Cannon Fodder Returns!

Yes, you heard it here first, folks. The Amiga classic Cannon Fodder is making a return, thanks to the good folks at Codemasters and GFI! Imagine my surprise when the press release landed in my inbox this morning. Of all the classic Amiga IPs that could be resurrected, this is one of my favourites (someone crack on with Turrican and The Chaos Engine and life will be gravy).

For the uninitiated, you take control of a small band of soldiers and direct them through jungle, desert and arctic campaigns, struggling to keep them alive and progress them through the ranks.

It's a surprisingly humourous and touching game, actually; I'll be intrigued to see if they can keep the delicate balance of the original, after a while you genuinely began to care about your little foot soldiers (I miss you, Stoo). Considering they were made up of only a handful of pixels they conveyed real personality through some clever animation (not to mention the dreaded "hill of graves").

Whether the wonderfully intuitive and simple two-button control system will remain is another question. It was one of the game's strengths, ensuring that, no matter how chaotic things got, you never got confused or lost in the controls. Hopefully, they won't try to 'modernize' the game too much and thereby over-complicate things with an overabundance of buttons.

Confirmed by GFI so far are the following details: an isometric perspective (a nice nod to the original, this gives me hope), destructible environments (hopefully more than just the sheds of the original), weather effects (intriguing) and full 3D (who cares?).

There aren't really any more details to tell at the moment, but as soon as there are, you can be certain I'll let you know. Still, for a drab old Tuesday, this is cracking news and has put a terribly large grin on my weathered old mug. Thank you, Codemasters. Thank you indeed.

BREAKING NEWS: According to VG247, Codemasters have confirmed that this is set for a Russian-only release. If this is true, I take back all the nice things I just said and shall remain in an interminable grump. Please be wrong.