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Earthworm Jim II
Originally released toward the tail end of the 16-bit era on the SNES and Genesis, Earthworm Jim 2 defied the conventions of what gamers had come to expect from a 2D platformer. Featuring a memorable yet unlikely hero, outlandish humor, and surreal level design, it was an unusual game to say the very least. Close to seven years later, Majesco Games has brought Earthworm Jim 2 to the Game Boy Advance. Unfortunately, this port has a host of new problems that render the game virtually unplayable. While Majesco's first attempt at bringing Earthworm Jim to the Game Boy Advance looked, played, and sounded much like the original, this game is a completely different story. To put it bluntly, you'll get the distinct impression that just about every chance to cut corners was taken in porting Earthworm Jim 2 to the GBA. The graphics barely resemble what the game used to look like, to the point where the entire game looks like a mess of badly drawn sprites. Those same sprites also seem to be missing many key frames of animation, making the game look even worse in motion. The audio seems to be the part of the game that was least affected by the move to the GBA, although the music and sampled voices aren't very distinctive. One has to wonder what exactly went wrong this time around, especially since the previous Earthworm Jim game on the GBA was just fine.
Adding insult to injury is the bug-ridden password feature this game offers. Some passwords the game provides after finishing levels simply won't work when typed in. Others will start you off on the intended level, only to kill your character right away, not even giving you the chance to play. To call this an oversight would be a huge understatement--it's a glaring problem that should have been fixed before the game shipped.
In short, this game is a mess that should be avoided at all costs. It plays poorly and looks even worse. While the game was fun when it first came out, this attempt to bring an old license back to life leaves a black mark on an otherwise decent series. If you have any interest in Earthworm Jim 2 at all, you'd probably be better off dusting off your old 16-bit console and picking up a used copy of the SNES or Genesis version somewhere. Good old Earthworm Jim. Annelid superhero and mascot extraordinaire from the 16-bit era, he continues to slowly but surely pull himself up out of the dirt of obsolescence and back into the public eye. It's been a little over a year since the re-release of the original Earthworm Jim adventure on the Virtual Console, and a just about four months since Gameloft announced that that same game would be getting a remake on WiiWare. And now, the slow crawl towards renewed relevance for the once-popular character continues, as Earthworm Jim 2 has arrived in the Wii Shop for its own encore appearance -- groovy.
Earthworm Jim 2 is supposedly an action/platformer like its predecessor, but truthfully very few of its stages play out that way -- more often this game ignores what most would consider "normal" gameplay and, instead, offers players a string of disconnected, standalone levels fueled by ridiculous gimmicks, altered perspectives and costume changes.
In one level, for instance, you'll find that Jim's been buried underground and has to dig his way out by shooting up into the earth above him, all while a countdown clock ticks away the seconds he has left before he suffocates. Then, in the next, he's inexplicably bouncing puppy dogs and bombs off of an enormous marshmallow, in an off-the-wall and kind of disgusting homage to Nintendo's classic Game & Watch game, Fire. (Kind of disgusting because, if you miss a puppy, the poor little thing goes splat on the ground.) And that's just the beginning -- there's an isometric shooter stage, where the gameplay changes into a crazy race displayed from a three-quarters view. There's a vertically-scrolling stage where you have to inflate Jim's head like a helium balloon, in order to float up to the goal. There's a level where you're not even playing as Jim at all, but a sightless, flying cave salamander named Blind Sally -- and, at the end of that one, you're forced to take part in a multiple-choice quiz show where every question has no right answer.
Madness.
So when it all shakes out in the end, Earthworm Jim 2 ends up having only about three "normal" run-and-gun levels -- quite a shift from his original adventure, and not a good one. What's more, the few times you actually do get to play side-scrolling, standard stages you'll find yourself tripped up by some of the original's unresolved issues, and a new annoyance or two.
Jim continues to be a bit floaty and imprecise in his movements, and it's difficult to target enemies with his weapon -- especially after you collect certain gun upgrades, with actually downgrade its effectiveness. The level design is beautiful to look at, with lots of swooping, non-linear platforms making for some intricate landscapes to explore -- but they're also ridiculously confusing, since you frequently can't tell what's a viable platform to stand on and what isn't.
And one of the most helpful techniques in Jim's arsenal from the first game, his spinning helicopter-head maneuver, has been cut in this sequel. Instead, you've got a mostly useless tag-along partner named Snott riding in your backpack. The sentient booger allows you to whip your way across certain gaps by sticking to specific points on certain ceilings -- which is pretty worthless. Especially since Jim could already do the same thing before, by whipping his worm body out of his cybersuit and swinging with it. So while Earthworm Jim 2 scores for being one of the wackiest, most nonsensical games ever created thanks to its absolutely ridiculous array of characters, locations and slightly disgusting imagery, it doesn't manage to surpass its predecessor in any significant way in the end. Its over-reliance on specific, one-stage-only game design gimmicks make it feel like you're never getting the chance to play the real game -- and then, when you do, you get disappointed by the odd cuts and control troubles found there, too. This is still a decent effort overall, and one that is certainly still worth a look if you were a fan of the original. But I'd caution against jumping straight into this sequel without already having an established love for Earthworm Jim in place -- if you did, you might just leave confused, eight bucks poorer and wondering how this kind of insanity was ever as popular as it was.
(It might be worthwhile, too, to wait around and see what Gameloft does with that EJ1 Remake on WiiWare -- if that ends up being good, a remake of EJ2 could very well follow it and make this VC release obsolete for all but the truly nostalgic.)
Earthworm Jim II
Originally released toward the tail end of the 16-bit era on the SNES and Genesis, Earthworm Jim 2 defied the conventions of what gamers had come to expect from a 2D platformer. Featuring a memorable yet unlikely hero, outlandish humor, and surreal level design, it was an unusual game to say the very least. Close to seven years later, Majesco Games has brought Earthworm Jim 2 to the Game Boy Advance. Unfortunately, this port has a host of new problems that render the game virtually unplayable. While Majesco's first attempt at bringing Earthworm Jim to the Game Boy Advance looked, played, and sounded much like the original, this game is a completely different story. To put it bluntly, you'll get the distinct impression that just about every chance to cut corners was taken in porting Earthworm Jim 2 to the GBA. The graphics barely resemble what the game used to look like, to the point where the entire game looks like a mess of badly drawn sprites. Those same sprites also seem to be missing many key frames of animation, making the game look even worse in motion. The audio seems to be the part of the game that was least affected by the move to the GBA, although the music and sampled voices aren't very distinctive. One has to wonder what exactly went wrong this time around, especially since the previous Earthworm Jim game on the GBA was just fine.
Adding insult to injury is the bug-ridden password feature this game offers. Some passwords the game provides after finishing levels simply won't work when typed in. Others will start you off on the intended level, only to kill your character right away, not even giving you the chance to play. To call this an oversight would be a huge understatement--it's a glaring problem that should have been fixed before the game shipped.
In short, this game is a mess that should be avoided at all costs. It plays poorly and looks even worse. While the game was fun when it first came out, this attempt to bring an old license back to life leaves a black mark on an otherwise decent series. If you have any interest in Earthworm Jim 2 at all, you'd probably be better off dusting off your old 16-bit console and picking up a used copy of the SNES or Genesis version somewhere. Good old Earthworm Jim. Annelid superhero and mascot extraordinaire from the 16-bit era, he continues to slowly but surely pull himself up out of the dirt of obsolescence and back into the public eye. It's been a little over a year since the re-release of the original Earthworm Jim adventure on the Virtual Console, and a just about four months since Gameloft announced that that same game would be getting a remake on WiiWare. And now, the slow crawl towards renewed relevance for the once-popular character continues, as Earthworm Jim 2 has arrived in the Wii Shop for its own encore appearance -- groovy.
Earthworm Jim 2 is supposedly an action/platformer like its predecessor, but truthfully very few of its stages play out that way -- more often this game ignores what most would consider "normal" gameplay and, instead, offers players a string of disconnected, standalone levels fueled by ridiculous gimmicks, altered perspectives and costume changes.
In one level, for instance, you'll find that Jim's been buried underground and has to dig his way out by shooting up into the earth above him, all while a countdown clock ticks away the seconds he has left before he suffocates. Then, in the next, he's inexplicably bouncing puppy dogs and bombs off of an enormous marshmallow, in an off-the-wall and kind of disgusting homage to Nintendo's classic Game & Watch game, Fire. (Kind of disgusting because, if you miss a puppy, the poor little thing goes splat on the ground.) And that's just the beginning -- there's an isometric shooter stage, where the gameplay changes into a crazy race displayed from a three-quarters view. There's a vertically-scrolling stage where you have to inflate Jim's head like a helium balloon, in order to float up to the goal. There's a level where you're not even playing as Jim at all, but a sightless, flying cave salamander named Blind Sally -- and, at the end of that one, you're forced to take part in a multiple-choice quiz show where every question has no right answer.
Madness.
So when it all shakes out in the end, Earthworm Jim 2 ends up having only about three "normal" run-and-gun levels -- quite a shift from his original adventure, and not a good one. What's more, the few times you actually do get to play side-scrolling, standard stages you'll find yourself tripped up by some of the original's unresolved issues, and a new annoyance or two.
Jim continues to be a bit floaty and imprecise in his movements, and it's difficult to target enemies with his weapon -- especially after you collect certain gun upgrades, with actually downgrade its effectiveness. The level design is beautiful to look at, with lots of swooping, non-linear platforms making for some intricate landscapes to explore -- but they're also ridiculously confusing, since you frequently can't tell what's a viable platform to stand on and what isn't.
And one of the most helpful techniques in Jim's arsenal from the first game, his spinning helicopter-head maneuver, has been cut in this sequel. Instead, you've got a mostly useless tag-along partner named Snott riding in your backpack. The sentient booger allows you to whip your way across certain gaps by sticking to specific points on certain ceilings -- which is pretty worthless. Especially since Jim could already do the same thing before, by whipping his worm body out of his cybersuit and swinging with it. So while Earthworm Jim 2 scores for being one of the wackiest, most nonsensical games ever created thanks to its absolutely ridiculous array of characters, locations and slightly disgusting imagery, it doesn't manage to surpass its predecessor in any significant way in the end. Its over-reliance on specific, one-stage-only game design gimmicks make it feel like you're never getting the chance to play the real game -- and then, when you do, you get disappointed by the odd cuts and control troubles found there, too. This is still a decent effort overall, and one that is certainly still worth a look if you were a fan of the original. But I'd caution against jumping straight into this sequel without already having an established love for Earthworm Jim in place -- if you did, you might just leave confused, eight bucks poorer and wondering how this kind of insanity was ever as popular as it was.
(It might be worthwhile, too, to wait around and see what Gameloft does with that EJ1 Remake on WiiWare -- if that ends up being good, a remake of EJ2 could very well follow it and make this VC release obsolete for all but the truly nostalgic.)