Small Soldiers

Small Soldiers draws on the DreamWorks action film about living military action figures, the Commando Elite, and their more peaceful counterparts, the Gorgonites, turning this license on Game Boy Color into an action platformer with shooter elements. The player takes control of one of the toys fighting for survival in a suburban house and garden, where ordinary pieces of furniture, garden tools, and household appliances become giant obstacles, and enemies attack from many directions at once. The game relies on fast action sequences interspersed with collecting weapon upgrades and occasional platforming exploration of an environment that, from the perspective of a miniature toy, is unexpectedly vast and full of dangers no one would expect at a normal scale.

Developer Fluid Studios adapted the pace of gameplay to the film's action-heavy character, so the player faces constant pressure from enemies and must combine shooting with agile movement across platforms and obstacle courses. The graphics use the GBC's color palette to distinguish the different toy factions and environments, though the hardware's limitations meant it couldn't fully capture the film's action choreography that made the source material famous. The sound design underscores the game's military character with short gunfire effects, explosions, and lines reminiscent of the action films that made this generation of military toys famous around the world.

In its contemporary context, this was one of many movie tie-ins that flooded the handheld market in the second half of the nineties, and Small Soldiers held its own among them thanks to its solid pacing and inventive use of the home environment as a battlefield. Today the game is appreciated mainly by collectors of movie licenses and fans of the run-and-gun genre, who will find in it an honest, if now largely forgotten, take on the beloved film concept of toys waging war right under the noses of unsuspecting people and their families.