Earthworm Jim : A 16-bit platformer from Dave Perry and Doug TenNepal and a developer called Shiny Entertainment, all of which are only famous for making…well, Earthworm Jim.
Story : Here’s as good a synopsis as any. It’s your typical scenario with games of the day where the only way to understand the story is to read either the back of the box or the manual, as the game itself had no form of dialogue or storytelling, (other than the story of one cow’s journey.) Come to think of it, I kind of wish more of today’s games followed the same route instead of shoving a terrible storyline down our throats. Sadly, nobody reads instruction manuals anymore either, and as a result, we have to deal with annoyingly long tutorials in nearly every game.
If you were to reach into a time capsule from 1994 and look at video game magazines of the era, they would probably have high praise for Earthworm Jim. I’m only thinking about it now that this acclaim would be due to them knowing the above mentioned developers in person, causing them to give Earthworm Jim Game Of The Year honors on account of Dave Perry having bought them a beer. That and I guess the game was considered visually cutting-edge for the entire 3 months of glory it had until Donkey Kong Country was released.
But even Donkey Kong Country didn’t feature as much…imagination as Earthworm Jim did. This game bucked the trend of common platformers comprised of an ice level, a lava level and a swimming level, by introducing players to the intestine level, the insect butt level and the HECK level. Indeed, this game is a byproduct of the Nickelodeon era of gross-out kids’ humor before that generation moved on to gross-out Howard Stern humor. If anything, the game is good at throwing out a variety of scenarios to match the absurdity of its concepts. If you haven’t heard of mucus bungee-jumping, you’ll be very familiar soon enough. Reluctantly, you’ll be even more familiar with “Andy Asteroids”, a racing mini-game between every stage where defeat means an annoying boss battle.
(I never knew of the existence of the intestine level before this VC release, being that it was only in the Genesis version of the game)
But with all this comes the great mind killer of the 16-bit era; extreme, game-lengthening difficulty. Earthworm Jim himself is far from a nimble hero, and must stand perfectly still to fire his gun or use his head like a whip (this doesn’t seem so odd in retrospect, the head-whipping.) (And in another instance of bucking convention, EWJ’s gun doesn’t shoot little bright dots like other shooters of the day. No, his is a Looney Tunes-esque rapid fire machine gun of death). The third level…or rather the third actual, non-Andy Asteroids level features a rocket-globe ship comprised of delicate glass and finicky controls that you must navigate through narrow underwater passageways, all within a time limit. In this one level, along with several other obscene challenges, you are going to die and die often, sometimes unfairly so.
Trial and error gameplay is one thing… trial and error gameplay with a few “cheap death” moments is another thing… but trial and error gameplay with a few “cheap death” moments coupled with a limited number of lives and continues is something completely different and downright cruel. If you know nothing about the game’s cheats, you can expect to find yourself memorizing the first six or seven levels on account of how many times you’ll have to replay them over and over again because you can’t seem to get past a particularly tough platform sequence on the last world. Here are the cheats that you’re going to need if you ever hope to actually finish this game, unless you’re some kind of Earthworm Jim freak of nature.
Perhaps in the mid-nineties, it was perfectly acceptable for games to require cheating to progress; people seem to consider Contra an all-time great without hesitation, so long as you enter in the lives code. And perhaps the secret to the game’s critical success was in part due to the lack of the internet, forcing people to buy magazines to obtain cheat codes. And while the internet in 2008 is enough to save the modern day gamer some money (at the expense of causing half the magazines from the 90s to go bankrupt), it also means that the difficulty issues in Earthworm Jim are just considered bad game design by modern standards.
Nonetheless…if you’re looking to get nostalgic with Jim, Psycrow, Peter Puppy and a cow, or if you want to view creative, outside-the-box art design that still feels fresh and wacky by today’s standards, then gorge yourself and pick it up, it’s a mere 800 points. But some of the game’s archaic challenges and the need to hack and cheat your way to see the end are major turnoffs, which I think will bother most gamers of today. For me, this game has a place in my heart more because it spawned a superior sequel (coming soon to the Virtual Console apparently) and a superior children’s cartoon (which needs a DVD release and bad).
Pros : Earthworm Jim 2
Cons : Earthworm Jim 3
3 Stars
Some more of that cartoon goodness.
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