Please Note : I have reviewed the game from memory. According to the Steam reviews, it seems the digital download version for windows is worse and doesn’t play the music as it should.
The original version for PC is quite cheap on ebay and you can set up an old PC rig to play them. The N64 version on the other hand is quite expansive.
Earthworm Jim 3D can be seen as a game that represents an era, a time when Sony and Nintendo were fighting each other for exclusives. Nintendo had an exclusive agreement with Acclaim for the Turok series, South Park, and others, while Sony had an exclusive deal with Square for the Final Fantasy series. Sometimes, Nintendo used the stronger graphics of the Nintendo 64 to show that there were games that couldn’t even run on Sony’s machine (which was then derogatorily referred to as the Grey Station). Those who benefited from all of this were PC gamers, who often got ports of these exclusive games, some of which were better, and some worse. For example, while console controls were usually better for understandable reasons, PC graphics weren’t limited by memory size, so there were no issues like excessive fog or short draw distance.
Many of the exclusive games were sequels to existing titles, and Earthworm Jim 3D was a continuation of a celebrated series of platformers with wild humor, falling cows, great music, and a very talented (at the time, at least) team behind it, Shiny Entertainment. Unusually, 3D was developed by a new and unknown company called VIS Entertainment, which initially aimed to release the game solely on Nintendo 64 and published many images of different areas in the game. To the disappointment of many players, the final game included only some of those areas due to the limited memory capacity of the cartridges for the console. The cancellation of the animated series (which was also excellent) didn’t help the popularity of the character, who only appeared in a very poor game for the Game Boy Color after that. (Not including another SNES port of the first game to the GBA).
It might be a curse, but neither company released any serious hits since that time. VIS closed in 2008 and mainly produced embarrassing games like Powerpuff Girls and Tom & Jerry, while Shiny also failed with two very disappointing Matrix games and another pointless title based on the movie The Golden Compass (which is rarely even mentioned in their portfolio…). But I’m not here to rub salt in the wounds; on the contrary.
My claim is that Earthworm Jim 3D for PC isn’t such a bad game, and under certain conditions, it’s worth the $6 digital download price.
As implied by its name, this is a 3D game. The basic story is no longer about Princess What’s-Her-Name, but centers around Jim himself, who suffered a concussion after the last cow fell on him, and is now fighting to keep his sanity. This internal battle within his mind causes his deepest fears and enemies to come to life, but also releases his alter ego, who must collect golden udders to unlock different areas and regain control over them.
The 3D world is quite similar to those of other games in this style, like Mario 64 and Rayman 2, but the controls are more abstract and include the use of a laser gun and Jim’s head, which can turn into a whip or a propeller (while falling). The different levels parody a range of movies and TV shows, from tough military films to Elvis movies, horror, and disco. The missions and puzzles are also quite unconventional; in one level, you need to guide the Elvis character to the exit as a tribute to one of the levels in Earthworm Jim 1, while in another, you have to guide mumbling old ladies into a walled yard and blow them up…. Anyone fearing that the sharp humor was lost will be disappointed.
The levels are divided into smaller areas, and along the way, you need to collect green balls (marbles) to score points and help Jim’s brain heal. The problem here is that the game doesn’t remember which ones you’ve already collected, so every time you enter a level, you have to collect them all over again, which is annoying.
The graphics are excellent for the time, very colorful, and the game supports almost all resolutions, with the texts being fully legible. The music, in CD quality (which takes up most of the space), was well-composed for each level. Sometimes it keeps the classic Earthworm Jim 2 vibe, while other times it surprises with heavy rock and screams or a spooky atmosphere with appropriate synthesizers (there are also tracks that sound like they were taken from spaghetti westerns).
So where exactly do the problems start? Right where they start in every platformer – with the camera and controls! The camera is undoubtedly one of the worst ever seen, and it has this annoying trait of slowly rotating around Jim every time he stops, thereby hiding enemies, obstacles, and basically anything important. The designers probably knew about this, so to absolve themselves from responsibility, they simply added a mode that allows you to disable the movement completely, fixing the camera at a certain point. In this mode, things get even stranger, and you can end up in a position where you can’t see Jim at all!
But people managed to progress in this game, and there’s no way to explain it other than by manually adjusting the camera left and right almost all the time. The only way to do this is with a gamepad, where the shoulder buttons (usually L, R) control the camera and allow you to continue controlling Jim’s movements and shooting.
While you can get used to the camera itself, in the later levels, movement becomes quite difficult – jumping from one box to another can be a tedious task, especially when it involves height. For such precision levels, you need very sensitive controls, and here they’re rather clunky, making it easy to fall into various holes, especially with an analog stick (for those parts only, it’s recommended to use the arrow keys instead). On the other hand, the shooting system deserves credit, and most of the time, the automatic aim works very well.
All these problems mainly affect the regular levels, while the boss levels are less problematic and, in my personal opinion, they are the most fun. These are 3D versions of Pac-Man, where you have to collect all the dots without being hit by various missiles. In these stages, you truly feel like you’re playing fairly without messing too much with the camera or controls, perhaps because the maneuvering space is quite small. In my personal opinion, these are by far the easiest levels, but also the most fun.
