Retail Gamers

Okay, this week in classic games we revisit one of my Super Nintendo favorites which of course is Earthworm Jim. Some of you might be saying “GROOVY” and you don’t know how true that is. With a recent announcement of the long awaited Earthworm Jim 4, I thought this game would be perfect.

First off, this game was released back in 1994 for the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo and as the box art shows, this game has ‘24 megs of play action’. The game was produced by Interplay who also worked with Blizzard in making one of the best racing games of all time Rock and Roll Racing.  Doing some research on the game, I had no idea how many times this series had been rereleased. Originating on the SNES and Sega Genesis, Earthworm Jim 2 came out on the SNES, and there was Earthworm Jim 3D on the Nintendo 64. Besides those launches though, the games were ported to the Game Boy, Game Gear, Game Boy Advance, Sega CD, and the PC. Thats how good the game is.

The main character ‘Jim’ and the others from the game were created by Doug TenNapel who will also be lending a hand on the upcoming Earthworm Jim 4. The music was created by Tommy Tallarico who you may have heard of from the show Judgement Day on G4. The audio for the game was given 1994 best soundtrack by Die Hard GameFan Magazine and 1994 best sound effects by Video Games Magazine. And yes, the game deserved it.

The gameplay was very much platforming and it played beautifully. The main character, Jim the earthworm, was put in a robotic suit to fight evil (of course) and mainly used a pistol but like any good game there were many power ups and items to collect. Jim’s head could stretch out to become a whip in many instances to attack enemies or grapple on things in the environment. The game sported many awesome characters like Princess What’s-Her-Name (not making this up) and the evil (get ready) Queen Pulsating, Bloated, Festering, Sweaty, Pus-filled, Malformed, Slug-for-a-Butt. Some of the enemies were chuck and fifi, evil the cat, and Bob the killer goldfish. There were cows everywhere in the game and Jim would say random crap like ‘groovy’ and ‘ooh yeah’ and of course the extra common ‘yipee’ when he collected items.

Like I mentioned earlier, the game has great music. Take these two jumps to take a listen.

Level 1 New Junk City
Level 5 Level 5 thats the real name of the level

The game was also made into a cartoon that aired for two seasons, take this jump to see some clips.

Earthworm Jim cartoon

Check this video out to get an idea of the game. The video is the first level of the game, New Junk City.

Finally, if you want to hear more about the game, check out podcast #1 airing this sunday. If you missed the previous classic game of the weeks they were Banjo Kazooie and Ninja Gaiden.

-written by junkfoodtony

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