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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.”

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.