Worms

Worms is a 2D artillery tactical video game developed by Team17 and released in 1995. It is the first game in the Worms series of video games. It is a turn based game where a player controls a team of worms against other teams of worms that are controlled by a computer or human opponent. The aim is to use various weapons to kill the worms on the other teams and have the last surviving worm(s).

Gameplay – Worms

Worms is a turn-based artillery game, similar to other early games in the genre such as Scorched Earth.^[2]^[3] Each player controls a team of several worms. During the course of the game, players take turns selecting one of their worms. They then use whatever tools and weapons are available to attack and kill the opponents’ worms, thereby winning the game. Worms may move around the terrain in a variety of ways, normally by walking and jumping but also by using particular tools such as the “Bungee” and “Ninja Rope”, to move to otherwise inaccessible areas. Each turn is time-limited to ensure that players do not hold up the game with excessive thinking or moving. The time limit can be modified in some of the games in the Worms series.

Over fifty weapons and tools may be available each time a game is played, and differing selections of weapons and tools can be saved into a “scheme” for easy selection in future games. Other scheme settings allow options such as deployment of reinforcement crates, from which additional weapons can be obtained, and sudden death where the game is rushed to a conclusion after a time limit expires. Some settings provide for the inclusion of objects such as land mines and explosive barrels.

When most weapons are used, they cause explosions that deform the terrain, creating circular cavities. If a worm is hit with a weapon, they will lose health. A worm who is out of health will die by blowing themselves up and leaving a grave marker. Worms can also die by being thrown off the side of the map or by falling into the water at the map’s base.

Development – Worms

Worms was the brainchild of Andy Davidson, a then-unknown computer shop employee and fan of Amiga microcomputers since 1987. He began work on the project in 1990 under the name Artillery, based on previous tank games from the 8-bit era using a Casio graphing calculator as an experiment for his own amusement.^[4]^[5]^[6]^[7] Davidson later moved development of Artillery to the Amiga in August 1993, which allowed to expand his idea further, leading him to introduce new elements and a graphical style to distinguish his project from its spiritual predecessors.^[4]^[5]^[7] Davidson wanted to achieve the same animation quality and humour seen in Lemmings, which led him to employing worms as characters for his project after various character design experiments through Deluxe Paint.^[4]^[5]^[7]

With the addition of worms as characters, and inspired by a Blitz BASIC programming competition held by Amiga Format magazine, Davidson renamed his project from Artillery to Total Wormage (possibly in reference to Midway‘s Total Carnage). Featuring 55,000 levels, publications compared it with both Lemmings and Cannon Fodder due to its visual style and themes,^{[4][5][6][7][8]}which Team17’s project manager Marcus Dyson later claimed was planned from start.^{[9][10][11][12][13]} However, Davidson’s entry neither won the competition or reached any place for classification.

Davidson then pitched his project to multiple publishers with no success, before showcasing his game during ECTS in September 1994, where he met Team17 co-founder Martyn Brown,^{[4][5][6][7][14]} who would make an offer on-the-spot to develop and publish it.^{[4][5][6][7][14]} Level designs are randomly generated by the use of an alpha-numeric string as their seeds.^[4][5] The object and landscape sets used to generate the field are arranged into thematics including forests, martian terrains, beaches and hell.^[4][5][16]

Release – Worms

Worms was first launched in Europe for the Amiga on November 17, 1995, by Ocean Software.^[17] Commercial ports of the game were released for Amiga CD32, Atari Jaguar, Game Boy, Macintosh, MS-DOS, PlayStation,^[18] Sega Mega Drive,^[19] Sega Saturn and Super Nintendo Entertainment System.^[20]^[21]^[22] The North American release of the PlayStation version was the subject of considerable negotiation, as Sony Computer Entertainment of America had a policy against 2D games being published for the console.^[23]^[24] The Saturn conversion was a straight port of the PlayStation version.^[25]

The Jaguar version was published by Telegames on May 15, 1998;^[26][27] Telegames announced the release of this version after becoming the last remaining software publisher for the Jaguar and, like all of its other games published following the system’s discontinuation,^[28] Worms could be purchased either through direct order from Telegames’ US and UK websites or select retailers such as Electronics Boutique.^[29][30] It also served as the final Atari-licensed title ever to be released for the Jaguar; two months earlier, on March 13, 1998, JTS Corporation sold all the assets of Atari Corporation, including the Atari name, to Hasbro Interactive,^[31] which, one year later, would release all of the Jaguar’s rights into the public domain.^[32]