If you’ve happened to pick up Worms 2 from GOG in the past, you may already know that the experience leaves a lot to be desired. Not only does the game struggle to run on most modern PCs, but it also has had all of its online functionality stripped out, making it a hollow shell of the version that players first fell in love with back in 1997.
Previously, we’ve touched upon this subject before, reporting briefly on the efforts of a programmer and YouTuber named Nathan Baggs, who went to pretty extreme lengths to try and fix the game in an amazing video on his channel called “Hacking a 25 Year Old Game To Make It Work”. There we mentioned there was already an unofficial fix on an old forum involving downloading a ZIP file and copying over some DLL files, but that Baggs had chosen to ignore it as he wanted to not go down the easy route and had made a habit of not downloading potentially dodgy files from unknown sources.
Something we failed to bring up, however, was that there is also a more recent fan effort to fix the game called Worms 2 Plus that not only gets the CD and GOG versions to run on modern machines but also restores the online multiplayer and introduces various quality of features. This mod is the work of a fan developer Carl Norton (Carlmundo), who recently reached out to let us know about its existence.
As Norton pointed out in his email to us a complete list of fixes and improvements is currently available on the project’s GitHub page, but here are some of its major features that he thinks players, in particular, will enjoy:
• The ability to play online without port forwarding
• Multi-language selection – the patch allows you to change the game to your preferred language (GOG only included English), including some new translations
• LAN play restored
• Backflip permanently added to the game
• Settings app to configure graphics (i.e. borderless, resolution)
• Fixed upscaled intro videos
• Soundbanks included from all other 2nd generation Worms games
• Mission select
• Quality of life fixes
• And much more!
You can download the mod now from GitHub. Just bear in mind, you’ll need a copy of Worms 2 from CD or GOG installed to play it.