postal strikes of the time, while the Mad Cow refers to the BSE epidemic of the 1990s. The French Nuclear Test, introduced in Worms 2, was updated to the Indian Nuclear Test in Worms Armageddon to keep with the times. Other weapons are inside jokes. The MB Bomb, for example, which floats down from the sky and explodes on impact, is a cartoon caricature of Martyn Brown, Team17's studio director. Other such weapons include the "Concrete Donkey", one of the most powerful weapons in the game, which is based on a garden ornament in Andy Davidson's home garden, and an airstrike known in the game as Mike's Carpet Bomb was actually inspired by a store near the Team17 headquarters called "Mike's Carpets". Since Worms Armageddon, weapons that were intended to aid as utilities rather than damage-dealers were classified as tools. This classification mainly differs in the fact that they do not fall in ordinary weapon crates, and instead appear in toolboxes. Many tools were left in the wrong class for the sake of keyboard-shortcut conveniences. This was resolved in Worms 3D. Some weapons were inspired from popular films and TV programs, including the Holy Hand Grenade (from Monty Python and the Holy Grail) and Ninja Rope (named the Bat Rope in early demos of the original game). History Creator Andy Davidson is the creator of the original Worms video game by Team17. The game "Worms" is based on the 2D classic "Artillery", and originally did not feature worms, but the Lemmings from the popular game of the same name. Background Davidson was working on a program called "Jack the Ripper" for the Amiga personal computer, which allowed him to trawl the residual contents of RAM after applications had been run and quit. In this way, he "ripped" the graphics from Lemmings, and used them while developing his version of "Artillery". The original name of the game was Lemartillery, and it was created purely as a bit of fun for him and his school friends in 1993. The positive reaction he witnessed encouraged him to develop it further. Knowing he could never commercially release the "Lemmings" characters, he changed them to worms and changed the name of the game to Total Wormage. Development Created as an entry for a Blitz BASIC programming competition run by the Amiga Format magazine, a cut-down version of the programming language having been covermounted previously. The