Hacking a 25 Year Old Game To Make It Work 

Hi everyone. After posting this the official Worms 2 discord reached out to me to say that: 1. There's a much more up to date community patch that fixes what I covered in the video and more 2. There's currently an OFFICIAL Team17 trial server! So if you also want to re-live your childhood, or maybe try this out for the first time, then head over to their discord for all the details discord.gg/Tvs83972UD

Clearly the next step is to reverse engineer the networking protocol and setup a working multiplayer server

You opened a can of worms with this one

We will never have the slightest idea how many hours of knowledge are needed to produce this 11:25 minute video. Thanks, Nathan!

The ironic part is that while this game absolutely refuses to run on Windows, it runs flawlessly on Linux

This is actually a common thing that GoG does (and other distribution platforms like it) that's actually incredibly frustrating. Often times the game will be patched to require no CD, and any multiplayer component will be patched out because something like MSN Zone doesn't exist anymore. They usually handle this at the main menu instead of the launcher, but what this means is that they also patch out any LAN capability. Zoom does this with the game Plane Crazy. They patched the pathing to the registry entries and also removed multiplayer from the menu options. I was able to get ahold of a copy of the original game and do a comparison between the two EXEs, easily patching back in the multiplayer menu option. I wish these companies would stop taking the lazy route... there's some of us that still have LAN parties!

worms armageddon works just fine on windows and still gets the occasional update and the community is still alive. all the worms games run fine on linux though. thank you so much for improving worms 2 support on windows!

I love how everyone in the comments is on the same page that the logical next step is to write your own Worms 2 server; I'd love to see it written from scratch and explained with a high-level overview of the code :D

This was fascinating to watch. I really love this reverse engineering videos and your style is great. Looking forward to seeing more!

I was surprised to hear that they only switched off the servers in 2020! I've enjoyed a couple of your vids now so I decided you earned a new sub :)

why am i always wanting to learn skills i'll literally never use... why can't we live a thousand years :(

This was fascinating, thank you! Would love to see more like this.

Man love this content, its kind of an inspiration to some of us to learn how to hack games to bring them back to life, wish you could make tutorials on the tools you use, how to patch games/inject them and how memory works. There is a game i never really played since I was young and clueless its called Darkspore which was a follow up of my favourite game called spore, they shut down their servers really early and it was kind of a dream for me to find a way to patch it and check it out(it would only run if connected to the internet), This video just gave me hope that with studying and hard work everything is possible 🙌

The quality of your vids are amazing - so happy to have found your channel

I love these videos, keep up the great work man

Super Great vid! I'm a high-level software programmer so seeing you go through the assembly is wild to me. I'd love to see more vids like this :)

I just loved worms, this gave me such a great nostalgia flash and I’m playing it for weeks now! I’m glad I still have my xp system up and running for all the older games!

Have never seen your channel before. I love how this started as unassuming "haha I download game" and suddenly turned it up to 11 inside debugger and Ghidra and OS internals. Very cool.

Have no idea what's going on but am fascinated by your videos regardless!

Just discovered your channel with this video. i didn't know anything like this existed! You have a new Subscriber.

Oh man, I really enjoyed this video so much. Keep up the amazing work!

Nice job man, this was a good watch.

This was a blast from the past. Great game, and also a refresher on Lena's reversing tutorials from back in the day.

Great video, glad it was recommended to me. Enjoyed the adventure you had with this. I think adding more background music would've improved the video

Really cool! I wish there was more low level stuff like this

I loved this video! And I love your channel!! I just found you some days ago. Also I feel like GOG should fix their games...

Love this type of video! So cool and interesting to see your approach, a lot to learn! There are so many programs/games that probably could be fixed by reverse engineering like you did.

So many fond memories with this game - used to play it over a local network (well, using Direct Cable Connection which connected to PCs together over the parallel port) with my sister. So much fun.

Your vids are ace!

Maybe im mad, but i would watch an unedited video of you live working all this out and patching games 😂 Keep up the awesome work!

I learned a lot from this since im new to reversing. Thanks for making this

This was super fun! Would love to see more vids like this

Glad to have found this, I can across my Worms 2 CD the other day and wanted to play to only run into the same issues.

Even though I don't know shit about reversing, I like the pace of your videos :) Very nicely done :)

Great video. I love a puzzle! I kinda feel like I’m an ant who someone is trying to explain algebra too, but I do learn a tiny bit with each similar video.

Surely the next logical step is building a Worms 2 server from scratch and patching the client further to allow connection to it? :D Great work, I enjoyed this and despite being far beyond my abilities it was actually quite easy to follow what you were doing.

Despite sometimes hitting roadblocks, rabbit holes, wheels that spin…it’s super cool to see your thought process and attempts at reverse engineering. It boggles my mind that some games have practically been fully reverse engineered without original source or debug symbols.

I'm an application security engineer that just started learning about malware research and reverse engineering. This video was a complete delight. What a fun way to learn how things work

I played this game sooooo many hours. Sharing mouse and keyboard with a friend. No online play back then for me! Thanks for showing it still can be bought and the discord! I think I’ll download it tomorrow and give it a try ❤

really inspiring, I love watching this process!

Great video mate, glad to see youre well! 🤘

Love this Detective Bit stories...😎

Great work, very interesting.

Great video!

hey Nathan, great and inspiring videos! Could you make a video explaining how to get to this level of expertise? Which resources would you recommend to a more traditional web-dev to get these skills?

This is proper use of a disassembler. Cheers mate, great skills.

Very cool! I was on a similar journey to try and figure out why the old PC game “Jane’s Longbow 2” doesn’t work in WINE, but sadly I wasn’t able to figure it out, so my Mac remains unable to play one of my favourite 90s games!

Man... I can relate to this. About half year ago I was debugging worms armageddon demo from an old cd from a magazine. x32dbg has this nice thing on the bottom right displaying "time wasted debugging"😂 The demo was special to me because this was one of the first pc games I played before I had actually my own PC. I remember when I was playing at my neighbor's house and we got first time a mysterious "banana bomb". I throwed it... into the water. I wanted to do it right this time, but the demo did not work on modern windows. I remember the same message loop in ghidra. When the game was about to start (I managed to fix the menu part) it ended up in some exception loop. I wanted to run it in windowed mode at least and was hacking some win api functions in assembly to change some window creation parameters, but i never got it to work. I was not familiar with the tools I was using. It was a fun 2 nights experience. I wish I fixed it though.

Brilliant video! Excellent work!

Cracking video!

Hahahaha, seeing my face in a random RU-vid video was definitely the last thing I'd have expected to come across.. 😂 Really cool and entertaining content!

No idea what you did here but it was great to watch

Do more games where u solve problems with old game great video!

Bro, i subbed cause I love this reverse engineering/debugging stuff.

Very insightful and interesting. More please

Awesome content

I've been where you were. 😅 Thanks for the video

I played so much of this. So much. I remember as a kid running into an issue like this, and i think i worked around it by making a shortcut to the actual exe file instead of the launcher or something.

If you can hack Worms 2 into working on modern platforms, then maybe--just, maybe, I have hope to getting Lego Rock Raiders or moon tycoon working on my PC.

I like how you speak to the computer as if you are in an episode of star trek

Loved the game back in the days. So many options to customize your game. You could change the color of the water and not just how much damage a weapon does you could also change how big the explosion was. Big holes with almost no damage … you could do it!

10 year old me downloading NoCD cracks in the late 90s feeling like a hackerman, only to realize I need to spend the next week troubleshooting the drivers for the badass soundblaster card I yoinked from another computer to further build my Frankenstein Win95 PC. Worms always reminds me of that DOS tank game with similar gameplay.

Awesome, Do Black & White 1, and 2 next 😉

worms 2 was my childhood. played it hotseat with a childhood friend. so many precious memories

I used to play so much Worms 2 Demo with a clan and stuff, the good old days. :D Still remember it clearly.

Awesome video.

Cool video, I hate editing videos, so I get your pain, but you may want to spend more time polishing it and the audio Either way I’m subbing to see what else you do

We need more people dedicated to getting these games working on new computers

This is so dope

That was really cool!

And btw... Did you release the patched executable already? Did you provide it to GOG so people could play the game? :)

This reminds me of trying to get Yuri's Revenge to play on modern hardware. The disc is literally unreadable by modern disc drives due to changes in hardware and software over the years. (Apparently a form of drm detection in the shape of a driver required to recognize the disc no longer exists) I had to install it using an old drive hooked to a virtual box running windows XP because it had the driver for the disc drive to be able to read that form of drm and recognize the disc. Then I had to move it over to windows 10 and manually add all the registry stuff.

worms2 was sweet. Ninja roping around was fun with friends

Runs fine on my steamdeck 😂😂 Great vid tho 😊

I've got my worms 2 CD sat right next to me, this game was a HUGE part of my childhood and getting into gaming and computers. I remember editing the game files on notepad to make explosions bigger or something. Good times. This is beyond my understanding, I've only recently installed x64dbg but really I dont have a clue what I'm looking at, I'm not a coder. But this video was great. YT suggested this video to me on my homepage. Sometimes their algo does work, most of the time its crap tho. I also would love to see a multiplayer server set up.

Omg thank you so much, I faced this problem on Windows 7 or 8.

A breath of fresh air for youtube content. Love it. Thanks!

Me, someone who has been playing Worms 2 on and off since 2000 without much issue: Huh.

would like to see you fix xcom interceptor from the 90's great dos game but sooo many bugs and glitches

dude i can't believe this. i had the same issue back in the day with worms world party. took ages to figure out. and finally what got it working was to copy the audio files that were supposed to be in the cd into the game folder. *facepalm. what a journey man

how an incredible actor you are

Interestingly my wife is the voice of Worms 2 (and some others that came after it!) She was only 11 when she recorded the sounds and was only paid a Barbie game and a rice crispy square treat!

the really interesting thing is that when games don't work like this, its almost always because of a third party vendor breaking one of MS's rules about backwards compatibility. there are plenty of really old games that use GDI that work just fine. its kind of a godsend that MS supports some of the insanely old stuff they do

FIY, Worms Armageddon is still getting updates and features, and has official Linux (Wine) support.

One of the best reverse engineering videos that I’ve seen in my 10 years as a software engineer

Worms 2 is 25YO??! Fck I'm old. Kids, your body ages but you're still a kid inside! Give a break to your elders, they've been through a lot, their bodies don't work properly, but they're just like you on the inside! 😅😅

Very interesting!

Love this shit man. I've definitely run into broken features in old games over the years. Would love to see someone go through them like this

Greetings from Worms Speedrunners!

I wonder ... can you hack the "story games" from the 90s that were sold by Jast USA? I was able to crack the format of the menu files (like the position of the pointers), so I was able to replace all the text with my own translations (no matter if it was longer than the original one). The only thing that I wasn't been able to do was to determine the format of the image files. I think they are compressed by their own method, and probably parts of the images are also working as an animation.

total dedication

Command and conquer next!

This is why I have a Win 98 dedicated PC for playing old games:)

Interesting that Worms 2 has compatibility issues when Worms Armageddon (a game heavily based off Worms 2 and was originally gonna be an expansion pack), had updates as recent as 2020. Then again Armageddon had more content and most fans stuck to it, so not much reason to go back to Worms 2 other than it's different balance and campaign. Not sure why they removed the network screen though. Sure the official servers are down, but you can still do stuff like LAN parties, connect via VPN or run your own server (if that's possible.)

Noice. Can you now hack Windows Live Messenger to bring it back to life again?!

Vry cool, you should look at disney universe, tried playing it but on my pc at least it aint working

strange that the GOG version doesn't work right away while the Utomik version does. no tinkering required. and yes, i have a very top of the line system at the moment, running Windows 11. (i9-13900KF, RTX 4090, 64 GB of DDR5 RAM.)

I have absolutely no idea about any form of code, or software engineering, but I still enjoyed this, it could have been in another language and I wouldn't have come out of the end any different. There is something about watching someone do something they are passionate about, and achieving what they set out to do. I vow to try to understand more context to this video by subscribing and watching more.

They really should have a warning on the top of the store page like Steam does. While they technically don't lie on the page, I feel most people don't look at the system requirements, especially for older games that any modern computer should be able to run just fine. I even told GOG support as much years ago, but I guess they still haven't fixed it.

Impressive!!!