Army Men RTS | DJcube

The first Pick-up-and-play real-time strategy game for the Nintendo GameCube system!

NA release: 2nd November 2004
EU release: N/A
JP release: N/A
Developer: Pandemic, Coyote
Publisher: Global Star Software
NGC Magazine Score: N/A
Mods Used: Widescreen Code

While the Army Men franchise already had a new owner, and attempted a gritty third person shooter with Sarge’s War, Army Men RTS was actually the last Army Men game published by The 3DO Company. It came out in 2002 on the PS2 and PC, but Global Star Software decided to port it to GameCube a few years later. Like the previous games, it’s a more joyful universe with all the characters that were killed off in Sarge’s War.

It’s not the first RTS in the franchise, either – the series started off as a Command & Conquer style PC real time strategy, and this was developed by Pandemic Studios (Battlefront released shortly before the GameCube version of Army Men RTS). Unfortunately, this is exactly what you would expect at this point in time: a very simple real time strategy.

It’s not quite as simplified as Goblin Commander, as you have the standard array of buildings to make: headquarters, barracks, resource processor and garage for producing vehicles. The build menu is quite well done, as you just hold down a button and can scroll though the different buildings to make what you need.

But it’s very much a “throw everything at the opponent and hope for the best” kind of game. The AI of your units is quite abysmal. If you create a group, they won’t move together, but rather at their own speeds. And when the first units encounter an enemy, all the trailing ones will just stop in their place and not help at all. So you just create a ton of extra soldiers or try to fiddly move them all one at a time. It’s a bit of a mess.

Fun

The previous Army Men games seemed to have missed the mark but with Army Men RTS, 3DO caught a winner. Army Men RTS has hit on something — it’s serious, it’s primal, it’s wacky and it’s fun, all at once. You get all the fun of RTS fundamentals combined with the kitsch appeal of plastic soldiers.
Mur Lafferty, IGN

Remake or remaster?

A collection with widescreen support would be good.

Official Ways to get the game

The old PC version of Army Men RTS is available on GOG and Steam.