Level Up: Earthworm Jim

Note: This is the way I wrote the script for me to read when recording, so that's why there are notes for when sound effects are supposed to come in. I'm also working on making it so you can download the audio verson of my reviews.

Earthworm Jim is probably the most unlikely hero EVER. Why? Because he’s probably the lowliest creature ever: an Earthworm. At the height of the popularity animal game mascots, like Sonic the Hedgehog and Donkey Kong, developers Shiny Entertainment decided to release this wonderful guy: a worm with a super suit to make him stronger than anyone and an awesome ray-gun. In truth, with this concept, it was more of a parody of the current fad, but it still worked!

The plot line behind this game was simple, yet wacky, proven by the names I’m about to say. The evil Psy-Crow had one day taken the "Ultra-high-tech-indestructible-super-space-cyber-suit" built by professor Monkey-for-a-Head, but had dropped it in battle over earth where it landed on the Earthworm we know as Jim. After that, Jim overhears Psy-Crow talking to (stop the music, I want to get this right) Queen Pulsating, Bloated, Festering, Sweaty, Pus-filled, Malformed, Slug-for-a-Butt (called Queen Slug-for-a-Butt for short)and their plans for the kidnapping of the Queen’s sister, Princess What’s-her-name. After that, Jim sets off to the princess by going from planet to planet defeating enemies like Evil the Cat, Bob the evil Goldfish and Major Mucus.

By the way, just from their name you can pretty much attain who everyone is: Psy-Crow is indeed a psychotic crow, Professor Monkey-for-a-Head has a monkey grafted to his head and Queen Slug-for-a-butt does have a giant slug for her butt. Once again, I think this was a parody of the obviously named Sonic the Hedgehog.

Once you start playing, you get pure platforming joy. You’ll play as Jim as you shoot enemies with your ray gun or whip them using your own HEAD! Seriously, how cool is that? The levels are each unique and probably unlike anything you’ve ever seen. For example, the first level is New Junk City, a garbage dump level, where you’ll have to bounce on tires, climb up conveyer belts and fight a robot made of garbage. You also launch a cow into space using a fridge in this level. That cow actually follows you throughout the game (pay attention to the background), but I don’t want to give to much away.

The game mixes it up quite a bit, not just with randomness of some of the settings but also the game play. There are levels where you’ll have to race against time under water, bungee using snot and clear the path for the adorable Peter Puppy (seriously, do NOT let him get hurt, he looks cute at first, but he mess you up!).

Earthworm Jim was originally released for the Genesis, but after his success, he was ported onto other consoles: Super Nintendo, Sega Mega-CD, Sega Game Gear, Game Boy... Personally, I own a Windows 95 CD release which I found for 2$, which was awesome (crowd cheers) but there is a scratch on the CD causing the sound FX not to work, which is not awesome. It really does suck, cause I’m missing out on things like this: (play a few sound effects at random). It’s also available for the Virtual Consol, X-box live arcade and the Playstation Network, so there is no excuse for you not to play this game. If you like platforming, you’ll love this brilliantly funny game.