Worms Amiga Original Version 1995 Team 17 Andy Davidson

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Worms Original Version

Team 17 of the U.K. released the original version of Worms for the Amiga in November of 1995. Worms is a time-limited turn-based tactics artillery game that plays similarly to Wendell Hicken's Scorched Earth of 1991 and Dark Unicorn's Scorched Tanks of 1993 [1].

In terms of interface, mechanics and humor, Worms also shares similarities with DMA Design's Lemmings of 1991.

In Worms players control a squad of 1-4 worm units versus 1-4 other worm squads. Worms can move and jump left and right and use weapons and special abilities. Weapons are aimed via crosshair. At intervals weapon drops parachute down and can be collected. The main difference between Worms and most other artillery games is that in Worms players control multiple units. In addition, the worms can tunnel through landscapes, as in Lemmings.

Worms was conceived, designed, programmed and animated by Andy Davidson. Worms was drawn by Rico Holmes and composed by Bjørn Lynne.

Worms Features

• 4x Game modes: League, Friendly, Tournament, Training
• 1-4 squads consisting of 1-4 worms
• 1-16 players
• Tailorable AI
• 10x landscape-types
• Icon-driven interface
• 15x weapons
• 6x special abilities
• Super-smooth "mouse-look" screen-scrolling
• 4.3 billion randomly-generated landscapes
• Destructible terrain
• Physics: wind, gravity and friction
• Keyboard and mouse control 

The 22 Worms weapons and abilities are air strike, banana bomb, bazooka, blowtorch, bungee, cluster bomb, dragonball, dynamite, fire punch, girder, grenade, homing missile, kamikaze, land mine, minigun, ninja rope, pneumatic drill, prod, sheep (top-secret weapon), shotgun, teleport and uzi.

The 10 Worms landscape-types are alien, arctic, beach, candy, desert, forest, Hades / Hell, junkyard / scrapyard, Mars and tropics / jungle.

Worms Technical

The original version of Worms runs on A500s with 1 meg of RAM. The original version of Worms also runs on AGA Amigas, such as the A1200 with 2 megs of ChipRAM. Worms auto-enhances for the AGA chipset and 2 megs of ChipRAM unlocks sampled speech.

The original version of Worms was distributed by Ocean on 3x 3.5" 880kB DD diskette and extracts and installs to hard disk drive via Worming. The install size is 2.5 megs and consists of 175 files.

Worms was programmed in 68K assembly and compiled via Blitz Basic 2 by Acid Software.

Worms PC DOS 1995

Team 17 ported the Amiga version of Worms to IBM PC MS-DOS in 1995. PC DOS Worms displays in double-buffered 256-color VGA 320x200.

Worms employs Rational Systems' DOS/4GW Protected Mode Run-time.

PC Worms audio supports Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster Pro, Sound Blaster 16, Sound Blaster AWE-32 and Gravis UltraSound.

PC Worms requires an i80386DX 33 MHz CPU and 4 megs of RAM, but a 486DX2 66 MHz CPU and 8 megs of RAM is recommended and an iDX4 100 MHz or Pentium CPU with 16 megs of RAM and 16 bit Sound Blaster or Gravis UltraSound with 1 meg RAM is preferred.

PC Worms was distributed on 3x 3.5" 1.44MB HD diskettes or 1x CD-ROM and extracts and installs to hard disk drive via Worms Installation. The install size is 5.5 megs and consists of 72 files.

The PC version of Worms was programmed by Pieter Opdam, Gary Symons and Karl Morton.

[1]

Scorched Earth IBM PC 1991

Wendell Hicken released Scorched Earth: The Mother of All Games for IBM PC MS-DOS in 1991. Scorched Earth is an artillery game that presents in side-on perspective.

Scorched Earth is a masterpiece of artillery-game design and programming.

Scorched Earth supports turn-based, synchronous and simultaneous modes of play. Scorched Earth games consists of 5-50 rounds and support 2-10 players. v1.5 supports 5-1000 rounds.

In Scorched Earth players control a tank that can be customized to fire various weapons. Before firing shots at other tanks or the terrain players set the firepower of the shot and the angle of the shot by rotating the tanks turret. Tanks can also be moved along the landscape, terrain-permitting. The terraformed terrain is fully destructible. Gravity, wind and air viscosity are employed.

There are seven computer-controlled AI-types as well as random selections. There is even a team mode.

Scorched Earth v1.0 displays in 256-color VGA 320x200 or 360x480 and 256-color SVGA 640x480 whereas Scorched Earth 1.5 added 320x240, 320x400, 640x400, 800x600 and 1024x768 display modes.

Scorched Earth 1.5 also added sky-color gradients and digitized backdrops.

The 33 Scorched Earth weapons are Baby Missile, Missile, Baby Nuke, Nuke, Leap Frog, Funky Bomb, MIRV, Death's Head, Napalm, Hot Napalm, Tracer, Smoke Tracer, Baby Roller, Roller, Heavy Roller, Riot Charge, Riot Blast, Riot Bomb, Heavy Riot Bomb, Baby Digger, Digger, Heavy Digger, Baby Sandhog, Sandhog, Heavy Sandhog, Dirt Clod, Dirt Ball, Ton of Dirt, Liquid Dirt, Dirt Charge, Earth Disrupter, Plasma Blast and Laser.

The 15 Scorched Earth accessories are Heat Guidance, Ballistic Guidance, Horizontal Guidance, Vertical Guidance, Lazy Boy, Parachute, Battery, Mag Deflector, Shield, Force Shield, Heavy Shield, Super Mag, Auto Defense, Fuel Tank and Contact Trigger.

Scorched Tanks Amiga 1993

Dark Unicorn Productions released Scorched Tanks for the Amiga in March of 1993. Scorched Tanks was programmed by Michael Welch and composed by Eric Gieseke, aka Sidewinder.

Scorched Tanks supports 1-4 alternating human or computer-controlled players over 1-99 rounds.

v1.90 of Scorched Tanks was released in December of 1994. The original Scorched Tanks featured 40 weapons whereas v1.85/90 features 70 weapons, 13 shields and tracer-fire graphics.

Scorched Tanks requires 1 meg of RAM and displays in 16 or 64 color 320x256 resolution.

Scorched Tanks was developed in AMOS Pro on an Amiga 1200 with 2 Megs of ChipRAM and 4 Megs of FastRAM.

The 70 Scorched Tanks weapons are Single Shot, Big Shot, Trishot, 5 Shot, Skipper, Super Skipper, Dirtball, Big Dirtball, Mountain Mover, Zapper, Roller, Large Roller, Cruiser, Mega Cruiser, Dirt Slinger, Laser, Big Laser, Pile Driver, Morph Wall, Nuke, Mega Nuke, Sound Blaster, Parachute, Homing missile, Lava, Liquid Nitrogen, Scatter Shot, Firecracker, Supper Zapper, Chain Reaction, Dirt Mover, Cruiser Mine, Teleport, Groundhog, Weasel, Move Tank, Laser Beam, Timewarp, Dome Protect, Crimson Flood, Grab Bag, Field Medic, Tank Displacer, Slingshot, Cruball, Homing Weasel, Dirt Inverter, Self-Destruct, Molten Plastic, Plast Converter, Defense Wall, Smart Bomb, Crater Maker, Flash Blast, Big Blast, Mega Blast, Mole, Mega Move Tank, Cascade, Tracer, Pineapple, Reflect-o-dome, Elevator, Sunburst, Crazy 8s, Minigun, Tommygun, Shield Disarm, Mark 4 and Mark 8.

The 13 Scorched Tanks shields are Absorb 1, Absorb 2, Absorb 3, Reflect 1, Reflect 2, Reflect 3, Magnetic 1, Magnetic 2, Magnetic 3, X-tinguisher, Detonator, Displacer and Feedback.

Scorched Tanks criticism: There are 70 weapons and yet the Weaponslink interface only shows five weapons at once when it could easily have shown more.

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