A lot of what resonates about retro video games is their degree of nonsense- weird design quirks that might have made sense to the original programmers, but certainly not to anyone else, and are only slightly more bizarre in retrospect than they were in their original context. Earthworm Jim, just by its title alone, evoked its absurdity. But Earthworm Jim 2 took this idea taken to its most illogical possible extreme. It’s aggressively, unapologetically silly not just in its story trapping but yet even down to its mechanics that devolve ever further away from coherent platforming. Earthworm Him 2 is a strong satirical statement on just how nonsensical games could get, and the extent to which we as players had to either just accept this logic or move on and play something else.
Of course, the line between satire and poor quality disguised as satire is a thin one in video games as much as it is anywhere else, and whether Earthworm Jim 2 is mocking genre conventions or just engaging in trollish level design is a fairly abstract question. Everyone seems to have at least one level that just infuriates them. For me, that was ISO 9000, a world covered in paperwork, much of which needs to be burned, guarded by hooded executioners who dive into said paperwork, where travel to different zones is facilitated by hamster ball powered torture gadgets. The most frustrating obstacles, though, are clattering file cabinets that can easily kill Jim in a single hit by crushing him into a wall. Unless, of course, Jim sets up enough of a paperwork storm to force the file cabinets to stop and open up their drawers, providing our hero with a platforming footstool in the process.
You can perhaps see what I mean about Earthworm Jim 2 being a game filled with nonsense. After my first disastrous trip through ISO 9000, I found it surprisingly difficult to maintain much frustration because the whole thing was just too ridiculous. The level even ends with a boss fight against a door that probably shouldn’t even be called a fight at all. Earthworm Jim 2 isn’t a very sophisticated game so there’s only really one solution there even could be once you understand the game well enough to understand its various quirks and running gags.
Timing is really important, whether in trying to dodge old ladies or spitballs aimed at Jim’s ascending, helium-infused head. Many of the exact physics involved, whether with grabbing ledges or just noting that Jim somehow has more precise, stronger jumps when carrying a heavy object, are quite rewarding once the player can execute them consistently. The classic shooter style level The Flyin’ King might seem obnoxiously difficult- until the player realizes that the bomb laden balloon can be moved quite quickly if it’s hit while Jim is using a shortcut rocket.
What makes Earthworm Jim 2 so satisfying is that even when you die, it’s usually pretty easy to understand why you died. The exact hitbox of the marshmallow Jim must use to save the puppies in the recurring Puppy Love level can at times be easy to misjudge, and the game punishes the player hard for dropping bombs. But for the most part, Earthworm Jim 2 is surprisingly forgiving in its difficulty curve- provided the game is played as originally intended.
Earthworm Jim 2 has no native save feature, but even in mediocre play, you shouldn’t have any trouble getting lots of continues, to the point that on my first attempt I was wondering whether the game actually had infinite continues. But Earthworm Jim 2 is a strong argument for why a lot of continues might be better than infinite continues. Limited continues force the player to stop playing- and you’re pretty much always better off taking a break for awhile and starting from the beginning than trying to brute force the final level.
In Earthworm Jim 2, the final level exemplifies this sort of difficulty with a very intense platforming race, rather than an actual boss fight, an almost sadistic punishment for players who up until that point may have been frustrated by just how little traditional platforming the game has. See Jim Run, Run Jim Run, forces the player to memorize the layout and traps to not just beat the level, but effectively speedrun it. Failure is so baked into the trollish design I was shocked to beat it on a run where I hadn’t used any continues at all. A more unreasonable game would have just assumed since anyone could eventually win without any continues, no one needs any. An overly forgiving game would figure that a person only really needs to play a game once, so the final level can be an unpleasant chore and that’s all that’s really necessary.
But the best games in this no save feature style, and I count Earthworm Jim 2 among them, understand that if the earlier levels are fun enough, a person should actually want to replay them. If the earlier levels are fair enough, it becomes an exercise in gratification when you play them more quickly and competently in subsequent playthroughs. It’s a bit surprising that Earthworm Jim 2 isn’t speedrun more competitively, given that it’s such a great demonstration of the concept with the sheer variety of gameplay and simple, yet easily exploitable mechanics.
Then there’s the sense of humor which has aged far better than it had any right to. How else do you respond to a level where Jim has inexplicably transformed into a difficult-to-control blind cave salamander, a surprisingly playable parody of terrible swimming levels, closing with a quiz show that’s impossible to win short of preparing your own list of correct answers through trial and error alone? But let’s not forget the greatest equalizer of all- cheat codes from a player-accessible debug menu. If you want to play the save state version of this game, you can do so even on original hardware. Me, though, I played on the Genesis Mini II, and I’m glad for it. Sure, the lack of weapon changing makes the water bubble gun in the final level a huge troll compared to the SNES version- but it’s funny difficulty more than mean-spirited, which makes all the difference.
William Schwartz is a media writer who specializes in South Korean media, but also writes about a wide variety of popular culture subjects- including retro video games.
