Worms

Worms for Game Boy brings the 1995 turn-based artillery strategy game to Nintendo’s monochrome handheld. Published in Europe by Ocean Software and developed for the Game Boy by East Point Software, it adapts Team17’s original creation into a compact battle of armed cartoon worms. Players command a team against computer-controlled or human opponents, taking turns to be the last side with a worm still alive. It is the first entry in the long-running Worms series, built around careful positioning, unpredictable explosions, and a deliberately comic approach to tactical combat.

A match takes place on a side-view battlefield of destructible ground. Teams are deployed across a generated landscape, and each worm begins with a health total that is reduced by blasts, falls, and other hazards. On a turn, the active worm can walk, jump, select an item, aim, and make its move before the timer expires. A misplaced leap can bring fall damage, while water at the bottom of the field and the edges of the level are immediate dangers. The central objective is simple: eliminate every opposing worm while preserving enough of your own team to win the round.

The Game Boy controls make aiming and power management central to every attack. The Control Pad adjusts a bazooka’s angle, while holding and releasing the A Button sets its firing power; gravity influences the shot’s arc. Grenades bounce and roll before detonating, creating opportunities to reach enemies behind cover or on slopes. The handheld version also includes direct-fire weapons such as the shotgun and Uzi, plus tools and attacks including the Fire Punch, Dynamite, Air Strike, Teleport, and Kamikaze. Weapon crates can add more options during a battle, including destructive special weapons such as the Banana Bomb, Minigun, and explosive sheep.

Terrain is not merely scenery in Worms Game Boy. Blasts gouge holes in the landscape, alter lines of fire, and can leave a worm stranded on a narrow ledge or exposed in an open crater. That changing battlefield rewards planning beyond a single shot: a player can use a weapon to push an opponent toward water, deny a safe route, or open a route toward a difficult target. The ability to set weapon quantities and match rules lets players shape the balance of a game, including the available turn time, round time, and number of rounds required for victory. The game supports one to four local players, as well as computer-controlled teams.

Although its idea came from the earlier artillery-game tradition, Worms distinguished itself through its animated worm soldiers, oversized arsenal, and the consequences of a fully deformable 2D battlefield. Andy Davidson developed the original concept under the name Total Wormage before Team17 helped bring it to release. For the project’s broad 1995 rollout, East Point Software created the Mega Drive, Super NES, and Game Boy versions, while other teams handled the remaining formats. Team17 has described those versions as separate developments made in parallel rather than straightforward ports of the unfinished Amiga code.

Worms on Game Boy is therefore a handheld interpretation of the original formula rather than a later sequel or remake. It preserves the series’ defining rhythm of short movement phases, tense aiming decisions, terrain destruction, and sudden reversals when a projectile lands in the wrong place. Its mix of single-player computer opposition and local multiplayer makes every round a contest of judgment as much as firepower, while the randomly assembled battlefields help keep the familiar worms-and-weapons premise from playing out exactly the same way twice. The game established the foundation for a franchise that would continue across many subsequent systems and generations.