Cannon Fodder - Television Tropes & Idioms

This game is not in any way
endorsed by the
ROYAL BRITISH LEGION

WAR!
Never been so much fun!
WAR!
Never been so much fun!
WAR!
Never been so much fun!
WAR!
Never been so much fun!
Go to your brother
Kill him with your gun
Leave him lying in his uniform
Dying in the sun!
WAR!

—Cannon Fodder theme tune

A video game from Sensible Software, in which the player commands between 1 and 8 soldiers on a series of missions like "kill all enemies." It is remembered for attempting to avert Do Not Do This Cool Thing — your soldiers die horribly and in droves, each adding a tombstone to the pre-mission screen, and the game manual openly states that "war is a senseless waste of lives and resources." Electronic Gaming Monthly proclaimed it the best Atari Jaguar game of 1995.

In January 2010, Codemasters announced licensing third game

to be made by Russian developer GFI for PC and Xbox 360.

The original game is available for download on Good Old Games

Cannon Fodder contains examples of:

Arbitrary Headcount Limit
Black Comedy: The "Home/Away" scoreboard above Boot Hill.
Cannon Fodder: Of course. They're also essentially Player Mooks, and when freshly recruited they're New Meat.
Death from Above: Helicopters and those fucking roofs.
The Dead Have Names: And they're listed at the end of every mission.
Deconstructor Fleet: Targeting most of the Military and Warfare Tropes.
Do Not Do This Cool Thing: This game was an experiment to see if it was possible to avert this in regards to war. But it ends up as a fun, challenging, yet unique game that enjoyed until today.
Desolation Shot: The whole game.
Excuse Plot: Utterly straight in the original - they tried to make a bit more plot for the sequel.
Family Unfriendly Violence: For which it was banned in Germany. To be fair, it's fairly Gornographic to watch your soldiers bleeding to death in agony.
Friendly Fireproof: With guns and only guns — grenades and rockets can kill your soldiers.
Grotesque Cute
Infinite Ammo: All except your soldier's grenades and rockets; running out when you had to blow up a bunker/hut could make a level unwinnable.
Kill 'Em All: Well, your playing determines who survives, but a typical player loses 200 soldiers (out of 300). The scoreboard on Boot Hill will show that you take out a lot more than that, though.
Mercy Kill: An option for bleeding soldiers.
Mood Dissonance: This is basically the video game equivalent to Erfworld.
More Dakka: The machine guns are nice, and the Amiga version makes them sound meaty, but nothing compares to the later missions when you get your hands on rocket-firing helis. AHAHAHAHAHAAA!
Nintendo Hard: The second game is significantly harder than the first, although Stoo did a lot to try and smooth the difficulty curve (the first suffers from an infamous spike at mission 7).
Player Mooks: The title soldiers, except they have names, and they're all so damn cute...
The Poppy: Its use on the game's box art was a source of controversy (see Serious Business).
Quicksand Sucks
Recycled In Space: Cannon Fodder 2 has you fighting aliens.
RPG Elements: Soldiers who survive a mission are "promoted," essentially levelling up.
Save Point: At the end of every mission.
Self Insert Fic: The first four soldiers are named after the development team.
Serious Business: "Make sure you do not buy this shameful game," said the British newspaper The Daily Star. The reason? It has a corn poppy on the opening screen, and it didn't get official permission from the Royal British Legion, which uses a corn poppy as a symbol of remembrance for World War One. The game thus carries a disclaimer, "This game is not endorsed by the Royal British Legion".
Shout Out: Each and every single level and sublevel name. The original Stoo's website has a thorough documentation of the lot for the sequel.
Time Travel: Cannon Fodder 2 uses this a lot, mostly to make palette swapped new environments.
Vapor Ware: Codemasters (which bought Sensible Software in 1999) planned to remake this game for the Playstation Portable, but reconsidered. Also, a proper third game in the series has been repeatedly begun and cancelled.
Video Game Caring Potential: Each soldier has a name, and players often become quite attached to individual soldiers, trying to keep them alive as long as possible. It helps/hurts that at the end of each mission you're reminded of the names of the soldiers who died.
Video Game Cruelty Potential: Of course if you're a really sick and twisted bastard then the above will probably go overlooked in favour of deliberately setting off explosions while members of your squad are close enough to be taken out as well. And then of course there's the option of not dispensing a Mercy Killing to a mortally wounded comrade and just watching him bleed out instead. Ahahahahaa! Jools bleeds good!
War Has Never Been So Much Fun: Trope Namer, but doesn't quite fit it, being more a case of Grotesque Cute. Incidentally, Cannon Fodder 2 changes it to "War has only been this much fun once before."
War Is Hell: For all its Grotesque Cute visuals and Black Comedy, Cannon Fodder, being a satire, bears a very strong anti-war message.
A Winner Is You
X Meets Y: "Lemmings crossed with Commando crossed with Dune 2," as amazon.com describes it.