POPPY GAME INSULT TO OUR WAR DEAD
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- Опубликовано: 4 июл 2024
- Patreon: / ahoy
00:00 Introduction
01:24 Some Quick Historical Context
02:16 Cannon Fodder
04:00 Controversy
08:01 Game Changes
09:24 Reception
10:24 Conclusion
Bibliography
[1] Zzap! Issue 62 (June 1990), p46
[2] / 293414909176328193
[3] Amiga Power, Issue 20 (December 1992), p29
[4] CU Amiga, Issue 44 (October 1993), p65-66
[5] theweekly.co.uk/ap2/issues/AP...
[6] Sunday Mirror, October 24th 1993, p38
[7] Daily Star, October 26th 1993
[8] theweekly.co.uk/ap2/dissent/p...
[9] Amiga Power, Issue 32, December 1993
[10] Daily Star, November 23rd 1993
[11] Sensible Software 1986-1999, Gary Penn, p125
[12] / 1140729557668040704
[13] Retro Gamer, Issue 193, p90-95
[14] Retro Gamer Issue 54, p56-57
[15] Amiga Format, Issue 54 (Xmas 93), p80
[16] Amiga Computing, Issue 70 (February 1994), p137
[17] Amiga Format, Issue 66 (December 94) p53
[18] Lemon Amiga - Top 100 Amiga Games [www.lemonamiga.com/games/vote...]
[19] Cannon Fodder, Instruction Manual, 1993 
Игры
What a fantastic account of the rather frustrating shenanigans we endured during the last days of development! We were pulling all nighters for a good few weeks to get the game finished, so you can imagine having something like this happen near the end of development was far from welcomed.
I remember the moment I was told I had to re-draw all 3 poppies in the game, a few choice words were said! Looking back I think the game has stood the test of time rather well!
Great video, thanks for taking the time and trouble to document this. Cheers! 😎
Legend. You and the other Sensible folks are legends.
Unfortunately back then video games had a massive stigma of having little less value than the cheapest McDonalds meal has nutritionally.
To be fair, video games are STILL fighting against that stigma, even if less so nowadays.
It is rather wild to me that something that encapsulates music, writing, drawing and cinematography combined is somehow not considered art by some.
Maybe a little crude, especially back in the day, but Cannon Fodder clearly demonstrated how you can be extremely poignant and thought provoking even with rather crude tools.
I kneel
Thanks guys for making this game. I bloody love it still, Iv'e got the Amiga CD32 version and it's defo the best game on it by far. I am not offended in any way whatsoever and I am an army veteran.
You guys are awesome
When I saw the title of this video I thought ‘wow, that’s a funny parody of an outraged UK tabloid headline’
…then you showed the tabloid
CADDY????
anyways, yeah it’s funny how sometimes real life events look like parodies
Spons
No salvage for the Daily Star then, I take it?
Caddy, you’re a treasure.
That’s it, that’s the comment.
caddy???
UK truly has never changed
> Local Man annoyed at {object} for [trivial reason], outrage ensues
Classic culture war grievance generation.
I'm pretty sure that's basically the entire world. Esspecially online
People often act like Snowflakes are a new thing, but forget that those who coined the word and love to use it are the biggest Snowflakes most of the time.
Random MP, when questioned says "I've not seen it but I'm shocked and appalled."
Aren't they supposed to be stoic?
"POPPY GAME INSULT TO OUR WAR DEAD"
I swear Tabloid writers are in a constant state of having a stroke.
Perhaps they already had one, otherwise they'd be writing for some more reputable papers
I read it in Chris Morris's voice as if he flips through the headlines in the end of The Day Today episode
It reads like a Toynbee tile.
Wtf is that sentence even supposed to mean? I've read it ten times now and I just can't figure out how to read it.
Yeah niether do I@@Ten_Thousand_Locusts
British going the extra mile over "insensitivities" is a tale as old as time.
The game earned those poppies.
The star is only bought because it has pornography on page 3. Tabloids are always rags
Rupert Murdoch really did a number on them
@@SpoopySquid
That scumbag has a *_lot_* to answer for. Looking back with hindsight, it's truly horrifying to see just how much power and influence he wielded, merely through the tabloids he controlled, not just over British politics, but the attitudes and opinions of the public too. The sheer amount of hatred, and fear, and senseless outrage he stirred up is honestly difficult to quantify.
@@stickiedmin6508 Not to mention that he still controls nearly all Australian media to this day.
Emigrate from Censorship Island, divest all your money and assets, boycott British goods and renounce citizenship.
I didn't realize they owned the idea of a flower.
Copyright BS as usual, never protects actual people but only idiotic things like the image of a poppy.
Are you kidding? this is coming from the same country where both Microsoft and Hello Games were hit with lawsuits for using the word "Sky"
Apple trademarked the rectangle with rounded corners.
@@keatonwastaken correction
never protects actual people but only stifles creativity and is a means of controlling other people
They don't. They own a trademark.
I'm from Newfoundland Canada. At the time of WWI our province was an independent country. We sent an absurd amount of our able bodied men into war, and my great grandfather was shot in Gallipoli, surviving after days lying on the ground.
While medics came to rescue him, he indicated that his superior lying beside him was in fact not dead and should be brought to hospital, leaving my great grandfather to lie another day before being taken to a medical facility himself. My family has submitted many of his personal letters and effects to local museums, and while not heralded as any kind of war hero, his story is preserved and remembered fondly in our family history.
I have a poppy on my desk at work, which stays there 24/7/365 not unlike many people here. Remembrance day is a well respected holiday in this part of the world, and at 11:11 on 11/11 people will observe a minute of silence, even in major shops and companies.
I think this game looks great, and did exactly what art is supposed to do. It's a shame it was censored in order to reduce the affect it was clearly supposed to have.
I am not german but I know that in the german city of Cologne on 11/11 at exactly 11:11 they have a massive carneval that lasts until february
Newfoundland was an independent country? Never knew that.
@@Shinkajo it was the lest province to join Canada they joined only after ww2 in 1949
@@Romanian901 Yes and no. The carneval *season* starts on 11/11 at 11:11, but it's not like it's a three month parade. And it's not only Cologne, though that is quite a hub for carneval. It's also a tradition firmly rooted in northern germany, and originally was meant as a mockery of the then-occupiers of Prussia (their home soil was in the south of modern germany). That's why you will see a lot of pseudo-military uniforms involved, and political satire is a strong theme.
Its hard to put away the poppy after you buy it, usually its a member of my family who ends up doing so
3:05 One thing that is also striking on that screen is the Sports style HOME : AWAY in the titlebar of the screen.
Naturally HOME is the amount of enemies you've killed and the AWAY team the amount of your men dead. Reducing lives into just numbers in a very flippant way as more lives lineup to get thrown into the grinder... And well the Heroes list those who added the most to your team's score. Another way of further hammer the point home. It's honestly a very clever screen that even without context easily can tell you a LOT.
I thought it was the timer of the game
😎👍
In 1990 the cultural memory of Vietnam was much, much more prominent. Any one old enough to want the game was probably born no later than the final years of the conflict, or immediately after.
No matter how you feel about the conflict, we know that the public in the US initially highly supported it, and the public in allied nations were broadly neutral on it.
It’s only after a few years of Kissinger and Westmoreland’s utter incompetence that the overall strategic approach, and the accompanying public message, shifted to “a body count war.”
The public leaders of the world’s presumptive most powerful military constantly appeared in newscasts doing exactly this: reading the “score” of human lives.
This proved to be both a strategic failure (the Vietnamese have waged high attrition resistances against invaders for thousands of years, they never ever thought it would be a low casualty war) and an even more catastrophic public and soldier morale failure.
People watching the war had vivid memories of “the March to Berlin” and “The Island Hoping Crusade” from WW2. The public broadly knew and understood that taking and holding territory won wars.
So broadcasts claiming victory because the US lost 400 sons, the Vietnamese lost 2,000, but then the US got onto their helicopters and left and now the NVA held the hill… that just didn’t make sense to the public. They weren’t willing to accept war by scoreboard.
Nor were the soldiers exactly enthusiastic about being reduced to points on the scoreboard. It’s hard to believe you’re making a Nobel sacrifice when you’re just gonna end up a tally mark in the away team’s ledger for a random Tuesday in October.
So this game’s use of that is an extremely poignant and savvy critiques building on a broadly shared cultural experience relevant to almost the entire public at the time.
@@piedpiper1172 Extremely well put, although I'd also put some of the body count fixation on McNamara's obsession with numbers over the more 'soft' values of war that couldn't easily be put down as numbers on a chart which helped lead to the body count fixation.
I originally considered making the Vietnam connection although with the developers being British I wasn't sure if they'd push the ties to a very American conflict. Although maybe I should have pushed the connection with one of the tracks of soundtrack being "Sensible 'Nam 1994"
@@Zelinkokitsune While I am by no means in the habit of defending McNamara, it is my personal opinion that his fixation was driven by pressures originating from the influence wielded by Kissinger and Westmoreland.
Westmoreland in particular was the epitome of the “career political games bureaucrat made general,” and had always used over emphasis on, and obsession with, hard numbers for his relentless self-advancement.
Similarly, Kissinger was perhaps the first major political player to truly master the manipulation of data to accrue power in the style that we all now take for granted as defining the unscrupulous, entirely amoral “political advisors.” He quite literally wrote the book on it, and fell victim to it when ousted by his own disciples. He also managed the trick of surviving the presidency transfer from one party to another, meaning he was an “old hand” on Vietnam before McNamara gained the level of power he eventually held.
All three of them are monsters who grossly failed in their duty to the American people and to our allies, and their basic human duty to the people of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. I’m pretty happy to condemn all of them with any specific distribution of blame apportionment one might choose. I just default to seeing Kissinger and Westmoreland as the most critical failures in the chain that produced cascading failures up and down the line from their nexus.
Would that JFK had lived, and that Abrams had been promoted in 1966.
Really cool to see the Royal British Legion literally extort a game studio for making a game about how war is bad because they cared more for their "copyright" over flowers
Yeah they wanted people to keep the idea that the poppy is a symbol of remembrance, and not a critique against war. Surely it has nothing to do with the fact that the very same governments that do these kinds of things are the ones sending young men into war to get shot and bleed out, starve, etc.
@@TheDMG45it's not really the same as their logo, their logos have often been a much more simplified version of a poppy, the ones in the game and video where much more like a realistic Poppy(although stylised due to hardware limitations)
it's more the association of the poppy as a concept with them
the RBL didnt invent the poppy as a symbol of rememberence lmao@@TheDMG45
@@cameron3452 And the guy who wrote the poem was Canadian
@@miawgogo You clearly weren't paying attention at the part where they clearly said they based the ingame poppy directly off the RBL poppy originally and then the controversy happened and they had to redraw them with a realistic poppy. It was not the association with the poppy at all. 8:35 shows the original image as used in the game and later the changes to use the realistic poppy.
"POPPY GAME INSULT TO OUR WAR DEAD"
It seems that tabloids are indeed written by a bunch of monkeys with typewriters
That's an insult to the intelligence of monkeys.
Each letter costs money ig 😂
What did a monkey ever do to you to deserve being compared to a tabloid journalist?
It was a lowtech solution before LLMs were invented.
It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times.
“Back in the day we weren't so easily offended.”
Dude, back in the day people lost their shit over a picture of a flower on a game box.
The sentiment of "everyone is easily offended these days, people used to be tougher" goes back centuries
@@VanessaMagick Time is a flat circle!
It's like a game of telephone how the context diminished with each new publication.
The game uses poppies to make you think about all the people dieing, and it's used on the box art.
Amiga Power uses that on their front cover, along with TOTAL WAR as a tagline.
The Amiga Power cover is shown as a tiny ad where the only thing visible is the poppy and the tagline.
Without context, yeah it does look pretty bad to have that text with that image.
And then the Tabloids get hold of it and do what they always do. Maximum rage, minimum context.
the tabloids being listened to at all, and people in power taking advantage is the actual crime
The more things change, the more they stay the same
"Many people died, and this was universally regarded as a bad thing."
I was not expecting a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference.
Elon Musk ruined that fucking book for me and everyone else with a soul
"rocket man bad because he's a white african-american who survived postapartheid oppression"
Less of a reference and more plagiarism
Hey, tomorrow is Towel Day! Best possible timing!
@@Pangloss6413don't let that tool ruin your enjoyment of the book.
literally a 'Whiny politicians should be forced to play video games' moment.
Hi there! Would you like to sign my petition?
@@mandalina31 I'm sorry...
Hashtag FreeCivvie 😂
Are you gonna sign this or does it have to be your remaining family members?
Every day matpat becomes more and more vindicated for his actions
That image of the tombstones growing reminds me of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly where Tuco finally arrives to the graveyard where the gold is buried and the camera follows him frantically sprinting past tombstone after tombstone while Ennio Morricone's "The Ecstacy of Gold" plays. It is a stirring scene and it holds a similar poignant message that this game helps tell. I get that sometimes we have to defend our homes against those who try to destroy them, but so often war is brother against brother or by people just seeking power. The media tries to whip up fervor and discontent until people believe that perhaps the war was righteous.
it also reminds me of boot hills, those cemeteries where gunfighters who died were buried. lots of towns dating back to the western times have those, like dodge city
One of the greatest scenes I've ever watched and it's a guy running around a graveyard
@@jaibonaparteI mean, one of the greatest scenes I ever watched was a chemistry teacher face planting in the desert
Kudos for the not-insignificant effort of not only making the main body of the video exactly 11:11 in length, but also timing the background music to fit.
Oh, Rembrandt Day.
@@oliparkhouse Remembrance Day. Armistice was signed at 11 AM on November 11th - 11/11 at 11 AM.
What music is it, man? It sounds pretty good.
@@tuiarma3241 Thanks for clarifying. The RUclips app showed jamesRosewell's comment under an entirely blank video so without context I was completely confused but now it's loaded correctly with your comment so thanks for explaining politely.
I've now edited to remove my original comment
_"I wonder what the title means?"_
Daily Star brought up
_"Oh I see where this is going..."_
Daily Star and the Sun papers I wouldnt wipe my arse with
@@SeizureGmanduh, you use them for insulation silly.
@@MercurialStatic Least it has a use
@@SeizureGmani would not even use it for a cat's litterbox because it will give brain damage to the cat...
@@SeizureGman 19 years RUclips has been alive and they've still never reached the clickbait reactionary titles the british tabloids have been cranking out for well over 100+ years.
So essentially the Royal British Legion saw the article and thought to themselves "Oh, boy. Extortion!" and went with it.
Daily Star got to shit-stir, the RBL got to bluster and make demands then extort money, a bunch of stuffed shirt politicians got to pontificate without knowing anything, and a bunch of idiots got to pound their chests about soldiers. All in all, a pretty standard news cycle.
The RBI don't care about veterans anyway. Jim Davidson knows all too well.
They're dodgy af mate. My great grandfather WW1 and his sons in WW2 would tell ya the same. Yno... If they werent brown bread.
"It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it."
How is it blackmail?
The greatest tragedy of World War 1 is that there really wasn't an easily defined "bad guy". No side could really be said to be the villain. It started with the death of one man, that triggered a dense network of military pacts, and ended with the death of 40 million. In many ways it even seeded the environment that allowed the monster of the next war to come to power. To venerate the dead as if they chose a noble sacrifice, as a vehicle for pride and propaganda, instead of being ground up by the cogs of a machine they could neither control nor escape from, is a final vicious misappropriation of their tragedy.
Well said.
There's a very clear bad guy in WW1, it just wasn't as easily placed upon the shoulders of individual nations like WW2. The ruling classes of Europe were the bad guy be that the German ruling class, the Russian, the French or the British, they all sent their men to die in a senseless war.
very well said
It wasn't "started with the death of one man", the intra-imp3ria|ist tensions and socio-economic contradictions leading up to the war were built up over decades.
@@caramelldansen2204 Except it was started with the death of one man. A fire isn't started by you pouring gasoline everywhere; it's started by you throwing a match on it. Obviously, the fire wouldn't be there without the gasoline but that doesn't mean it started it, just allowed for it to happen.
Much like WW2 started with the invasion of Poland, by most people's accounts, even though the tensions and foundational issues which allowed for it happen were building up for years - if not decades, I'd argue. That doesn't mean the tensions that led to the situation in the first place aren't important; they are, and arguably more so than the spark that set it off. Let's not get the two mixed up, though, or else one could argue WW2 started with Napoleon's invasion of the German states.
Controversy absolutely sold more copies of video games back in the day. In a time before the internet, there was so little attention to the genre by people outside of gaming, that any mainstream attention, especially by a national newspaper, was sure to get far more eyeballs than just gaming magazine readers. Also that snark in gaming magazines is something I miss so much, it's what made them unique, full of personality and actually worth buying.
"Don't desecrate the Poppy, it's a symbol of remembrance! It's a sacred reminder of the men and women who gave their lives in two world wars!"
Cannon Fodder: "...Yes. That's the point. That's why we chose it, and that's exactly how we're using it."
"RAAAAAAAAARGGHHH TAKE IT DOWN"
"BUT BEFORE THAT GIVE US MOOOONNNEEEYYYY"
I mean, by the description given in the video it looks like it is more of a symbol of brave people who's live got *wasted* in WW1.
Which is arguably a more accurate view on the matter and I can see how veteran associations would get pissed at that
@@paulenan9636 "I can see how veteran associations would get pissed at that"
I don't. Seems to me they're just greedy and wanted to be paid off first.
@@roadent217 telling prideful people dealing with survivors guilt that their comrades did in fact not die for a greater cause and where in fact wasted for petty reasons would absolutely sting.
I am not saying that it is a good or rational reason to be pissed, just a reason I could see
@paulenan9636 I feel it is nicer to be remembered as heroes and as sacrificing your life for a good cause.
Most people dont actually like being pitied.
In this age of constant outrage, a phenomenon usually attributed to the rise of the internet, it's nice to be reminded that British tabloid newspapers have been manufacturing it for many a decade.
Here in the States we call it "yellow journalism". This type of behavior has probably existed since man learned to speak.
Witnessing in real time people discovering that there isn't an "age of outrage". We've always been outraged at everything.
@@AliasA1and then you realize that's just what they want you to think
@@AliasA1 It's an age of outrage due to it's reach, where every moron with an internet connection can share their stupidity with the world. Back then it was mostly just newspapers shit stirring, now it's anyone, anywhere, at any time, causing the equivalent of road rage at the city, state, and national level when before it was localized to maybe a few city blocks and got them liable for an ass whoopin, now they can shitpost with impunity.
@@frank.e.wildcatand who are they? It has always been this way.
Holy shit that Stuart Campball quote lmao, what a legend for publishing that quote. If you're pissing off the Daily Star then you're doing the right thing.
He runs the pro Scottish independence blog Wings over Scotland while living in England, he loves Scotland and wants to destroy the UK so much but doesn't want to live in his home country which he claims to love so much, he's proven himself quite the bully over the years.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the tagline, "War has never been so much fun!" because it really contradicts the serious tone they were trying to convey. Unless it was actually just intentional irony
British people are known for their sarcasm.
I thought that too.
Definitely was intentional irony, to draw people into playing the game only to experience it's message
WHAT DOES THAT TITLE EVEN MEAN 🔥🔥
EARLY GANG MAD CONFUSED RN 🗣️🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥
Ikr I thought he was either schizo posting or my phone was glitching
lol
Just for the record "POPPY GAME INSULT TO OUR WAR DEAD"
WE INSULTING THE WAR DEAD WITH THIS ONE 🔥🔥🔥
That title legitimately frightened me, "Oh no, what happened to Stu?!" Then I watched the video, slowly realizing. That headline is legitimately strange to read, but so... striking, it punches.
It certainly has the same rousing effect as the original tabloid headline.
the strange + striking nature is intentional. Its similar to todays clickbait, newspaper titles tried to be as evocative as possible with as few words as possible.
I fully expect it to change to a much more standard title within the next few days. Sometimes RUclipsrs do this sort of thing to attract different kinds of viewers at different points after it's upload to maximize viewership. The algorithm likes it.
@@graniteoverworld8955 You must not be familiar with this channel.
Yeah with a title like this I assumed Stu had a case of the old "artist timebomb psychosis" but nope, good old insightful shorts as always.
This video highlights the reason I don't buy poppies in Canada. Even though we don't have the Royal British Legion here, we do have the Royal Canadian Legion who hold as much of a copyright claim to the poppy as the British Legion does. The Royal Canadian Legion has been known to pull similar antics regarding the poppy and have several scandals and cases against them regarding disrespecting active duty Canadian Military members. Considering the Canadian Legion is no longer comprised of actual veterans, yet dare to commit these acts, I see the organization as tainted.
sorry eh
I have only ever bought 3, and all three of them was because i was not allowed to take tips at my last job, and every time people tried to tip me i just took the money and donated it to whatever charity was partnered with us at the time.
I feel similarly and have begun to instead wear a poppy pin I needle-felted myself, I'd rather donate my money or time in ways where I know it's really going to have a meaningful impact on those struggling with the consequences of experiencing war than a corporate entity too opaque to trust. I wonder if they'll retroactively claim In Flanders Fields as their copyright too?
I did not know about them disrespecting those on active duty, though. I suppose the perspective of people who are actually in the midst of it and not conveniently passed on and unable to speak for their real wishes could be a problem for them.
Let's not forget that they support all wars, especially those with g3n0c1de... as long as white people are leading the charge.
Mounties have always been corrupt and incompetent, so naturally the institution that oversees them would be also.
At first I thought the all caps title was in regards to the old "Evil Ahoy" idea from years ago. But with the context of the video it works even better.
Spectacular work as always! Loved the video!
Politicians overreacting without doing any research to make sure they're mad at the right thing? Say it ain't so!
unlike gamers who famously only wade into an issue once they fully understand it.
@@TheEvilCheesecake gamers have no power to just do things when they feel like it. That's why it's so fun to see them whine - because you know there's 0 consequence to what they're mad about.
But, this? stuff like this just happens too often, where a certain group with power gets all upsetti at something harmless and causes a massive shockwave.
@@TheEvilCheesecake
yes keep perpetuating meaningless tribalism, that is entirely necessary and absolutely not contrary to the entire point of the video you were just watching.
@@bebobo1 today i learned that tribalism means "when people criticise gamers for being jackasses".
@@TheEvilCheesecake i think you might wanna check inside your walls, you might find some gamers there
I love how much distain was in you voice when you said "Daily Star".
disdain*
It is the only paper that still has page 3, though. So there is that.
@@worldcomicsreview354That's likely part of the reason for the disdain tbf.
04:43 for those interested
In Flanders Fields was written by John McCrae, a Canadian veteran of the Second Boer War who volunteered to return to active duty at 41 when War was initially declared by the British Empire. He died before the end of the war, not before the death of a friend and treating uncounted wounded from the Second Battle of Ypres. He truly deserves to be known as widely as In Flanders Fields.
the nuclear war game First Strike, which focuses on nuclear proliferation, can only be won by every player deconstructing their entire arsenal. it could be called a senseless war game, but it holds far more nuance than most think.
I don't think you know what nuance means
@@Shotblur i think i do.
@@ShotblurWhat do YOU think nuance means?
Well then describe exactly how they are misusing the word because it seems grammatically and thematically correct for the sentence the words was included in @@Shotblur
You can hear the barely-restrained derision in Stuart's voice as he mentions the Daily Star (beginning at 4:44). I don't know why, but that little vocal detail impressed me.
also the mocking tone at 7:10 with "poppy row mag insults old soldiers"
The Daily Star was absolutely throbbing at the chance to do this much shit-stirring. That encompassed the entirety of their "concern" over the use of the poppy symbol.
That's most UK tabloids to this day, British news is just 90% shit stirring over taking words out of context and creating fake outrage to pacify the audience.
And the intro and exit music is the inimitable "WAR", from the game. Written by Jon Hare, lead game designer and co-founder of Sensible, and musician and game-music composer Richard Joseph. They're also two of the first recruits you get in the game, Jops and Rj.
I loved this game as a kid. You really do get attached to the soldiers, as they survive each mission and get promoted to higher ranks. I would even move my veterans back from the head of the line so they were less likely to die after surviving so much. And showing all the individual gravestones of soldiers who's names you knew really was poignant, even as a young kid.
I replayed it recently and its still really good fun to play. It was very polished for the time. Sensible Software were top quality back then.
Holy moly 2 Ahoy videos in one month? Am i dreaming?
You probably are… but why am I dreaming that you mention here that you are dreaming?
Holy moly, a cliche unfunny comment? Im sure Ahoy appreciates you making such a LAZY comment instead of actually addressing his hard work
schizophrenia
@@lingricen8077someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning 😭
@@lingricen8077shut up nerd
Glad to see random dorks sending threats have always used the bogus "I'm 6'2 and jacked" line.
I swear on me mum
pre-Internet Internet tough guys
Sorry, your post reminded me of the legendary copy pasta and I just HAD to lol
this was pre-gorilla warfare copypasta
I like how at the time people still measured body mass in *stone*
Damn, he's 15 stone (not stones FSR?), must be huge.
Crazy how the "are video games art?" conversation has lasted this long, considering this came out in '93. The argument is easier to argue in favor of now than back then, but still.
1993 and this game's message, presentation, and provocation is just as poignant now as they were back then. Love it.
The gravest insult to the "war dead" is to shore up support for creating more of them, as the The Daily Sun did, by stirring up outrage for short-term profit.
Cannon fodder is a great little game. It's engaging, fast paced, and fun. Then you make a single mistake and will be reminded of it by gravestones between the missions. Individual graves for individual soldiers under a HOME-AWAY counter.
If anything, it's bleak. I can understand how it could be interpreted as disrespectful to fallen soldiers but actually it's a warning to future ones.
A fair review, but you're assuming the people writing the newspaper articles and putting together letters of condemnation had actually played the game.
Remember: Those complaints weren't even directed at Sensible. The game wasn't out yet. They were mad at a magazine for advertising the game with the Poppy (and then having poor PR afterwards).
hopefully there aren't future ones as well
The whole situation with the news media really feels like the epitome of "judging a book by its cover".
That's what so much of news media runs on- just the cover
A good example of the knee-jerk reactions that usually fuel censorship
The media pretty much is the epitome of every bad trait a person could have.
Ah, but you see, if they take the time to actually see what the thing is about and write an accurate description of it, they won't be able to get ahead of the outrage cycle!
@@LexYeen There should be a joke about the 'outrage cycle' running our a** over- or the idiots trying to get in front of it.
Those outside the UK need to understand the importance of the poppy. When november comes, every person in a position of public visibility has to wear one. Every TV presenter. Every politician. To not wear a poppy would result in backlash - there would be angry headlines about how this person is insulting our armed forces by not showing respect for their sacrifice. The accusations of un-patriotic behaviour and questionable moral standing would soon follow. Wearing the poppy is a social obligation.
The closest US comparison would be someone who remains seated and doesn't make some respectful gesture during a public performance of the anthem. They aren't doing anything, but their act of not participating in a collective action is in itself, interpreted as a statement: "Everyone else is doing it, why aren't you?" Just think of the absolute outrage that followed when just a few athletes in the US refused to stand during the pre-game performance of the anthem. That's what would happen if a British sports star was caught on rememberance day without a poppy.
Yeah, the poppy is definitely the closest thing we have to US-style flag-and-anthem worship, right down to using the supposedly sacred and meaningful iconography in increasingly insincere ways over the years
Yoooooooooooo Cannon Fodder was an interesting game when I was a kid. That game has flown under the radar for so long. I really enjoyed the level of empathy and connection with the soldier characters you controlled. I tried so hard to keep them all alive as best as I could. Very much in the same way I like to play STALKER.
The custom channel logo in the intro is killer!
so stylish
How is this comment 2 days old if the video was posted 12 minutes ago?
It’s good
@@mattthiel2050patreon users get videos early
@@mattthiel2050 A wizard is never late
Okay, hats off to you Stu
reusing that inflammatory headline for the video title is actually genius
Shows, "Clickbait" was never an internet-only thing
At 1:40, I've got to give you a nod for the HHGTTG quip.
Was just about to comment this! Glad someone else noticed
@@murdoph not everyone is as hoopy as we are.
@@Napalmdog Just a couple of hoopy froods, you and I
It must be thursday.
Taken out of context, the image of the poppy flower with the words "Canon Fodder" is obviously not going to be understood well.
The media and the politicians just jumped on the easy outrage.
“We hope you never have to find out the hard way.” Kinda punched me in the gut, but in a good way, you know? Very powerful line
I like it when games make it clear to the player that yeah, what you're about to experience is messed up and something no-one should have to go through.
A cautionary tale with many sobering moments.
punched me in the balls
Gave me the creeps as no other war game ever did
"Games are art!" will always be impeded by groups that will always lambast games, a medium they believe to be merely a toy, for pushing the envelope of conveying a message. Not all games are supposed to be art, sure. But some pieces of art are games.
It's crazy to think that the thing that saved the video game industry during the crash was basically Nintendo coming in and saying "Here, these are toys, look at the cute little robot, they go in the toy aisle" and yet treating video games as mere toys has kind of held them back as an art form in many people's eyes.
It's still crazy to think that, in the US, it took until 2011 for Video Games to get the legal protections of an art form.
It's not like art aren't for entertainment anyway. I don't see a point in holding one piece of medium higher to others, saves to a petty classism. But it's not like the modern history weren't totally revolving around petty classism sooo
Same thing happened to movies. And music genres. And comic books. And radio. And novels.
Art is and has always been under attack by pearl-clutching nobodies looking for their 15 minutes of fame.
Except the fact games will never be art because everything that is a component to making it art can entirely be taken out of it and presented on its own. The cinematography can be placed by its lonesome, the physical art can be taken on its own merits though will often not amount to anything meaningful as it's just landscapes and concepts and the story is not inseparable to the game itself.
Its crazy with all these works of art, you can tell how smart the people working on them are.
Ahoy not only educates me on Videogame Culture, Videogame Impact and Videogame Development, but also Videogame history. This channel is too good, man.
cant believe i only just now realized the "triangle, square, circle, inverted triangle" spells out AHOY, i immediately read it when they were one after another rather than in a square, very clever!
I only noticed that on rewatch. The very first shot is Ahoy in sensible software typeface too.
@@richh5620 yeah i love that he does that in the retro ahoys
Poppy growers in *shambles* when they found out they weren't allowed to associate with their crop anymore because of the poppy's new, singular meaning that destroys all previous.
There can be only one
Opium farmers are outraged!
It feels akin to The Red Cross not allowing any games to have red +'s on healing items
the poppy was never about 'remembrance' it was a symbol of national pity for every soul that was wasted in service to a system that didn't care.
I like the new shorter but more frequent video uploads, makes the channel feel fresher than ever. Very awesome video as always.
Imagine how much money the RBL could have raised if they offered a licencing deal instead of requesting £500 hush money.
This is worse. I don't want this greedy corpo getting more money just because someone drew a flower.
Imagine how much money they could have gathered for the poppy appeal if these people had a spine
It's fun when you can instantly tell that a video is going to be about Cannon Fodder just from the thumbnail, even if you haven't played it.
Well, perhaps Yanks like me wouldn't know.
@@md_vandenberg It was just as playable in North America in 1993.
if you haven't played Cannon Fodder, find a version you can emulate and do so at earliest opportunity. It's a banger.
@@TheRealSkeletor I was 12 in 93, & a huge NES, Commodore 64/128, PC, Game Gear, & Genesis kid here in the US, & I don't remember a single one of my friends talking about Cannon Fodder here, so no it was not a very popular game here, so I'm not surprised some have not heard of it, and for us Americans ribbons, and crosses are more widely used as a sign of remembrance than a flower.
The amount of work that goes into these videos, from the little details to the actual flow of it is insane. It's so good. Thanks for doing such a fantastic work man.
In germany there was a game from a student where you are a soldier on the Berlin wall and you have to shoot dissidents. The game was atacked by tabloid media for its content and usual politicians demanding censorship. What they all omited was that your character went to a court and then to jail
Every time ahoy uploads, I should treat it like a formal event
Basically it is. It feels like if best Netflix documentary was also lost media
Instead I pounce on it like a drunk on a sour herring 😅
I get my tux on and the 16 year old scotch out mate
I swim to Cuba just to smoke a cigar while watching.
I put my suit on and made some tea
I'm just about old enough to see the themes of Rememberance Day morph from "Millions died in the World Wars and it was terrible" into "Millions died in the World Wars and it was glorious"
Yep! Seems like a very clear shift from 'No more war' to 'Come on away the lads'
That's not how it seems to me, I've not seen anyone say that WW1 was glorious.
Yeah, happened in the 90s.
@@blob22201 Not that it was glorious but there's absolutely been a shift from 'no more war, ever again' to 'Our Soldiers (not theirs) should be venerated and Come Away The Lads weeeey.'
Basically the red poppy has been bastardised into 'our guys good, their guys bad' instead of 'no one should die in war because we should not have another, as they are awful'
@@Iymarra I suppose it's due to the fact that WW1 is overshadowed by WW2 so i guess the spirit of defeating the evil Germans sipped from one war to another.
It just shows you how the game is written with such care - so much so, that the whole philosophy is "show, don't tell". I am very much enjoying these types of historical deep dive videos. Keep up the good work! :)
I realize this is NOT the take-away of this vid, but man that soccer game looks SO GOOD I gotta have it on my steamdeck somehow.
Wow they seriously tried to extort them over ‘copy-right’ under the guise of being offended??
That's so British innit
Imagine trying to copyright a plant
That's the average use of copyright laws, never for anything actually good lol.
@NinjaGodzilla
In America you can trademark colors!
Hell world
Ha, just from the title you could tell this would be about some tabloid blowing something out of proportion for a cheap headline. Some things never change.
nice. thanks for the video. very interesting, and as usual your high production and research are a real treat.
I didn't expect to tear up over your summarisation of the game's mechanics and themes of remembrance, but it really struck me how amazing the narrative is. Saying so much about war with just a scrolling text of names of the people that died. You view the game's main gameplay screen as just a strategician or politician, and the rest of the game is viewed as a person.
It’s good to see ahoy to tackle more smaller topics rather than his huge videos that he usually does. Any bit of ahoy is a good day for me. Whether he decides to continue with these smaller films or longer biopics im all for it
hee ho!
POPPY GAME INSULT TO OUR WAR DEAD indeed 🤔
OH. It means the game with poppys is an insult to those who died at war
Classic British newspaper headlines
Says the Daily Star, the pinnacle of morality, yeah?
Deeep
@@AlexanTheMan
Brit here, It's the Star. I wouldn't use it to line a cat's litterbox.
Ah sweet, I covered this a few years ago in a video, it's an interesting piece, especially how clueless the RBL were about video games.
You are litteraly the inspiration for me to start my YT. I always love your work and have watched them all! Keep up the wonderful work!
All this probably would've been avoided if the British Royal Legion was invited to actually see Cannon Fodder and the context to the poppies. In complete contrast the first Medal of Honor game had similar controversy with the Medal of Honor Society in the United States, but Steven Spielberg and EA invited them out to actually see the context of the game, and once they realized they meant no offense and actually showed respect to the soldiers of WWII, even endorsed the game.
I doubt it. Back in the 90's the stigma around videogames was still seen as toys. I doubt a bunch of BRL members would see any depictions of war in videogames as nothing more as a joke.
@@DoodleWill I dont really get what makes video games any more insulting than toy soldiers
@@Dell-ol6hb video games makes fun of war, toy soldiers idolatrize it
Considering they literally asked them to make a forced donation, I really doubt they actually cared about actual anti-war messaging.
More than likely, as is tradition with most groups similar to BRL, they just exist to pocket some money while pretending to do something for the veterans who get jack shit.
The 500 was probably pocketed by some higher up guy there and paid for his meals or a vacation.
@@DoodleWill the first medal of honor game released in the 90s lmao
"jingoistic bludgeon" is a great descriptor of how the poppy & Remembrance Day are used in the commonwealth. Stuart Campbell was right.
Just because you're a bitter social outsider doesn't mean other people don't have genuine passions
"Please praise how Marshal Haig sent tens of thousands of men to their deaths to accomplish literally nothing"
Also the whole "Youd be dead if it werent for those soldiers" line was a hoot: Please tell me how Jerry learned to walk on water and thus threatened Britain
Same here every “Patriot’s Day”. The country spends 364 days of the year spitting on NYC but come one day and it’s all unity and flag waving. To say nothing of how the energy in reaction to the attacks was used to waste our geopolitical clout, money, and lives on both sides of the pond for nearly two decades straight.
@@Amfortas Every time I see a poppy defender, I'm reminded how fucking stupid they are.
@@Amfortas maybe read some siegfried sassoon or wilfred owen. how is one even meant to be "passionate" about the needless and horrific slaughter of human life.
personally, i see it has a symbol of support for the men who literally beat my granny with a gun, knocking her out cold while her child son cried while trying to wake her. or the foreign occupying military who i remember patroling my streets with SA80s, turning where i played as a child into a potential combat zone
I’m so happy you’re back. I’ve been watching your videos since the beginning on my older accounts. Thank you.
Great video and overview of the whole debacle. Thanks! I hadn't realized the extent to which Amiga Power had added to the situation
We've made some progress but video games are still not widely accepted as a medium for deep and thought provoking stories. - Which becomes all the more ironic when considering that movies seem to have entirely lost that place in the last decade... Combining audio, visuals and writing into an interactive experience will always be able to express more than non-interactive media but it will still take a long time for most people to acknowledge that.
Well its more that the respect of storytelling has only been handed to movie-like games. And arcade-style games (or otherwise "videogamey" games) are still seen as nothing more than kids toys meant to be sanitized and sanded down to remove all the edges and corners
What really stinks about this is that it's given certain parts of the games industry a chip on their shoulder the size of the Moon. That's one of the things that led to the bizarre obsession with forcing games to be 'cinematic' for the sake of looking serious. It's like they're trying to please people who have not and never will take video games seriously above people who actually play video games.
Video games will not be considered art until people from hollywood and wall street starts getting high positions in video game companies
It's quite a funny second reminder, that the box art is placed right above where you would commend on desktop RUclips. The politicians just wanted to run their mouth. They didn't even check to see if they would look stupid (They already are but you know)
Amazingly well researched and presented video essay about one of my childhood favorite games. Thank you.
As a reader of the old Amiga Power tribute website, this title absolutely had an instant recall with me. Tremendous.
Cannon Fodder was probably the first experience that showed me war is ‘really really awful’. I wasn’t aware of any of the controversy as a kid and I was probably too young to be playing it.
It had a much more lasting and thought provoking effect on me than an annual minute’s silence, attending a church service or wearing a paper poppy.
Experiences and intelligent storytelling are more informative than symbols and poncing about. The rich and those in power love symbols and poncing about as it makes them feel like they did something. The OG participation trophies. The actual people that fought in the wars just never want it to happen again, the medals are just evidence to show others. THey don't rever old bits of metal. They revere their fellow man that died. The irony is the poppy pushers always say; "never forget" but ironically they've forgotten what it is that they're not supposed to forget. It isn't about remembering who died, but why and how to prevent it again. And that's the bit the jingoists forget selectively when waving about the latest military hardware.
@@darrens3 In recent years it's actually gotten worse, many newsreaders, royalty and celebs are wearing jewellery version of poppies pins instead of the paper poppy. Which likely means they will just reuse the same every year instead of buying (donating) to the charity for a new paper poppy. As well as likely not being an official poppy at all, as I'm pretty sure the charity prefers their yearly repeat business over a one time sell.
@@darrens3this is a damn important comment. Wow. Well spoken.
I remember this game as: so incredibly hard that it wasn't fun or interesting. Why would anyone want to play this?
Obviously there's the lack of skill issue as such a young child, and absolutely no concept at all that punishing difficulty in a game could be a statement about the brutality of war.
The moment I read the "Poppy war game" in the title, I knew straightaway that it's gotta do with the classic Cannon Fodder game. However, I'm extremely glad that the video covers the historical context of the use of the poppy flower imagery and the game's history. It's always the backstories that tend to give more insight and make the content thought-provoking.
OMG Cannon Fodder. One of the games of my childhood, that left a impact. Nice job Ahoy shedding more light onto that! A pleasure to watch as always!
Incredible work as always, thank you!
immediately thought of cannon fodder at the sight of the thumbnail haha. excited to watch it all!!!!
lovely vid
have you played it?
@@chip-lol i have. i believe via an emulator for the gameboy or SNES. i dont remember which one exactly, but i have for sure :)
As a currently serving Aunty Soldier, I absolutely agree that war is senseless and one that I wish for everyone not to have to experience. In my youth, I did play Cannon Fodder, and it absolutely made an impression of me. The death of my soldiers, the killed in action scroll and the rows and rows of crosses were quite memorable. Add to that the title song, one of the few on the Amiga that used sampled vocals, blatantly pointing out how brutal and horrible war is.
I didn't know until now about the symbolism of the Poppy, but it absolutely stood out to me, in stark contrast to the overly macho gung-ho coverart of the era. It does make a lot more sense now though.
This, but add in having been to Ypres and seen the real rows of crosses, having stood at the Menin Gate at dusk, having seen people on my family tree in lists of war dead and on the CWGC made it hit all the harder as well. To me the Royal British Legion were entirely out of line, the Daily Star were out of line as well.
Where was the controversy with the....I think it was the Speccy game simulating the Falklands War, or other strategy or shmup games that tackled war, before or since?
The hill of graves and the music that goes with it - ingrained into my memory forever. I was always gutted when I lost a soldier who'd run a few missions.
Sensible Software vs Senseless Politicians
What role did politicians play in this?
Must admit, I am a bit disappointed we didn't get segment of him reading "In Flanders Fields."
I was confused trying to figure out how poppy playtime got into another controversy from my notifications until i say ahoy and got even more confused
This somewhat reminds me how they had to change the red cross on health packs to a green cross for Tomb Raider III. Even in the remasters that have been released just a few months ago, decades after the originals. It honestly makes me wonder, does the red cross not want that its symbol is universally conceived as a symbol for healing?
Personally that one is perfectly valid. The Red Cross makes plenty of dumb statements about video games, but keeping their symbol out of games is a good choice. I'd give a more in depth response but I have to leave for work.
Fun fact, misusing the symbol is classified as a war crime.
@@kodeytheneko I'd really like to hear the more in-depth response 🤔
And I, in fact, didn't know that misusing it is considered a war crime :'D
@@kodeytheneko So they're even bigger grifting pieces of crap than the RBL, good to know. Screw their charity when they think they own a red plus sign
Goddamn the bop you chose for the background music is just so good
From the notification I got and the fact that he already uploaded another video this year, I was almost hoping that Ahoy had lost it and this video was going to be some unhinged political rant.
I fully expected this to be a DISRUPT-style meltdown
I definitely wasn't *hoping* for it, but I was worried that's what it was going to be. Lol
@@Xylophytae could you tell me more about it?
@@proCaylak i dont know a lot about it myself but apparently one of the two guys who ran DISRUPT had a mental breakdown after doing drugs and became insanely religious and he basically tried to forcefully turn DISRUPT into a weird Conspiracy theory/religion channel
@@Xylophytae I see, thank you :)
The poppy and remembrance day might just be one of the most bastardized symbols we have in the modern day.
Everyone demands it is worn, everyone regurgitates the words "lest we forget"
And yet, if the poppy is used for the purposes of being anti war, it's suddenly wrong
it's as if the real remembrance day message is meant to be "remember the sacrifice, wasn't it cool? we should do it again"
Sounds like it's become more symbolic of virtue signaling than self sacrifice. The sad truth is that not even one of those "outraged" people were offended on behalf of fallen soldiers. They just wanted to sell magazines, make some money, and protect a copyright. That by itself is f*%king gross, but to do it under the pretense of being morally offended... Were they trying to win some king of "Greed/Hypocrisy/Shamelessness" hat trick bonus prize?
Something always irked me whenever people would say things like, "if it weren't for their sacrifice, you wouldn't be alive today."
Those people were already alive before me. They had experiences & relationships. They had everything to lose by dying in a war. "I" did not exist then. "I" would lose nothing by continuing to not exist. "I" did not demand that people should die for me to exist. Am I meant to feel guilty for existing? Because that's the impression I get.
I don't know about the UK, but in the USA thought-terminating cliches about "supporting the troops" and gratitude for how we supposedly owe everything we like about life to the military are *very* frequently used as blatantly disingenuous excuses to demand that people not question the government's decisions about warfare.
Well, people did sow the seeds of sacrifice when we were young.
@@macdeus2601 True but I also think Memorial Day at least is just the start of summer for us so it's an excuse to grill and put our air conditioners in not to mention consoom product from all the sales.
Veteran's Day I think might be a bit more about muh troops but it's still a big day for consooming.
Incredibly, fleetingly, impossibly rare Stuart Campbell W
Nice one of the Games I loved as a child. Was not remembering the poppy at first but the remixed title song in the background made me realize 'OMG Ahoy made a video about Cannon Fodder.'
Absolutely had me with the Cannon Fodder music remixes. There was a local video store that rented Jaguar games, and I remember renting this having no idea what it was. It was such an interesting game, and totally unexpected that I'd get an Ahoy video discussing it. I had no idea the story behind the logo / poppy, this was a great video.
"Oh boy, I can't wait to learn about the history of a retro video game! I wonder what the historical context will be?"
Ahoy: "On June 28th, 1914 Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated..."
It only set in half-way through that the video title is a tabloid headline, and it really worked too! Great video as always!
He references the tabloid headline title before half-way so why did it take you so long
@@scottparker1741 Chill out Scott, I'm only human.
Quality of the higest rank as always! Thanks for always coming back to the channel with uploads!