Retro|Spective 185: Earthworm Jim

[Neon Ignition]

History in Games:
1994 - Earthworm Jim
1995 - Earthworm Jim 2
1999 - Earthworm Jim 3D
1999 - Earthworm Jim: Menace 2 Society

Overview:
Looking back it's staggering that Earthworm Jim came and went in as little as five years with the robotically enhanced worm enjoying a run of games and a media push before disappearing just as quickly into the depths of space. With a bright animated cartoon like visual style the games saw Jim travel through a mix of genred levels running, gunning and flying through enemies and mini-games The franchise hit a quick hurdle when Shiny was bought out and the third dimension third game was constantly retooled around the animated series that had itself aired and died quickly making the final game a clunky hybrid of content. The announced fourth game failed to materialise and whilst another attempt at a new game has been announced for the Intellivision Amico it remains unseen.









Was there life in this Jim, or not as you knew it?

[Dogg Thang]

I only played the first two. They looked fun and the animation is superb. But I never though the games themselves were actually all that good. They're fairly average platformers of their day, in my view.

[wakka]

I remember really enjoying these on the Megadrive, but I can't imagine they'd be worth going to today. The character felt like A Big Deal in the 90s, but it's interesting how quickly the whole franchise vanished without trace.

It turns out the guy who invented the character is a homophobe and transphobe too, so, ya know, it also has that going for it.

[fuse]

They had a look going for them, but they were always clunky, mechanically poor things. I remember renting both of them, but memories of neither are particularly fond. I remember liking the cartoon most, out of anything the character appeared in.

And as correctly noted above, Doug TenNapel is a piece of ****.

[teddymeow]

Meh. Looked great, played averagely.

The cartoon was pretty funny.

[phillv85]

I tried playing the first one recently on the MD and while it looks amazing, it is pretty clunky. The Psycrow races are still a lot of fun though.

[dataDave]

Over-marketed garbage. Another game that all the 5-minute casuals at school went crazy for.

Like Fuse I rented it and still felt ripped.

[Neon Ignition]

My main experience comes from the second game, because it followed so quickly on the first and was hyped up my parents got it me for Xmas. It never really held my attention much for the same reasons as everyone else but it did get me mentioned in the Cheats section of Total! Magazine for submitting a cheat code. Wasn't hard either as it's the same code that worked in the first game too.

[Cepp]

Absolutely gorgeous but really unfun to play. I always found myself getting lost. The level design in platformers like this always turned me off personally.

I do have the cartoon intro playing in my head again now though

[Neon Ignition]

We're now just fifteen Retro|Spective's away from the end now and I'm in a position now to know what all but three of them are going to be focusing on. With that in mind though I figured I'd take us back a couple of years to when these used to end with a little tease to figure out what the next in line would be about:

Clue: You're bound to be excited by the next game and if not then it's on yer' bike

[nakamura]

Pretty much everything Dave Perry was
Involved in was style over substance.

[Sketcz]

Last year I (re)played the Mega CD version, to see the extra levels. Previously I'd only owned the SNES version.

It was better than I expected. Passwords nullified the steep difficulty and made it much more fun. The Pete's Sake level was quite inventive - an interesting twist on escort missions (though still a bit too hard).

Not sure I agree with the lack of substance points of view. The game took a standard platform framework and used that within interesting set-pieces. Pete's Sake takes the basic toolset but reframes it to protect an NPC. The snot bungie was a fun gameplay diversion. The submarine sections were too difficult and frustrating, but it remixed the gameplay and at least they were trying to add variation.

When I go back to SNES era platformers, they tend to be all uniform left-to-right jumpathons. I suppose people look back on them fondly now because so many of them are easy.

I disagree with the statement EWJ was a game for casual gamers. It wasn't. It was difficulty, inventive, and required a diverse range of skills. Each new level introduced some new gimmick or novelty, which took the basic framework and warped it slightly. Green teleport crystals, submarines, NPC protection missions, bungie jumping, riding hamsters, getting sucked out of your suit, into the screen vehicle levels, the gatekeeper enemies unique to the Mega CD version, and so on.

Look at all the bosses. Every single one of them required a different method to win. Bouncing trash on a spring, reflex shooting in one of the cardinal directions, plummeting down the screen while blasting either side. The fish boss was actually a fake out - after the agonising tension of navigating the rocky waters, his posing no challenge whatsoever was a relief.

I can't even say I love it. Since it is way too difficult. But I had fun replaying it, solid 7/10, and that's down to the constant inventiveness, novelty of new gimmicks, and the depth these add.

So many of the other platformers from that era which still get the love today are usually repetitive in the extreme. The original Donkey Kong Country which I'm playing through is shockingly repetitive - and the odd gimmick levels aren't that great.