The Weekly WTF: Earthworm Jim

Few video games exude quite as much crazy-ass as Earthworm Jim. This little slice of madness could sweat pure lunacy into bottles, to be used as a 'New Asylum Smell' to attract prospective buyers when the local crazyhouse is up for sale.

Buckle up, gentlemen, we're going in.


How's this for a bizarro premise: a regular earthworm is cruising through the dirt when a technology-laden 'super suit' falls from the sky. Right on its freaking face (whichever end that is). Instead of crushing the slimy bastard --crushing it real good-- it instead imbibes him with remarkable strength, agility, intelligence and all that good stuff. And thus, the world's most craptacular superhero concept ever was brought to life.

Alongside Jim himself, a crop of similarly nutso villains were needed. His arch enemy is Queen Slug-for-a-Butt (Full name: The Evil Queen Pulsating, Bloated, Festering, Sweaty, Pus-filled, Malformed Slug-for-a-Butt), but Major Mucus, Psy-Crow and Professor Monkey-For-A-Head all oppose him as well. But anywho, we're getting ahead of ourselves.

This guy first surfaced on the Genesis/Mega Drive in 1994. This sidescrolling platformer tasked our suddenly-belimbed friend with defeating the aforementioned angry buggers (who want to reclaim the suit for their own, presumably asshole-y ends) and rescuing Princess-What's-Her-Name.

Doing so will not be easy. Or remotely sane. Over the course of your lofty quest, you'll have to catapult cows, bungee jump from booger-ropes and whip a puppy in the ass to help it traverse obstacles. This, right here, is just a day at the office for Earthworm Jim.

The game's sense of humor does have a wonderfully juvenile Beavis and Butthead thing going on, but that's just more reason to love it. The same applies to the varied and peculiar environments (space landfill New Junk City is a favorite) and the levels themselves. Earthworm Jim deftly mixes platforming and run and gun-ing sensibilities, while throwing in a dash of anti-gravity racing and snot-bungeeing too.

One boss battle consists solely of pushing Bob the Killer Goldfish's tank off of the table it resides on. We'll say no more.

Header image: hardcoregamer.