Friday, May 22, 2009

Cannon Fodder

Developer: Sensible Software
Publisher: Virgin
Release Date: March 24, 1993
System: PC
ESRB Rating: N/A
Good Old Games Web site

In a nutshell: War ... cute, pixilated hell.

0:00 A few friends recommended this as one to check out when I came in possession of a few freebie downloads from Good Old Games. The old-school action looks right up my alley.

0:01 A helicopter flies over the jungle in an overly round, stereotypically early-'90s 3-D animation. "This is Tumba, on approach to flight zone," says the pilot over the radio. They touch down in the jungle and shuffle off, to calls of "OK, go go go, move move, come on ... oh you lousy bunch of..." from the commander. The chopper flies off and crashes in the distance. Crusher, Slice, Ice, Bambi and Daisy are the pith-helmeted guys left behind. The credits play immediately ... did I win already?

0:02 The title screen pops up with retro-tastic SoundBlaster 16 synthesizer and a confusing picture of a flower. Grainy black-and-white digital pictures of the team scroll by with jokey credits: JOOLS as James Dean, STOO as Elvis, etc.

0:04 More team credits scroll by. OK, this stopped seeming cute and started seeming a little self-obsessed. "A Virgin Publication." Publication?

0:05 I click and a bunch of pixilated, Lemming-like figures walk down a hilly path. The left side of the screen is cut off, for some reason, but some monitor-level adjustment fixes that.

***-->CONTINUE READING AT CRISPY GAMER<--***

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