Cannon Fodder is a series of war (and later science fiction) themed action games developed by Sensible Software, initially released as Cannon Fodder for the Amiga. Only two games in the series were created by Sensible, but were converted to most active systems at the time of release. A sequel, Cannon Fodder 2, was released in 1994 for Amiga and MS-DOS. A third game, Cannon Fodder 3, was made by a Russian developer and released in English in 2012.
History
Cannon Fodder was designed by Jon Hare, co-founder of Sensible Software, and released in 1993 on a variety of platforms. Stuart Cambridge was lead art director on the game and worked with a 16-color palette.
Shot over just one day and for a total budget of £500, it featured the entire team dressed up in military uniforms, an assortment of masks (including one of Mario and Donald Duck) and toy guns. The version of the music track is more complete than the one that appeared on the 16-bit versions and was recorded professionally. In fact, the menu screen track is also a pared down version of a proper song, featuring studio-standard vocals. Both of these tracks were written and performed by Jon Hare, as were many of the other songs featured in Sensible's games.
Games
Cannon Fodder
thumb|New recruits queue near the tombstones.
Production of Cannon Fodder began following the completion of the successful strategy game Mega Lo Mania. Sensible Software wanted to create another strategy game featuring mouse control and the notion of sending troops on missions, but with more action than had been used in Mega Lo Mania. Production began in 1991 but was slowed due to Mega Drive conversions of other games. Cannon Fodder lost its provisional publisher in the aftermath of owner Robert Maxwell's death. As development work resumed, the team gradually reduced the complexity the strategy gameplay in favour of more direct control and action gameplay. In May 1993, Sensible Software found a new publisher in Virgin Interactive, which released the game in November of that year.
Amiga magazines rated the game positively, widely awarding scores of over 90%, while Amiga Action awarded an unprecedented score, calling it the best game of the year. Critics praised the fun, addictiveness, music and humour of the game. The game also drew criticism in the Daily Star for its juxtaposition of war and humour and its use of iconography closely resembling the remembrance poppy.
Ports
Once Sensible Software was sold off to Codemasters, the decision was taken to port the game over to the Game Boy Color. The limit on having two men in your squad and a much smaller playing area meant changes had to be made to the gameplay, mainly to make it easier. Jon Hare described the change as converting "11-a-side football to 5-a-side football".
In 2004, Jon Hare set up a small mobile phone games team known as Tower Studios. Their first release was Sensible Soccer in 2004, followed by Cannon Fodder in 2005. Both titles were published by Kuju Entertainment. The games were only playable on certain color models and, due to many keypads' inability to register a diagonal movement, the control systems for both games had to be radically redesigned.
Cannon Soccer
In 1994, a free minigame called Cannon Soccer (or Cannon Fodder - Amiga Format Christmas Special) was included on the coverdisk of the Amiga Format Christmas issue. It was essentially two bonus levels of Cannon Fodder in which the soldiers fought hordes of Sensible Soccer players in a snowy landscape. The levels were titled "Land of Hope and Glory", and "It's Snow Time".
Sensible Soccer 92/93 Meets Bulldog Blighty
One of the demos on the Amiga Power cover disk 21 was Sensible Soccer Meets Bulldog Blighty. It featured a mode of play that involved replacing players with soldiers from Cannon Fodder and the ball with a hand grenade. The grenade would randomly begin to flash and would eventually explode after a few minutes, killing any nearby players. The magazine described it as a "1944 version of Sensible Soccer", though The Daily Telegraph compared it to the Christmas-time football match in 1914.
Cannon Fodder 2
Cannon Fodder 2 is a 1994 sequel featuring very similar gameplay and graphics to the point where an Amiga Computing review suggested it had more in common with a data disk than a true sequel. A major difference in the sequel is that the plot involves time travel.
Cancelled sequels
After selling Sensible Software to Codemasters, Jon Hare ended up consulting on many of their development projects, one of which was the PS2 title Prince Naseem Boxing. Work on this title was performed in a satellite studio based in Hammersmith, London. However, due to the commercial failure of this title, the studio was shut down. A casualty of this was cancellation of a 3D remake of Cannon Fodder, something that Hare had been working on for at least nine months. Hare did speak about how he was looking to expand on the whole theme of war and include gameplay not just set on the battlefield: "I'd like to focus on the public's perceptions of war and warfare. There's many interesting things that go on behind the scenes with politicians".
In an interview with Eurogamer in late 2005, Hare confirmed that there was up to two years' work (on and off) put into a 3D update of Cannon Fodder: "I designed Cannon Fodder 3 with Codies six years ago, development stopped and started three times and eventually it was seemingly permanently halted when the London studio was closed four years ago. Nothing would please me more than to see this project resurrected, it was very advanced in its structure and therefore would need little modernisation".
In August 2006, Codemasters London announced a brand new version of Cannon Fodder for the PlayStation Portable. The game would have retained its familiar top down view, and the big heads of the soldiers, and for the first time the game would have been 3D. After a large launch announcement which included character renders and screenshots, the game was quietly canceled without explanation. In a later interview, Hare said that Codemasters was hit with economic problems and was forced to sell the studio.
Cannon Fodder 3
In 2008, now intellectual property owner Codemasters licensed Russian publisher Game Factory Interactive to develop another sequel. GFI created the game along with developer Burut CT and released it in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States on 19 December 2011. English-language media speculated on whether GFI was permitted to release the game outside of that region, but Codemasters ultimately clarified it had reserved but declined the option of publishing the game. GFI released the game in Europe and North America in February 2012 via a download service.
The game retains the core style of its predecessors but with more advanced graphics, a counter-terrorism theme and a greater array of weapons and units. It includes 26 locations around the world and on the moon. with both more positive, and negative reviews appearing elsewhere in Europe.