Guh-ROOVY! And welcome to a really late edition of Nostalgia World. Those of you who know me in person, who didn’t see this one coming? Honestly? If you did see this one coming, then give yourself a round of applause, cos I’m pretty sure that a name change on Facebook and me gibbering about it a lot is pretty indicative that I’ve been watching and playing a lot of Earthworm Jim lately. Granted, it’s the HD version, but I also dug out the Mega Drive version to compare the differences. Okay, I lied, I downloaded a ROM, because the game cartridge that I had of Earthworm Jim was strapped to the back of the cow I launched in New Junk City.
Earthworm Jim is described as a run and gun platformer, which is kinda accurate. You run, you gun, you leap from platform to platform, and you whip enemies with yourself, which isn’t a usual part of the run and gun formula. As Jim is an earthworm, with a super suit, he can use himself to whip enemies or swing on hooks, or have helicopter-like abilities to float down safely. This is only the start of surrealness for this game. A surrealness that is Monty Python-esque at times. We’ll talk more on this later though.
This makes perfect sense. You launch the cow by dropping a fridge on the branch its on, to get past.
Earthworm Jim is challenging at times, requiring skill to get some of the grappling and hook swinging sections exactly right as you need to hit them at just the right time, and in the case of the Andy Asteroids mini-game, you need to have Jedi-like reflexes during the latter ones to dodge between the asteroids and grab the orbs, or just dodge the asteroids at times. I remember as a kid, being very frustrated by the fact that I kept having to fight Psy-Crow because I kept failing Andy Asteroids all the time as a kid, probably because I wasn’t born with freakish reflexes.
Great success!
The level designs are pretty surreal at times, taking place in a city made entirely out of junk, Hell itself, underwater tubes and tunnels, somebody’s guts, and suchlike. Maybe it’s just me, but the level design is either genius, insane, or both, and I’m probably betting on both. There’s usually a specific set path through the levels, but there’s the occasional alternate route, which is longer, usually more pain-filled, but does net you nice rewards in the form of a full health refill or PLASMA! Guns, which obliterate most things instantly and do make an impressive blasting noise and animation.
Yes. Skipping.
As I mentioned earlier, EWJ is very surreal. As a kid, I had no problem with the surrealness of the game. It makes perfect sense to hammer a gigantic bogey into the side of a cliff so his bungee rope made of snot will snap and he’ll be thrown into the green water below. Or why a cow gets launched in the first level. Or how Jim can use himself to swing the suit across gaping pits and chasms without any collateral damage such as smashing his face open. Or indeed, how Jim actually operates that suit, given that he has no actual appendages with which to do so, as whilst he’s a worm and has eyes and a mouth, he has yet to grow proper arms.
However, looking back as an adult on the entire game, the humour present in the game is fairly adult at times, like with the level called What the Heck?, featuring either a lawyer or a businessman wandering around, or the boss called Doc Duodenum being found in the intestines level, along with several round brown objects with spikes on and in them rolling around. I don’t want to go any further in case you happened to be eating dinner, but I’m fairly sure that I’m clear on what I’m referring to here, which is something you don’t really expect as a child because, if you were like me, you hadn’t yet been exposed to years of toilet humour and shit jokes (c wut I did thar?)
Jim, being stretched for all he's worth
Lastly, the music for the game is actually pretty awesome. It’s a blend of programmed drums, synths, and some absolutely rocking basslines at times. New Junk City and Snot a Problem (the music that plays in the Major Mucus fight) spring to mind, containing nice ambient synths and decent chunky basslines. Major Mucus has an awesome blend of proper floor-shaking bass which then abruptly springs into life as slap bass, before melding the two together. At times, the music is as appropriately whacky as the game itself is, with Andy Asteroids, where Jim is pitted against Psycrow in a space race, having a crazy banjo duelling against what sounds like a synth violin, in a frantic bluegrass parody of chase music, which is interspersed with various sound-effects, which only adds to the insanity.
Still frustrating as ever even in HD
So, in conclusion, you really need to play Earthworm Jim if you haven’t. It’s a classic, manic platformer, which needs to be played by everyone and appreciated for its crazy surreal humour and awesome soundtrack and memorable characters. If you’ve got an Xbox 360, go get the HD version of it. If not, go dig out the Megadrive and play on it then. I command you to!
