Army Men is a real-time tactics video game developed and published by The 3DO Company for Microsoft Windows and Game Boy Color.

Plot

At the beginning of this game Sarge is tasked with a simple recon mission on the front line - locate some documents - that takes place in 3 regions: Desert, Alpine and Bayou. At the end of this game, Sarge finds a strange portal that leads to the next dimension - the Real World - and the next game. Regarded as a classic by fans, this is one of the few games to actually display Sarge and his squad as merely pawns in a bigger battle. Two features that make this game almost unique in the series are its storytelling (Black-White spoofs of old-time, World War II-style newsreels) and the fact that it often depicts a frontline or other fighting that doesn't involve the main characters.

Development

Army Men was originally in development for the Panasonic M2, but that version was never released due to the system's cancellation. The game was showcased at E3 1997.

Reception

The Game Boy Color version received favorable reviews, while the PC version received mixed reviews, according to the review aggregation website GameRankings. Next Generation called the latter version "a solid, fun example of the genre, and anyone looking for a new strategy game with a very nice graphic twist should seriously consider this."