10. Cannon Fodder

Why do war games have to be so serious? When’s the last time someone cracked a fart joke in a Tom Clancy game? Cannon Fodder knew how to present war, simple controls, a catchy jingle, extreme violence and hilarity. You used the mouse to move your four little troops around and just clicked on an enemy to shoot them. That was it, that was the whole game. You could split up your team and leave some people to stand guard but you normally only had four little guys. Later levels involved vehicles and became crazy difficult; some levels could only be completed by tricking bad guys into shooting each other.

In what remains one of my most haunting game moments ever, at the end of each level you watched new recruits line up on a road next to a hill. As your men died during missions a white cross appeared on the hill and the new recruits replaced them. The idea of course was to complete levels without using up all your recruits. This was made even more unsettling by the fact that every single one of your little men had a name, even though you’d have gone through hundreds of them by the end of the game. You wouldn’t be quite so quick to send your little guys into battle in Command and Conquer if you were going to have to face the consequences like that. Cannon Fodder was actually all set to be remade for the PS2 and PSP as soon as 2006 but the company with the rights to it fell apart and now the game is in limbo. While Call of Duty and its ilk are outstanding games, we really do need more games that are both satirical and show the futility of warfare. Call of Duty 4’s nuclear level probably had bright eyed young Americans ripping up their enlistment forms, but a dose of Cannon Fodder would have stopped them enlisting in the first place.

• features