Bravo Company Commando’s Bazooka man
Riff is the squad’s Bazooka man and Sarge Hawk’s best friend. Riff is every inch a soldier, yet retains the musical chops and coolness of a Blues musician. Riff wails some really cool Bazooka Blues for the enemy’s heavy armor.
Riff is Bravo Company’s anti-tank specialist. Unlike his more wild and cocky squadmates, tying his love for Jazz and the explosions of enemy armor and plastic soldier pieces. Riff takes on a more cool-headed approach to his squad-leader; resulting in them both being close friends.
His cool head is essentially ideal in wielding the heavy bazookas for the tougher jobs, his squad faces.
His military record in Sarge’s Heroes states that he was made out of plastic guitar picks found in a jazz club. This statement, at the time, was inconsistent with the events of Sarge’s Heroes where the Portals had supposedly been encountered for the first time. Although it was later revealed that the Portals were first found a little over a year earlier, at that time no one seemed to notice this detail.
His uniform configuration and physical size are very similar to Sarge Hawk’s. Riff wears three small hoop earrings on his left ear and a saxophone earring on his right ear. He has a combat knife strapped to one of his boots. Riff plays a mean saxophone.
Unlike his peers in charge of Hawk, Riff seems to be practically the only one who did not have serious cognitive/mental and behavioral problems during his Super Soldier process. For this reason he was always the second in command of the Bravo Company Commandos.
Riff bios from Sarge’s Heroes to Sarge’s Heroes 2
Army Men: Sarge’s Heroes
He is the first of the Bravo Company Commandos to be rescued by Sarge, while in a Tan Base.
Plastic Surgery?
Some time before Sarge’s Heroes 2, Riff and the rest of the Bravo Company Commandos changed their appearance substantially (although some did not notice). Everyone except Sgt. Hawk.
Theories and gossip say that this was because they underwent the Super Soldier 2.0 experiment to try to fix their serious attitudinal and mental flaws. Something a bit strange for Riff to be practically the only “normal” one of the batch of Commandos under Hawk’s command (except for his fanaticism for Jazz music).
But this does not seem to be true, since after this change the particularities of the rest of the Commandos only became more accentuated. Riff was one of those who suffered the smallest visual changes.
Army Men: Sarge’s Heroes 2
While Riff plays a minor role in both the Playstation and N64 versions of the events, in the Game Boy Color version he is one of the three key soldiers alongside Scorch and Vikki Grimm who assist Sgt. Hawk on fighting against a Tan resurgence lead by General Plastro. This notably shows that he is adept at commandeering vehicles and aircraft.
Army Men Advance
Another battle was fought. Previous attempts to discover Plastro’s plans were thwarted. Riff was captured and Scorch disappeared.
Riff had been transmitting Alien code, but his transmission was broken. Hawk & Vikki found that radio to get to Riff. He needed to be rescued. He was being held in a high security enclosure. They cracked the code to release him and helped him escape. Riff was returned.
Omega Soldier Experiment
Riff was one of the Bravo Company Commandos to volunteer for the Omega Soldier experiment, donating his plastic DNA for the creation of the Omega Soldier.
Army Men RTS
Riff appears in Army Men: RTS as the hero version of the Bazooka Man units during the campaign.
Other missions
Sarge’s War
Riff is seen at the beginning of these events taking out an enemy vehicle. He stays behind to secure the area while Sarge Hawk goes on to liberate the rest of Greentown.
He was killed along with the rest of Bravo Company Commandos due to the bomb at the peace ceremony.
Behind the scenes:
Original 3DO concept art
