Worms Armageddon

Worms Armageddon for Dreamcast brings Team17’s 1999 turn-based artillery strategy game to Sega’s console. Published under the MicroProse label, this version of the third main Worms game pits small teams of heavily armed cartoon worms against one another on 2D battlefields suspended above lethal water. It follows the Windows original and shares its playful visual style, exaggerated voices, and a mixture of tactical aiming and slapstick destruction.

A match unfolds one turn at a time. Players choose a worm, move it across ledges and uneven ground, then select a weapon or tool before the timer expires. Walking and jumping are the basic ways to get around, while utilities such as the ninja rope, parachute, bungee, and teleport can open routes or rescue a worm from an awkward position. The terrain can be blasted apart, so every bazooka shot, grenade bounce, and collapse can alter both cover and movement options for the turns that follow.

The aim in a standard battle is to eliminate the opposing teams. Every worm has a health total, and a worm is removed when its health is exhausted or when an attack knocks it into the surrounding water. Success depends on judging angle, shot strength, wind, terrain, ricochets, and the limited time available for each move. The armoury mixes familiar firearms and explosives with deliberately absurd series staples, including explosive sheep, the Holy Hand Grenade, air strikes, and other special weapons. Weapon crates and health crates can change a round’s priorities, while configurable rules determine starting equipment, turn length, and sudden-death conditions.

Worms Armageddon includes solo content such as training exercises, mission-based play, and computer-controlled battles, but its Dreamcast identity is most clearly built around local competition. The console’s controller ports allow up to four people to take part around one screen, with human and computer teams combined as desired. Players can set team names and individual worm names, select voice sets and other team details, choose landscapes, and tailor match rules. This makes a short skirmish, a carefully restricted weapon set, or a longer multi-team contest feel meaningfully different without changing the core turn-based formula.

The Dreamcast port arrived in late 1999, after the initial PC release, as Worms Armageddon expanded to consoles including PlayStation, Nintendo 64, and Game Boy Color. It is important to distinguish this version from the PC game: the Dreamcast edition supports its own local multiplayer setup but lacks the PC release’s WormNET Internet play and has fewer customization options. Even so, it preserves the series’ central contrast between careful ballistic planning and unpredictable cartoon mishaps. As a standalone follow-up that began life as an intended Worms 2 expansion, Worms Armageddon remains a defining late-1990s entry in Team17’s long-running 2D Worms series.