Earthworm Jim 2

"Eat dirt, icky maggoty type thing!"

So Jim did pretty well for himself for being just a worm in a spacesuit. He saved the universe from Queen Pulsating, Bloated, Festering, Sweaty, Pus-Filled, Malformed Slug-for-a-butt, saved the girl of his dreams and managed to hang on to his indestructible spacesuit.

But trouble never leaves heroes alone. Jim's archenemy Psy-crow kidnapped Princess What's her name and is planning to force her into marriage to become ruler of the universe or something like that. So Jim has to track down Psy-crow and take on a bunch of old and new enemies to find his beloved nameless princess.

But luckily everyone's favorite invertebrate has some help to do it. Besides his slimey buddy Snot who lets him swing on mucus on ceilings and parachute safely down (even though falls can't hurt Jim), Jim has a bunch of new weapons like the homing missile gun that shoots little homes at enemies, the three-way finger gun, and the completely useless bubble gun. Plus his trusty head-whip if you feel like saving ammo.

Though the game is mostly a run-and-jump platform deal like its predecessor, there are a lot of weird things about it that set it apart, too. For instance the interesting not-boss fight at the end of Anything but Tangerines, the quiz show mini game, the carnival where Jim has to inflate his head and avoid cats with peashooters to make it to the end, and the level where Jim has inexplicably been transformed into a floating salamander in a cave full of pinball bumpers. That last one had me wondering what kind of drugs the designers were on, though.

EWJ 2 is one of the sequels that's every bit as good as what came before it, but not worlds beyond it in improvement. It's still a platform game at heart, but it's a good platform game, at least. The background music in a lot of levels is nice, particularly in the pocket rocket shooting episode, though a lot of the level names don't make any sense. The Flyin' King a.k.a. Peter Pain? Anything but Tangerines? The guys at Shiny know something I don't?

Earthworm Jim was a nicely irreverent platform game, and EWJ 2 did a commendable job of following it up. One of the best of the latter-day Genesis titles, it's a worthy addition to the game library of anyone who plays platform games. If you happen to still ove cartoons like me you HAVE to play it all the way through at least once.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/02/04