Earthworm Jim 2 (Genesis/Mega Drive)

The original Earthworm Jim grabbed me, shook me around like a chew toy, then spat me out into a pile of trash. And not in a good way.

But will I have any better luck with the sequel?

Genesis/Mega Drive

Unlike the first game, this one seems to have some kind of story to it. Well it has an intro at least. Well, I mean it has some animation around the company logo.

SNES

The nefarious Psy-Crow, Earthworm Jim's arch-enemy, distracts him while he's serenading Princess What's-Her-Name in this inky black void.

Fun fact: The SNES version seems to be the only one where he plays something close to a tune on that accordion.

DOS

With Jim temporarily distracted, Psy-Crow takes the opportunity to kidnap the Princess from right under his nose.

Saturn

So I suppose we have take a strange journey across the galaxy to save her now then. Because there's no way we could ever just catch up to them. Nope, they're long gone.

Earthworm Jim 2 was released in 1995, at the end of the 16 bit era, when Genesis/Mega Drive games were starting to look a bit dated and 2d art like this was considered 'last gen'.

PlayStation

So PlayStation owners with their shiny new next gen graphics hardware got this awesome 3d rendered art on their level title screen instead. Saturn owners too, as the two versions seem to be basically identical. Yeah I think 16 bit wins this round.

Apparently the PlayStation version wasn't even released in the US because Sony America just wouldn't approve it. Because who'd want to buy a game with 2d graphics?

Well this is definitely familiar. At least these flying enemies don't grab onto me like the ones in Earthworm Jim did.

So far the game seems basically identical in gameplay to EWJ, with Jim getting around and aiming his pistol in more or less the same way. Though that part's definitely not a problem, as in the first game Jim moved about the level with style and effortless grace. It was everything else about the gameplay that pissed me off.

Not sure what the deal with this idle animation is though. I guess the super suit came equipped with a limitless supply of... little dancing men. And bricks.

I was sure I'd heard somewhere that either this or Earthworm Jim was an entirely different game on the SNES, but I guess I heard totally wrong. This seems to be absolutely the same thing as the Genesis/Mega Drive version, just with different backgrounds with a little more depth to them.

Earthworm Jim 1 (Mega Drive)   |   Earthworm Jim 2 (Mega Drive)   |   Earthworm Jim 2 (SNES)

I would have assumed they'd just reused the art from the first game, but nope, Jim has a brand new sprite this time around. He's lost the frown, and some of his outline too.

In fact they've even gone to the effort of redrawing all of Jim's frames slightly thinner for the SNES version, to compensate for the lower resolution and stretched screen. I don't remember seeing that happen that often.

DOS

Here's another farm animal related 'puzzle' like the cow catapult in the first game, only this one works far better from a gameplay perspective. For one thing there's some actual gameplay to it: I have to carry the pig over to the goal, throwing it up onto ledges before I can climb up myself. If I leave the pig too long unattended it'll ascend into the heavens, and then I have to go back and grab another one.

Also there's an actual point to it this time. I need to get the pig on the pig chute to launch it into the goldfish bowl to prevent the cat from leaping out of the shallow water to punch me. There's not much of a puzzle here, the game flashes up exactly what to do in big letters, but it's nice to feel like I'm doing things for a reason beyond setting up a joke.

Damn grannies, falling from the sky and shoving my stairlift on reverse. I have to carefully adjust my speed to dodge between them, which is made more difficult than it needs to be by the controls reversing on every floor.

Love the Jaws posters though. Nice touch.

I saw another one of these pictures earlier in the level with an image of  a planet on it, and I've no clue what they're for. Knowing my luck I'll need to find all of them to open up a bonus level containing a continue, or something.

Oh fuck, it's a boss battle against the fish from American Dad!

I forgotten that Earthworm Jim 1 had me fight a boss at the end of the first level. Two of them in fact, in a row, and it took me forever to beat them. Not really looking forward to this.

Oh. Well, okay then. Level complete!

And the cows show up to congratulate me on a job well done. Yay!
Though that one in the background is creeping me out with that grin.

Saturn

They, uh, enhanced the image for the PlayStation and Saturn ports.

This is interesting, on this level I have to cut my own path through the soil. Or sometimes I'll reach a ledge I can't reach until I raise the floor level by shooting down some of the soil above me. It's a great idea for a level, and it actually works. Plus they had the sense to give me infinite ammo.

I'm not so happy about the time limit, but they had to try to ruin it for me somehow. It's not even instant death when the timer reaches zero, it just knocks off a bit of health and resets, so I can't really complain.

These little assholes like to crawl out from holes in the wall and throw babies at me. Though at least they don't fly. They can throw what they like as long as they stay on the bloody ground. I can just close off the holes by covering them with soil anyway.

To mix things up a little from the first game, they've given Jim a slime creature sidekick-thing that gives him two new abilities! Now I can swing from slime patches in the ceiling, and float down with a slime parachute. Though now that I think about it Jim could swing from hooks in the first game and float down with his helicopter head spin. So not actually much difference then.

Damn, I've found an actual boss fight. I half thought they'd gotten bored of them after EWJ1 and the sequel was going to be 100% boss-free.

Actually this guy was a total pushover, I just stayed out of his way and shot him until he eventually exploded into baby enemies. Which I shot.

Whoa, this level looks awesome. So many layers of parallax scrolling. Plus the buildings appear to change perspective as I move around. It's all really impressive, to me anyway.

Shame I have to focus on bouncing these puppies across the screen on this cushion so I can't really look at it. If I miss one they'll go splat onto the floor and die, which is a little... dark. If I miss four of them my dog buddy Hulks out and beats Jim to a bloody pulp. All happy fun times in the puppy round.

PlayStation

The PlayStation (and Saturn) port of the game has entirely redrawn backgrounds, but they've been fairly close to the original game so far. On this level though they've gone crazy and moved it to a volcano. Which wouldn't be so bad, except they've taken out the cool perspective effect on the buildings. The original game looked far better in my opinion.

Shit, I failed to catch a bomb and it took off my remaining health in one go. My first lost life.

Which surprises me actually, because I was losing lives like crazy in Earthworm Jim 1, I was terrible at it. I'm pretty sure I haven't gotten dramatically better at platformers in the meantime, so I guess this must just be an easier game so far. Or a fairer game at least.

I finally delivered the bomb across and blew up Psy-Crow, and was ready to finally move on to more platforming. But nope, gotta bounce more puppies across in ROUND 2!

You know, there's a reason platformers sold so well in the 90s and puppy bouncing games didn't. This kind of thing is fine for a quick minigame, but it gets old fast. Well for me anyway, I'm sure someone must love this level.


THREE THOUSAND BOUNCING PUPPIES LATER.

You have got to be shitting me. If this goes up to round 5 I'm turning it off right now.

I understand they've got to drag out the playtime, and get their money's worth out of these clever graphics, but this seems like a crappy way of doing it. I think it'd be so much better if they'd put in saves, and let the player unlock levels as they go. Then players could go to a level select screen and play thirty rounds of this if they so desired.


EVENTUALLY.

Anyway, it turns out round 4 was the final round, and now Jim's a blind cave salamander flying around what looks like the intestines of a pinball machine. Well, it's a change I suppose.

Eat lead, sheep! No no, go higher, stop falling! It seems salamander Jim can't stay airborne and shoot guns at the same time.

Hmm, 'Easy' or 'Hard', a difficult decision indeed. Are they lying to me or not? I think I'll trust them this once and go with 'Easy'.

I thought this was supposed to be the easy route! It seems that touching the walls is a bad thing, and I should probably avoid doing it ever again. Not easy when the corridors are so narrow, and I have to stop flying to shoot the sheep.

You know, this level's not so bad. A bit slow, but it works as an interlude between the platforming. So far that's three levels I've kind of liked, and four rounds of puppy misery. I think that still puts it ahead of what I played of the first game.

... what?

Do I just guess at random or something? No idea what this is about.

Crap, now I have to do one of those 'repeat the sequence' minigames, where the objects light up one at a time in an increasingly complex pattern, and then I have remember what it was then hit them in the same order. Over and over again.

It only took me five minutes in total, but it felt like I was here for an hour. I think it got up to a 12 item long sequence in the end. So that's 78 times I had to slowly fly across and drop onto a bumper. Thanks for that, game.

Thank fuck for that. Jim takes his salamander costume off, hails a cab, and we're finally out of here.

Uh, I guess we're flying around on Jim's Pocket Rocket doing a bit of isometric shooting now. It said something about a bomb at the start, but I looked away for a second and missed it.

The screen scrolls automatically, but if I flip direction he starts flying backwards. It feels pretty awkward to me.


LATER.

It took me a while but I finally found my bomb, right back at the start of the level. I'll see if a couple of bullets can convince it to explode.


MUCH LATER, AT THE OTHER END OF THE LEVEL.

Son of a bitch. Well, the bomb makes a bit more sense now. I'm guessing the thing has probably respawned if it's necessary, so I guess I'll just fly back all the way to the start of the level and grab it then.

Fuck! They keep firing fat guys at me, and I have to keep flipping back and forth to shake the bastards off. It's ridiculously annoying. Plus they drain my health while they're latched on.

I can't grab the bomb balloon, instead I have to keep nudging it along with my Pocket Rocket. Which is hard to do when I'm trying to shake off enemies.

Shit! Now I have to start pushing the bomb from the start again.

Agh, no! Stop pushing my bomb back down the level you bastard slime pushers!

Eventually I get the bomb over to the slime monster, and fortunately one explosion was enough to sort him out. The game had me seriously wondering if I'd have to make a few more trips. At least it's over with now. Shame they haven't bothered to give me a single password yet so I can't just skip past the level if I ever feel like playing this game again.


AND THEN, ON THE NEXT LEVEL...

No.


Changing the gameplay each level like this is definitely ambitious, and they've shown no shortage of imagination, but the gameplay in these stages is just not on the same level as the platforming stages. I was actually enjoying this a lot more than Earthworm Jim 1, right up until the first puppy bouncing level. But after that it started wearing me down, and by the end I was just playing out my last few lives just to see what the game over screen looked like.

Damn the game looks good though. Music ain't bad either, especially on the CD versions. Next game!