Earthworm Jim

It's a great game but a pain in the neck giving me the finger but great music and levels as well

This was one of my favorite Sega Genesis games while growing up.

Within just sixty seconds, I was enticed by the game's weirdness. You play an earthworm in a super suit traversing across a city made up of junk. Hungry crows and vicious, frothy mouthed dogs try to kill you and you launch a cow into the air via catapult. And that's just the very beginning. Don't you just love it?

You'll fight your way across seven levels and seven bonus stages in a run-and-gun/platform adventure, such as Junkyard City, Heck, an underwater city and a massive laboratory as you guide Jim in his quest to rescue Princess-What's-Her-Face from Queen-Slug-For-A-Butt.

The animation is fluid and cartoonish at the same time with goofy sound effects and the music has a cool sci-fi/techno feel to it. And Jim's voice clips are fun to listen too with his original surfer accent.

The game can get frustrating though. The difficulty increases steadily as you progress, and some of the levels, such "For Pete's Sake" and "Buttville", are quite hard.

While not as good as Sonic the Hedgehog, Earthworm Jim is a fun classic that still holds up today for retrogamers.

Earthworm Jim is my favourite Super Nintendo game it is so cool it's hard to describe. I get such a feeling when I play or think of this game its beyond Nostalgia. Earthworm Jim was an ordinary earthworm until a supersuit fell out of the sky and transformed him with Cosmic Powers to Earthworm Jim. Now he has to save Princess What's Her Name from Queen Slug for a Butt. He travels from Junk Yards to Heck to Bungee Jumping with Major Mucas in Snot A Problem to going through underwater tubes to walking Peter Puppy and making sure he doesn't get hurt. I like this game better then the sequel and cartoon show. Just because it started it all and nothing can beat the coolness of this game

One day, as Jim, the earth-worm, was crawling around, he found himself chased by a crow... he was fortunate enough to escape to safety, but what made this particular day stand out was the fact that right after that event had played out, a super-suit fell from the sky, and landed right on Jim... transforming him into Earthworm Jim, the superhero that we know today. The game starts with you going out to find Princess What's-Her-Name, who's been kidnapped by her hideously ugly twin-sister, the appropriately named Queen-Slug-for-a-Butt, who employs Psy-Crow, and various other evil creatures, in trying to get their hands at the suit, since it will make the Queen beautiful. The controls are simple and easy to learn, letting you fire the gun in basically any direction. The graphics are good, and still hold up nicely. The humor is silly and the gags are plentiful... and almost all of it works really well. Personally, I could have done without quite so much gross-out comedy... but maybe the fans of the character like that, I really don't know(I've only played the first two games, I haven't seen the show that came later). The level design is pretty cool... the places you get to visit are imaginative and varied, and the challenges are good, if they don't always fit how far into the game they appear. The genre is action-adventure, with you alternating between blasting enemies with the red gun that goes with the suit(or whipping them with Jim's worm-part) and solving puzzles. You work your way through about twenty levels, to the almost impossibly and frustratingly hard last level. You get to play around with a few vehicles during the course of the levels, and some of the levels consist of racing Psy-Crow through increasingly thick asteroid fields, on a small one-person jet. Apart from the standard machine-gun blast, you can also pick up ammo for a few other weapons; two, I believe, one, a blast of plasma, that does massive damage to anything in its path, and the other being seeking missiles. The sound is excellent, with both the music and the sound effects also adding to the hilarity. As you fly through the aforementioned asteroid fields, you are accompanied by a number of instruments(which are unrelated to each other) playing a merry tune... occasionally interrupted by a dog barking, a Jew's-harp or the sound of a farm animal. This is a game that takes you to Heck(as it is known in this game) and back... and on your trip down there, you'll encounter lawyers that attack you with case-files, and, when hit by your weapons, retort "I'll sue!" The entire thing has that silly and goofy tone throughout. If that is how you like your games, then this is a must-have. With an entirely linear level design and a lack of high-scores(or even anything to collect that gives points; everything that you can pick up is extra lives, more health and more ammo for the weapons), the replay value really lies only in selecting a higher difficulty to complete the game at. The main levels are platform, with a dynamic camera which is mostly locked on Jim. Fast-paced, hopping, floating(since Jim is, in fact, a worm, he can use his head as a propeller to keep himself afloat, though he can't stay in the air for very long, and will continually drop downwards, slowly) and fighting fun. The game is exciting and addicting, and the boss fights and occasional unique level keep things interesting. Made by David Perry, who later went on to be the lead designer on Enter the Matrix, the simple controls and interface let you do quite a lot of fun feats. The sequel went on to add more weapons and a feature or two more, but only featured half as many levels, several of which weren't different from each other. I personally prefer this game, and one has to admire the fact that this was apparently what started the show, instead of the other way around. It certainly isn't hard to tell why this begot more games, and a television show. I haven't heard Castellaneta's Jim, so I can't say how good Douglas TenNapel(the character creator who does the voice here), is comparatively, but whilst Dan(no, I'm not putting myself through spelling out his last name again) is known for his comic voices, on The Simpsons, Douglas does quite good, with a wacky, spaced Jim. Though I haven't tried the original version, I would advise anyone who intends to play this game, expecting to like it, to get the Special Edition, as it adds several things(which you can read about in Alternate Versions), and improves on what is there. I would guess that children are the main audience that is aimed for, here, though basically anyone can play this game. It does take good reflexes and a bit of patience, however. You are given a level selector, though you cannot choose to start in a level that you haven't reached by playing through the previous ones, first. You start out with only a few lives, based on the difficulty... and though most levels have a few continue-points, which, if reached, allow you to start from there, instead of starting over on the level. But, if you run out of extra lives and Jim passes on, you will be sent to the "continue" screen... and you'll have to start the level all over, not necessarily knowing how to pass the part that cost you your level progress. That, and the gross parts of the comedy is pretty much the only problem I have with the game. If you plan on purchasing and playing this game, know that it can be very difficult. But through that, it's usually fun, always silly and makes for great escapism. I recommend this to any fan of the character, as well as anyone who enjoys silly, goofy fun. Cartoony, creative and colorful... and a great game for all ages. 8/10

Back in the early '90s a little side-scrolling platform game called "Earthworm Jim" came out and it was the talk of the school yard. I must've played this game HUNDREDS of times and remember ever little detail that game had in spades and the wonderful game play mechanics that made the series so damn special. It is so uniquely bizarre, it's hard to put into words just how amazingly AWESOME this game really is. You've got a superhero who battles unconventional video game villains in unconventional ways, navigating stages using his "head" as a "whip" as well as a "helicopter", fighting sub-bosses and tackling bonus stages complete with psychedelic colors whizzing about on a what could best be described as a "space crotch rocket". On top of that, the game oozes with style in the level design and the trippy and equally bizarre soundtrack. With all this, "Earthworm Jim" is easily one of the best 2-D platform games of the world; even coming close to rivaling Sonic the Hedgehog and Mario, for its' time and it's still a blast to play, even today. Now int the 21'st century, Earthworm Jim returns with an High Definition face-lift, courtesy of XBoxLive Arcade and Gameloft and also on PS3 and Wii(albeit Virtual Console). This version packs never-before-seen stages, boss characters, and bonus stages which has also seen a face lift. So if you never had the pleasure of playing EWJ, you can pick this up for SNES, Genesis, Sega CD, PS1, Sega Saturn, PC, or Xbox 360, PS3, or Wii; doesn't matter which version you get(although the Sega CD version has several new stages ALSO never before seen).

Simply put, EWJ is one of the grooviest and quirky, inventive 2-D platform games ever created. It' be a crime to pass this up this beloved, legendary classic.