Cannon Fodder | Code Like It's 198x

Cannon Fodder opens on a hill. On one side a queue of new recruits waits to join up; on the other, a gravestone stands for every soldier the player has already lost, each with his name on it. Sensible Software made it for the Amiga, and Virgin published it at the end of 1993 with a theme song called “War Has Never Been So Much Fun”. The squads are tiny and the jokes are broad, but the game keeps count of its dead. AMIGA POWER gave it 94%. Before it reached the shops, a poppy on its packaging had put it in the Daily Star and brought an objection from the Royal British Legion.

Fast facts

Developer: Sensible Software. Designed by Jon Hare, programmed by Julian “Jools” Jameson, with graphics by Stoo Cambridge.
Publisher: Virgin Interactive Entertainment.
Released: late 1993 on the Amiga: 1MB, three disks, £29.99.
Music: the title song, “War Has Never Been So Much Fun”, by Hare and Richard Joseph.
Reception: AMIGA POWER 94%; CU Amiga 93%.
Conversions: Atari ST, PC, CD32, Super Nintendo, Mega Drive, Jaguar and 3DO.
Sequel: Cannon Fodder 2: Once More Unto The Breach (1994).

Gauntlet with guns

Hare told Edge in 2004 where the idea came from: “You take a bit of what Sensible stuff looked like, take Gauntlet, take explosive hardware, and that gives you an idea of where we started.” The enemy huts that keep spilling out soldiers until they are blown up are Gauntlet’s monster generators in military dress. The look came from Sensible’s own games: Hare said the Mega-lo-Mania men had been dressed in football kit for Sensible Soccer, and this was the third game in the same style.

Everything is done with the mouse. The left button sends the squad to a spot, the right button fires, and both together throw a grenade or fire a rocket. The squad can be split into groups, and one group can be sent along a set course while the player directs another, so a position can be attacked from two sides. The game has 24 missions broken into 72 phases, across jungle, arctic, desert, heathland and underground bases, with jeeps, skidoos, tanks and helicopters to commandeer along the way. AMIGA POWER noticed that the later levels were “puzzles in the Lemmings mould”, where getting a civilian out of a compound “involves a tank”. Hare told Edge that the hardest thing to program was the squad itself: the pathfinding, which soldier took the shots, who became leader, and getting the men in and out of vehicles.

Names on the hill

Each mission brings fifteen new recruits, and each soldier who survives is promoted, which improves his aim, range and rate of fire. AMIGA POWER’s Cam Winstanley described what that did to the player: “You get quite attached to anyone who survives more than a couple of levels,” until “there’s inevitably a horrible moment when a rocket with his name on it comes whooshing in and he gets his.” The dead are named as they scroll past at the end of a mission, and their graves fill the hill. “I think you identified with soldiers you cared about in the game — they were never expendable,” Hare said.

The humour sits right beside it. Missions end with jaunty tunes and soldiers leaping for joy, and the title sequence plays “War Has Never Been So Much Fun”, which Hare wrote with the musician Richard Joseph. “We got the riff and the singing together, then took those ideas to Richard,” Hare told Edge. Chris Yates, Hare’s partner at Sensible, described the tone to ST Format as “a black game, really… like Blackadder 4 with them all in the trenches; it’s almost a parody. Some other games take it so seriously, almost glorifying war.”

The poppy

Sensible chose a remembrance poppy as the game’s symbol, for the packaging and for one of the loading screens. Hare later explained the choice to Amiga Computing: “We didn’t choose the poppy to cause a fuss. We chose it because the poppy symbolised people dying in war and a lot of people die in Cannon Fodder so it seemed appropriate.”

The trouble began in October 1993, after the image appeared in a Sunday Mirror piece about the Future Entertainment Show. The Daily Star reported that war veterans and MPs had called it “monstrous”, and its editorial of 26 October told readers: “Make sure you don’t buy this shameful game.” The Royal British Legion, which sells remembrance poppies every November, asked Virgin not to use the image. AMIGA POWER reported that the Legion was concerned it “might give the impression that they were in some way endorsing the product”. Tim Chaney, Virgin’s managing director, told the magazine the image was being withdrawn “more out of sensitivity rather than anything else. In the cold light of day, I don’t want to upset anybody, especially the people that this could upset.” A Legion spokesman, Jeremy Lillies, told Amiga Computing that “the whole thing was totally unacceptable to us”, and that a poppy on the cover “would have caused grave offence to the ex-service community”.

AMIGA POWER had planned a poppy for the cover of its December 1993 issue, which carried the world-exclusive review, and replaced it with a screenshot. The finished game opens with a screen stating that it is not supported or endorsed by the Royal British Legion. Amiga Format’s reviewer, having noted the change, concluded that despite “what the tabloid press (well, The Star) have to say about the ‘shameful’ nature of this game”, it was “possibly the most anti-war game I’ve seen in a while”. Years later Hare told Edge that Sensible had paid the Legion £500.

Reviews

AMIGA POWER put the game on its cover and gave it 94%. Winstanley’s list of downers read, in full, “Nothing”, and he explained why he had stopped short of 100%: a finite number of levels, one player only, and because “not even real life is worth 100%”. CU Amiga gave it 93%. When Atari ST User covered the Atari ST version in April 1994, it dismissed the newspaper coverage as “uncalled for and unfair publicity” and called the game “one of the best games you’re ever going to clamp your sweaty mitts on”. It topped the Amiga charts, Edge recorded.

Hare’s regret, looking back, was that it never caught on in the United States. “It was the one game we did that could have got us a lot of respect over there,” he told Edge. He also admitted that the difficulty rose too steeply “about 16 or 17 in”, where many players got stuck.

Conversions and sequels

Virgin took the game to other machines through 1994 and 1995. There were versions for the Atari ST, the PC and the Amiga CD32; a Super Nintendo cartridge at £49.99, released in December 1994; a Mega Drive version, reviewed in March 1995; and versions for the Atari Jaguar and the 3DO.

Cannon Fodder 2: Once More Unto The Breach followed on the Amiga in November 1994, again through Virgin, at £30. It kept the structure of 24 missions and 72 levels, but sent the squad from Beirut to a medieval castle, gangland Chicago and an alien spaceship. Stuart Campbell, who had been AMIGA POWER’s acting editor during the poppy row and was by then working at Sensible, co-designed it, and AMIGA POWER readers designed some of its levels through a competition. The magazine’s review, again by Winstanley, found it “not quite as worthwhile as the original. But something still brilliant”, and missed the old green cemetery.

After Sensible

In 1998 Hare told Edge that Sensible had decided against a third game: “Cannon Fodder is a good game about war. It doesn’t mean we’re a wargame specialist, we’re just good at games.” After Codemasters bought Sensible in 1999, PC Zone previewed a Cannon Fodder 3D, which never appeared. Codemasters did bring the original to the Game Boy Color, “using some of the original team”, as a company spokesman told Digital Press. Hare’s Tower Studios later made a version for mobile phones, published by Kuju Wireless, and in 2005 Radica included the game in its Arcade Legends: Sensible Soccer Plus plug-in controller. A Cannon Fodder 3, made in Russia under licence from Codemasters without Hare’s involvement, came out there in December 2011 and in Europe and North America in 2012, according to public sources.

Sources

AMIGA POWER issue 32, December 1993: news, “Virgin remove ‘offensive’ image from Cannon Fodder” (the Legion’s request, Tim Chaney, the withdrawn cover); pp. 32–35, review by Cam Winstanley (Virgin, £29.99, three disks, the controls, 72 maps, recruits and promotions, 94%).
CU Amiga, January 1994: review (release at the end of December, three disks, 1MB, overall 93%).
Amiga Format issue 54, Christmas 1993: review (the poppy on the original packaging and in-game graphics; “possibly the most anti-war game”).
ST Format issue 54, January 1994: preview, with Chris Yates on the game’s tone.
Atari ST User issue 99, April 1994: Atari ST review (the Daily Star, the Liberal Democrat MP, the Legion).
AMIGA POWER issue 38, June 1994: “Diary of a Game: Sensible Golf” (Julian Jameson programmed Cannon Fodder; Stoo Cambridge’s graphics; Richard Joseph).
AMIGA POWER issue 43, November 1994: news (Stuart Campbell at Sensible). Issue 44, December 1994: Cannon Fodder 2 review by Cam Winstanley (Virgin, £30, 24 missions, 72 levels, the settings, the level-design competition).
Nintendo Magazine System issue 28, January 1995: Super Nintendo review (Virgin, £49.99, December).
Sega Pro issue 42, March 1995: Mega Drive version.
Amiga CD32 Gamer issue 7, December 1994: CD32 version on sale. Edge issue 16, January 1995: Jaguar version listed. 3DO Magazine issue 11, June 1996: 3DO version (Virgin, £44.99).
Amiga Computing issue 83, February 1995: feature on controversial games (Jon Hare on choosing the poppy; Jeremy Lillies of the Royal British Legion; Stuart Campbell as AMIGA POWER’s acting editor).
Edge issue 58, May 1998: Jon Hare on not making a third Cannon Fodder.
PC Zone issue 86, February 2000, p. 31: Cannon Fodder 3D preview.
Digital Press issue 47, November 2001: Codemasters on the Game Boy Color version.
Retro Gamer issue 15, 2005: Tower Studios’ mobile version, published by Kuju Wireless.
Edge issue 154, October 2005: Radica’s Arcade Legends: Sensible Soccer Plus.
Wikipedia, “Cannon Fodder 3” (web, secondary): the Russian game and its release dates.
Edge issue 138, July 2004, pp. 114–117: “The making of… Cannon Fodder”, with Jon Hare (Gauntlet, the squad code, Boot Hill, the song with Richard Joseph, the Daily Star editorial of 26 October 1993, the £500, the United States).