Holy shit, yea I am back and ready to kick your faces in with this game that is simply amazing. If you have never had the delight of playing Earthworm Jim 2 (or EWJ2) you are a sad sad video gamer. This game was released in 1996 (or 95 if you had a SNES in America) by Shiny entertainment after the success of Earthworm Jim 1. Before I can even talk about this game I have to give back story on the character himself.
He looks like a goofy asshole….wait….he is a goofy asshole.
Jim was an ordinary earthworm rummaging through the trivial dirt and random shit that worms run across when during a space battle a super suit fell from the sky and so happened to engulf Jim. Thanks to this suit he now has the ability to kick a lot of ass all the while being a funny and awesome alternative to other gaming characters of the time such as Sonic and Mario. In this game you have to save Princess Whats-Her-Name from the evil Psycrow, because he has kidnapped her and taken her hostage just to basically piss our man Jim off once again. To get her back you must shoot, whip, and snot your way through level after level.
Look Jim is playing the accordion like Weird Al for the princess, the only difference is that Jim will get laid for this while Weird Al is probably still a virgin.
This game handles perfect. I really mean perfect. For the type of game that it is there is simply nothing wrong with the controls as you can honestly feel them not needing to be forced or pushed just to do certain things throughout the game. there are times where they could have possibly had a certain tweak here or there to make things a little less complicated but you can easily get past the small things to focus on the whole games controls. Right away you are thrust into action, with a stage called “Anything But Tangerines” which has you shooting aliens and eventually riding up stairs avoiding old ladies as they fall from the sky. If they land on you, they shout “Fresh!” and bitch-slap you with their purses as you have to go all the way to the bottom of the staircase only to have to do the whole thing over again. Each stage is honestly something to discuss but for the sake of saving myself a lot of words I will only go over a few more of them. The most original stage to me has to be “Jim’s Now a Blind Cave Salamander!” (or also known as the Villi People). This stage has you playing as Jim and all you can do is swim around, shoot enemies, and avoid all obstacles as you are moving through the body of a animal of some sort. In this stage you also must collect earthworms which you then get to use to access trivia questions at the end of the level. If you can somehow guess the correct answer you win a small prize, which could be health or ammo, the only catch is the fact that the questions are nothing but random ass nonsense. For example: What color is Jim’s big red gun? A) Blue B) Green or C) Yellow…..the correct answer is B) Green but how are you even supposed to congure up a guess as to something that ubsurd.
This is Jim as a Blind Cave Salamander….and yes he is still cooler than you will ever be.
Another level in the game is “The Flyin King” where you have to use your trusty Pocket Rocket to move a hot air balloon full of TNT across a map while avoiding enemies, and cannons, only to use it to kill an enemy at the end of the stage known as Major Mucus. You also must go through a grill to face a boss known as Flamin’ Yawn, in Stage Ate. There is one stage that I cannot stand which is “Udderly Abducted” which has you saving cows from ufo’s and other random shit. It by far is the most tedious stage in the entire game and I hate it more than anyother stage that I can think of in gaming history. Finally you finally get to save the princess by facing Psycrow in a footrace to get to Whats-Her-Name. This sounds like an easy task but the problem is that there are so many pits that you cannot really see untill you are jumping right into them that you can easily screw up over and over again. Hell if he beats you to certain points before you can get to them, he will lock a door and then you are fucked…all you can do is withstand the barrage of shit he throws at you untill you finally die and start the stage over. This stage can and will kick your ass when you have no idea what to be facing which is normally the case.
Little lesson here Tommy Tallarico did the soundtrack to this game. I know what your thinking…who the Hell is this guy? Well the man has 25 awards for making badass music in video games since 1991, and has done other games such as Wild 9 and Robocop Versus the Termanator. What does this mean for this game? Well basically its an audio orgasm of awesome that destroys your ears and makes them feel as if they are getting throttle cocked the entire game. Yes there are a few tracks that could have been done better I will say that much at least, but this soundtrack kicks ass. In the game when you are the blind cave salamander they play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, part 1 which is just classic and somehow with the feel of the stage actually works very very well. They also use Moonlight Sonata albeit part 3 for the final race against the boss. They even use Cuban Pete for two stages as well. If you can get ahold of this soundtrack you need to for the love of God…or Allah…or whatever you believe in, because you will not regret it.
Look if you ever get the chance to play this game or buy it please do. This game is nothing short of an example of what gaming used to be like, and what it should currently be like. I mean Earthworm Jim as a character is basically what would happen if you put Bruce Campbell into a spaceage suit that allows you to kick copious amounts of ass. This was the last really successful game of the franchise and its a damn shame too because Shiny could have made alot of progress and kept Jim alive instead of making Earthworm Jim 3d and giving all the fans a nice big middle finger of awful gaming. There are rumors of a possible fourth game in the series coming out and if it does I want them to keep it simple and cartoony just like EWJ2 was. If they deviate from that formula at all I am sure it will suck like all the 3D Sonic games do now. If you like crazy ass story lines that have no seriousness to them at all, while having the most fucked up twist ending in cartoon gaming history then this is the game for you. If you have a problem with good games or anything remotly fun, then stick to something like Zoop you pansy.
Hey its Zoop…..remember Zoop? Yea no one else does either.
