Worms Armageddon

Worms Armageddon for Nintendo 64 brings Team17’s cartoon artillery strategy series to Nintendo’s 64-bit console. Released in Europe in late 1999 and in North America on March 30, 2000, this version was developed and published by Infogrames under licence from Team17. It is a turn-based battle game in which squads of tiny, talkative worms face one another across colourful two-dimensional landscapes, combining careful aim, terrain awareness and playful slapstick destruction.

A match is fought in turns. The active player selects one worm, moves it around the level, chooses a weapon or utility, and acts before the turn clock expires. Success depends on judging angle and power for projectile weapons while accounting for the wind, the contours of the ground and the position of every team. Damage reduces a worm’s health, but a well-placed blast can also send an opponent into the water surrounding the stage for an immediate knockout. Since explosions permanently reshape the terrain, every shot can create a route, remove cover or open a dangerous drop.

The arsenal gives the straightforward artillery foundation its personality. Alongside bazookas, grenades and shotguns are deliberately absurd tools and attacks, including explosive sheep, banana bombs and air-delivered strikes. Utilities such as the Ninja Rope, parachute, teleport and girder help worms reach otherwise awkward ledges or escape trouble. Weapon crates and other pickups can change the balance of a battle, while the special weapon chosen for a team adds another strategic decision. The result rewards a mix of direct attacks, movement planning and opportunistic use of the landscape.

Worms Armageddon on N64 offers solo and group play. Its single-player material includes a mission campaign, Deathmatch battles against computer-controlled teams, and training activities that teach particular tactics and weapons. Multiplayer supports one to four local players, making it suited to taking turns with a single controller setup as well as filling the Nintendo 64’s controller ports. Players can create and name worm teams, then choose the worms, rules, weapon availability and level conditions that shape each contest. The Nintendo 64 release does not include the online WormNET mode associated with the PC game.

The presentation keeps the conflict knowingly lighthearted: expressive worms react with comic voices, while the weapons and hazards turn each round into an unpredictable chain of explosions. Rather than a campaign driven by a single hero or a fixed story, its focus is on self-contained tactical encounters and the memorable situations created by players’ choices. A defensive worm can hide behind a ridge, a risky rope swing can reach a powerful crate, and an inaccurate shot may alter the battlefield more than the target’s health.

Worms Armageddon followed Worms 2 and began life as an intended expansion before becoming a standalone entry in the long-running Worms series. The Nintendo 64 edition is therefore a console-specific adaptation of a game first developed by Team17, with Infogrames responsible for this conversion and its release. Its combination of destructible stages, configurable rules, turn-based aiming and local multiplayer made it a distinctive strategy game in the N64 library, retaining the series’ central idea that a small team, a limited turn and a wildly varied toolkit can produce both calculated plans and comic disasters.