Worms?

Worms? is a 1983 computer game written by David Maynard for Electronic Arts, released for the Atari 800 and Commodore 64. It was one of the original five games that launched the company. More a software toy than a game, Worms? is an interactive version of Paterson's Worms.

The game is abstract, like Conway's Game of Life, but the player's ostensible goal is to optimally program one or more "worms" (each a sort of cellular automaton) to grow and survive as long as possible. The game area is divided up into hexagonal cells, and the worms are essentially programmed to move in a particular direction for each combination of filled-in and empty frame segments in their immediate vicinity. Over the course of a game, the player needs to give his/her worm less and less input, and more and more moves by their worm result in the encountering of familiar situation for which the worm has already been 'trained'. As the worms move, they generate aleatoric music.

Reception

Orson Scott Card in Compute! in 1983 gave Worms? and two other EA games, M.U.L.E. and Archon: The Light and the Dark, complimentary reviews, writing that "they are original; they do what they set out to do very, very well; they allow the player to take part in the creativity; they do things that only computers can do".Compute!'s Gazette's reviewer called Worms? for the Commodore 64 "one of the most fascinating games I've played in a long time. It's so different from anything else that it quickly captivated me. Worms? tournaments become popular among the staff of Compute! ... [It] is as much fun to watch as it is to play". He added that part of its appeal was that "The game is hard to master. It's easy to play, but seems almost impossible to play well time after time".Compute! listed the game in May 1988 as one of "Our Favorite Games", writing that four years after its introduction "Worms? is still in a class by itself", requiring "a sense of strategy as well as proficiency at joystick maneuvers".

Worms, Germany

Worms (German: [vɔʁms]) is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, situated on the Upper Rhine about 60 kilometres (40 mi) south-southwest of Frankfurt-am-Main. It had some 80,000 inhabitants as of 2013.

A pre-Roman foundation, Worms was the capital of the kingdom of the Burgundians in the early 5th century and hence the scene of the medieval legends referring to this period, notably the first part of the Nibelungenlied. Worms has been a Roman Catholic bishopric since at least 614, and was an important palatinate of Charlemagne. Worms Cathedral is one of the Imperial Cathedrals and among the finest examples of Romanesque architecture in Germany. Worms prospered in the High Middle Ages as an Imperial Free City. Among more than a hundred Imperial Diets held at Worms, the Diet of 1521 (commonly known as the Diet of Worms) ended with the Edict of Worms in which Martin Luther was declared a heretic. Today, the city is an industrial centre and is famed as the origin of Liebfraumilch wine. Other industries include chemicals and metal goods.

Worm (Kamen Rider)

Worms (ワーム, Wāmu) are the villains in the Japanese tokusatsu series Kamen Rider Kabuto. They are an alien life form that came from a meteor destroying the city district of Shibuya seven years prior to the series' timeline. However, the Worms known as Natives existed prior to the coming of the Shibuya Meteorite, through another meteorite that came 35 years ago. In the movie, a third meteor nearly hit the Earth, though thanks to Kabuto it was adverted and history was altered. This implies that meteors containing Worms are insolated and there are others.

The Worms were designed by Yasushi Nirasawa (韮沢 靖, Nirasawa Yasushi), who also designed the Undead for Kamen Rider Blade, the Horrors in GARO and later created the Imagin for Kamen Rider Den-O. These designs were later detailed in Worm Works: GITAI (ワームワークスGITAI, Wāmu Wākusu GITAI).

Shibuya Meteorite

A mysterious meteorite that crashed into Shibuya seven years ago. This meteorite brought along the extraterrestrial creatures known as Worms. During episode 41, Riku Kagami explains that another meteorite carrying the Natives had arrived on Earth thirty-five years before this, explaining why fragments of the meteorite similar to those of the Shibuya Meteorite existed so long ago. The Natives that arrived on Earth worked with humans to create the Masked Rider System in order to fend off the threat of other Worms that would arrive later. In the movie, which acts as a prequel to the series, it is revealed this meteor was actually far larger and would've vaporized Earth's oceans and released many more Worms until Hyper Kabuto went back in time with the meteor and caused it to slam into the Shibuya meteor, resulting in only a small fragment of it landing in Shibuya.