Earthworm Jim

It may seem strange now, but back in the 16-bit era, the consoles were largely ruled with Japanese games. There were numerous American and European-developed titles for the Genesis and Super Nintendo, but they were usually found trailing behind titles from companies like Sega, Capcom, and Konami. And yet, one of the few instances of a Western developed title that stands amongst the best was Shiny Entertainment’s Eartworm Jim, a series of comical sidescrolling platformers with a clever cast of characters, an amusing universe, excellent music, and innovative level designs.

The story of Earthworm Jim begins with the toy manufacturer Playmates, who, back in the late 80s and early 90s, was rolling in dough thanks to the success of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures. Seeing the success of the franchise, they decided to start their own. But rather than creating a toy line and cartoon simultaneously, as most companies did, they took a different route. Upon seeing the success of Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog, they decided to produce their own video game, which would eventually lead into a blitz of licensed products. They got together with Dave Perry, a programmer at Virgin Interactive, and gave him the money to create Shiny Entertainment, the team that designed and created Earthworm Jim. This isn’t exactly the first time this happened – Tradewest and Rare attempted the same thing a few years before with Battletoads, and Accolade did the same with Bubsy. But Earthworm Jim succeeded where these others did not, for any number of reasons. Perhaps the most prominent was its bizarre sense of humor, loosely inspired by Chuck Jones and Tex Avery cartoons, combined with its own unique brand of madcap lunacy. Or possibly it was also the fact that the Earthworm Jim games were also quite good – Battletoads was ambitious but monstrously difficult, and Bubsy struggled to be defined as anything but mediocre.

It was David Perry’s work as a talented programmer that turned Earthworm Jim into an excellent game, but it was the artistic skills of Doug TenNapel that truly brought the world and characters to life.

Characters

There are many more characters – mostly villains – like Pedro Pupa and Doc Duodenum – who really aren’t terribly interesting. Most of the above characters have multiple appearances throughout the series, and star in the TV show.

The original Earthworm Jim games were published by Playmates Interactive, although after they went under, the license was passed around to other companies, including Interplay, Crave, and Majesco. Only the first two games were developed by Shiny, and the rest – Earthworm Jim 3D and Earthworm Jim: Menace 2 the Galaxy – have largely been credited as killing off the series. Interestingly, Playmates had a deal with Japanese publisher Takara. Playmates would publish their later Battle Arena Toshinden titles in North America, while Takara would publish Earthworm Jim in Japan. Alas, while the series caught on in its home territory, it was pretty much lost over in the East, where perhaps the sense of humor went over their heads.

Earthworm Jim runs on the same basic engine as other David Perry games, such as Global Gladiators, and Cool Spot. It’s designed almost specifically for smoothly animated characters and greatly expansive levels, so Earthworm Jim feels like an expansion of those previous games. Just like Aladdin, another Dave Perry game, all of the sprite were created by drawing artwork on cels, much like animated cartoons, then scanning them into a computer. This technique, dubbed Animotion, lend a unique quality to the sprite compared to the traditional pixel art methods. Since the characters consist of only a handful of colors, it manages to produce high quality sprites that look fantastic even on low palette consoles like the Genesis. Nearly all of Jim’s action are exaggerated, but if you hit the Pause button during pretty much any action, you can appreciate the amount of detail put into practically every frame. The backgrounds have a unique three dimensional look to them – there’s almost no flat surfaces, but rather, the ground twists and winds and slopes in ways that are drastically different from the 2D platformer norm. Everything looks and feels fluid, though like Perry’s other games, the fast movement can make the camera feel like it’s jerking too quickly when you change directions.

However, despite its graphical prowess, the mechanics are far from perfect. Despite all of the work that went into creating a fully fleshed out main character, Jim’s actions can feel a bit over-animated. His whip attack, for example, is too slow to hit most enemies, who generally move around pretty quickly. Jim can also use his head whip to swing on certain hooks, but the timing of this also seems a bit unnatural. Most of the time, you have to resort to using your gun, but that too is a bit awkward to use. Other than the few enhancements, Jim’s gun doesn’t actually fire any visible projectiles, making it hard to see what you’re actually trying to attack. And your field of fire is so limited that even the simplest of the enemies – like the crows in the first stage – can prove to be a hassle. 

While the controls aren’t exactly perfect, Earthworm Jim excels because there’s more than just running, jumping, and shooting. A good chunk of the states are fairly straightforward, but there’s enough variety – the tube races, for example, or the level where you protect Peter Puppy – that keeps the action refreshing. It does tend to go overboard with the Andy Asteroids racing segments – there are half a dozen spread throughout the game, and they quickly grow tiresome.

The sound also deserves special attention. The effects, like the visual style, are all based off of old Warner Bros. cartoons, and the goofy, Texan-twanged voice of Earthworm Jim – provided by designer Doug TenNapel – add an extra bit of important personality. He also developed Jim’s catchphrase – “GROOVY!” – delivered after each stage with a mile-wide grin. The music is mostly provided by Tommy Tallarico, another collaborator on many of Dave Perry’s works. Like the levels themselves, there’s a huge amount of variety amongst the tunes, ranging from silly banjo chase music to awesomely rocking songs like New Junk City.

Earthworm Jim was initially released on the Genesis and Super Nintendo. The Super Nintendo version has generally has better graphics, with more defined colors and lots of extra special effects, and nearly all of the stages have an extra level of background scrolling. However, due to the system’s lower resolution, the screen view is slightly smaller, and everything is slightly fatter when viewed on a CRT television screen. The Genesis version isn’t quite as nice, as the backgrounds have a dithered look to them, but it still looks pretty excellent, plus it has one extra stage, Intestinal Distress. The explanation behind this was that the Genesis version was more easily compressed and had the room for the bonus level. Both versions also have different sound synth, and while the SNES version has better (and in some cases, different) digitized samples, the difference in the soundtrack is more a matter of taste. 

A Special Edition was also released for the Sega CD and Windows 95 platforms, the latter of which was ported and published by Activision. This version includes some slightly expanded and redone levels, including an extra “Nude Jim” segment where Jim hops around outside his suit, as well as a completely new stage, the “Big Bruty” level. There’s a fun little pencil animation of Jim on the title screen, as well as a new level introduction that shows a small portrait of the boss. There’s also a new homing rocket weapon, with ammo placed throughout all of the existing levels. The Sega CD version has a password system, while the Windows version 95 lets you skip around to different stages with a proper cheat code. Both versions include some extra cheats, including the ability to equip Jim with an afro or a Groucho Marx mask, or turn him into a fat little stick figure. All of the music is redbook CD audio, all of which is fantastic. There are also a few goofy bonus tracks played at the ending – one, where you beat the game on the easy difficulty level and are treated to all sorts of made up facts regarding worms, and the other is a funny congratulatory message. The Windows 95 version has slightly better graphics that have been recolored, although since they’re still based off the original Genesis version, it’s not quite as good looking as the SNES rendition.

Earthworm Jim also received another PC port, this time running in DOS, as part of The Whole Can’o Worms package. This version has improved graphics over the Genesis version – it’s roughly on par with the Windows 95 port, but with smoother backgrounds – but it’s missing all of the content from the Special Edition, as well as the Intestinal Distress level, and the Chicken Plummets boss fight. It does, however, feature the same redbook audio soundtrack. If you put the CD in a CD player, you’ll notice how the same song repeats several times in the same track. Older CD-ROMs had problems where the action would pause momentarily once a track looped, which would disrupt the action. By looping the music several times within a track, it reduces this drastically. Modern CD-ROMs and operating systems don’t have problems with this though. This disc also includes a video clip of the opening to the cartoon show, as well as some pictures of various Earthworm Jim ction figures.

There was also a port to the Game Boy courtesy of Eurocom. Naturally, all of the visuals are completely lost, since everything is so tiny, and the control is a bit choppy. The biggest pain is due to the lack of buttons – if you hold the B button, you’ll fire your gun, but if you tap it, you’ll do a head whip. Naturally, this causes a lot of issues. It’s missing a bunch of levels too, including all of the Andy Asteroid stages. Earthworm Jim was also ported to the Game Gear by by Eurocom, and is essentially just a colorized port of their Game Boy game. However, it’s actually substantially worse, with dreadfully choppy gameplay that makes it completely impossible to play. There’s no background detail, at all. It was also published for the Sega Master System in Brazil by Tectoy, with a huge status bar taking up a chunk of the screen.

Earthworm Jim was also ported to the Game Boy Advance around the time of its launch. The tiny screen makes it difficult to navigate the expansive environments, the graphics look kinda bad, and the animation has taken a major hit. The entire game plays way choppier than it should. The graphics are based on the SNES port, tuned a bit brighter to be made visible on the GBA screen, but are missing a lot of its extra details, although it does feature the Intestinal Distress stage from the other versions. It also lacks a save or password system – annoying for a portable game – although there is a level skip function. It’s only barely playable, and should probably be avoided.

A PSP version was conceptualized but never came to fruition. However, in 2009, Gameloft released an HD remake for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. This was completely remade from the ground-up, included higher resolution sprites and backgrounds, and widescreen screen display. It looks fairly decent, though not without its problems – the number of animation frames is the same, and the improved quality of the sprites just highlights their jerkiness.

However, despite looking okay and playing pretty well, there are a number of other issues. For starters, all of the sound effects needed to be re-recorded, and none of them sound great. Jim’s new voice, in particular, is kinda off. More unfortunate is that all of the music was redone too, and it’s much worse than the CD audio version of the original game 

For the most part, the levels are based on the Genesis version, with the Nude Jim sublevel from the Special Edition added, plus three new bonus levels. These feature Keyboard Cat, the popular meme video from the time, which fits along with the silliness of the game but definitely dates it. The “Who Turned Out the Lights” secret level is gone though, and none of the extra features from the Special Edition are present either. The speed of the Andy Asteroids level is off, too. 

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