Out of all the games that shaped me into the kooky Batman-loving writer that I am today, Earthworm Jim has to be at the top of that list. The tale of a member of the oligochaeta family finding itself thrust into a power suit, armed with a blaster and fighting off some truly weird nemesis, was one hell of a breath of fresh air back in the mid-nineties.
But Earthworm Jim is a game confined to the history books, a title that will never surface again.Or will it?
Even though he has no idea when exactly he’d do it, former Shiny boss and now Gaikai executive Dave Perry says that he and his team would love to return to that wacky universe one day, with an all new game. “It’s something they all want to do,” Perry told Eurogamer.
We have our own little discussion group on Facebook. We’ve been having this discussion: when will this happen? When could we do it? What would make sense? We feel the Kickstarter thing would have been fun just to see how much money could be raised out of a Kickstarter, because we would have put a lot of effort into the video, for example.
It’s one of those things that, no one’s got the time right now. I’m sure it’s going to happen, I just can’t tell you exactly when.
According to Perry, one obstacle that needs to be overcome for the Earthworm Jim team to reunite, is for , uh, is that the Earthworm Jim team needs to actually reunite. Am I reading that right?
“Our problem is that the team is all doing well in whatever they’re doing right now,” Perry said. “It’s just a bunch of guys who all have their own thing. Everyone has their own company. So, to get them to stop what they’re doing and work on a game is very difficult.”
One other genuine hurdle that would need some effort to overcome though, is the creative differences that Perry had with Doug TenNapel, the man who came up with the visual side and look of that weird world which Jim inhabited. According to Perry, if he does make a new game, it would have to be a traditional 2D platformer, as the last time that Earthworm Jim went into an extra dimension, he came out with one of the worst games ever made.
“I would do 2D, but if you wanted you could play with the camera a little. But I don’t like it when you’re doing very 3D, because then your jumps become very hard to predict and then your controller starts breaking. It wouldn’t be fun,” Perry said.
Seeing as how there are a ton of projects right now, both retro and new, sitting on crowd-sourcing initiatives, I wouldn’t be surprised if Perry does indeed attempt to get a Kickstarter initiative going.
There’s money to be made there, and I for one, would gladly fork over some green in order to help save Princess Whatshername once again.
Last Updated: July 18, 2012
