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3DO Company, Army Men History, Army Men: Sarge's War, Interview, Making Of, Michael Mendheim, Old Army Men stuff, Reviews and opinion

Heroes may die, but plastic lasts forever. By Zoey Handley – destructoid.com – including some words from Michael Mendheim – Jun 27, 2021

June 27, 2021 Mr. X 2002 Leave a comment

Original source

https://destructoid.com/sarges-war-eulogy/

Army Men: Sarge’s War: The eulogy for an entire series

It’s a complicated subject, the Army Men series. The 3DO Company released somewhere in the realm of 25 games between 1998 and 2002. When you consider some of the ports were made from the ground up and entirely distinctive to the platform they were released on, the actual number of unique games is probably around 35 or more. I’m sure you can already see the problem.

Army Men Vikki Dead — Army Men Sarge’s War Vikki Dead

“The problem was with all the early success of these Army Men games, the executives at 3DO thought they could ship an Army Men game (or bundle) every quarter and be successful,” Michael Mendheim, creative director of Battletanx and the Sarge’s Heroes subseries, told me. It’s obvious. The output was stunning, putting even history’s most prolific market spammers, like Guitar Hero, to shame. What started as a promising series with a few hits on its hands quickly declined into one that was treated with scorn and derision by players and the press.

The result is that the Army Men games are poorly remembered. I’ve previously compared the series to a shotgun blast: a sudden and abrupt spread, sometimes causing a lot of agony. Few mourned the loss of the franchise, but I still visit to place flowers on its grave.

The 3DO Company was founded by Trip Hawkins, who previously founded Electronic Arts years earlier. Hawkins dreamt of a console that would become the universal medium for games. Licensing fees would be almost non-existent, so developers and publishers would jump aboard with little risk, abandoning frontrunners Nintendo and Sega. Hawkins left EA to pursue this dream, but by 1996, the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer flopped under the weight of FMV game ports, and the company had to pivot to purely making software. Hawkins even took on a creative role to help out his teams.

Army Men started out quietly enough in 1998. The first game on PC, merely titled Army Men, was a reasonable success. Early the next year, Army Men II came out alongside a PlayStation remake of the first game called Army Men 3D. Again, these were pretty successful. By the end of 1999, however, a second PC title, Army Men: Toys in Space, the 3D action title Army Men: Sarge’s Heroes, and the top-down helicopter game Army Men: Air Attack were all released. Five titles in its second year, and the snowball had only just begun rolling.

That’s where Michael Mendheim comes in. In 1998, he was creative director on Battletanx, which was a hit for 3DO. He was then given creative license on his own Army Men title and envisioned a character-driven game with more of a story, and that became Sarge’s Heroes.

Once again, Sarge’s Heroes was a hit. If I can wade into the story for a moment, it’s where I was introduced to the series, and it’s one that still holds a place in my heart. It had its rough spots, but a lot of its design, especially when it came to its levels, was fantastic. I remember following it through Nintendo Power up to its release and playing the hell out of it.

While I’ve trudged through a great deal of the Army Men series since then and could give you the full and detailed history, that’s quite a detour. We’re going to hurry the story along here.

The important fact is that not only did the quality of Army Men titles start to plummet almost immediately, but the public’s appetite for the games declined just as fast. I’d say that the four PlayStation Army Men: World War games are pretty consistent fun, but by the release of the last two titles, the press was practically ignoring them.

It became something of a laughing stock. In 2001, Portal Runner was released to harsh reception. After a particularly scathing review in Gamepro Magazine, Trip Hawkins even went as far as writing to the Editor-in-Chief to defend the title in an almost comical fashion. He described the staff as “angry young men” and threatened to reduce their advertising. I can understand him wanting to defend his creation, but the letter wasn’t a good look.

Around 2002, the pace of releases from 3DO had slowed and the writing was on the wall. “We already had a round of layoffs; everyone was nervous about the company’s future,” said Mendheim. He had a team working on a game called Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. “It was an edgy, gritty, post-apocalyptic nightmare, based on the Book of Revelation.” Mendheim also believed this to be the best chance at saving 3DO, but it wasn’t to be. “I was called into a meeting and told that I could keep a small team working on Horsemen but everyone else, including myself, would need to make another Army Men game. That Army Men game would be Sarge’s War.”

Sarge’s War would be the last 3DO developed Army Men game, put together in haste as the company took on water. “Honestly, it was like developing the game on the Titanic and it took 9 months for the ship to sink,” described Mendheim.

If you’ve played Sarge’s War, you may have been stricken with how tonally different it was from previous games. The series’ standard features were there, but a lot of the color was washed out of it. In its place was a grittier veneer, even over its more cartoonish elements. The entire supporting cast of the Sarge’s Heroes sub-series–all of them–were killed in an explosion, sending Sergeant Hawk into an avenging rage.

This was the sound of a series dying. There are plenty of franchises that have disappeared from the face of the planet, never to be heard from again. Jazz Jackrabbit, Top Gear, F-Zero; there are many easy examples of games that have just…gone away. Sarge’s War was a game on its deathbed, one last defiant scream before the embrace of oblivion. It was a deliberate move to put the final nail in the coffin and bring closure to the series.

I think Michael Mendheim put it best. “There are certain games that you just put your heart and soul into because you love the content, they are your babies. Sarge’s Heroes was one of those games for me. Every character in the game was developed with love and passion. Sarge’s Heroes was fun, positive, and hopeful. It was a game that made you laugh and feel some magic.”

“Sarge’s War was the opposite of that. It was grim and dark. The story in Sarge’s War was about loss. Losing everything that you love and care about. In the plotline, the entire cast and crew – Sarge’s Heroes died with 3DO. Everyone except for Sarge.”

“When I killed off Sarge’s Heroes, I also killed my desire to ever design another Army Men game. I designed the first and last game in the Sarge’s Heroes product line.”

By the end of development, 3DO had already breathed its last, and Sarge’s War wound up getting released by Global Star Software, a subsidiary of Take-Two and the new home of the Army Men license. Some sources credit Tactical Development for completing the game, but according to Mendheim, “Our orders were to finish the game and that is what we did…the game was delivered completed as the ship went down.”

In comparison to the Army Men games that came before it, Sarge’s War was less rickety. It’s obvious that some of 3DO’s best remaining talent had worked on it, though under less than ideal constraints. It doesn’t reach the height of the series, but knowing the story behind it underlines it with melancholy. It’s a surreal experience.

“There are no bad guys in this story; everyone did their absolute best to try and keep the company alive,” explains Mendheim. “No one sets out to make a bad game. No one worked harder than Trip Hawkins, who even put his own money on the line to try and save the company. Unfortunately, not every story has a happy ending.”

Global Star made a token effort at continuing the Army Men series. Their first attempt was Team 17’s Army Men: Major Malfunction in 2006, which I’ve previously covered, and it’s awful. Later they’d try another reboot with Army Men: Soldiers of Misfortune in 2008, which is similarly terrible. There was a mobile game for pre-smart phones, and then that’s it. Aside from a few re-releases, the series has been left to rest peacefully.

Army Men: Sarge's War Hawk — Army Men: Sarge’s War Hawk

Whether or not it deserved that fate is a matter of opinion. On one hand, it was unwise and intrusive to flood the market with those titles. Releasing games of questionable quality to bank on a brand should never be commended. But on the other hand, they weren’t without merit or appeal. The best games were just buried under the worst. It could have been straightened out. It didn’t have to end this way.

Or, as Michael Mendheim put it: “I always look back at my time at 3DO and think what could have been if we had managed the brand better by releasing only one Army Men game a year and each year releasing a different type of Army Men game with cool innovations and game mechanics…maybe, just maybe Army Men and 3DO might still be alive.”

3DO Company, Army Men 1998, Army Men History, Interview, Keith Bullen, Magazines & Printed stuff, Making Of, News & Press, Trip Hawkins, uncategorized

The Making Of: Army Men – RetroGamer magazine. May 16, 2019. By Hareth Al Bustani

May 16, 2019 Mr. X 2002 Leave a comment

Exclusive interview with Trip Hawkins and Keith Bullen

During the mid-to-late 1990s, as video games began branching out beyond traditional genres, a surprisingly simple idea sparked the birth of one of gaming’s most memorable franchises. That spark was to bring the iconic green plastic toy soldiers (the Army Men) to digital life. What followed was a mix of action, strategy, and tongue-in-cheek satire that would grow into a universe of its own: the early foundations of what we now call the Toyverse.

The project emerged from The 3DO Company, founded by industry pioneer Trip Hawkins, who had already changed gaming history with Electronic Arts. At that time, 3DO was primarily focused on software development and searching for its next big concept… something that could blend strategy, humor, and accessibility. The result went far beyond expectation, shaping not just a game, but a world of plastic warfare and nostalgic imagination.

Origins of the Idea

It all began in 1996, when Keith Bullen, an art designer from Electronic Arts, was hired by 3DO to direct the visuals for a new project, then tentatively called War Sports. The goal was to create something in the spirit of Return Fire, 3DO’s popular vehicular shooter, but with stronger squad-based mechanics. Marketing wanted an “E for Everyone” rating, an idea ironically tied to the ESRB system that Trip Hawkins himself had helped establish.

“I remember various marketing meetings when ideas like green blood and making the soldiers robots were brought up as ways to get the game a friendly rating. I didn’t like any of these ideas.” – Keith recalls

At that time, that’s what was done with Half-Life to sell it in Germany: making the human enemies… robots.

Months passed without a clear direction, until Bullen had a eureka moment. He thought back to his childhood days, setting up tiny armies in the backyard and taking turns throwing rocks with his brother to knock them down. That memory (of creativity, chaos, and fun) became the emotional core of Army Men.

The toy soldiers had long been a universal symbol of imagination. From the Louis Marx playsets of the 1950s to Toy Story in 1995, these little green figures had stood the test of time. By centering the game around them, Bullen found a way to capture both nostalgia and originality, something fun for players who wanted a break from the gritty realism and machismo of other war games.

Building the Plastic World

Once the toy soldier idea took hold, Keith’s role evolved from art director to lead designer.

“Once the soldiers became plastic, we had to come up with a universe with real terrains and plastic soldiers,” he says. “We wanted the world to feel serious to the Army Men characters’ point of view but fun and nostalgic for the player.”

This is key: “The (plastic) world had to feel real and serious for the Army Men.” With these words, coming from Keith Bullen himself, we can cement this as a fact, dispelling any doubt or denial: For the inhabitants of the Plastic World, war is not a joke… it’s serious. That’s why Sarge’s War isn’t excluded from the equation (as many fans wish), because whether we like it or not, it respects this original principle of the idea behind Army Men.

The team paid careful attention to the way plastic behaved in real life, how light hit its glossy surface, how it bent, shattered, and melted.

“We paid close attention to the physics in the animations. It was very important to me that the plastic pieces reacted to the world as if they were made of the same light plastic as the original figures.”

But turning that idea into a finished product wasn’t easy. The small team of six soon grew to more than ten as Bullen became creative director.

“It was very challenging convincing the team to adopt my new gameplay ideas… It took several months to finally get everyone on board.”

Executives were another obstacle. Early pitches for Army Men were dismissed as childish, “too young” some said. RTS fans, they argued, wouldn’t take seriously a game about toys. Yet Bullen persisted, finding clever ways to win people over.

Green Plastic Soldier — The “bought” generic soldier 3D model

“I then bought a 3D model of a generic Army Man and brought in some classic toy green and tan Army Men to use as pose references,” he remembers.
“For several weeks, many people from every department in the company would stop to discuss the posed 3D model… Soon after, the momentum switched from the product being perceived as too juvenile to being an awesome nostalgic experience.”

This is key: “I then bought a 3D model of a generic Army Man”. This is a direct confirmation of the source of the classic Army Men 3D model: it was purchased, obtained from 3D model packages, in this case the ViewPoint DataLabs ones (and it’s not the only 3D model from third party sources).

Sarge with rolled up sleeves, a modified version of the original 3D model

That was the turning point. Nostalgia had done its job.

From the Backyard to the Battlefield

The next challenge was translating the tactile world of toy soldiers into an interactive one. The developers recreated classic units like riflemen and bazooka troopers, while experimenting with how plastic would melt or break apart.

“We destroyed many plastic Army Men in the 3DO parking lot for the sake of realistic plastic physics,” Keith admits.
“The enhanced fear of fire when you are made of plastic was a theme we relied on throughout the series.”

To tie everything together, Army Men adopted a satirical tone. The game opened with a mock newsreel showing the totalitarian Tans preparing to invade the Greens.

Army Men News reel Introduction

Plastro from Army Men — The Mussolini Tan leader

“We watched many hours of authentic old reels… The Tan leader gesturing like Mussolini was one of my favourite segments.”

Originally planned as a real-time strategy game, Army Men evolved into something more direct and personal. Players would take control of Sarge, a Green Army hero.

By the way, it was the RTT (Real Time Tactics) videogame, not a RTS. At least we called it that way today.

“I’ve always preferred arcade-like action games over strategy games,” says Keith.
“So I redesigned the game around the central character of Sarge… as in games like Ikari Warriors.”

The final product blended tactical movement with fast-paced action.

“The gameplay became more about tactics, rather than strategy,” Bullen notes, crediting Crusader: No Remorse as an influence.

Trip Hawkins’ Perspective

One of the concept’s earliest champions was 3DO founder Trip Hawkins himself.

“Toy soldiers were my dominant play pattern as a child and I’d always invented strong storylines and adventures around them,” he says.
“Besides all the World War soldiers, I had Swoppets from the Wars Of The Roses, Roman centurions, and others – including cowboys, of course.”

Hawkins immediately recognized the blend of nostalgia, humor, and design potential behind Army Men.

“It inspired me to do something more central with humour in the genre and a stronger narrative.”

To him, the plastic theme wasn’t just an aesthetic choice: it was a creative platform.

“We were focused on the US market… nobody cared about them, because they’d not grown up with those toys.”

Despite the game’s playful tone, Hawkins insisted that warfare and destruction were essential to the experience.

“Creatively, we also wanted to have fun repeating some of the famous play patterns from childhood… It allowed us to cast our villains with a bit of sadism, that is still funny because… they’re just toys.”

Colonel Grimm and Sarge from Army Men — Colonel Grimm with Sarge

A Legacy Beyond Plastic

The development cycle lasted just over a year, despite several restarts. Once the formula clicked, Hawkins knew they had something special.

“This is what we live for in game development and publishing… to do something we really believe in and love.”

Across three themed terrains (desert, alpine, and swamp) Army Men culminated in a memorable twist: Sarge crossing into the Real World, a scene that would directly lead into Army Men II. The franchise quickly exploded, selling over 7 million copies across every major platform and generating more than $300 million in revenue.

Looking back, Bullen reflects on the impact of that first title:

“I never would have imagined that it would spawn 23 sequels and spin-offs… My goal was to create a game that I would want to play and not a clone of a game I had played before.”

Indeed, Army Men defied easy classification. It was part shooter, part strategy, part parody… a digital sandbox that reimagined childhood battles through the eyes of living toys. Beneath the surface, it captured something universal: the creative spirit of play itself.

From Sarge’s Heroes to the ever-expanding Toyverse, the legacy of those little plastic soldiers continues to march on.

Sources for this article:

Original source: Retro Gamer (2019), “The Making Of: Army Men” by Hareth Al Bustani.
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/retro-gamer/20190516/281672551382117
Edited and adapted for armymen.com.ar

Army Men History, Army Men: Major Malfunction, Gavin Hood, Interview, Making Of, News & Press, Old Army Men stuff, Team17

Behind the scenes: Army Men: Major Malfunction

November 7, 2018 Mr. X 2002 Leave a comment

Original sources:

Team17 source: https://www.team17.com/team17s-100-games-part-nine-2005-2006-lemmings-worms-army-men

This proves that canonically, Sarge died.

The first very revealing article was Team17’s recalling history of their first 100 games, when celebrating the release of game number one hundred, PLANET ALPHA. In this chapter, they’re heading to 2005 & 2006, a time of both 2D and 3D Worms games and their first foray into work-for-hire projects on both Lemmings and Army Men.

In an unexpected twist, Team17 was granted creative freedom while working on the Army Men franchise. This allowed them to introduce a new main character and even eliminate the recurring character, Sarge, in the opening sequence. This bold move highlights the unique creative liberties Team17 enjoyed during the development process. You can read the complete article in: https://team17.com

1. Team17’s 100 Games – Part Nine: 2005-2006 (Published: Nov 7, 2018)

(…)

48/100
Army Men: Major Malfunction

When Team17 was founded in 1990 it was entirely possible, thanks to open platforms like the Amiga, for a small group of programmers and artists to make and release their own game. But times changed. As next generation consoles took over, team sizes grew and budgets ballooned. Releasing a game was virtually impossible without publisher support and this meant you had a limited number of ways to get a game made. Either own a best-selling IP or develop for somebody else’s. In this climate, Team17 found itself pitching to publishers for “work-for-hire” projects. Sometimes this led to us working on a game like Lemmings, other times it led to Army Men: Major Malfunction… Perhaps the most surprising game in our entire history.

Recruited to Team17 after a 10-year stint at Rare, Gavin Hood found himself in command of the Army Men project and worked on the pitch. “I had literally only joined the company a few months before and was sitting opposite the head of design,” says Hood. “I remember most of the designers were working hard on a Worms title as it neared the end of production so I was asked to come up with something to pitch. I guess it went okay because we got the deal and I got the chance to lead it.”

Working on someone else’s franchise, you’d think that the publisher would have final say on any creative decisions but actually, as Hood explains, Team17 were given free rein on Army Men and even got away with a few unexpected choices. “We wanted to use a different main character to many of the other Army Men games and not only did we not meet resistance to this, but we even microwaved recurring main character Sarge in the opening sequence to set up the introduction of our own character. I’m actually proud that we were able to melt a series character in the opening of a game and everyone concerned be okay with that!”

Army Men Major Malfunction Huey Helicopter

Every game has its unique challenges and for Army Men it was designing a 3D world in the era before off-the-shelf game engines made the process more streamlined. “The programmers wrote a set of tools that, because of the limited time we had, were made to work on development kits using the Xbox Controller,” Hood explains. “We had to place enemies, assign A.I. to them and set their patrols all using an Xbox Pad, even the cutscenes were done in the same way. Using those tools was a nightmare but the advantage was we could throw a load of stuff into a level and just hit play. It was awful to use with a pad but the speed at which we could test ideas and get something into each of the environments is probably the only reason we hit deadlines.”

Army Men Major Malfunction WIP — A WIP CG animation from the Escape From Precinct 17 mission

“It was an interesting game to work on,” concludes Hood. “I remember having grand ideas about what the game would end up being and although it might not have exactly reached those heights there are some things I think we got right. There are a lot of pop culture references in there that I still think we handled well .” Even the subtitle, “Major Malfunction”, was a reference to a line from Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket!

“Looking back, the game obviously wasn’t a masterpiece but everyone on the team got everything done in a very short development time with makeshift tools! It probably won’t go down as Team17’s finest hour or be the game I’m proudest of, but I did at least get to buy a lot toy soldiers and put them all over the office!”

(…)

Army Men Revolution, Interview, Making Of, Microverse, Miniaturization, VFX

Making the Microverse, Part 1: Miniaturization secrets on Cinema!

December 19, 2017 GigaHawk c3 Leave a comment

Before 3D design and video game design, other talented artists had to face the challenge of making small beings look realistic, and showing giant environments from their perspective. In this first part of this series, we will reveal some of its ingenious secrets, knowledge that will help improve the experience of the small world of Army Men: Revolution

An article and interview made by VFXBLOG (https://vfxblog.com) December 19, 2017

Sources for this article:

https://vfxblog.com/2017/12/19/indian-in-the-cupboard-vfx

Miniaturisation secrets: Eric Brevig on ‘The Indian in the Cupboard’

Films like “Honey, I Shrunk The Kids”, The Indian in the Cupboard, Ant-Man, Fantastic Voyage, Inner Space, Willow, Hook, among others, are all movies that have used different techniques of visual effects to do large things smaller, or show how the world looks from the perspective of a plastic soldier.

The visual effects supervisor, Eric Brevig, has worked on this type of films, including one of our favorites, “The Indian in the Cupboard”, which presented visual effects by the ILM of George Lucas, a visual effects company created by “The Creator of Star Wars” to be able to make Star Wars.

These techniques have varied, from the forced perspective, large sets, filming on green or blue screen and, of course, digital media such as 3D.

But before reading this text we copied and pasted, with our opinions interjected, we ask you to go first to read it in the original source, attached below!

Original Source of the article:

Miniaturisation secrets: Eric Brevig on ‘The Indian in the Cupboard’

Eric Brevig Industial Light & Magic “Indian in the Cupboard”

Eric Brevig interview by VFXBLOG

vfxblog: What had been your experience with any miniaturisation effects prior to The Indian in the Cupboard?

Eric Brevig: I had done certain short sequences in other projects. I did a 3D, double 70mm Disney EPCOT film for the theme park around 1980. It was like a dream sequence for a pavilion that they built there about imagination. And part of the dream sequence had the little boy, who was the main character, imagining that he was looking at a miniature circus, maybe three feet across, filled with tiny clowns a few inches tall and so forth. Then later on he shrunk down to fit into somebody’s hand.

And so that was the first time I had to really wrap my head around how you shoot mixed scale characters like that so that the perspective is correct and so forth. And since that was a 70mm 3D, meaning stereo 3D, project, there was much less tolerance for cheating things like scale and perspective.

I also did work on the Honey, I Shrunk the Audience for another Disney theme park several years later and just continued the same sort of things. I was on Hook at ILM as well with Tinkerbell. It was very familiar territory for me by the time The Indian in the Cupboard came up.

vfxblog: What is the major thing you think you have to get right with any kind of scale or miniaturisation work?

Eric Brevig: You have to be able to have the tiny element look like it was photographed from the same camera as the large element. And that means all aspects of photography – depth of field, shadow size, obviously camera position and camera motion and lighting. In Hook, because most of the time Tinkerbell was a fairy character that was glowing, the lighting became a combination of casting her light onto the background.

I remember we had a scene that I’d actually proposed to Steven Spielberg because I loved it in the Peter Pan animation, where the little Tinkerbell character walks up Peter’s shirt. Robin Williams was wearing a shirt and we had the character, Tinkerbell, walk through an ink pad so she left tiny little footprints. And it was just a lot of fun to work with Robin and getting him to, in a very tight close up, track his eyes where I was going to composite in the Tinkerbell character, and I gave him a little guide to follow. And then on overscale piece of blue screen set, we shot Julia Roberts following the same path.

But one thing that’s kind of fun when you’re doing little characters like that is that you can speed up the action because little things can move quickly. So I was adjusting the timing so that, at the rate that an adult Julia Roberts, full size, could walk up a set that looked like somebody’s blue chest, laying down of course, that her character, composited in, would track exactly where his eyes had been looking.

vfxblog: With Tinkerbell in Hook, and in several other films like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, one of the main methods was to build over-sized sets. And then there’s also shooting the actors against bluescreen and compositing them in, and there were some forced perspective shots. But was that kind of the idea, to mix it up a bit, so that audience isn’t really quite sure how you’ve done it?

Eric Brevig: Yeah, I think that’s the most fun. We did one or two forced perspective shots, which I love to do and I kind of, growing up really was enamoured with the work that the Disney studios had done on Darby O’Gill and the Little People, which was all essentially forced perspective. There’s maybe one or two composited shots in the entire movie, but most of it was very sophisticated forced perspective and mirror shots, where a front surface mirror is partially removed, revealing a background set that’s painted and lined up precisely to match the foreground.

When I was a student in college, one of my student films, because I had no technical equipment to do anything sophisticated, was basically a mixed scale student film, where I bought $1 mirror tiles at the local construction supplies store and carefully scraped off the silver from the back and lined it up with the foreground set and the background set. So that was all stuff that I loved to play with and experiment with as a kid. And then, because I think on Hook Steven really wanted to do that the old school way, my art director and I set it up for him, so we could make it look like Julia was in the doll house, and the doll house was in the foreground, and she was on an oversized set in the background.

But the reality is, it is so cumbersome to take the time to do that in front of camera, and so much faster and easier to use compositing and CG that we did it one time and they said, ‘That’s great, let’s not do that anymore, let’s just go back to the way you want to do it,’ which is using multiple photography elements.

vfxblog: Hook came out in 1991. By the time Indian and the Cupboard came along in 1995, had digital compositing moved on to a point that was even more beneficial for pulling off scale shots?

Eric Brevig: Well, it didn’t necessarily help with scale, because both the large scale and small scale characters were played by actors, so you’re obliged to photograph them both. If you have a small character in a fantasy world or in a CG world, life is much easier. But if you’ve got both characters, large and small scale on screen together in a photorealistic world, you’re obliged to come up with a way to photograph them both so that they both look like they’re in the same environment. And also, for the actors and performers, you have to come up with a way for them to interact and act together.

So a lot of the work on Indian in the Cupboard was to facilitate that kind of emotional relationship that was the core of the movie. It wasn’t a fantasy – well, it was a fantasy, but it wasn’t a spectacular visual effects extravaganza that was showing off, look what we can do. It was an intimate tale of two characters from different worlds and different scales who developed this emotional bond. So it was really important to allow the actor, his name was Litefoot, who played Little Bear, to be able to hear and react to, as an actor, this giant boy. And similarly I had to help the boy, who was played by Hal Scardino, find where to look and so forth and be able to act with the Indian actor so that there was this genuine sense of two people communicating.

vfxblog: I’m curious if going from optical compositing to digital compositing made any difference at all?

Eric Brevig: Well it didn’t really make a big change because essentially we were just replacing the clunky, mechanical, optical printer phase with the equally clunky, primitive digital compositing stage. But it gave me the opportunity to do some fun, nuanced enhancements. I remember there was a shot of, I think it was a cowboy, he’s supposed to be two inches tall and he’s walking across a bed with a comforter on it, and I had a big uneven surface that was blue and shot David Keith, who was playing the cowboy, walking across that.

And my director of photography is a fella named Chuck Shuman, who I worked with on a lot of movies, from Total Recall to The Abyss, and he’s one of the most precise and brilliant directors of photography in understanding how to match the lighting between a small set and an oversized set. And he would actually match the size of the lights, scaled up, when we shot the actors portraying little people, because that’s the way the light wraps around you, is the relationship between the size of the light source and the size of you. And so, when we would shoot the normal set, we would have normal sized lights, whatever size they were, a foot across, and he would rig, for bluescreen miniature people, I think the scale was like 24:1, 24 foot wide illuminated surface that would cast the matching shadows.

In any event, we would shoot these, but there really wasn’t a way to puppeteer how the footsteps would move the fabric because oversized fabric never looked convincing. One of the things that I learned early on was, if you can always shoot the non-miniature stuff on real sets with real cloth, like you would normal macro photograph, it adds a verisimilitude to the scene that you can’t get with oversized props and so forth, which are very difficult to pull off and not have them look a little bit like oversized props.

In any event, as our character walks across this blanket, we were able to digitally put in little divots and depress the cloth wherever his foot stepped, which just sort of locked him in, in a way that you could never had done without digital. Because we’re essentially just warping, or morphing a little bit, some of the background imagery as his foot is making contact. So there were really nice little enhancements like that, as well as just the ability to perfect the compositing edges and so forth, in a way that photo mechanical compositing did not allow us to do.

vfxblog: You mentioned a really cool thing there, which was matching lighting for when a character is shot big and when they’re shot small. What about camera movement, did you use motion control to match up small and large shot plates?

Eric Brevig: I would decide based upon the needs of the shot, which camera – because we had to photograph foregrounds and backgrounds with cameras because they were both real environments – which camera would lead the shot. Let’s say it’s the little boy and he picks up this tiny Indian and he moves across the screen with it in his hand. I would photograph that with a traditional camera, tracking the boy. And he’d have just a little tiny object, I think I used something that looked like a bent paperclip, so that he had something in his hand that was showing him where to put his eye line and kept him honest about how he was holding it, but was easy to paint out.

And then after we had shot that, we would analyse the footage within the duration of the shot that was intended to be used in the movie and we’d say, ‘Okay, here at the beginning we’re one foot away from his hand and six inches above that. Okay, well that’s equal to 24 foot back and 12 feet above.’ And so we would design a camera move, using a very big crane arm, so that we would, as the boy moves through the shot, the camera’s now six inches from the character and one inch above his head, well, that equals 12 feet back and six inches would be six feet above his head.

So, we would basically plot out in the real world what we were doing in terms of matching that camera. And because you have a lot of space for leeway when you’re moving a camera 50 feet through a sound stage, it doesn’t matter if you’re a little bit to the right or the left of where you’re supposed to be, because then by tracking the two and using digital compositing to lock the two together, you’re able to make the perspective of one non-motion control shoot fit the other one by sort of locking them together afterwards.

If instead the shot is driven by what the little characters are doing, well, there was one very nice shot where the camera’s creeping across the little boy’s bedroom, and we can hear the Indian is singing some sort of traditional song. And the camera peers over this toy box that’s in the foreground, and we see that the Indian’s sitting on top of this little half-built structure that’s going to be his home. So what we did is, we figured out the total distance needed at the scale of our adult actor, and it was like a 100 foot camera move, and then we’d come down and we’d peer over where the box would be and then we boomed down, basically into a close-up of him, and we shot that first.

And then by tracking it and using a motion control system to shoot the same move on a bedroom set, we were able to lock them together precisely in photography and really get that sense of no hindrance to the camera wherever it went, because we were shooting on a genuine bedroom sized set, rather than a little bluescreen of the Indian. All the depth of field and focus and all that stuff was exactly as it should be, so it felt like you’re crawling, you know, the camera sort of creeping through this room and peering over a little toy box and there, in shallow depth of field, on this half built house, we’d find the Indian character.

Once again, my director of photography, being aware of what we were doing, would take incredibly precise notes on, for example the bedroom set. Including colour temperature from each of the lights and positioning, and we’d really create that on the giant scale of the screen stage and the two fit together really, really precisely.

Army Men: Sarge's Heroes, Interview, Making Of, N64

Combat in the Skies. Interview with director Kudo Tsunoda. By Matt Casamassina – ign64.com – Jan 7, 2000

January 7, 2000 Leave a comment

Original source

https://www.ign.com/articles/2000/01/08/combat-in-the-skies

IGN64 brings you an interview with Army Men: Air Combat’s director plus the first-ever N64 screens.

The Army Men franchise has proved to be most profitable for 3DO. The company recently released Army Men: Air Attack, a polygonal 3D top-down shooter similar to the Nuclear Strike series. Now Nintendo 64 owners get their own take on the experience with Army Men: Air Combat. IGN64 recently chatted with project director Kudo Tsunoda about the toy-based shooter.

IGN64: 3DO recently released Army Men: Air Attack for PlayStation. Now Nintendo 64 owners are getting Army Men: Air Combat, a very similar game. Can you explain the idea behind it for those who are not familiar with the PlayStation title?

Kudo Tsunoda: Yes. Air Combat is helicopter combat in the Army Men universe where you fly a little toy helicopter through these giant, oversized worlds. We’re really trying to focus more on the playing with toy aspects of the franchise for the Nintendo 64 version. We’re really playing up that it’s a little plastic toy helicopter so, for example, instead of firing off missiles you’ll be firing off bottle rockets.

Like other Army Men games, it’s the Green Army versus the Tan Army. But we’re also throwing in a lot more neutral environmental enemies so you’ll have bees that swarm out and attack you and mutant bugs that you have to fight against. A lot of the missions are based more on using your helicopter’s winch and interacting with the environments than they are on flying around and blowing things up.

IGN64: What are the differences between Army Men: Air Attack for PlayStation and Army Men: Air Combat for N64?

Kudo: There are some parts of the engines that are similar, but obviously for the Nintendo 64 we’re doing a lot more hardware-specific stuff. They’re definitely different systems so you want to max out the potential for each. We rewrote a lot of the code for the Nintendo 64 version, we’re doing new missions and we’re playing up a lot more of the multiplayer stuff. We don’t have a four-player mode for PlayStation, but Nintendo 64 does. So, we’ve really worked on that. Besides the campaign missions, we’ve got cooperative ones. We’ve got four different four-player head-to-head games.

IGN64: How is the framerate in four-player mode?

Kudo: It’s doing great. We’ve always got lots of stuff on screen, too. One of the problems about making a game like this is that you can pick up everything in the world [with the helicopter winch] and put it down somewhere. People tend to pick up stuff and build a little encampment with all of the different world objects — pile up all of the soda cans and things like that and then have a huge battle with it all. It’s difficult technology-wise. I mean, it’s great for the gamers, but when I talk to the programmers about what we want to do with the game they look at me like, “I’d like to kill you.”

We did have a lot of time to work on the technology though, so even in multiplayer we still have all of the objects on-screen, everything still looks as good graphically and it all runs at a good speed. So we’re pretty happy with that.

IGN64: Are you using the 4MB Expansion Pak for the game?

Kudo: Yeah, we will be, mostly for different [presumably high-resolution] graphic modes.

IGN64: Can you give us a few examples of the different missions in the game?

Kudo: Most of the missions are based on using things in the world or capturing toys that you can take into different missions. In Army Men there are the “Our World” missions and the “Their World” missions. The “Our World” is more of playing with toys in these huge environments and the “Their World” is more of the normal scale, military based missions. So, one example is in the “Our World” missions you can go and collect some toy that doesn’t animate. But once you get into the “Their World” missions we tried to keep a lot of the fun of playing with toys alive, so instead of having it straight military based, we’ve added in a giant, for example, a giant toy that walks around and blows up Tan units.

We’ve also got ways of using things in the world to manipulate different insects. So there are bees in the world that you can control by moving flowers around. You pick up a flower, drop it off somewhere else and it’ll attract all of the bees to that area and they’ll help you take out the Tan units.

IGN64: How do play mechanics work?

Kudo: One of the interesting things about making an Army Men title is that it’s such a mass-market license. Because of that it’s hard to make a game that’s going to be fun for a six or seven year old to play as well as advanced players — you know, people our age who played with Army Men as a kid. So we made the helicopter mechanics as simple as possible so that gamers can get into quickly and start flying around shooting stuff. Even a little kid can play, but you still have the added depth of game play like figuring out what every object in the world can do. For example, you can pick up a soda can and then pull the helicopter behind it where it will act as a shield. You can drop it on stuff and squish guys or you can build barricades. You can take a bunch of pinecones and lay them down around an anthill so that the ants are trapped. Then you could remove one pinecone and the ants will drum out in that direction. You can essentially guide where you want the ants to go.

IGN64: How does it control?

Kudo: Since we don’t have any vertical control, you can just use the analog stick to move the actual helicopter around. After that you’ve got a simple winch mechanic buttons, some strafing buttons — it’s very simple.

Air Combat N64 — Multiplayer Army Men: Air Combat

IGN64: Tell us about the multiplayer modes.

Kudo: There is a two-player split-screen cooperative mode. Plus we’ve got four different four-player modes. We’ve got a mode called Flag Nabbit, which is basically Capture the Flag. We’ve got Food Fight where you going around collecting different food items and seeing how you can use them to take your enemy out. We have a bug hunt kind of game where you get points for killing each different type of bug. You can use items in this mode to lure insects your way, where you can kill them all. This mode is pretty cool because you’ve got everybody not only trying to kill the bugs, but also swooping into each other’s areas trying to retrieve various items that will lure the bugs their way. The last mode is Air Rescue, where you go head-to-head trying to rescue little Army Men guys while trying to kill the competition’s guys.

IGN64: What sort of 3D environments do you get to play in?

Kudo: We’ve got a backyard environment with a patio and everything. We’ve got a beach area with lots of big sandcastles that you can fly through. We’ve got a park where you can fly up on the Jungle Jim, through a slide and a park-type environment. We’ve also got a campground area with lots of little picnic blankets. We’ve also got military environments like an alpine forest and an Arctic level.

IGN64: What sort of weapons does the game feature?

Kudo: In the “Our World” missions we’ve got bottle rockets, Roman candles, different swarm rockets that’ll come out like a four-pack, machine guns and napalm that you can use to melt guys with. But even more, everything in the environment can be used as a weapon. You can pick up the soda can, pinecones — whatever, and drop it on enemies.

Army Men Air Combat — Multiplayer Army Men: Air Combat in Nintendo 64

IGN64: In your opinion, why is this game better than Nuclear Strike?

Kudo: To me Nuclear Strike is pretty much a straightforward military shooter. The Army Men franchise is based around playing with toys — out in your backyard building a sense of nostalgia of stuff you used to do as a kid. Back at the office we get busted all of the time by security late at night because we’re out in the parking lot lighting Army Men up and firing Roman candles at them. Or when we first started development we had this huge ant farm that we expensed to the company to help develop our “realistic ant AI engine.” But we’d come and take Army Men, dip them in honey, drop them in the ant farm and watch the ants go to town on them. To me, there is only so much of the “Hey, I’m going to go pick up an oil drum and save the POW” missions before it starts to get taxing.

Plus, in Air Combat you can interact with everything in the environment as opposed to the Strike games where you fly around and blow stuff up. Having the depth of game play where it’s not just flying around and shooting stuff, but also learning what you can do with the environment and interacting with it, adds a whole lot.

IGN64: When can we expect Army Men: Air Combat on retail shelves?

Kudo: The end of the first-quarter 2000.

Army Men Air Combat N64 — Multiplayer Army Men: Air Combat on Nintendo 64

IGN64: Finally, can we look forward to more Army Men games for Nintendo’s upcoming Dolphin system?

3DO: You can pretty much expect that 3DO will be bringing all of its major franchises over to the next-generation of machines. We support Nintendo. They like us.

Army Men: Sarge's Heroes, Interview, Making Of, Michael Mendheim, N64

Sarge’s Hero. We talk with Michael Mendheim. By Dean Austin ign64.com Sep 24, 1999 / Jun 20, 2012

September 24, 1999 Mr. X 2002 Leave a comment

Original source

https://ign.com/articles/1999/09/25/sarges-hero

IGN64 talked with Michael Mendheim, Creative Director on Sarge’s Heroes, about the game & the industry.

IGN64: How did you get into the industry and what were the first titles you worked on?

Michael Mendheim: I started in advertising and eventually became a freelance illustrator. I got involved in the industry by designing and painting box covers for video games, that led to character design and eventually game design. The first title I ever designed was Fester’s Quest (NES). The game was a hit and I decided creating and designing video games was incredibly satisfying and fun, so I started a company that specialized in character and game design. I had a small team and we designed numerous games from Tazmania (SNES) to the Mutant League Series (Sega Genesis).

IGN64: What was your most satisfying product to work on and why?

MM: Tough question since I have enjoyed the majority of products I’ve worked on. I can’t pick one but I can pick my 3 favorites.

1). Mutant League Football (Genesis):

This product was a dream for me because I love football, mutants, and carnage. Every aspect of this game was fun to work on from character and field design to testing. The game was quite successful and spawned one of the first video game animated television shows and a toy line.

2). BattleTanx (N64):

This was the first product I designed at 3DO. Trip Hawkins spent a lot of time working with me on this product. The team was great and incredibly talented, our Technical Director Robert Zdybel bent over backwards for the designers. We finished the product from start to finish in under a year. It was touch and go there for a while but the product came together over the last two months. I remember having to plead with the team to stop playing it so we could finish it.

3). Sarge’s Heroes (N64 / PSX):

This game is wonderful to work on because of the dynamic character design and overall strength of the brand. The development teams are probably the hardest working and determined people I have ever worked with. The Technical Director on the N64, Dan Geisler is a God. Bob Smith is the Technical Director on the PSX and he is a Gods’ God. It’s a very good feeling to be working on a product that you know has the potential to be a big hit and you are being supported by strong engineering, strong art direction, and strong marketing.

IGN64: Please tell us the story for Army Men: Sarge’s Heroes.

MM: General Plastro and his evil Tan Army have discovered mysterious Portals. These portals offer passage to an alternate reality, a dimension that holds the secret to ultimate power. General Plastro is currently in possession of the Portals and has sent his soldiers through them to find new weapon technologies which, when brought back to the plastic dimension, can be used to destroy the Green Army.

Fortunately, for the Green Army it has Sgt. Hawk, aka “Sarge,” a one-man wrecking ball, trained and guided by Colonel Grimm to be the leader of the most elite squad in the Green army… The Bravo Company Commandos. The Tan Army is now in possession of the most diabolical weapons ever created and General Plastro has mounted a full-scale attack on the Green Nation. With the capture of his entire squad and Colonel Grimm’s daughter Vikki, Sarge has a one in a million chance to save the Green Nation from the clutches of defeat.

One of the first weapons of mass destruction General Plastro’s forces bring back is a giant magnifying glass. Needless to say, General Plastro loves the smell of burnt plastic in the morning! One of the coolest weapons of Plastro’s army, is the dreaded “V-Bot,” which is a toy robot that comes to life once it is brought back from “Our World” into “Their World.” Any inanimate plastic object that is brought back (using the Portal) from “Our World” into “Their World” becomes animate.

IGN64: What did you learn from your experience of making the first Army men?

MM: First and foremost, Sarge’s Heroes is not a sequel to Army Men 3D it is a line extension from the Army Men brand. Army Men 3D is about plastic army men waging real combat, it is a game of tactics and gritty combat and it does it better than most. Sarge’s Heroes is a much lighter and funnier game, it is a character (Sarge) -based action game with an entertaining and compelling story that evolves from mission to mission.

I was not involved in Army Men 3D (PSX) but I thought the team did a very good job. The three main areas where we wanted to differentiate ourselves from Army Men 3D:

Real world environments:

We wanted to take the game player into our world environments like the kitchen, bathroom, and backyard sandbox. The thought of kitchen counter warfare sounded like an absolute blast and it was something that hasn’t really been done before in an action shooter.

Animations:

Nina Stanley (the game’s Art Director) and I set out at the start of this project to focus on the character animations. Our goal was to create some of the finest animations ever seen in a video game. We wanted to bring Sgt. Hawk to life. All the animations in Sarge’s Heroes are hand drawn and the reason for this was to allow the artists to interpret motion and to exaggerate gesture, in the end the character’s personality comes to life through motion and artistic expression. This cannot be achieved using motion capture.

Plastic soldiers that look plastic:

Another goal that we set out to achieve was to create an effect that would make Plastic Army Men look like plastic. Dan Geisler, the game’s Technical Director, came up with a technique for mathematically approximating the effects of light reflecting on a plastic material surface. He calls it Plastosheen (Plast O Sheen).

IGN64: How many levels and/or missions are in the game? Can you describe some of the missions and the environments they take place in?

MM: There are 14 missions in Sarge’s Heroes, 7 that take place in “Their World” and 7 that take place in “Our World.” We also have 7 multi-player levels, and of course this wouldn’t be an Army Men game without Boot Camp.

When playing in “Their World” the player will experience everything from treacherous mountain terrain to arctic wastelands, forests, towns, and heavily defended enemy army bases. When playing in “Our World” the player will experience giant terrains that take place on the inside and outside of one particular house in Suburbia, USA. The player will experience warfare like never before as he fights the dreaded Tan Army in the backyard garden (complete with giant insects and flowers), the living room, and the kitchen. The designers of Army Men: Sarge’s Heroes have even included a massive bathroom.

IGN64: Could you describe the game engine?

MM: The engine was built by a very talented corp. of engineers, led by industry-vet and Technical Director, Dan Geisler. The engine and its supporting technology was built to fully accommodate the ambitious Sarge’s Heroes design. Some of the challenges were to build an engine that would support very large worlds with a fast frame rate and an incredible viewing distance. Missions like the Living Room and Bathroom well demonstrate this success. Additionally, the engine supports a high-resolution mode with the Expansion Pak. Sarge’s Heroes also shows all characters in a 3rd person perspective in 4-player deathmatch, which is rare.

IGN64: How would you describe the player view and how does the interface work?

MM: The game is primarily played from a third-person, over-the-shoulder perspective. The camera does have some dynamic elasticity to it and allows the player to view Sarge from the front. A quick tap of the R-Button, resets the view to directly behind the character. Another view we have comes via the sniper lens. While in this view, the player can survey the land and manually zoom in and out to take out enemy troops from long range. It’s a very effective method for the more patient player.

The interface was truly designed with the action gamer in mind. It is very intuitive and easy to navigate. Here we allow the player to choose items like resolution (w/Exp. Pak), view type (normal or letterbox) as well as configure their controller to their liking. Players should also find the multi-player setup very user-friendly. Many players will get well into game play without ever reviewing the manual.

IGN64: We understand that the game features both two player and four player modes. How do these work from both a game play and graphical standpoint?

MM: Sarge’s Heroes actually supports two, three or four players in a competitive capacity. We have also included a Family Mode that was introduced in the original BattleTanx game. This mode levels the playing field between all players. It removes an oft-found intimidation between parents and kids by presenting them with startup weapons and a more forgiving difficulty level. This has proven successful and has been well received by the customers. From a graphical standpoint, we opted to display all the characters in a 3rd person perspective. While this presents its own challenges, we felt that this was the best way to introduce the various characters and get players to connect with them. Watching the Sarge’s Heroes characters battle it out in the Bathroom or Living Room is a sight to behold. The sense of scale and heavy firepower kick butt!

IGN64: Can you play multiple characters?

MM: You can select from a variety of different characters (Sgt. Hawk, Vikki, and Plastro) to play as in a multi-player game. Since Sarge’s Heroes is a character-based game we spent a lot of focus on the character development, below are the stars of Sarge’s Heroes:

SGT. HAWK:

Sgt. Hawk is Bravo Company’s unquestioned leader. He’s an experienced Army Man who has seen it all – gritty battles over endless sandbox dunes, frozen conflicts across the icy wastes of unshoveled driveways, and the hi-tech warfare of magnifying glasses held aloft by the hands of cruel titans. As a dedicated leader, Sarge is highly respected by his squadron and by Colonel Grimm.

COLONEL GRIMM:

Colonel Grimm is a gruff, tough veteran of the old days when most soldiers were wood or tin. He’s a lifer as were all the men in the Grimm family who made it to Colonel status. The Colonel has suffered numerous tragedies fighting the Tan Menace and from these tragedies, Grimm has become a solemn man who never smiles. Colonel Grimm is the master tactician of the Green Army and Sarge’s mentor.

VIKKI:

Vikki is a beautiful, sexy, independent, hard working young woman whom is one of the top reporters for the Green Army’s newspaper, Green Star News. Raised solely by the Colonel, she has spent her whole life as an army brat traveling to different military bases around the world. Since Colonel Grim was Vikki’s only role model, Vikki followed his every move and grew up to be a very tough, confident, and strong woman.

PLASTRO:

General Plastro is an evil and ruthless man who has no problem slaughtering hundreds of Green Army men with his newly acquired barbaric weapons. He is a highly intelligent war tactician as he leads his Tan Army to victory over the Green Army. Plastro has won the support of several other nations, although they had no choice since he conquered them. Another sign of his genius is discovering the “Alternate World” (Our World) and the Portal devices that can transport him there. From this Alternate World, Plastro has exported powerful weapons that he enjoys using on Green Army Men. The only positive attribute of Plastro is that he has a dry and evil sense of humor.

Sarge’s Squad consists of 5 soldiers that are based on some of the classic Army Men poses (Bazooka, Mortar, Minesweeper, Flame-thrower, and M-60 Machine gunner). As Sarge rescues these squad members over the course of the game, each of their weapons become a permanent fixture in Sarge’s inventory, increasing the firepower that accompanies Sarge at the start of each mission.

BRAVO COMPANY:

RIFF:

Riff is the squad’s Bazooka man and Sarge’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.

HOOVER:

Hoover may be a gawky, geeky-looking beanpole with more ribs showing than a 4th of July barbecue and an Adam’s apple you could hang a helmet liner on, but the squad depends on him nevertheless. His depth of concentration and smooth fluidity of movement made him a natural to either man a minesweeper or run a floor buffer. He chose the minesweeper since the squad didn’t need a janitor.

SHRAP:

Shrap is the Squad’s Mortar Man. He used to pull a lot of shore patrol duty, and became a way cool surfer dude as a result. Later he gave up the big waves for the field artillery.

THICK:

Thick is basically an educated trigger finger attached to a nearly brain dead soldier. His name describes his skull, his neck, and the layer of lead he lays down with his M-60 machine gun, cutting down tan troops like a weed whacker does dandelions. He has the body of an action figure guided by a mind no brighter than a penlight.

SCORCH:

You’ve got to be a little nuts to be made out plastic and still love fire (Scorch is a lotta nuts). Sarge gave him custody of the flame thrower (he was setting fires around camp, anyway) so he could torch tan soldiers until they bubble. He creeps out the rest of the squad by sleeping in a book of matches instead of a sleeping bag.

IGN64: You mentioned the giant magnifying glass weapon in your earlier answer. How many weapons types are there in the game and what are some of their characteristics?

MM: There are 12 different weapons in Sarge’s Heroes:

M-16 Assault Rifle: All-purpose, Sarge’s main weapon.

Bazooka: Great for destroying tanks and helicopters.

Flame Thrower: The most feared weapon of plastic soldiers.

Shotgun: Lays out a circle of buckshot.

M-60 Machine Gun: Heavy machine gun that puts out a tremendous amount of lead.

Sniper Rifle: Everyone’s favorite, allows players to zoom in on enemies.

Grenades: The animation of Sarge pulling the grenade pin with his teeth is awesome.

Grenade Launcher: My personal favorite, the grenade launcher is a trajectory weapon that is incredible fun when used with the precision targeting mode.

Mortar: Player uses a cursor to target the mortar. This is a long-range weapon.

Mine-Sweeper: Not as exciting as a grenade launcher unless of course you’re in a minefield and you don’t have one.

Mines: Great for multi-player.

C-4: This weapon has a time delay and the largest blast radius in the game.

IGN64: You mentioned the RAM Pak earlier. How are you taking advantage of it?

MM: We use the Ram Pak for a high-resolution mode. In this resolution, the player will find that the characters, weapon effects and environments become much sharper. However, the N64 hardware does such nice filtering, so players without this peripheral are still in for a treat.

IGN64: Switching gears, what’s the most overlooked title you’ve ever seen in the game industry and why?

MM: There are many good titles that have been overlooked, but the one that I always think of first is 3DO’s Uprising (PC or PlayStation). Uprising had all the depth and satisfaction a game could ever deliver, with solid graphics and game play, but it didn’t sell in the market. Another game that I enjoyed a lot was Warhawk, one of the first games out on the PlayStation. It was an innovative flight sim/shooter with elegantly simple level designs. Like Uprising, Warhawk deserved to be played more than it was. But the classic overlooked title would have to be Dune II on the PC and Genesis. Some people think that Command and Conquer started the RTS trend, but in fact, Dune II did 90% of what C&C did years before.

IGN64: What usually causes the most lost sleep during a project?

MM: Figure the team spends 16 to 18 hours at the office during the last two or three months of the project (some people don’t go home at all, we had one Director who camped in the building for a month). Everybody is doing the best they can, they are giving 110%, but they are tired and sometimes irritable. They are sacrificing their lives and families for the project. When they finally close their eyes and try to sleep, their brains are wired and moving at 100 mph trying to answer a hundred different unanswered questions all relating to a single question, how to make the game better.

IGN64: What’s the weirdest thing that happened during the making of Army Men?

MM: I came into the office one day and sat down to work and something was wrong. Finally it dawned on me that all my plastic soldiers that decorate my cube were missing. I went to ask a team member if he had seen them and he realized that all his soldiers were missing too. The entire team had their soldiers taken! We then went to investigate and found out that every person in the entire company had their soldiers taken and there were none to be found anywhere (3DO usually has plastic soldiers littered all over the place on the floors, in cubes, etc). A few hours later a ransom note was E-Mailed to everyone in the company, some diabolical fiend was holding them hostage! Needless to say, it was April Fools day and someone pulled off quite a gag. In the end we got our boys back safe and sound and we are planning our revenge.

IGN64: Given carte blanche to build any game you wanted, what would it be?

MM: Sarge’s Heroes with hand to hand combat. Sarge is a very physical guy and it would be a blast to see him tear into those Tan soldiers with an advanced fighting engine running the show.

IGN64: And lastly, who do you respect most in the industry and why?

MM: Certainly from a design stand point Shigeru Miyamoto attains the highest respect from me. His games are pure magic that mesmerizes players of all ages, races, and cultures. His contribution to the video game industry is beyond words. The attention to detail that Mr. Miyamoto delivers to every level shows his passion and dedication.

Another person who awes me is Trip Hawkins. The knowledge that the man possesses is inspiring. Not only does he know game design, product development, marketing, sales, finance, operations, etc. but he will always take the time to sit down and discuss a problem or idea. Trip’s vision is crystal clear and way ahead of its time, if you want to get a sense of where the industry will be 10 years from now all you need to do is listen to Trip.

3DO Company, Army Men History, Interview, News & Press, Old Army Men stuff, Trip Hawkins

Trip Hawkins, The 3DO Company and other interviews: Army Men highlights!

September 23, 1999 Leave a comment

Original sources:

https://futuregamez.net/3do-interview

1) Trip Hawkins 3DO Interview, September 23, 1999 on futuregamez.net by David Warner ~ Dreamcast Australia

The games industry can be tough at times. Trip Hawkins should know. He built Electronic Arts from nothing to become the largest gaming company in the world. Several years later he left Electronic Arts to form the 3DO company. 3DO designed a console architecture which was developed by Panasonic. Unfortunately the system lacked software support and coupled with a high price ($US700) the system died soon after the Playstation’s and Saturn’s launch. After another failed hardware bid with M2, Trip Hawkins decided that 3DO was better off as a software company. Once again Trip is aiming to create a major software company, and the games so far have proven themselves as world class titles. I thought it would be nice to have a chat to one of the most powerful men in the gaming industry.

Here are the Army Men highlights from this interview you can read in this link: https://futuregamez.net/3do-interview

3DO INTERVIEW

Trip Hawkins 3DO Interview, September 23, 1999 on futuregamez.net by David Warner ~ Dreamcast Australia

(…)

– What are your thoughts on technology in regards to gaming and gameplay?

Trip: My mission at 3DO is to turn people into lifelong gamers. That’s why I have been making games for over 25 years. That’s also why I have on occasion in the past made forays into the hardware side of the business when I felt it needed to be moved forward in the interest of gamers.

Sony and others have done a great job moving the hardware to where it is now. It’s very exciting to see the capabilities of these systems getting where they are. The medium is the message, after all. I have always felt that great games need to be simple, hot and deep. That’s how I built EA and EA Sports in particular.

And that’s the same philosophy with 3DO’s game brands like Army Men, BattleTanx, Heroes of Might and Magic, and High Heat Baseball.

(…)

– Can you explain a little about your major 3DO games titles?

Trip: Army Men is a best-seller because people are emotionally enthralled with the idea that some of their favorite toys have come to life in a way that lets their imagination run wild. Our new lines, Army Men: Sarge’s Heroes and Army Men: Air Attack, add new dimensions to this fantasy world. The first is a terrific character adventure action game with a great story. The second is a charming helicopter action game. (…)

(…)

Would you like to see any other 3DO games ported to the Dreamcast?
Trip: Army Men, High Heat Baseball, and BattleTanx are great brands that would do well on any platform.

Army Men 1998, Army Men History, Interview, Making Of, Nick Earl, Old Army Men stuff, uncategorized

Interview with Nick Earl, Army Men Producer – “Army Men Official Strategies & Secrets” Book by Brett Skogen (Jan 1, 1998 by Sybex Inc.)

January 1, 1998 The Maker 1 Comment

It’s no easy feat to develop a best-selling computer game. With the gaming community’s insatiable appetite—always wanting better graphics, special effects, story, and, most importantly, gameplay—it takes a dedicated team of professional producers, writers, programmers, graphic artists, and others to put a finished game on the shelves.

Army Men is no exception. With an estimated budget of 1.5 million dollars, over 20 dedicated people spent two years of their lives making this game. The results are definitely worth it though—this game is one hell of an adventure!

One of the key members of the Army Men team was its producer, Nick Earl. Nick is currently an Executive Producer at 3DO, where he oversees the development of Army Men and BattleTanx products. He’s been with 3DO for over five years, starting out as one of the original 3rd Party Evangelists. Later, he founded and managed the Affiliated Label and Licensing Programs at 3DO, before finally climbing to the producer ranks at one of the company’s studios. As the producer of Army Men, Nick had the responsibility of managing the day-to-day concerns of the project, while keeping the development team in focus and motivated. Nice work, Nick, you did a great job.

Fortunately, Nick was able to spare a few minutes to answer some questions as he put the finishing touches on the game.

Nick Speaks: Q & A with the producer

From the start, what was the vision for Army Men? What did you want to achieve?

Nick: There were a couple of inspirations for Army Men. Back when we started thinking about doing a military game, we were playing a lot of Return Fire, developed by Silent Software. We all loved the game, but yearned for better enemy AI and the ability to give orders to intelligent squads. So, the first vision was an action/strategy game that would give the player depth. But the real and enduring vision developed when we were laying out missions with the little plastic green and tan soldiers one afternoon. Suddenly it hit us to do the game based on plastic army men! As we started to build the design, it gained momentum, and pretty soon we knew we were onto something big.

Where did you get your inspiration for Sarge?

Nick: This was really Keith Bullen’s (the designer of Army Men) idea. He realized early on that the player would want to bond and identify with a personality rather than just move plastic armies around a battlefield as is usually done in a strategy game. With the introduction of the plastic concept, the design really started to evolve from a strategy game toward immersing the player in a fantasy world created in the mind when playing with these great little toys. We knew right away that we wanted to have all of the classic poses, weapons, vehicles, and, most importantly, special effects, such as melting a Tan soldier into a pool of tan plastic with a flamethrower! Many other things evolved over time.

For example, at first the concept was to have Sarge ferry his units to different parts of the world and then issue orders to his troops, who would go off and carry them out. After talking to the magazine editors and focus groups, we realized that the player would want to bond with Sarge and his immediate world by being the one who gets to do all the destruction!

Therefore, we made Sarge tougher and able to carry and use all of the classic weapons. And most importantly, we gave Sarge the persona of a classic soldier. Now, we had what we thought was the best design for a game based plastic soldiers, one other evolution of Army Men was to use the MovieTone news concept. During their time, those clips did such a good job of making the war seem heroic, but not bloody and tragic. The nature of plastic physics lends itself perfectly to this notion—lots of action, heroism, and challenge, but none of the nasty and sickening effects of war.

Obviously, your team spent some time renting WWII movies. What movies were most inspirational?

Nick: Some of the mission objectives are loosely based on the classic WWII movies such as Bridge over the River Kwai, The Great Escape, and Kelly’s Heroes. There is something so dramatic yet clean about these movies—we thought that Army Men worked well within this theme. After all, plastic army men were invented right after WWII.

What’s the origin of the game’s engine? Did you modify an existing one or create your own?

Nick: We built one from scratch. The Technical Lead was Nicky Robinson, who, with the help of several engineers, built a great engine that allows this highly detailed art to come to life.

What has been the most difficult part of bringing Army Men to life?

Nick: Capturing the exact positions and then transitioning them into fully animated sequences. For instance, having a flame thrower start in the classic pose, then run with his weapon, fire it while running, dive, roll, and then move right back into the classic pose. We also spent a lot of time and energy balancing each mission to get the right combination of action, strategy, and intrigue. This is what really brings Army Men to life, because each mission is so fun and compelling that you keep coming back for more—you really feel like you are Sarge blowing up bridges, shattering Tan enemies, and liberating your Green troops from prison camps.

What else does Army Men offer the gamer?

Nick: We like to think that we will give the player a compelling, tough, and heroic character (Sarge), thrilling and humorous plastic special effects, absolutely beautiful art and animations, and an opportunity to really immerse oneself in those great battles we all played out in our backyards when we were kids. We see Army Men as a great blend of action and strategy, and of serious missions sprinkled with humor such as tanks flipping over to reveal hollow underbellies!

What’s your favorite strategy/tip for getting through the game’s missions? For a multiplayer game?

Nick: Wow, there are many. I think the best advice is to be methodical and thoughtful as you progress. There are numerous times that you think you have the mission solved when all of a sudden a Tan tank appears out of nowhere to shatter you! By thinking ahead and planning, you can neutralize such events with a few strategically placed mines or a mortar. I also recommend dropping to the prone position and rolling when in a fire fight. You are less vulnerable, and your chances of hitting the enemy are increased. For a multiplayer game, my favorite strategy is to hide in trees, and when an enemy runs by, melt him with the flame thrower before he knows what happened!

Any Easter Eggs in the game you want to confess to?

Nick: I don’t want to give much away, but after calling in air support a few times, you just may be surprised! I also recommend checking out the lake in the Alpine campaign’s Out of the Mountain mission. You will get a kick out of what lurks there. The best one by far, however, is the final-win cinematic—it has a really great twist.

On a personal note, what are some of your favorite things?

Nick: My favorite game, other than Army Men of course, is probably NHL Hockey ’98. My favorite musical groups are Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, U2, and the Grateful Dead. If I had to pick a favorite song, it would probably be “Comfortably Numb” by Floyd or “Unforgettable Fire” by U2, depending on my mood. As far as movies, my two favorites are Platoon and The Graduate.

What’s your next project after Army Men?

Nick: Army Men! I am doing an Army Men sequel for PC, as well as entirely new designs for PlayStation and Nintendo 64.

Thanks, Nick, we all look forward to Army Men sequels in the near future!

About the autor of “Army Men Official Strategies & Secrets Book”

Brett Skogen has worn many hats in the gaming industry: reviewer, strategy guide editor, marketing specialist, and producer. Brett is the author of Hexen II Official Strategies & Secrets and co-author of Final Fantasy Tactics Battle Strategy Guide, both from Sybex.