The first time I encountered Earthworm Jim, I was 15 and desperately trying to convince my mom that renting a video game was a better use of our weekly Blockbuster allowance than whatever VHS tape my sister wanted. “It’s educational,” I insisted, pointing at the box with its cartoon worm in a super suit. “It’s about… biology.” Mom raised an eyebrow but relented, probably because she was tired and it was cheaper than the new release movies. Little did I know that this random rental would introduce me to one of the weirdest, most creative gaming experiences of the ’90s.
I got home, popped the cartridge into my Sega Genesis (sorry SNES fans, I was a Genesis kid through and through), and was immediately greeted by the sight of a regular earthworm being granted extraordinary powers when a super suit falls from space and lands on him. Within minutes, I was using Jim’s head as a whip, launching cows into the stratosphere, and battling an evil goldfish in a bowl. Whatever I had expected, this definitely wasn’t it—and I was absolutely hooked.
The game’s first level, New Junk City, set the tone immediately. While other platformers had you running through forests or castles, Earthworm Jim had you navigating through literal garbage, dodging rabid dogs, and using old tires as trampolines. I remember pausing the game just to watch the idle animations—Jim would pull out a pocket book, do pushups, or check his watch with this exaggerated cartoon flair. These weren’t just programming shortcuts; they were genuine character moments. My dad walked by during one of them, glanced at the screen, and just said, “What in the world are you playing?” I didn’t have a coherent answer then, and I’m not sure I do now.
The controls were challenging but incredibly satisfying once mastered. That head-whip mechanic felt absolutely revolutionary—not just a simple attack but a versatile tool for swinging across gaps, grabbing items, and slingshotting yourself to higher platforms. I spent an embarrassing amount of time just whipping Jim’s head around in circles for no reason other than it looked hilarious and made that satisfying “thwack” sound. The friend who visited that weekend (Tom, who had insisted I should have rented Vectorman instead) became equally obsessed with perfecting the timing of the head-whip to take out multiple enemies in one swing.
And then there were the weapons. The plasma gun with its limited ammo forced you to be strategic rather than just blasting everything in sight. I’d meticulously conserve my shots only to waste them all in a panic when encountering one of the game’s more bizarre enemies. “I had a full gun and now it’s gone!” became a frequent lament in my basement gaming sessions. My little brother, who was only 8 at the time and mostly watched me play, would solemnly nod and offer useless advice like “maybe try not getting hit” as if that had never occurred to me.
Nothing prepared me for the “What the Heck?” level, though. After navigating relatively normal (well, for certain values of “normal”) platforming challenges, the game suddenly throws you into a twisted game show hosted by Evil the Cat. The jarring shift in gameplay—from precision platforming to a demented trivia contest—was so unexpected that I actually thought my cartridge was glitched. I called the rental store to complain, only to have the clerk laugh at me. “Yeah man, that’s just how the game is. It gets weirder.” He wasn’t wrong.
The infamous underwater level “Down the Tubes” with its glass-bubble submarine almost made me quit entirely. Those racing sections with their punishing time limits and tight corridors were the source of at least one controller being thrown across the room (sorry, Mom). I remember calling Tom in desperation after my rental period was almost up. “How do you beat the stupid bubble part?” His response: “Oh, I just got my older brother to do it.” Not helpful, Tom. Not helpful at all. I finally managed it with literally seconds to spare on the timer, sweating profusely and feeling like I’d just disarmed a bomb.
The most memorable aspect of Earthworm Jim wasn’t the challenging platforming, though—it was the utterly bizarre humor that permeated every aspect of the game. The villain named “Queen Pulsating, Bloated, Festering, Sweaty, Pus-filled, Malformed Slug-for-a-Butt” who wanted to steal Princess What’s-Her-Name. The level transitions where Jim would get crushed, flattened, or otherwise mangled. The random cow that would occasionally fall across the screen with its mournful “Moooooo.” It was like playing through a weird fever dream or a particularly unhinged Saturday morning cartoon. As a teenager raised on Ren & Stimpy and Rocko’s Modern Life, it felt like this game was speaking directly to my sensibilities.
When I finally returned the rental, I immediately started saving up for my own copy. Twenty bucks was a lot of lawn-mowing money in those days, but I was determined. Three weeks later, I proudly walked out of Electronics Boutique with my very own copy, much to the confusion of my parents. “Didn’t you already play that game?” my dad asked. How could I explain that Earthworm Jim wasn’t just a game you beat and moved on from? It was an experience you wanted to revisit, like a favorite movie or album.
The animation was a huge part of what made the game special. At a time when most 16-bit sprites moved with relatively limited frames, Earthworm Jim featured fluid, exaggerated animations that felt pulled straight from a cartoon. Years later, I learned that the development team at Shiny Entertainment was largely made up of former animation professionals who had worked on projects like Ren & Stimpy, which explained so much. Jim’s stretchy, physics-defying movements weren’t just impressive technically—they were genuinely funny. The way he’d dramatically launch himself to grab ledges, the pained expression when he’d get hit, or the triumphant flex when collecting a power-up—these were character acting moments in a medium that rarely prioritized such details.
I discovered the SNES version at a friend’s house some months later, and while I hate to admit it, it did have slightly better sound (don’t tell my Sega-loving teenage self I said that). The comparison between versions became a heated debate topic among my gaming friends, with the kind of passionate intensity that only teenagers can muster for completely inconsequential things. The “Genesis vs. SNES Earthworm Jim” argument claimed at least one friendship casualty at summer camp. In retrospect, we were probably all just jealous of the one kid who had a 3DO version, which none of us had ever seen in person but had heard mythical tales about from gaming magazines.
Speaking of gaming magazines, I vividly remember the four-page spread GamePro did on the making of Earthworm Jim, featuring interviews with creator Dave Perry. I cut it out and taped it to my wall, fascinated by the glimpse behind the curtain of game development. Perry talked about wanting to create a character-driven platformer that stood out from the sea of Mario clones, and how the team’s animation background influenced the game’s distinctive style. It was one of the first times I considered that actual people with creative visions were behind the games I played, not just faceless corporations. I kept that article for years, long after the tape yellowed and the edges frayed.
The boss battles remain some of the most creative I’ve encountered in any game. Evil the Cat, who would dramatically lick himself while you frantically dodged falling debris. Major Mucus with his disgustingly memorable snot attacks. And of course, Psy-Crow, Jim’s arch-nemesis with his jetpack and cocky attitude. Each boss felt like a character from a twisted cartoon rather than just an obstacle to overcome. They had personality, which was still relatively rare in the mid-90s gaming landscape of largely generic bad guys.
When the Earthworm Jim cartoon show premiered in 1995, I was already in full fanboy mode. Every Saturday morning, I’d wake up early to catch it, bowl of sugary cereal in hand (probably Cocoa Pebbles, if memory serves). The show captured the absurdist humor of the game perfectly, with Jim’s catchphrase “Groovy!” becoming part of my daily vocabulary, much to the annoyance of literally everyone around me. I even had an Earthworm Jim lunch box for a brief period before deciding I was “too old” for character lunch boxes—a decision I now deeply regret as an adult who would absolutely rock an Earthworm Jim lunch box at the office if I still had it.
The toy line was considerably harder to find in our small town. After weeks of checking every Walmart, Target, and Kay-Bee Toys within a 30-mile radius, I finally found a single Jim figure at a store an hour away during a family trip. I convinced my parents it was essential that we stop by showing them the GamePro article as proof of the cultural significance of Earthworm Jim. The figure still sits on my desk today, slightly yellowed with age but still sporting that manic grin. My wife has suggested several times that perhaps a professional man in his forties shouldn’t have action figures visible during Zoom meetings, but some hills are worth dying on.
Earthworm Jim 2 expanded on everything that made the original great, with even weirder levels (the one where Jim is a blind cave salamander still haunts me) and more elaborate animations. By that point, I was working my first job at the local movie theater and bought it on day one, calling in “sick” to work so I could play it uninterrupted. My boss, who was also a gamer, saw through this immediately. “Earthworm Jim 2 came out today, didn’t it?” he asked when I returned. I nodded sheepishly. “Was it worth it?” Another nod. He just sighed and put me on popcorn duty for a month as punishment.
The series unfortunately went downhill with Earthworm Jim 3D, a game so disappointing that teenage me wrote an actual physical letter to Shiny Entertainment expressing my dismay. I never got a response, unsurprisingly, but the therapeutic value of channeling my gamer rage into coherent sentences might have been an important developmental step. It was probably my first experience with the unique heartbreak of seeing a beloved franchise take a wrong turn, a pain that gamers of my generation would become all too familiar with as the years went on.
As an adult collector, I’ve managed to track down complete-in-box copies of both Genesis and SNES versions, though the price has climbed considerably since my lawn-mowing days. There’s something deeply satisfying about having these artifacts of a weirder, more experimental era in gaming. Whenever I have friends over who are also of the gaming persuasion, I’ll sometimes fire up the original on my vintage CRT TV. It never fails to get laughs, even from people who’ve never played it before.
What makes Earthworm Jim still resonate today, I think, is how unapologetically strange it was willing to be. In an era of focus-grouped, market-tested game design, there’s something refreshing about a game that feels like it sprang fully formed from the fevered imagination of its creators. Of course Jim’s nemesis would be a crow with psychic powers. Of course there would be a level where you have to escort a blind, narcoleptic puppy through danger. Of course the princess you spend the whole game trying to save would get crushed by a cow in the ending. These aren’t decisions made to maximize market appeal—they’re the product of creators who were clearly having fun and trusted players to come along for the ride.
I sometimes show Earthworm Jim to my nephew, who’s growing up in an era of photorealistic graphics and cinematic game design. At first, he’s skeptical of the primitive (to his eyes) visuals, but it never takes long for the game’s charm to win him over. By the time Jim is using his head to helicopter slowly down from a high platform, he’s usually laughing and asking questions about this weird worm guy. It’s a reminder that good design, creative animation, and genuine humor don’t have an expiration date, even if the technology that delivers them continues to evolve.
Maybe that’s why I keep coming back to Earthworm Jim after all these years. In a medium that’s constantly racing toward the next technological breakthrough, there’s something comforting about revisiting a game that prioritized creativity, humor, and sheer weirdness above all else. Every time Jim yells “Groovy!” or launches that cow into orbit, I’m 15 again, sitting cross-legged on the floor of my parents’ basement, controller in hand, wondering what bizarre sight this strange little game will show me next.
