Julian Jameson speaks about the groundbreaking Gameboy colour version of Cannon Fodder.

Describe the game for us

Cannon Fodder is an action and strategy video game
where the player leads his squad of soldiers through various battles
against his arch-enemy "El Presidente". The action takes place within
five different regions, within the settings of these five regions
the player mustcomplete 25 missions. Each mission is split into
a number of phases, in all there are 72 levels. This game is absolutely
massive! But, it's not only size that's important here, each level
is intricately detailed in every way possible. Only by using new
techniques, not yet employed on the Gameboy Color, we have managed
to cram not only so much into a single cart but so much into each
individual level.

For those of you who don't remember the original Cannon
Fodder (it sold well over half a million units on the Commodore
Amiga, Sega Megadrive, SNES, PC, Jaguar and 3DO), the game employs
a gameplay system which allows the player to see as much action
as possible at any time. The player controls the action by moving
a crosshair around the screen. As the crosshair moves, the screen
scrolls automatically, but never moves the player's soldiers off
screen. This allows the player to move to one point on the map and,
at the same time, shoot at another position - and it's really easy
to do this.

The player must fight many battles on his way to defeating
the enemy leader. The enemy has many different units he uses to
combat the player, including Bazooka men, Grenadiers, Machine gunners
and Snipers.

Including the enemy leader there's also five enemy
bosses, they're spectacular and each one has been dedicated one
full level's worth of game-space. I'm not going to ruin the experience
by telling you all about them. You'll have to play the game to see
them!

By the way, the player can freely alter the identity
of the enemy leader. For example, instead of fighting against "El
Presidente", he could fight against his best friend, a family member,
a character from TV or even his own worst enemy!

How were you involved in the original Amiga version?

I did all of the programming. I helped with the design
of the game and even designed some of the levels.

How different is the Gameboy version to the Amiga
version?

One of my objectives, from the beginning of development
of the Gameboy Color version, was to include as many of the features
which made the original Amiga version so good. I also wanted to
update the game byincluding as many new features as possible. The
outcome is that we managed to recreate all of the original levels,
some with improvements and some with major overhauls: people who
played the original version will notice many similarities in the
GBC version but will find it a completely new gameplay experience.

Technically the Gameboy Color version is far superior
to the original Amiga version. Which is amazing considering the
old Amiga hardware should out perform the Gameboy Color. To achieve
this I had to put all of my fourteen years of games programming,
design and production experience into it and we employed what must
be the biggest team ever used to create a Gameboy game. The last
time I checked the credit list it had 33 names on it! If you look
at the credit lists on your GBC games they'll mostly show 3-4 names
and sometimes a handful more. If that doesn't give you an idea of
the quality and size of Cannon Fodder then I don't know what will.