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Every single one of these @WormsTeam17 The Director& #39;s Cut screenshots is unique in that it comes from a build of the game nobody has played in almost 24 years.
1. The menu. Pretty much identical to the final menu screen, but with that ruddy great big "AMIGA FORMAT PREVIEW VERSION" text over the logo. This validates my hypothesis about what this build was for - I do so love it when I& #39;m right!
2. One of the options pages. Most of these pages are identical to the final build, except this one - it has CD audio options which were cut from the final game!
3. The team creation screen. Big difference here is that it seems you can pick a specific speechbank for your team - something that, again, was cut from the final game (I& #39;ll be doing some testing with this eventually).
4. An in-game screenshot. The HUD is taller than the final game (more black space above the text). Note the worm on the Ninja Rope. In previous 1st-gen @WormsTeam17 games, worms couldn& #39;t flip on the rope. In WormsDC they can, but the 360-degree sprites aren& #39;t in this build.
There are a handful of other delightful oddities. The Princeless Ming Vase shrapnel doesn& #39;t have its own sprite yet, so they just used the Cluster Bomb / Grenade Launcher shrapnel instead.
The Ninja Rope physics are a lot closer to the original Worms and feel slower/heavier. Roping is a LOT harder in this build. The retail build had a very buggy rope, no doubt because Andy tried to make it less cumbersome to use.
The water graphics are simpler/lower quality. The gloop in particular looks like it was pulled from the original Amiga @WormsTeam17 game... which is interesting, because gloop and fire were cut from the OG Amiga version.
There& #39;s no option to save settings, but by default the game gives players 1 of every one of the new weapons, no doubt so the reviewer at Amiga Format could try them out.
NONE of the cheat codes work. The MUSIC cheat, used to disable the menu music, doesn& #39;t work. But settings for secret and super weapons can be altered anyway, again probably so the reviewer could experiment with them.
(I tested the JESUS cheat Andy told me about a couple of years ago, by the way - naming a worm JESUS allows it to walk on water. Doesn& #39;t work in this build.)
New weapons aside, this feels VERY similar to the original Worms. Amiga Format& #39;s final review gave it a 90%, or 45% for readers who owned the original @WormsTeam17. Given how much fine-tuning had yet to be done before the game& #39;s 1.0 build in April & #39;97, that& #39;s a fair assessment.
Historically, this build is fascinating to me. So much added compared to the original Amiga version, and yet so much left to be done. Playing this was like looking at a photo of a close friend from before you knew them. What an experience.
I took a handful of screenshots, but those were the best ones. I took them using WinUAE on a Windows PC - getting this to run involved changing some values in memory on the copy-protection screen, which is a lot harder for me to do on my actual A1200.
This is a wonderful slice of #Amiga history, though - a look at an earlier build of @Team17Ltd& #39;s final game for the platform, coded by someone who loved the Amiga and all it represented.
I imagine I& #39;ll do a proper write-up about it eventually.
I imagine I& #39;ll do a proper write-up about it eventually.
