Gameboy

Worms for Gameboy sounds like a totally stupid idea, you may think. Well, the idea isn't stupid, but the conversion from PC to Gameboy could have been done better. There are many things to to be irritated about, but I'll explain those more clearly later. Now the good parts. If you're a total Worms freak (like me :) you may want to be able to play Worms when you're not at home, and then Worms GB is better than nothing. When you first try it you may be a bit dissapointed and not used to the control system, but after some playing you get the hold of it.

Team 17 actually got four (4) different terrains converted from Worms PC: Mars, Desert, Snow and Forest. There are two different levels of each terrain making it eight in total (a bit less than 4 billion in Worms PC but, who cares? :). Along with the ability to play with 4 teams of 4 worms in each and so fourth. Now, I'd just want to say that you really should use the Gameboy pocket or even better the Gameboy Color when playing Worms, not the ordinary Gameboy, as the other have much better contrast and it's almost impossible to see the little worms on the original.


Overall rating out of five worms:


Why not five worms?
I'm sorry to say this but there are lots of things which Team 17 and EastPoint Software( The guys who converted it, I guess) could have done better, and added. I could make a whole list, but I'll try just to name the most important. First of all, it's the battery backup. Or, the absence of the Battery backup. There is no. A big part of the fun with Worms is to create teams and to save how good the teams are, and in GB Worms there even is a wormlist, a list where you can see the ranking of every worm available. All this you would like to have saved is lost when you turn off the game. This is especially bad considering how easy it is to name your team and worms with the up and down buttons on the Gameboy. Naming all the 8 teams available can take hours.

The second thing has to do with the landscapes, as said before there are four types available but very often you get to play on either Mars or Desert. It's seldom you play on the Snow or Forest, which I think are the funniest. And besides these two irritating details, there's always why some weapons like ninjarope and blowtorch has been taken out of the game, that the CPU teams surrender unt so weiter...

Why is it like this? I haven't got a clue actually. Well, maybe Team17 wanted it to be realesed fast so they had no time for including it, or it couldn't fit on the small space available on a GB gamecartridge. Oh well, afterall it IS a Worms game and it is from Team17 and the good sides are more than the bad. And let's hope better if Team 17 do Worms 2 or something for the Gameboy Color. To say something about how Worms GB is selling, it's been on second place in the Swedish GB top 10, and it actually got rated 91% in NMS, with the entusiastic comment: "Pure class and an essential purchase"...


Screenshots
Then what does the game look like? A bunch of ol' grey and white junk? Impossible to see the small little worms? No no, I'll show you:





< The worm I've used here is not from any screenshot if you thought so, it's just my try of painting it in a greyscale on the PC. The gameboy has four colors, you can say it's white, lightgrey, darkgrey and black. Three of these are used on the worms in the way I've painted it.