Worms

Forget Skirmish, the worms clone by the Kindred, why not just play the original thing instead! Aftre the astounding success of this classic game, Team 17 the authors of worms did conversions to many different platforms, including the megadrive and gameboy as well as the original PC and Amiga versions. As for your Acorn, Worms can be played very easily either on or off the desktop using the gameboy emulators which are available, or on the megadrive via MESS. Note, I've been using Genecyst to play megadrive worms (I'd be mad not to) but it seems to work fine under MESS also.

Worms is very similar to the old tank games where you have to keep adjusting the angle and force of projection of the shells to try and destroy your enemy, as you'll see the game has come a long way since then. You control a team of commando worms whose job it is to destroy an enemy team of worms controlled by the computer. The battle takes place in a two dimensional world viewed from the side on (in a similar style to lemmings) on islands protruding out of the sea. You take it in turns to control a single worm and make him move left and right and jump up around the varying landscape in order to get in the best position to hurt your enemies. Once in position you can then select from a whole range of weaponry with which to damage your victims. With the majority of weapons, you then have to direct the weapon towards your victim, changing the angle by pressing the up and down cursors to move an onscreen cursor. You can then hold down a fire button while the power meter at the bottom of the screen increases (reminiscent of those old golf simulations), and release it when you feel it's about right for a direct hit. The projectile then soars overhead and hopefully lands near the intended victim doing them much damage. You have to be very careful about where you aim though, since a simple miscalculation can result in the weapon discharging into your own team of worms causing massive damage to your own team. You continue in this manner taking it in turns to hurt each other until one team or another is completely destroyed. There is a time limit on each worms turn to prevent that annoying player who takes hours to decide what to do - this is a bit of a hassle when you're just learning to play but become invaluable later on to keep the gameplay fast and furious.

Every worm starts with a life force of 100, and the diminishes depending on the destruction done to it. When the worm's lifeforce reaches zero, the unfortunate worm pulls out a detonator and blows itself up leaving a gravestone behind on the landscape to remind you of the casualties of war. This final act of suicide will also damage any worms in the immediate vicinity, and it is not unknown for the death of a single worm in a packed area to start a chain reaction killing whole groups of worms.

You can choose from an entire arsenal of deadly weapons; shotgun, uzi, grenade, bazooka, homing missile, dynamite, cluster bomb, fire ball, dragon punch, and air strike to do your damage. The shotgun and uzi are good for close range attacks, though you have to be careful not to get too close since ricochet's are not unknown and can harm the attacker. Bazookas are the default weapon which can really damage your victim if they land on target, detonating on impact, but more often than not can go wildly astray missing completely. If you're not sure of your aim then you can choose a homing missile whereby you can select the victim by pointing at them and the missile is almost guarenteed to hit them right between the eyes. Dynamite is devastatingly powerful and can blow and entire screen of worms into the air, you can drop the dynamite next to your enemy and then run away to cover before seeing the worms flying all over the screen.

Grenades are quite high powered devices, similar in devastation to the bazooka except that they are on a timer and can roll down hillsides after they hit the ground. My weapon of choice would have to be the cluster bomb, for massive concentrated devastation, when the timer runs out, there is an initial explosion which blows out 4 more successive bombs that all explode on impact. If set off in an enclosed space, a well targetted shot can kill a worm outright. Fire balls are a little naff, but allow you to throw a fire punch out horizontally hitting your victim. The dragon punch is quite useful in that you can punch the enemy into the air in the desired direction, you can even punch them off the playing area which kills the worm. The best device by far is the air strike, when you call in the fighters they drop a row of 5 bombs in the area you selected, accurate destruction, and the best way to remodel a landscape. These weapons are often in short supply and you get a limited number, except for the grenade and bazooka which you can chuck out at infinitum.

More advanced weaponry becomes available as you play, since weapon drops are made at random intervals, and inevitably far away from where your own worms are playing. This includes the banana bomb, and the sheep bomb (both of which have to be seen to be believed) or perhaps a first aid kit instead. Other facilities are available instead of a direct assault to try and improve your stake in the game. Rather than choosing some weaponry you can choose to teleport to another location on the playing area, hopefully away from your enemies, or maybe closer to that much needed first aid kit. The alternative for a critically wounded worm is to take the honourable route out of existence, the kamikaze. This involves trying the bandanna to your forehead before charging left or right through the ground itself injuring any worms that get in the way, and finally exploding doing yet more damage. Some versions of Worms (DOS for example) have extra features such as being able to place girders around the landscape, dig holes in the ground, but this varies from version to version and seems to be missing from the gameboy and megadrive versions.

The game is great fun to play, particularly in two player mode, and teams can be renamed so that you can play one group off against another. This is used to great effect on some systems where you can fight the Bee Gees, The Beetles, The A Team, you get the picture, and believe it or not it does make it even more fun to play knowing you've just detonated Murdoch (watch the A Team). There is even the facility to play with 4 teams of worms, 2 being computer controlled so that you can gang up on opposition teams. I seriously recommend you give this game a try since even the gameboy version is very playable, then you can decide if you want to get skirmish when it comes out.

A word of warning, when playing the megadrive version of the game, initially the message, "This cartridge is designed exclusively for use on a PAL system", came up and the game wouldn't run. This is because the ROM image I had was for the European version of the game and for some reason the auto-detect code didn't work properly. In MESS, press Tab and alter the settings to European mode.