Buy Cannon Fodder at GOG The first time I ever felt sad about the death of an in-game character was in the aftermath of a Cannon Fodder mission in which I'd lost Jools, the first ever soldier you control in the game. Cannon Fodder is a classic 90s top-down shooter in which you control a four-man squad carrying out dangerous missions against huge numbers of enemies. If a soldier dies in a mission, he's gone forever, and replaced by another conscript in subsequent missions. The fact that characters died permanently was already pretty heavy-going stuff, but the magnitude of it was amplified by the post-mission debrief, during which the names of the soldiers who died in the last mission scroll up the screen, flanked by a pair of poppies and accompanied by the melancholy tune of Jon Hare's Narcissus. As you lose troops, the hill behind which new recruits come in to replace fallen ones steady fills up with graves, so between each mission you're faced with a constant reminder of the lives lost during your campaign. You feel guilty for being so reckless, and responsible for the dead. In a weird way, completing the game never feels like an unmitigated success unless every single one of your soldiers survives - which just isn't going to happen. Jools and Jop. Your sacrifices will never be forgotten.
Gamer, Researcher of strange things.
I'm a writer-editor hybrid whose writings on video games, technology and movies can be found across the internet. I've even ventured into the realm of current affairs on occasion but, unable to face reality, have retreated into expatiating on things on screens instead.
