Wurm: Journey to the Center of the Earth
| Wurm: Journey To The Center Of The Earth | |
|---|---|
 North American cover art | |
| Developer(s) | Cyclone System |
| Publisher(s) | Asmik (NA) SOFEL (JP) |
| Composer(s) | Dota Ando |
| Platform(s) | NES |
| Release date(s) | |
| Genre(s) | 2D action platformer |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
| Distribution | NES cartridge |
Wurm: Journey to the Center of the Earth, released in Japan as Vazolder: The Underground Battle Space (地底戦空バゾルダー Chitei Sen Kū Bazorudā), is a multi-genre video game released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1991.
Plot
Strange tectonic phenomena prompt the governments of the world to send a powerful digging vehicle called the VZR (but nicknamed the Wurm) underground to investigate. Contact is lost with four VZR's with the player controlling the crew of the fifth, who discovered that the previous teams were attacked by a subterranean empire of monsters called the Nonmalta. The Nonmalta are at war with a race of peaceful humanoids called the Dinamur, and the VZR crew find themselves embroiled in the war as well.
Gameplay
The plot of this video game deals with mysterious earthquakes that emerge in the year 1999, and the government dispatches explorers in powerful digging machines called VZR's (nicknamed WURMs, but the name is never used in the game). Moby is an 18-year-old leader of one VZR's crew. While doing some research near the core of the earth, Moby and her friends discover that two races of subterranean humans have been fighting a war underground.
Moby must leave her vehicle in certain sections of the game to fight the enemies in a side-scrolling fashion. Moby's set of combat skills include a karate kick, jump and the use of a firearm. Players lose the game if they run out of either fuel or energy in the life bar.
WURM has a variety of different styles of play, with side-scrolling travel stages in the VZR, overhead shooting levels, levels where Moby leaves the vehicle to explore underground ruins, and first-person shooting levels with boss monsters. Boss monsters have a probability meter that has to be raised up to 100% before that enemy can be eliminated. More characters join the crew over the course of the game.
Reception
Allgame gave Wurm: Journey to the Center of the Earth an overall rating of 3 stars out of an overall 5. Nintendo Power gave the game a rating of 4 out of 5 in their September 1991 issue while GamePro assigned the game a 3 out of 5 article two months later.