Worms. Everyone thinks they’re horrible and slimey, and serve no purpose. However, it is worms that have created perhaps one of the most enjoyable turn based strategy games, and we could be seeing it very soon for the Xbox Live Arcade, perhaps as soon as January. After the jump, there is a whole host of news taken straight from the Team17 Speculation and Discussion forum (primarily this thread, and a small selection from this thread). However, to view it, you’ll need to sign up. Thankfully I saved you the trouble.

Firstly, the date of release is known by all those at Team17. A forum Moderator who works for Team17 named Spadge has all the details, and gives a huge insight into the process of certification and all other background news.

15th November: Until we get final certification (test processes) I can’t say - but I do know when it’s scheduled to have it’s “Wednesday”

The “HD” has been dropped from the title, so it’s just “Worms”. Note: This doesn’t mean any high-def content has been dropped.

The game is now known simply as Worms. Pretty unoriginal, but that’s not important. It seems MS plan their XBLA schedules well in advance, and know what is coming in the New Year already:

17th November: I can’t confirm anything right now - especially with regards to a date. The game hasn’t been approved for release yet, it’s still being tested/certified and that will take a little while longer.

Worms is being tested over in the States, by VMC who do a lot of the XBLA testing - online, XBox guideline stuff, all that.

MS line up their release Wednesday’s well in advance, since there’s lots of PR/Marketing activities & plans attached to each - they don’t just say “ok, it’s ready, let’s ship it”.

Chill, it shouldn’t be too much longer and there’s things like Gears Of War to keep people occupied in the meantime

So MS knew that the end of XBLA Wednesday for 2006 was going to be crap. Couldn’t they have waited until next year? Apparently not, so don’t get your hopes up for next week.

As we all know, the certification process for Marketplace content can be a long one, particularly for Arcade games. Yet we never knew quite how long it took until now, with Worms being in testing for four months:

22nd November: I can’t announce the date right now (I do know it) but the game is still in the various certification stages (final code testing right now, followed by a full localisation testing stage and then another one…) Once that’s all passed it’s free to go.

It’ll be soon here. I will know more about what and when I can say anything after this week since the US is on holiday right now (Thanksgiving week).

11th December: 360 XBLA has about 4 certification passes, pre-code complete, code-complete, localisation complete and ZBR (not sure what this is). We’re almost at the last, which should be the quickest. All this takes months. It’s been feature complete for a few months now and we’ve been bug-fixing along the way, not that there were many at all - mostly just what we have to do on 360 (controls, buttons, messages, looking after errors etc). The release is not far away now and we’re pretty excited about that. We should be able to talk more openly about it soon enough.

22nd December: The game is now in VERY FINAL stages (last localisation checks before we get certified). The whole process has taken 3-4 months, it’s like that for every title - it’s not about being lazy, it’s just how the system works. Any title utilising online play gets extensive checks.

We’re talking a matter of weeks until release and an official announcement will be made just after xmas.

(ZBR stands for Zero Bug Release. Clearly not a valuable stage in the certification when you see the amount of glitched Arcade games such as Contra.)

It really does take a fair while for the games to get through certification, and certainly explains why we waited so long for Street Fighter (still had bugs in that needed fixing). It certainly sounds as if a January release is on the cards. That official announcement he mentions? Well, that can only be the CES held in Las Vegas, which is due to start on the 8th of January, running until the 12th. There will be an official announcement there, where Microsoft might do what the did with Doom: release it during the event, surprising us all! Plus, the game is now on Partnernet, so it isn’t far away:

23rd December: The game is now on Partnernet, which is the system all other xbla/360 devs have access to. As far as I am aware, there is only 1 bug remaining (and its fairly obscure!) preventing it from being final. We do anticipate it being with you only a few wednesdays from now. An official announcement should be made at CES in the new year, with release hot on it’s heels.

Have a good xmas everyone.

He doesn’t know what’s about to hit him…

More good news then. If it were to be released during the event, that would make it Wednesday the 10th. If not, it could debut on the 17th or the 24th, or even the 31st. If it fails to come out on the 10th, I’m placing a sizeable bet on the 17th.

Price wise, don’t expect either 1200 MS Points or 400 MS Points. Spadge gives a rather obvious hint:

24th November: No, but I’d expect it to retail for the usual price (cough) which in comparison to some of the stuff on there, might make it very good value.

If that doesn’t scream 800 Points I’ll eat my hat over in the forums for you all to see. They would be stupid not to release it at that price point, especially when DLC comes into play.

Panic not though, there are reasonable explanations as to why there will be Premium DLC. And for those that hate paying for stuff, there will be free DLC too, just for you!

20th November: Firstly, XBLA titles are currently capped at 50mb. I think the content on the PSP version (low definition) was something like 700mb (all audio, voices and levels). All the art in the XBLA version is high definition for a start (the images are huge) and 4X the size of anything else - if you see the swollen size of things like Defender (a 16k arcade game was 30mb on XBLA!) then you must understand that it’s pretty impossible for us to pack everything into 50mb as we have to provide the base game and cater for 5-6 languages. That said, we will release a good mix of content later on, some will be free and some will be chargeable - but you won’t need it to continue playing the game. Note: On PS3, our Lemmings title is about 300-400mb (I can’t recall the exact figure) in size, since there is no cap on the download size - such is the size of the high-def artwork (even after compression).

The Supersheep. Hopefully we won’t have to pay extra for these must-have weapons

So if you think DLC at a price is bad, then blame MS and Core users, since that’s the reason for the cap: not all Core owners have a HDD, apparently. Included in the DLC will be stuff along the lines of different accents and maps presumably. Hopefully not weapons, that would be annoying having to pay for those. He follows on from that post, this time about pricing again:

Secondly, the price of the game. As you’ll find out when it’s launched, it’ll provide stunning value for money - particularly compared to some other offerings on Live Arcade. At least you’ll have the choice if you want anything or not and charged offerings will be good value given the price people charge for phone Ringtones! As for “everything should be free” then I suggest you go to the trouble of developing video games on a professional level with 70+ staff and see how long you can survive as a business with those tactics

A very fair point, one we should all consider when mentioning Premium DLC. Of course, if you’re paying to unlock stuff already on the disc, it’s a different story, isn’t it EA?

There is a ‘thirdly’ to his post as well, which mentions how the game will play, since the whole point of Arcade titles are for quick bursts of fun.

Thirdly “what version of Worms is this and what weapons will it have?” - we’re going to be a little coy on feature set until nearer the time. It’s safe to assume though that we’ve got a version that’s hopefully casual friendly as it is hardcore-player friendly, so it’s positioned as such given XBLA is a pretty casual game-space. It’s a pretty pure, more strategic version (rather than crazy, kitchen-sink insanity) and we hope the lure of -secure- weekly, monthly and all-time leaderboards will prove fairly exciting for all.

Yes, that does mean that it’s back to 2D Worms, thankfully. The 3D series completely ruined Worms as a game, and most people went back to previous versions. The game is designed for 2D, and will not work in any other Dimension. Ever.

Worms 3D. So many hopes for the game, yet so many dissapointments when it finally arrived in 2003

That’s it. A complete round-up of all Worms news. It’s a long post, but I wanted to save you all the hassle of joining up to the forums only to read the juicy bits. Of course, feel free to join up, but there shouldn’t be anything you now don’t know about this game! The release of January is merely speculation and rumour at this stage, please remember. I’m really looking forward to this one, so long as it doesn’t lag online and retains the true essence of being a worm: blowing stuff up with bananas.