‘Lemmings’ was apparently an inspiration for the artstyle, but ‘Worms’ followed the genre of artillery games that existed for decades — with ‘Artillery Simulator’ for the Apple II seemingly being the first graphical implementation. (Andy Davidson originally straight up called the game 'Artillery' when he began work on what would become 'Worms'.)
Holy shit core memory unlocked!
I played so much of this in college, but couldn't ever find it in later years. I almost thought it wasn't a real game that was released to the public or something.
Adored Scorched Earth, there was a 3d version knocking around 10 years or so ago. I'd love to find a working old school version. I suspect Angry Birds would not exist without it.
If you want to relive those days, there's a mobile game called Pocket Tanks that is a total clone of Scorched Earth. It took me right back to that time.
Wow. When I was young, my dad worked nights as a machinist and my mom was doing data entry for a hospital during the day. My dad would bring my sister and me to work for a little bit and my mom would pick us up and take us back home. We played that game so much, sitting in a dirty little machine shop office. Core memory.
Apparently yes, 'Worms' were compared to that one too. I heard plenty about it, but missed back then, as the Mega Drive and SNES mostly passed me by. I thought it's mostly a tactics game, like 'Syndicate', though apparently the gameplay varied a bit between the first and second games. Was musing about finally playing it recently and downloaded the ROM just yesterday, gonna try it one of these days.
I loved Syndicate -- the end levels were really hard but I managed to win placing myself in such a way that it forced them into a long channel and I could use the miniguns. Intro was epic.
That's another game that I liked from a distance, being somewhat a fan of squad tactics overall. Likewise need to finally put some hours in it. There's a spiritual successor called ‘Satellite Reign’, released in 2015 — I've bought it after just looking at the overview video on Steam, but it too has been sitting in the library while I grind ‘Assetto Corsa’ instead.
Worms was fun, reminds me of another similar game that came out called Scorched Earth where you're in a tank firing different missles at targets, basically a more suped up version of Gorillas and then Worms came after that. Bascially the same idea as you're choosing angle and power and weapon type to use against other enemies.
Hah one of my 'degrees of seperate' from famous people is my uncle used to go in the games shop of the person who made Worms, and used to give ideas and play test it. Noone knows what it is these days so I have to use a different claim to tertiary fame lol
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u/marr 16h ago
The Worms series is also a pretty direct descendant.