Earthworm Jim (video game)/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Acceptable Targets: Lawyers in Heck.
  • Anticlimax Boss: Most-notably these three from the first two games:
    • Queen Slug-for-a-Butt, who is defeated by Jim effortlessly stun-locking her to death using his standard weapon.
    • Bob The Killer Goldfish (in Earthworm Jim 1), who is encountered at the end of quite-debatably the hardest level in the game, does literally nothing, and is defeated by knocking his bowl off of his table.
    • Psy-Crow (in Earthworm Jim 2), who is actually raced against rather than fought against.
  • Awesome Art: The "16-bit Ren and Stimpy" art style of Earthworm Jim 1 and (to a sadly much lesser extent) Earthworm Jim 2.
  • Awesome Music:
    • The first game's soundtrack is a particularly notable example of this, along with the second one's.
    • Tangerine from the Saturn version of Earthworm Jim 2.
    • New Junk City, in every version.
    • The Descent, for Genesis, SNES, GBA and PC.
  • Badass Decay: Jim started out having a genuinely "tough as nails" attitude in Earthworm Jim 1 but acted like a complete pansy in Earthworm Jim 2 and was basically just a bad rip-off of his cartoon self in Earthworm Jim 3D.
  • Common Knowledge: Contrary to popular belief, Tommy Tallarico didn't compose the music for the first Earthworm Jim game; that was done by Mark Miller of Nu Romantic Productions. However, Tallarico did re-arrange tracks and create a few new ones for the Special Edition re-release on Sega CD and composed nearly all the tracks for the second game.
  • Ear Worm: Basically every musical piece in the game, which ranged from creepy Danny Elfman-like weirdness, to classical music, to funk/electronica/pop.
  • Fanon Discontinuity: Earthworm Jim 3D, Menace 2 the Galaxy and the GBA rereleases are often subject to this.
    • There are also some people who ignore Earthworm Jim HD, or at least the new features, due to said new features being made without the involvement of the original team.
  • High Octane Nightmare Fuel: The music for the Intestinal Distress and Big Bruty stages are creepy. Especially compared to the rest of the music in the game. And Queen-Slug-For-A-Butt's graphic explosion after you defeat her in the first game.
    • The background during the boss battle with Evil the Cat features a legion of creepy, malicious stone faces. In some versions of the game, however, there`s just a regular pitch black background.
  • Memetic Sex Goddess: Princess What's-Her-Name.
  • Most Annoying Sound: Jim screams whenever he gets hurt.
  • Nausea Fuel: From "Snot A Problem" to "Intestinal Distress" to Queen Slug-for-a-Butt, the series is notorious for grossing people out, primarily on purpose.
  • Non Sequitur Scene: Jim's Now A Blind Cave Salamander (a.k.a. The Villi People)! This doubles as a Moment of Awesome and triples with Awesome Music since Moonlight Sonata is playing in the background.
  • Overshadowed by Controversy: While this wasn't the case at launch, in modern times, many people have come to associate the series primarily with the controversial anti-LGBT statements of co-creator Doug TenNapel, which has turned them off from playing the games at all.
  • Polished Port: The Sega CD and Windows 95 versions of EWJ 1 are often considered to be its definitive versions, with a new CD audio score, an extra level (Big Bruty), and some other neat enhancements. The Windows 95 version in particular deserves special mention, with a new save feature that allows you to skip to any level you want at any time and enhanced graphics over the Sega CD one. Either way, both versions provide the definitive and full experience that you won't find on any other versions of the game.
  • Porting Disaster
    • The first game was on many systems, but with the exception of the Sega CD and PC version, it got worse with each one! It lost a level on the SNES version, and you should expect what happened when they tried to port a game that pushed the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo to the very limit onto the Game Gear and Game Boy. The GBA port of the first game wasn't all that bad, even adding the missing level from the SNES game. But EWJ 2 on the other hand was a disaster.
    • The DSiWare port wasn't too bad either.
    • The "HD" remake for Play Station 3/360 was pretty good; only one problem: They omitted the secret level "Who Turned Out the Lights?" for some unknown reason. So the problem continues to this day.
    • The SNES version also took a lot longer to actually start the levels, almost like it was loading them. The underwater stage was also missing its music, using New Junk City's theme instead.
    • The PC port tends to be remembered fondly, but not many realize there are two ports of the first game, that are made by two teams: one is a Special Edition port for Windows 95, other is a DOS port that came in the Whole Can O'Worms edition. And while first is pretty good, second is not. While graphics are good and music was taken from Sega CD version, the controls are so-so, collision detection is not that good either and they took out not one, but two levels ("Intestinal Distress" and "Who Turned Out The Lights?"). The same team made PC port of Earthworm Jim 2, which has identical features to their port of Earthworm Jim 1, but this time they took out only one level ("Lorenzo's Soil"). The saddest part is the version now available at GOG.com and Steam is the second one.
    • The Game Boy Advance version of Earthworm Jim 1, lovingly made by Majesco. The game's graphics basically still look as good as they should, but many of its animations are either extremely too slow or missing altogether, many of its sound effects (especially the "Jim firing his machine gun" sound effect) are either laughably bad or missing altogether, Andy Asteroids looks utterly awful, and the game itself becomes a glitchy mess. Also, the game's soundtrack becomes a horribly distorted version of an already weak version of itself (the SNES version).
    • The GBA port that Earthworm Jim 2 got is easily just as bad as the original's, if not even worse. It still has most of the previous port's problems and fixes very few of them, and it even has its own fair share of problems as well. The graphics are slightly better than those of the previous port, but many sprite animations are still cut out of the game. The 3D-ish floor in the level "Puppy Love" is glitched up, and the music still sounds like a horribly distorted version of the SNES version's but with parts of the songs cut out. This port is also widely known for its incredibly broken password system that literally loads a game where you instantly die for no reason.
  • The Problem with Licensed Games: At least in the animated series: Earthworm Jim 3D and Menace 2 The Galaxy were rather lackluster attempts to milk the franchise dry.
  • That One Level: The original's "Down the Tubes" and the appropriately named "For Pete's Sake", and the sequel's "The Flyin' King."
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: The artwork is so detailed and the animations are so fluid that it could easily pass for an indie game released 20 years later.
  • What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: Just try to read the story of this game and make sense of it.
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