How computer game Worms went from classroom to classic

Andy Davidson was 22 when the game he programmed, partly in his last years at Bournemouth School, first hit the shelves.

Thirty-one years later, the various incarnations of Worms have sold enough copies that everyone in the UK could have one.

Davidson said: "Across all formats and all versions of the game it's up to 70 million now. I just can't get my head around it."

Worms is a turn-based artillery game where players control a team of invertebrates who use a variety of creative ways to destroy their opponents.

Options included dynamite, homing missile, or exploding sheep.

Davidson said: "I chose worms because they hadn't been in a game before.

"I thought I could get a lot of character into the animations because they're quite simple creatures."

In fact, the game itself had very simple beginnings.

Bored during his A-levels, Davidson started programming an early incarnation of the game into his scientific calculator.

"I found A-levels really hard, especially maths," he said.

"So I challenged my friend to make a game on a calculator. It was a little Casio graph-plotting calculator.

"And if you really pushed it hard you could get it to make a game. And so I made this little tank game. It snowballed from there."

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Davidson's art teacher at the time was John Pakeman.

Pakeman was intrigued by what computers like Davidson's Amiga could do when it came to art.

"Once I saw what it was capable of I thought perhaps I better get one of these," he said.

"There was so much interest from other sixth formers in the school that it was almost inevitable a club would come together."

It was partly in Pakeman's Amiga club that the game, which was originally called Total Wormage, started to take shape.

"The game got banned from school," said Davidson.

"Everyone was crowding around the corner in the art room. That's when I thought I might be onto something."

Even though he was there at the time, Pakeman was not sure of the potential impact of the game.

"I wasn't sure if Andy created something, whether he could find a company that would take it on," said Pakeman.

"I gather that's exactly what happened, he did find one, eventually.

"I have never played the game. I think I've screenshots of it and I have friends who definitely have played the game.

"You mention Worms and they start beaming. My research tells me it's quite addictive."

Davidson signed with the West Yorkshire based company Team 17 to release Worms in November 1995.

Its legacy is impressive - it was one of six British games celebrated on a special series of stamps in January 2020.

"When worms was on a stamp that's when it really hit home for my mum - she was telling everybody it's been on a Royal Mail stamp."

And Davidson's teenage voice still lives on in many people's mobile phones.

"I did the voices of all the angry worms," he said.

"I think 'Incoming' is the most famous one because people use it for text messages on their phones.

"It's bonkers. In my head it's still the little game I made for me and my friends."

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