Back in 1995, a Virtual Boy version of “Worms”, probably the most successful and long-running franchise of the british developer Team17, was planned to be made in cooperation with Ocean Software.
In the “Worms” games, groups of heavily armed worms (guess where the name comes from) fight against each other using all sorts of crazy weapons ranging from little pushes to heavy mortar. It is unknown if the game was planned to include a multiplayer option, maybe even using the link cable. Although it would have likely been included, since, thanks to malicious joy, “Worms” has it’s special appeal in multiplayer games.
Unfortunately the develoment of the game didn’t come very far, Team17 stopped working on it a few weeks into the pre-production when the Virtual Boy more or less got cancelled in Europe.
Here’s a statement from Team 17’s Studio Director Martyn Brown from 2008:
“Sorry to disappoint you, but work never really started on Worms for the Virtual Boy. We basically declined to develop it after we had a mess around and look at the machine which we felt was doomed to failure (and were largely proved correct). Our publisher on the project, Ocean Software never pursued interest after the initial idea. We kept the kit for about 10 years until it was recently returned to a ‘museum’ over at Nintendo Germany.”
Martyn Brown
Studio Director,
Team17 Software Ltd.