 Soon... ...I'll stretch. Thank you to AB 1986 for the request from my patreon page. Since there were dozens and dozens of platformers on the super nintendo if you wanted your game to stand out from the pack You really had to go out on a llamas something different and you're not gonna get any more different than the two earthworm gym games It's very obvious from the second you turn on earthworm gym one or two what makes them stand out It's the crazy visual style the background the level concepts the cows the gym sprite alone and his expressions Expressions are immediately recognizable and to this day when you think of 16-bit games you think of Earthworm Jim using his head to whip enemies. Now it might be easy to think, okay yeah that's real cute, it's an Earthworm he does wacky things and it's just weird for the sake of being weird. Yeah, it would have been easy for the developer's shiny entertainment to stop with just the visual style and make a generic platformer like so many other games, but there is a lot of substance in Earthworm Jim to back up its bizarre nature. Let's start with the first game. You begin with a huge sprawling level you can explore, with your weapons being your machine gun projectile thing and your own head which you can use to whip enemies. After that you get a weird bonus stage that looks like something out of Sonic where the perspective changes and you're riding on a rocket collecting stuff. From there you traverse a hellish landscape and end up fighting an evil cat where you send each of his nine lives to heaven. Seriously look at the background here, so cool. There's also levels where you commandeer vehicles like this space bubble thing and a giant hamster. There's a bungee jumping contest where you have to damage your opponent by pushing him into the wall or into the monster waiting at the bottom. And there's also an escort mission where you have to protect your dog. If he takes too much damage, he helks up and drags you back to an earlier part of the level. Escort missions are always a pain, but the way it's done here is actually pretty funny and not too frustrating. Throughout the journey you're met with all sorts of sightgags straight out of a Looney Tunes cartoon. I mean, you want to pause the game at any given moment just to see what the gym sprite is doing. Like when he's riding the hamster? That's great. The music and sound design are on the same level as the visuals and really add a lot to the game. Everything eventually leads up to a final boss fight against queen pulsating, bloated, festering, sweaty, pus-filled, malformed, slug for a butt. Hey, give the game points for accuracy, plus don't we all have someone in our lives that we can describe in that exact same way? Earthworm gym is far from perfect though. Some of the levels are sprawling to the point that you end up basking where the hell do I go at least a few times. What I climb up here, now what? It can be frustrating. Not only that, but this game is hard. Some of the enemy patterns are completely unpredictable, and while Jim's head whip is unique from his design standpoint, it's too slow because it takes too many frames to execute. So if you use it, certain enemies will always be a step ahead. Only a year later came Earthworm Gym 2, and for better or for worse, it's more Earthworm Gym. The visuals have been tweaked a bit to give the game its own personality, so it doesn't just come across as a clone of the first game. But make no mistake, this definitely feels like a true sequel to the first game. There's some minor changes here and there. Like you have a snot sidekick now who hangs out in your backpack and is able to help you swing from ceilings and whip enemies and such. But that's no different than from using your own head from the first game, so whatever. There's more weapons here too, including kind of a clear all attack that nearly clears out Jim himself, which is pretty funny. There's some inventive level design here too, like this stage where you have to create your own path by shooting up through this sand, and then you're a blind salamander and you have to navigate your way through a maze without touching walls and without touching these pinball bumpers that are inexplicably placed there too. There's another level where in order to proceed, you have to find a way to carry a cow to the checkpoint and have it milked which fills up this meter and sends you to the next part of the level. There's also these vertical stages where you drive around that are kind of annoying. And the recurring bonus level here is someone throwing puppies out of a window and you use a marshmallow to bounce them across the screen to safety. I guess the main difference between the original and the sequel that I'm getting at here is that the first game is much more straightforward and more of a run and gun style, while the second game takes more chances with the gameplay and the level design. So if you want to just run around, explore and shoot stuff and destroy enemies, go with the first game. If you'd rather play something with those kind of mechanics, but some more creative level design, play the second game. But just keep in mind, both games are really, really difficult. The second game in particular amps up the difficulty big time. But at least in that game, you get a password system. The problem is you can only earn the password if you find three different items in the level. So that kind of sucks. Save states to the rescue. Both Earthworm Gym Games got ports on the Genesis, Game Boy, Sega CD, Sega Saturn, PlayStation and PC. And there are some excellent resources out there that compare the strengths and weaknesses of each port, like this video from Game vs. Game that looks at the SNES and Genesis versions of the first game. To me personally, I always kind of thought that Earthworm Gym played a little better on the Genesis, especially the first game. The music also just fit better. Take the first level theme for comparison. So yeah, both Earthworm Gym Games are definitely worth playing today. They feature a deeply original visual style that's imbued with a kind of comedy you usually see in old Warner Brothers cartoons. The gameplay ranges from satisfying, I mean, when is it not satisfying just to shoot bad guys, and frustrating, since both of these games are really challenging. I never got the feeling that either of these games are particularly unfair or cheap though. It's just annoying not to have a battery save or to have to do all this extra crap just to get a password. But yeah, if you want a straight ahead run-and-gun side-scroller, go with the first game. If you want more of the Earthworm Gym universe with some more bizarre ideas and weird level design, check out the second game.