It’s designed almost specifically for smoothly animated characters and greatly expansive levels, so Earthworm Jim feels like an expansion of those previous games. Or possibly it was also the fact that the Earthworm Jim games were also quite good – Battletoads was ambitious but monstrously difficult, and Bubsy struggled to be defined as anything but mediocre.Įarthworm Jim runs on the same basic engine as other David Perry games, such as Global Gladiators, and Cool Spot. Perhaps the most prominent was its bizarre sense of humor, loosely inspired by Chuck Jones and Tex Avery cartoons, combined with its own unique brand of madcap lunacy.
But Earthworm Jim succeeded where these others did not, for any number of reasons. This isn’t exactly the first time this happened – Tradewest and Rare attempted the same thing a few years before with Battletoads, and Accolade did the same with Bubsy. They got together with Dave Perry, a programmer at Virgin Interactive, and gave him the money to create Shiny Entertainment, the team that designed and created Earthworm Jim. Upon seeing the success of Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog, they decided to produce their own video game, which would eventually lead into a blitz of licensed products. But rather than creating a toy line and cartoon simultaneously, as most companies did, they took a different route.
Seeing the success of the franchise, they decided to start their own. The story of Earthworm Jim begins with the toy manufacturer Playmates, who, back in the late 80s and early 90s, was rolling in dough thanks to the success of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles figures. And yet, one of the few instances of a Western developed title that stands amongst the best was Shiny Entertainment’s Eartworm Jim, a series of comical sidescrolling platformers with a clever cast of characters, an amusing universe, excellent music, and innovative level designs. There were numerous American and European-developed titles for the Genesis and Super Nintendo, but they were usually found trailing behind titles from companies like Sega, Capcom, and Konami. It may seem strange now, but back in the 16-bit era, the consoles were largely ruled with Japanese games.
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