Earthworm Jim 2 (1996)
Earthworm Jim 2 is a 1996 shooter video game made by Shiny Entertainment and Takara.
Jim returns on a mission to rescue Princess What's-Her-Name from the villainous Psy-Crow, and the sequel commits harder to the original's instinct for surprise. Levels include a segment played entirely as a blind cave salamander. The PC CD-ROM version upgraded the soundtrack to full CD-quality audio, added voice clips, and reworked the visuals. The core game remains a side-scrolling shooter built on the logic that no two levels should share a premise, and that Jim's worm-in-a-suit situation is always worth one more joke.
Quick answers
What is Earthworm Jim 2 about?
Jim returns on a mission to rescue Princess What's-Her-Name from the villainous Psy-Crow, and the sequel commits harder to the original's instinct for surprise. Levels include a segment played entirely as a blind cave salamander. The PC CD-ROM version upgraded the soundtrack to full CD-quality audio, added voice clips, and reworked the visuals. The core game remains a side-scrolling shooter built on the logic that no two levels should share a premise, and that Jim's worm-in-a-suit situation is always worth one more joke.
When was Earthworm Jim 2 released?
Earthworm Jim 2 was released on 30 April 1996.
Who made Earthworm Jim 2?
Earthworm Jim 2 was made by Shiny Entertainment, Takara and Interplay.
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Earthworm Jim 2 in our writing
- Companion guide: Interplay: By Gamers, For Gamers, and the Golden Age of the RPG
A few thoughts on Earthworm Jim 2
Portal 2 is worth trying if you respond to sequels that correctly identify what made the first entry work and rebuild the whole experience around it. Like Earthworm Jim 2, it expands mechanically and tonally without abandoning the dry humor or the satisfying strangeness that defined the original.
Superhero premises that get played for laughs instead of gravitas
Earthworm Jim 2 hands a worm an indestructible super-suit and then refuses to treat him like a hero, building whole levels around one gag instead of a power fantasy. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' sewer-dwelling vigilantes, Doraemon's gadget-cat chaos, Ranma's curse-driven farce, My Hero Academia's classroom antics, Assassination Classroom's alien-teacher sitcom, and The Boys' vicious superhero satire all treat powers as setup for the joke, not the spectacle.
Sci-fi concept albums that build an entire universe from one wild idea
Earthworm Jim 2 invents a new rule for its universe every few minutes, from a level played as a blind cave salamander to a soundtrack upgraded purely for the joke of it. Deltron 3030's future-war raps, Repo! The Genetic Opera's organ-harvesting rock opera, the moody Blade Runner score, Ozric Tentacles' Universal Migrator, and Muse's Simulation Theory and Black Holes and Revelations all commit fully to a strange, self-contained science-fiction world.