Retro Gaming Tougher Than Current Day Gaming?

Do you remember those days? The days when you couldn't just save your progress and come back to your game a few days later? The days when it mattered how many lives you lost and how accurate your gaming had to be to beat just one title?

Those were the best days of my life!

It wasn't the summer of 69 though, more early 90's when NES and Mega Drive were all the rage. I enjoyed spending endless hours of fun on those consoles and wouldn't change a minute of it. I even revisit my old games on occasion even though modern gaming takes up the majority of my time.

So being a veteran gamer I thought the old games of my childhood should be no problem to complete right? How wrong I was!

I died. A lot.

Worms

Late 1995 or early 1996 I was over a friend's house watching him play a video game on the Sega Mega Drive. My first thought was what kind of war game was he playing today as he loved his strategy games. I saw him controlling one of the soldiers across the landscape and selecting a bazooka. Ok nothing new here I thought until I realised the soldiers occupying the screen were actually worms!

What!? Worms? With weapons? Wait is that dynamite they're using? A Cluster Bomb? Banana Bomb?

Team 17 had created a classic.

A short while later I persuaded my parents to buy it for me and it became an instant favourite.

It didn't take long to get used to and I spent many hours blasting away at enemy worms. Shotgun, fire punch, dragon punch, teleport and kamikaze were just a few of the options available although being the first game in the series the selection wasn't huge but enough. 

You could name your own worms too. As I was huge into Xena at the time I named my team after the show. Of course I had Xena, Gabrielle, Joxer and Callisto. Sometimes Ares too haha. I often named them after my friends and myself and would always try to keep 'Mat' alive and be the best in the team! The imagination of a child eh?
The only unfortunate thing was that you couldn't save your data so I ended up manually inputting the names each new play session.

The game featured it's own teams and I always remember disliking Old School and having a rivalry with them. 

I remember my friend announcing she had worms once. She meant the game but many laughs were had at her expense.

Worms was that popular that a sequel would be released for the PC. I loved the short animation sequences they would have at the beginning of the game. The sequel would offer more weapons such as Super Sheep and the Old Woman. You could also make your own maps and select what theme to use for the landscape. Also you could now edit your teams and give them unique accents and head gear.

Now everyone say cheese!

One of my favourite things to do on Worms is to teleport all the worms on top of each other and place a dynamite at the bottom. Boom! Watch those worms fly!

The Holy Hand grenade was awesome too and Concrete Donkey. You could change the settings to these weapons and if you increased the range and power of the minigun you could wipe out entire maps in a small number of moves.

Anyone ever play a level and attempt to destroy it all without killing the other worms first?

Speaking of killing worms...when they lost all their health they would blow themselves up and become gravestones.

This game is really fun to play online or with friends, however, I hate bad losers. A random added me on PSN after I defeated them at a game of Worms. They challenged me to another and I killed 3 of their 4 worms in two shots. So what did they do? End the game...

If you can't stand the worm then stay out of the garden! 

That is the saying right?

I don't like losing but I will always play a game to the end. I've won with just one worm before so just try it. Maybe I'll list their PSN ID to shame them mwahahaha!

Ah man now I got to go play this great game! The only problem with writing this blog is that it makes me want to play and watch all the old childhood favourites when I really need to crack on with Castlevania 2!

Ha! Something I just remembered from my childhood. I used to draw scenarios of worms battling each other when I was bored in school or at home. Personally I think they were pretty good (actually pretty bad) and if I find any I will upload them.

18 years later and I'm still playing this great game with friends! Wait? 18 years!?!? Man that is crazy as! Take me back to my childhood! 

However old this body gets my inner child will always be here. 

Release the inner worm!

My Gaming History

I can't remember how old I was when I experienced my first video game but I do remember being given my first console, the Commodore 64. It was Christmas day, I was given a carrier bag full of cassettes which I thought were music at the time but my dad explained that they were games. I recognised ones like Garfield and Ghostbusters as I watched them on TV. When it came to setting up the console and loading the games I had no idea whatsoever so it was up to my dad to do it for me.