Army Men: Sarge's Heroes - Games That Weren't

2000 DC Studios + 3DO Studios

Platforms: Gameboy Advance and Gameboy Color

There have been many Army Men games over the years, though one we weren’t aware of until recently was a Game Boy Advance version of Army Men: Sarge’s Heroes, developed by DC Studios. This handheld version was intended as a conversion of the N64, PlayStation, Dreamcast, and PC title. A Game Boy Color version was also reportedly in development at the time by a different, currently unknown studio.

Production for the game was being carried out by Karla Healy and Mark Greenshields, with development by Ian James and with menu + FMV work by another person that we only know as Gerry. Ian would eventually go on to develop Army Men: Advance a year later which would see release.

Graphics were being created by Kristi-Louise Herd, with mock up work created by Alan Macfarlane. At this very point, no-one was allocated to sound duties.

Work was started in August 2000, with a proposal put together and various mock-ups, and was due to be released by January 2001. The main focus of inspiration was the PlayStation version of the game, following a customized design that DC Studios had put together to suit the target platform. Cartridge size was to be advised, but was to be around 32 megabits in total with FMV sequences based from the PSX edition.

Without the 3D power of the PlayStation, the game would adapt a pseudo 3D approach, with isometric graphics and a 2.5d tilted viewpoint of the players. You would be able to move and hide behind buildings and trees, as well as enter the buildings themselves and interact with vehicles and other objects in the game.

The best features would be taken from the original and translated as much as possible across to Nintendo’s portable, where levels planned included areas such as Kitchen, Bathroom, Garden, Fort Plastro, Sandbox and Living Room. Suggestions were to also try and include the garage and bedroom areas too.

There were plans for more interaction with the background, to have the ability of blow up parts of the background and have items such as guns appear. Barricades and blocked parts of the playfield being shot away would reveal new parts of the level.

To show where you were in the game, there was to be a map of the playing area that could be called up as an overlay by pressing one of the buttons. Finally, to make the game appeal to all players, there were plans to be able to also choose from Vicky or Sarge at the start of the game.

Unfortunately the game was not taken any further after Milestone 1 was completed, with the basic design and a test with the main sprite, menus and part of the barracks map. We’re not sure why this was, and hope to learn more soon from Mark about what happened, and will continue to update this page as more comes to light.

For now, check out a set of different builds of the game for yourself to see its very early progression before ultimate cancellation.

With thanks to Mark Greenshields for allowing the prototypes to be preserved.