Honourable Mention 3: Worms: The Director's Cut

Honourable Mention 3
Worms: The Director's Cut

Whether it was due to the supposed antipathy between Amiga Power and Team17 or not, Jonathan Davies's 60% review of Worms in 1996 was certainly an anomaly in the gaming press. The game received near-universal acclaim, spawned a franchise that continues to this day, and proved to be one of the last big smash hits of the Amiga generation. Unsurprising that it was not included in the final top 100, but in hindsight it's unforgivable not to include it now. A year later, Worms: The Director's Cut was released, which added new features and improved the game engine, and was exclusive to the AGA range of Amigas, so this is the version which I include here.

It seems unlikely that someone reading this list has never played any of the many incarnations of the Worms franchise, as the series has trundled on for many years, but it's an artillery game where you control a team of worms who must defeat one or more other teams of worms using a wide variety of weapons. It started life on the Amiga in its twilight years, and this, the Director's Cut, was intended to be the ultimate edition of the original entry, before games such as Worms Armageddon arguably eclipsed it. The differences from the regular version include slightly nicer graphics, new special weapons and the ability to jump backwards in addition to forwards.

I had Worms on the PC and absolutely adored it, and the Reinforcements add-on pack (what would now be called DLC) made it even better. It's true, though, that the reason I loved it was because I had several others to play with, and the local multiplayer aspect of it has to be taken into account. Also, despite this Director's Cut being the definitive Amiga version, in my mind it's still outshone by Worms with Reinforcements (later released as Worms United) on the PC, as that includes more additions that I felt improved the gameplay a lot. I should also point out that this requires an AGA machine, but a stock Amiga 1200 should work fine.

Recommended TOSEC disk(s):
Worms - The Director's Cut v1.0 (1997-03-04)(Team 17)(AGA)(Disk 1 of 3)
Worms - The Director's Cut v1.0 (1997-03-04)(Team 17)(AGA)(Disk 2 of 3)
Worms - The Director's Cut v1.0 (1997-03-04)(Team 17)(AGA)(Disk 3 of 3)