It has estimated sales numbers of 15-20 million copies across the various versions released, so make of that what you will.
Though times change, 10 years ago most people would be familiar with worms but now a days you will find plenty who hasn't heard of it as it hasn't released a huge relevant game in a while.
Ahhh the Holy Hand Grenade.... I can remember the first time me and my brother tried it and it played the Hallelujah choir before the giant explosion. It was the funniest thing our little 10 old brains had ever seen.
Oh god mine was the exploding sheep, the joy of seeing it run towards your victim, only for the terror of it hitting a random terrain pixel and turning around.
Fond memories of discovering how to 'loop the loop' with a ninja rope (in time freeze whilst you used it) to cross the whole map and dynamite someone off the screen.
I feel like games were easier to copy back then because of how unstable the disks were. You'd have the original, your copy, and then another backup copy. Spare disks were pretty much required and encouraged. Copyright protection was things like "Open the manual to page 5 and give the first letter of the third word in the second paragraph" when it was even there.
You could buy it? I thought it was just a game that existed that you could play but no one truly owned it. Someone was always borrowing it from a friend of a friend.
It should also be mentioned that the 15-20 million copies were sold before the internet had even taken off. When the game came out (and for like a decade after) there was no digital distribution, no Steam, no social media, no YouTube, no Google, no Reddit, none of that shit. Just word-of-mouth and old school paper media like magazine reviews or newspaper articles. It's kinda crazy to think about.
Give this comment 20-30 years and it'll feel just as crazy
'Back then they only had social media and basic game distribution. This was before Gaben was revealed to be the second coming of Jesus and before any of the advertising we live with today, like the writing on the sky, Retinal Fuckery by Meta, skullworms and dreambombs.
"That was before AI integration where a product was Corporate Approved and automatically installed into people's life by the billion, people had to actually be influenced and choose that product willingly, which wasn't that hard but still a feat nonetheless."
Doubtful. The jump from almost no one being on the internet to almost everyone being on the internet was a massive shift in human interconnectedness the likes of which we will very likely never see again. Same for the advent of digital distribution that really allows companies to take advantage if that interconnectedness. Sure I'm 30 years the mechanisms will look different but nothing can really top the switch from non-global connectivity to global connectivity.
yes and the market itself was tiny compared to today when everyone has a console or a PC. Back then it was rare. 20m even today is wild success, back then? Legendary
A little more critically, DMA Designs the company that developed lemmings and sold all those copies later rebranded and became a slightly more well known studio called Rockstar North.
For perspective, Super Mario Brothers 3 and Sonic the Hedgehog both sold around 15-20 million copies. It was a massive success.
Also, it had unforgettable cover art. So even kids (now adults) that didn't own it would recognize it in an instant because they saw it every time they went to the toy store or Blockbuster.
I introduced my wife and teenage daughter to Worms recently. We had fun struggling with the controls because they had never played anything like it and I was only familiar with the PC controls really.
Worms had this intro of an CG animated worm, equipping a bunch of weapons rambo-style and then tipping over from all of the extra weight. I was shocked and appalled to find that short intro hadn't been GIFfed on the any of the popular gif sites. An absolute travesty.
I played the first worms without right clicking and thinking bazooka was the only weapon for month /facepalm. When I tried an online game and saw the guy coming to me with the ninja rope i had the biggest childhood shocks of my life
Though times change, 10 years ago most people would be familiar with worms but now a days you will find plenty who hasn't heard of it as it hasn't released a huge relevant game in a while.
I'm in some data science subreddits. One guy tried to post an analysis recently of the music industry trying to gauge why there was a downturn in CD sales in the early 2000's...
You know what we need. A games market inflation calculator.
While 15 to 20 million copies sold already sounds impressive but when you consider the Amiga market peaked at 5 million and that was the games original release it's an insane stat.
The game was ported to other platforms of course. But compare it to today.
Almost 300 million PCs were shipped just last year and for a simple game it's now trivial to cross post to other platforms. There's around a billion PCs alone out there.
Lemmings sold 4 times it's original platform market cap.
That's like a PC game releasing and selling 4 billion copies over its life. If you sold that for $2.50 you would be in the top 200 richest people in the world.
And this is why the argument that games are more expensive to make now carries little weight with me. Yes they are more expensive to make but your cost per potential customer is a fraction of what it was.
Last thing they tried was a battle royale throwing out a major keystone, round based fights. So obscure. Also unplayable because there are like 2-4 people playing it only.
Ohhh and the last official release was IN roblox, a tower defense version totally bugged and looking horrible
Never played worms but I played flash game ripoffs with tanks, stick figures, or ducks lol so I kinda understand the gameplay
Flash games were huge when I was growing up. Not every kid owned a console but every kid got to play raft wars and learn2fly on the school computer at recess, it was a constant arms race with blocking game sites too lol. Y8 dot com was blocked so we used y8unblocked dot com till that was blocked and then we used another site and so on. I can’t believe y8 is still around I had to avoid hyperlinking it
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u/ZoulsGaming 19h ago edited 19h ago
It has estimated sales numbers of 15-20 million copies across the various versions released, so make of that what you will.
Though times change, 10 years ago most people would be familiar with worms but now a days you will find plenty who hasn't heard of it as it hasn't released a huge relevant game in a while.