, forcing us to explore several dead ends to flush out any cowards who might have thought they could escape us. Well, there are also more open levels, elevated areas, destructible walls that open up passages… and some really pretty scenery. I think it’s safe to say that the graphics have aged well, without risking losing one’s status as a reasonable person in the eyes of the general public. Or maybe my opinion is completely biased by the isometric view, and I’m spouting a load of nonsense. But in addition to the forest, jungle, and semi-humid areas, I also really like the arid terrain. Nice and hot, nice and terracotta-colored, and completely unfamiliar to me when I was nine or ten—which just goes to show I must not have gotten very far in this game. But nothing, absolutely nothing, could match the ultimate feature in my eyes. NOTHING, DO YOU HEAR ME? I’m talking about the ranks our little charges earn based on their combat prowess.
Just like in Fire Force, where it drove me crazy too, it’s clearly just there to look cool. No boost to stats or handling for our beloved pest controllers. Even though a few more-or-less conspiracy-theory-style claims are circulating online in various reviews, insisting that, yes, it does make a difference! What does it change? Um… Attack! But just seeing the little pixelated rank insignias change into other little pixels during the post-mission screen made me desperately want to keep my troops alive at all costs. Did anyone understand that completely unclear sentence? Sorry, I got carried away. While I’d already picked up from the cartoonish artwork on the box that the game didn’t take itself too seriously, I recently learned (while writing this article, actually) that it maintains a resolutely anti-war tone throughout. Really? I’d always thought of Cannon Fodder as being in the same vein as the first Command & Conquer, which—without going so far as to glorify armed conflict—conveys a certain joie de vivre through bodies screaming in pain and the explosions of mammoth tanks.
It’s not reeeally that obvious, this pacifist tone in Cannon Fodder. Especially when you don’t understand any of the messages written in English. And on the SNES, you don’t get the Amiga’s disclaimer: “This game is not in any way endorsed by the Royal British Legion…”, which admittedly wouldn’t have helped me grasp the humor back then anyway. Apparently, the Royal British Legion in question had lambasted the game before its release, calling it an aberration and using other colorful language, which led to the inclusion of this passive-aggressive dig. In fact, the game divided opinion on the subject far beyond that particular organization right from its release. There were the very smart people who had read between the lines and fully grasped the developers’ true intentions, and the very smart people who had clearly understood that superficial humor wasn’t enough to promote world peace. Source? Uh, the internet, Google, clicking on random hyperlinks. Reliable stuff, right! There were also the not-so-smart people who were getting in everyone’s way, snickering like Beavis and Butthead. Cousin Walter and I, for example.
It also seems that in Germany, the government has put Cannon Fodder on some kind of blacklist that prohibits its sale to minors, bans its promotion in any form, and prevents it from being prominently displayed on retailers’ shelves. Just that. Hey, Blood is on there too, huhuhu. But not Command & Conquer. Weird. I’ll let anyone who’s interested check it out at this link. It’s funny. Well, actually, you’d have to try really hard not to see even a hint of self-deprecation in there. Take the soldiers’ names, for example—some of them are named after real people listed in the credits, who themselves use pseudonyms (at least I hope so for their sake). But we never used to watch the credits. Unless we couldn’t skip them. There’s a sort of fun challenge among the old-school players from the very beginning, who comment here and there online: managing to keep Jools alive—the very first soldier you control—from the start to the end of the adventure. I’m happy to have a laugh with them now that I’ve watched a longplay on YouTube and get their joke. Will they accept me into their very exclusive circle?
Between silence and utter nonsense
I do a quick five-minute search and find that Richard Joseph is credited with the soundtrack. I get a little worried, because this guy also composed the music for James Pond 2, which sounds like it came straight out of the lowest circle of musical hell. Oh, I also recognize Rise of the Robots on his resume, but I don’t remember a single track from that one. If it sounds as bad as the gameplay, it’s not worth listening to. Jon Hare’s name also pops up as a composer, so I’m really confused now. But I don’t have time for this anymore. As for Cannon Fodder, it’s a huge letdown, because you don’t hear a single note of music during gameplay. Too bad—especially on the SNES, where the game’s tongue-in-cheek humor would have gone perfectly with its plump, rounded sounds. There isn’t a single game where I find it interesting to have no sound during the action—except maybe Populous and its anxiety-inducing heartbeat. So, who’s handling the port of this album without any music associated with the levels? Allister Brimble, whom I’m starting to get to know through all my digging around. I’d already sent him a ton of hearts when I found out he’d composed the music for the absolutely brilliant Mortal Kombat on Game Gear. He also tinkered with a few things on Roller Coaster Tycoon and produced a prolific body of work on Game Boy Advance (though I don’t have any specific examples to cite, since I’m pretty clueless about that console). This OST really cracks me up. It doesn't get any more disjointed or patchwork-like than this. The victory music sounds like it came straight from a broken ride at Theme Park; the cutscene music introducing the upcoming mission thinks it’s some badass, hardcore rocker that inevitably brings to mind Jungle Strike; and the debriefing theme, listing casualties and promotions to higher ranks, wipes every trace of joy from our faces with its dreary melancholy. But the prize for sheer absurdity goes to the intro. First off, one word: reggae. RE-GGAE! Reggae to introduce a war game. But who would have dared to do that without fearing they’d be seen as the biggest clown on the planet? The guys at Sensible Software, of course. But on top of that, they punctuate their track with in-game voices of soldiers dying and missiles exploding. Wahahaha! It’s so bad that it becomes more than perfect. If that still doesn’t make it clear that Cannon Fodder was meant to be pacifist…
Cannon Mother
This is the kind of game I would have really loved to finish, and one that sends me little reminders every now and then. I obviously push them deep down into my diaphragm, even though in the end they win anyway, since they’re what prompted me to write this. I missed out on some seriously fun moments—never flying the helicopter, never destroying an enemy fortress with the tank, or crashing into the same clump of trees ten times while driving the… uh, armored snowmobile? That one looked like a blast to drive. In any case, yet another game that kept me dreaming for a very long time despite very little actual playtime. Everything that adorned Cousin Walter’s room radiated so much magic—I could have set up my bed there and lived there forever. I would’ve died at twenty-seven from an overdose of appetizer crackers, but I would’ve had an experience beyond ecstasy—at least for someone cooped up in a room. In reality, I would’ve just tried to bring my Mega Drive along too, and Walter would’ve kicked me out in five minutes. OK, back to square one. Fate wouldn’t let me touch a Super NES for more than two hours a week—fine. Ugh, but no! My cousin was cool. So were his parents. My mom kept saying they just spoiled their son and his little brother, that they had no authority over them. Wrong! Well, maybe not the “spoiled kids” part.
But Walter’s parents knew how to command respect without terrorizing or humiliating their kids.They gave them toys to make them happy, not to buy their silence or give themselves leverage to blackmail them later. You should’ve looked up to them, Mom, instead of putting them down while harboring jealousy toward them. And you could’ve bought me a Saturn, too! Instead of constantly harping on about how video games were just dumbing me down. They taught me a thousand times more than you ever did! Who do you think you are, anyway? My mother? Whoa, uh, sorry—I haven’t lost my cool like that in a while. I hope there aren’t many people left reading this by now. Cannon Fodder stirs up way more passion in me than I ever would’ve thought. Then again, who wouldn’t fall in love with their own memories—filled with all those discoveries on the Super NES, munching on Délichoc (by Delacre) or Graffiti (by Bahlsen), surrounded by Dino Riders (by Tyco) and spiders (from the garden)? Nothing could top that! Except, um… Cannon Fodder 2? WHAT? That exists? Oh crap, I can feel it coming back to me…
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