| Army Men: Sarge's Heroes | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | The 3DO Company[a] |
| Publisher(s) | The 3DO Company[b] |
| Designer(s) | Trip Hawkins |
| Programmer(s) |
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| Artist(s) |
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| Writer(s) | Sharon Wong |
| Series | Army Men: Sarge's Heroes |
| Platform(s) | Nintendo 64, PlayStation, Dreamcast, Microsoft Windows |
| Release | Nintendo 64PlayStationDreamcastWindows |
| Genre(s) | Third-person shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, multiplayer |
Army Men: Sarge's Heroes is a third-person shooter video game and the fourth entry in The 3DO Company's Army Men series (1998–2003), which are based on the green plastic figures of the same name. Its Nintendo 64 and PlayStation versions were developed and published by The 3DO Company. The port for the Dreamcast was developed by Saffire and published by Midway, while another for Microsoft Windows was published by GT Interactive. Excluding the 1999 North American release for the Nintendo 64 version, the game was released in 2000.
The primary single-player mode depicts the Green Army, led by Colonel Grimm, fighting against General Plastro's Tan Army, which have found portals to Our World (the human world) that contain useful weapons when fighting in Their World (the world where the plastic soldiers reside). In 3D battlefields of both worlds, the player acts as plastic soldiers, either the titular Sargent Hawk or one of five members of a group of the army's best troops he leads, the Bravo Company, completing a variety of missions, such as rescues, capturing blue spies, killing enemies and destroying portals. In the game's multi-player modes, tan, gray or blue soldiers are options for playable characters. The game features variations of 13 weapons.
Part of a series that covered multiple genres, Army Men: Sarge's Heroes was set by The 3DO Company's founder Trip Hawkins and creative director Michael Mendheim to be a character-focused action-adventure game a la Super Mario (1985–present). Mendheim focused on characters and personalities so that transmedia content could be made out of them for the franchise, although none was ever made. He wanted to emphasize the "toy aspect" lacking in the series' previous entries but seen in the army men of Toy Story (1995), which he felt could be the "magic" of the franchise. As with other 3DO projects developed and released in the same era, Army Men: Sarge's Heroes was made under a year on a tight budget by the staff for long hours and on weekends. The game stars Jim Cummings as all the male characters and Susan Blu as Vikki.
Reception from the specialist gaming press were ambivalent, the general notion being that Army Men: Sarge's Heroes was a fun and humorous action game marred by several graphical and technical problems, such as with the controls, camera, draw distance and overuse of fog. Commercially, Hawkins announced it was the biggest success of the multi-million-dollar franchise and better than most games from The 3DO Company. As of 2022, 1.3 million units of the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation games combined were sold. The characters would star in several of the later Army Men games by The 3DO Company; Army Men: Sarge's Heroes itself garnered two sequels, Army Men: Sarge's Heroes 2 (2000) and Army Men: Sarge's War (2004).
- ^ "3DO Ships Army Men(TM) Sarge's Heroes(TM) for PlayStation(R) Game Console". The 3DO Company. February 23, 2000. Archived from the original on April 17, 2001. Retrieved June 4, 2022.
- ^ "Midway Press Release: PR 2000-10-31 A". 2006-11-09. Archived from the original on 2006-11-09. Retrieved 2023-03-19.
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