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For Worms creator Andy Davidson, his love of gaming started when he would play his Atari 2600 and Nintendo Game & Watch. It wasn’t long until he received his first computer, a Commodore 64, which led to a passion for developing his own games.
“It’s in my blood,” Davidson tells us. “Video games were the first things that captured my imagination as a kid. Just being able to make something move around on a television screen seemed like magic, and I knew as soon as I saw my first computer, aged nine, in the classroom at school, I wanted to make a game.”
He began developing a new game after getting inspiration from his favourite genre. “I’d always loved artillery games since the 8-bit days,” Davidson explains. “These were where two tanks on each side of the screen had to destroy each other considering angle and power. In 1990, during A-Level maths, I challenged one of my friends to see who could make the best game on our Casio graph-plotting calculators. This was more interesting than schoolwork and the one thing that really interested me was generating random landscapes, and I wanted to explore that further.”
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By this time, Davidson had moved to programming on an Amiga, and he quickly realised it was a powerful tool to make more than just a simple artillery title. “The Amiga allowed me to do a lot more with the game than the little calculator did,” he tells us. “One of the first things was allowing the tanks to move. This was a new thing for artillery games, which were normally very static, and it instantly became apparent that this was opening a lot more options in the game. Suddenly you could move about, having to work out the new angle and power made the game a lot more interesting. The game just continued to evolve from there, with things like the introduction of a much larger playing area, and water for an instant kill.”
Around the time, Lemmings was released and playing it gave Davidson an idea. “I was impressed by how small but well-animated the characters were. I’d written a programme called Jack, which was a graphics, sound and music ripper. A friend asked if it could get the graphics out of Lemmings using my programme. To my surprise, it could, and for a laugh, I replaced the tanks in my game with lemmings. This was a 'eureka' moment. The game became a lot more appealing, and there was potential to do more like the way Lemmings lets you choose the different types of lemmings to control.”
Davidson, still in school, continued working on his game, creating deeper strategy and gameplay mechanics. “I wanted to create a game that would be different every time you play, one that my friends could play at school and wouldn’t get boring. The result was the game getting banned from school because people were skipping lessons to come and play it. Once it was banned, I thought I must be onto something, as things that are banned are usually good!”
Following this initial success, he decided to put off going to university and committed himself to getting his game published. “I started working in a local computer shop and it was around this time I saw Amiga Format running a competition about a new language on the Amiga called Blitz Basic 2. The competition was to make a game using it, so I thought this was the ideal opportunity to get my game noticed. I picked worms as the new protagonists and started work on a complete rewrite under the name Total Wormage.”
Davidson had to put a lot of work into porting his game to the new language as well as designing the new worm characters. “The next few months were spent working round the clock on it, staying up all night drawing worms and programming, then getting customers in the shop playtesting it. After entering it into the competition I heard nothing until I saw the results in the magazine. Total Wormage wasn’t mentioned at all. I was gutted. The winner was a clone of an old Atari game called Circus.”
Although he was disappointed not to win, Davidson didn’t give up just yet. “It was then I had the idea of going to an upcoming trade show in London and showing the game to people myself. I put a hastily printed sign up on the door of the shop, closed it for the day, and got the train to London. The game was about 80% done at this point. Team17 was the company I had in mind to show it to because I saw the game as an Amiga game through and through. So, I walked up to their stand with a couple of floppy disks in hand and asked if they still looked at games.”
Team17 co-founder Martyn Brown was manning its stall that day and agreed to look at Davidson's game. “I started loading it up on one of their Amigas. As it was loading, I told them they wouldn’t like it, as it’s a bit weird! But Martyn did like it and asked if I wanted it published straight away. I was convinced this was a wind-up though, it was only the next week when I went to their offices that I believed they were serious.”
Davidson couldn’t believe what was happening and soon realised his childhood dreams might be becoming a reality. “It was all mind-blowing, I was on the way to achieving my dream of seeing my game on the shelf. There were worries as well; I was worried about losing control of it as there were still things left to add, but Team17 gave me complete freedom. I’d finish the Amiga version while they did the ports to other platforms.”
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Davidson suddenly found himself working for a major games company. “It was great to meet so many talented people in so many areas, from programmers to artists and musicians," he recalls. "They had a real passion for what they were doing, and that just fed my own passion. I remember showing them the game for the first time and seeing it being played on every screen in Team17’s HQ in Wakefield. That made my day, here was my little game being played by all these people who make games for a living and whose games I’d read about and played.”
For all the excitement, Davidson still needed to get his head down and finish what was now known as Worms. “The Amiga version was nearly done, but we took a year porting it to other platforms while I finished it up. Being at Team17 meant other artists and musicians could get involved, we added new background graphics and music which I couldn’t have done myself. I still wanted to keep my friends involved in the game’s development, as they’d been playing it since the beginning. I valued their opinions as well as Team17’s, who were new to it. I got into a bit of trouble during this time for adding things to the Amiga version while the ports were being done. Things such as the exploding sheep, banana bomb and custom levels went in quite late – but I simply had to have them in the game.”
By 1995, Worms was ready to be released and went on to be a huge hit for Davidson and Team17. “I hoped it would do well but had no idea it would be as big as it was," he explains. “To me, it was still the little game I made for me and my mates to play instead of doing schoolwork. Seeing it on the shelf in the shops for the first time, and later going to the top of the charts, was an amazing feeling. I’d achieved my dream.”
In 1996, a Worms expansion pack was released, which added a single-player campaign and custom levels. But Davidson wasn’t finished perfecting his debut game. The following year, he revisited Worms to develop the definitive Amiga version called The Directors Cut.
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“Giving the Amiga the best version of Worms was very important to me, as without the Amiga, I wouldn’t have done any of this. The Director’s Cut started as a straight AGA upgrade to make it look as good as it could, but it took on a life of its own with new weapons and gameplay changes. It turned into a real labour of love, and I was over the moon with how well-received things like Super Sheep, the Holy Hand Grenade, and the Concrete Donkey were.”
How does Davidson feel about his rollercoaster ride with Worms nearly 30 years after its release? “It was the most amazing of times,” he smiles. “Making the game was as enjoyable as playing it, even if, looking back, I don’t see how I managed it! I just sort of got into this zone where I lived and breathed the game and seeing the enjoyment my friends had playing it just drove me to want to do more with it. I never thought I’d be sitting here talking about it nearly 30 years later. To anyone who’s reading and has an idea for a game, go for it. You never know where it might lead.”
Comments 16
I still draw Worms characters (my own style) from time to time. Loved this game. Not so much the later games, the original is where it's at for me.
I had worms on the pc, although I owned an amega at the time. I spent quite a few hours with the inbuilt sound editor, which allowed you to sample audio and assign them to an audio pack, which you could then use in the game. We had "gangsters" recorded from a variety of tapes of good fellas etc, with a phono to 3.5m cable straight into a creative labs sound card. Every time I watch those films I still recognise the sample we used for that audio set, from what must be about 30 years ago ish. Very sad, but when your young you have time on your hands! Shame the internet wasn't a thing back then as sharing these samples would have been pretty cool
I had a lot of fun playing this game with my brother. I can’t remember what levels we used to play, but I think we found certain swear words generated very good levels.
Even the name of the game was fun, as my puerile response to being asked if I wanted to play was to ask if he had worms and that he should get that looked at. 😂
The Ossett legends. Yeah be careful if you say Wakefield. We get very parochial in Yorkshire. Folk in Ossett will quickly correct you (and rightly so 😉).
Worms was one of the first games I had on my ps1. Myself and pals played it to absolute death. Another friend had it on his Amiga too. I got worms 2 on release for my pc and loved it. We even ran it on our high school network less than 10 miles away from Team17 hq. 😂 Loved the series. And own a classic T17 logo t-shirt that hangs proudly in my wardrobe next to a Pysgnosis one.
Cant even begin to count the number of hours we spent playing worms armageddon and world party on Dreamcast. Best party game of all time.
Brilliant piece. Spent whole days playing Worms, back when I had whole days to spare. Amiga really was a turning point, such an explosion of creativity with that computer.
Worms 2 was my introduction to the series. It was so polished and perfect for the time, it felt like one of those games which couldn't possibly have been any better than it was. Eventually I realised that it was so good because it was building on such a strong foundation with worms 1, but man oh man the art style of Worms 1 is hideous if you're coming into it from Worms 2!
Such a guilty pleasure I came across back in the day. The same reason I was playing this is what he was doing to create it lol.
@Nahhhtendo Funny you say that. I had no idea about the Worms series until randomly buying Worms Armageddon (and eventually WWP) on Dreamcast. Me and my buddies instantly got hooked and played it all the time!
Great article and a dream come true for the developer. I wonder if Davidson was involved with sequels on the PC such as Worms World Party?
We are Worms, we're the best, and we've come to win the war.
We'll stand, we'll never run; stay until it's done.
Though our friends may fall and our world be blown apart,
We'll strike with all our might, we'll fight for what is right,
Till the end.
If this game didn't exist, and someone pitched it to me, I'd probably say come up with a better idea. Which just goes to show you how important gameplay is.
Good times, I remember me and my classmates spending time on Worms more then school work and recess, before of course the 'evil' teachers banned the game completely.
Wow! This article has reminded me of my Amiga days all over again. I was having the best time of my life back then, and this was one of the games me and my mates put so many hours into. This was a great read, finding out how this game was born and developed, I had no idea.
i played gorillas on IBM with my step dad as a small child, and when I rented Worms in psx in grade school, we were amazed! We played for hours, turning off the time limits and just going for it with epic battles that lasted all afternoon. great memories!
I also enjoyed Armageddon when it came out, but OG worms will always be my favorite.
Worms collection on Switch, when? ✌️
I created my own artillery game on the Atari ST at this time, after playing Gorillas in QBASIC on a PC. My game was called Balance of Power and it was my first game. It was OK, nowhere near as creative as Worms. My maths teacher couldn't figure out why I wanted to know such advanced formulas.
I think the version of Worms I played most was on either the PlayStation or Dreamcast. Brilliant.
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