Fat Worm Blows a Sparky is a worm/maze-style action video game created by Julian Todd in the five months before going to university and published by Durell Software in 1986 for the ZX Spectrum Sinclair.
Julian, after asking questions for review journalists, became critical of the game, stating that programmers like him had “insufficient understanding” of the real and virtual world because at the time “it seemed logical that the players would suffer” as much as the developers.
Except that their suffering was paid for, but ours was paid for.
It actually pushed players to find pokes and cheats to mitigate the pain inflicted by the developers.
It should be remembered that the games in the lounge or bar had pre-settable difficulty levels and often the “ancient” assemblers set the software parameters of the cards in the machines at the maximum difficulty level to earn more coins, and therefore more money to the managers.
Let’s face it, just about the dumbest habitat for your average worm is the inside of a Spectrum. But, things being the way they are in computer games, that’s exactly where this particular worm resides.
Ol’ Fatty, the world’s most dense worm, has clearly hit upon the theory that this is the place where he is least likely to be hassled by blackbirds, robins and the like.
Just as he is settling down to the easy life, he suddenly realises that things aren’t so wonderful after all. Contrary to popular opinion, the inside of the average Spectrum is absolutely crawling with life. Creeper bugs buzz around in Sputniks, swooping low over the main PCB. The Sputniks, if not dealt with, transform into Crawlies which try to attach themselves to Fatty. Just to add to the problems, termite-like Crawlies sometimes erupt from the surface of the PCB and chase him around.
Fatty’s eventual aim in life is the very natural urge to pass on his genes to another generation. Considering the limited intelligence he has displayed up to date, this seems a thoroughly dubious goal. To reproduce, Fatty needs to collect 50 spindles lying around on the PCB. Then he’s got to find the disk drive, get all his data copied and clone himself.
Fat Worm Blows a Sparky originally started life as Killer DOS, a tough-to-play simulation that plots or predicts, software worms that invade computer systems, cloning themselves and corrupting disks.
There is a remake: NOBY NOBY BOY, 2009 NAMCO BANDAI Games Inc.
