Smithereens / Stonesling - Videopac 20. Actually smithereens is the only video game my dad ever played and it is his favourite still!

The PAL version didn't have the scoring on top - it was just a single game where you win by knocking down the other player's castle first. It did feature the voices when you connected the Voice module. Here I've created a little animation of the PAL gameplay:

Xbox 360: Lactobacillus P | Wii: 8151 3435 8469 3138
Armchair arcade Editor | Pixellator | www.markvergeer.nl

Nice one, Matt. Smithereens is definitely one of my favorite Odyssey2 games. The voice and synthesized sound effects truly enhance the already solid real-time artillery-style gameplay. The way you use the controls (which is not apparent on an emulator) also help to make the game effective, with sort of a flick of the stick.

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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director | Armchair Arcade, Inc.

Imdeed, this game was simply MADE for the weird G7000/G7400/Odyssey2 controllers. It required precise timing.

Xbox 360: Lactobacillus P | Wii: 8151 3435 8469 3138
Armchair arcade Editor | Pixellator | www.markvergeer.nl

hours wasted on scorched earth. napalm was classic. and rollers... the dirt diggers..

oh man

-- Stu --

The usual kudos. Everything seems to be in place now. Even the background music seemed to work well this time, being neither too loud or too distracting.

How did you get video of the Dreamcast version of Worms? Just curious. For the record, I didn't know there was a Dreamcast version of Worms, otherwise I'd probably have bought it. I do have the PC version of "Worms Armageddon," but could never get it to work! Perhaps I'll give it another try now.

A couple of "artillery" games that I found fun, but were (probably) not worth mentioning in your video due to their obscure nature, was "Scortched Earth," a clear "Scortched Tanks" knockoff for the Amiga with greatly improved graphics (and gameplay?), and "Snowball Fight" for the Atari 8-bit.

"Scortched Tanks" was very slick and made the PC "Scortched Earth" look primitive, but was largely the same game beyond the graphical enhancements. I had a great deal of fun with it back in the day.

"Snowball Fight" on the Atari 8-bit was also a great deal of two-player (only) fun, and was a very innovative variant of the "artillery" genre. It was a simple, low-key game, though; I think it was a type-in game from "Analog" magazine. Still, I played it a lot. Your "kid" could pelt your opponent with quick, small snowballs, or he could take more time gathering up a massive snowball and blast his opponent. The arc and power of the shot was figured in (like any artillery game), along with the weight of the snowball, and there was randomly-changing wind that affected the trajectory of your shot. Even the snowflakes falling gathered on the ground and gradually changed the landscape! It was real-time, and thus had a bit in common with "Smithereens," except that you could move your "kid" around on the landscape. Heck, a game like this might be a good candidate for a modern update! Your father probably would have liked this game.

I did download a demo of one of the latest 3D versions of "Worms." It's still fun, even in 3D. I am not sure I would call it an improvement, but it wasn't an embarrassment either.

Overall, this was an excellent video, not only a great tribute to "Worms," but a great tribute as well to the whole artillery genre!

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We used to play Gorillas a lot in high school, because it used to be included with every copy of MS-DOS.

Somebody even made an iPhone version:

WORMS just came out for the iPhone too, I've heard.

Thanks for watching, guys. It's nice to know that folks are actually watching these and enjoying them.

I actually had a part in there about Scorched Tanks, but sadly had to remove it to stay under 10 minutes. The story is that the author had played Scorched Earth only once and didn't have access to it again. So, when he tried to clone it, he forgot some of the details and got them wrong--but the actual game was better for it! The main thing was that the battlefield was much larger than the screen, so it had to scroll around like in Worms.

Scorched Earth is a favorite of mine simply because it was one of the few games we could play in my high school's PC lab. It was a great way to connect to guys who didn't otherwise care for games; the appeal was just too hard to resist and we had some great multiplayer battles. Of course, then "Sango Fighter" (SF II clone) came along and that's all they wanted to play. Personally, I much preferred Scorched Earth! :) We also played Gorillas, but not much point once we had Scorched Earth.

You should do a "video response" about Snowfight! :P

I captured the Dreamcast footage with a TV capture card. The only two consoles I own are a PS1 and a DC, so I try to use them whenever I can. Unfortunately, my TV capture card software sucks the big one--it won't let me record lossless footage and the image is fuzzy no matter what I do. So the signal isn't that great to begin with, and having to compress it further doesn't help at all. I'm almost wondering if it'd be better just to use fraps or camstudio to record instead of wintv's built-in recorder.

There is a new version of wintv out that does have a lot more recording options, but sadly it isn't compatible with my HP. At least, it doesn't recognize the front A/V ports, and I just can't get it working. The card itself only has co-axial and s-video inputs; the front panel has component.