Diamons and Dogshit Report 2 - A Diamond- Earthworm Jim

No cows were actaully hurt while making Earthworm Jim

For God's sake keep Pete safe! (Pete is that purple dog)
1994's Extreme Sports Event: Jim versus Major Mucus
Art that is silly and at the same time, serious.

No super-space-cyber-suit would be complete without undies!

Earthworm Jim

Shiny/Playmates/Virgin

1994

Somewhere between madness and genius there is a thing called 'brilliance'.

Earthworm Jim was madness, brilliance, genius and art all thrown into one package, and it came in the form of a run-and-shoot platformer in 1994. EJ was a grossly funny cartoon brought to life in a video game and its purpose was to take all the things that made up video gaming culture and subvert them as part of a parody. Along with its unique acerbic attitude toward games in those days, it also put a new character in the rankings of gaming, right next to Mario and Sonic. This game made you laugh and challenged you at the same time (lets put a strong emphasis on the word 'challenge').

The story to EJ was as odd as it was ludicrous, and that might have been done on purpose. The main character that you play as is the result of an accident, according to the games story. The games story (in short) tells us that a 'Ultra-high-tech-indestructible-super-space-cyber-suit' falls from space onto earth, and landed onto an earthworm. This earthworm ends up crawling inside of the suit and mutating from an ordinary crow-fearing, dirt-eating worm into a super intelligent heroic super earthworm named Jim. Now this story wouldn't be complete without a villain and it has one named Psy-crow, who is a funky looking (duh) crow that wears a suit similar to Jim's and he wants Jim's suit instead (I guess Jim's suit really rocks). What Psy-Crow also wants is to kidnap Princess Whats-her-name (that's the characters name, I'm not making that shit up). But Whatever, few of us actually cared about the story, we cared about the game.

What made the game so fun was the 'look'. The world in EJ was weird and cartoon-inspired from top to bottom, in fact that's what I digged about this game the most. I was and I am still an art nut and EJ always impresses me. The game was designed by a cartoon vet Doug TenNapel. The art and design of EJ looks like it takes creative points from Ren and Stimpy and the muscled character designs of Simon Bisley. Jim has his earthworm body sticking out of the collar hole of the muscular upper torso'ed yet skinny legged suit, It looks absolutely ridiculous, but its supposed to look silly, its a cartoon. Jim has the ability to pull out his head and 'whip' at things like enemies and hooks conveniently placed in level for which Jim could use to swing himself around. This game of course isn't complete without Jim being armed with a gun. His gun shoots what looks and sounds like regular bullets but it looks like a 50's inspired ray gun with an antenna tip, but as odd as it looks, its a lot better than Jim using his head as a whip. Princess-whats-her-name has a Betty Boop in a full-bodied 'bubble bee suit' look. Its very hard to describe and honestly I feel stupid even trying to right now, because if you are reading this right now there's a good chance you played this game and you remember all this, but its always fun to look back (that is the point of this blog).

These characters animated better than anything else in those days thanks to EJ being published and made on a very beefy 24 meg cart which was rarely heard of in platformers or any game for that matter. The gaming world called this motion technology 'Animotion' but I'm sure that was just fancy talk for 'We worked on this game harder than any other have before us'. The work showed and after awhile during playing, you just forgot it was a game and began to control a VERY fun cartoon. More impressive was also what was going on BEHIND and AROUND Jim.

The world of Earthworm Jim was a diverse place, each level looking and playing different and unique from the other. The first level called 'New Junk City' takes place in a cartoon version of a junk yard, with crows flying around and pecking at you and guard dogs nipping at your heels. Another level called 'Down The Tubes' takes place underwater inside tubing that looks like a hamster tube maze and get this; you also get to ride a hamster at one point! No two levels look the same at all and that was a surprise back in those days, usually we'd see the same brick walls and the same trees over and over (*cough* Mario! *cough*) but not here. Another plus was that you were never moving JUST left to right, EJ had you moving zig-zag style from one area to another, up, down, all around and even forward away from the screen into space like on the 'Andy Asteroids' levels.

This was also part of the challenge, no longer could you just run and jump. You had to think, be creative and figure out things. This was more of a challenge for players because NOW they had to really look at the levels and see for themselves just WHY we couldn't get that green diamond in 'What The Heck' to levitate Jim from point A to point B. Gaming magazines must have been in good business in 1994 because plenty of us were thumbing through EGM's and Gamepro's trying to get tips on how to help Jim save the universe. Strategy guides could never help us perfectly time and help us swing Jim around from hook to hook on certain levels and gamers had to find a pattern to go by and never, ever stay from it. It was a challenge but never so frustrating that we had to fling our controllers into a wall because we died 100 times a level.

A game that is designed by a cartoonist deserves and requires cartoon-ish sound. If you thought Hanna Barbara had some sound effects that were unique then your still right, cause EJ had a sound effects cache that was familiar and nostalgic, even in those days. Jim's voice samples (done by creator TenNapel) sounded like he had a funny southern twang, but was a hillbilly that was trying too hard to be cool. Whenever Jim said "Groovy" I giggled, it was funny. Hit a speed orb in Andy Astroids and you'll hear Jim scream "Whoa NELLY!",- goofy as Hell. The music ranged from serious rock sounds, to backwood-sy banjo shit and the 'What The Heck' level had elevator music that was interrupted by rampant screams of unseen victims being held prisoner in the land of 'Heck',- totally goofy. The sounds of EJ was a layer of video gaming art that before then was sometimes overlooked or just took a back seat to the games visuals. This was 94' so we'd better hear something better than 'Doinks' and 'Pings' like in Mario.

The result was good. The game was fun and great sales of the title followed. A lot less was sacred in a game now. You could now use a video game as a good medium for comedy. This was really the first successful 'comedy game' and this game had a blast making fun of other games that were in the same vein. It was a gross out game as well, seeing that one of the enemies of EJ was a anthropomorphic ball of snot named Major Mucus, but it was all in good fun,... what kid doesn't pick his nose?

Was anything wrong with EJ? Yes, it got famous. Jim spawned merchandising that was ranked next to Mortal Kombat and Mario. Everything from action figures to a Saturday morning cartoon came out from the success of Earthworm Jim. The inevitable yet predictable sequel was good, but lighting didn't strike twice and honestly I didn't like it as much. Other games have been made but the fact that I can't remember any of them is a bad sign (I even know all the names of the Full House line-up). The only cool EJ plug I liked was his cameo appearance in Clayfighter 63 and a 3/4 (to bad that game sucked). But the original EJ was a gem and it came at a time when most of us thought that platformers were on the way out. Earthworm Jim revived a genre that was getting its ass kicked by the 'Fighting games' that ruled in the 90's and showed that an old dog like the 'platformer' could be taught new tricks.

Years later, TenNapel moved on after EJ to do the game 'The Neverhood' that had a sequel to it called 'Skullmonkeys'. Skullmonkeys was a stop-motion, clay-mated platformer on the PS1 that really felt like Earthworm Jim, even though it looked NOTHING like it. I was so sure that it was made by the same creator even at that time, so its good to know that I was right about that when I did my research JUST before writing this article. I also think I should add that because of that revelation I now see that art is easy to find and easy to recognize. Video games really don't get a lot of credit for artistic achievement even today and its not fair.

But that's a different subject for a different time.