Cancelled Sequels

It was true when Doug TenNapel said that development on projects should never be revealed until finished. The original EWJ games were made in that same spirit well before fans were around. The key to their success were the skills of the original development team and the creator of Earthworm Jim.

It is one of the more perplexing mysteries of the games industry for why the winning formula of the original Earthworm Jim games went so wrong. Ironically the solution has been staring the industry in the face for years. As soon as they took the creator away from his own creation, it died.

Unseen Prototype from 2003

In 2003 an Earthworm Jim prototype was being worked on. Interplay canned it early in its production believing it to be too risky a venture. Some concept art for the game was eventually revealed through the efforts of Unseen64.

It would have been a 3D fixed position side-scrolling adventure for the Ps2 and Xbox. It isn't known which developer was working on it.

Eventually in 2009 one of the developers for the game shared some information about the project.

These were concepts for a possible reboot of the EWJ series back when I was working at Interplay in 2003. Unfortunately it never got beyond the preproduction stage.

We had kicked around some ideas, with the thinking that the basic structure of the game would be somewhat like Klonoa (or in more current terms, the side-scroll Sonic sections of the newer games), in that it would be a 3d environment, but viewed along a track with a fixed camera.

Jim's head would be used to not only swing and attack, but also as a grappling appendage that could hoist heavy objects. Aside from a few tests and the concepts you see, it never really got beyond what you see.

I worked on it for a while, and once we nailed the look we (the team) all liked, things started to fall into place visually. Of all the things we talked about doing - and lots of crazy ideas get tossed around during the early stages of development - the thing I was looking forward to most was a musical sequence. I had planned out a part where Jim went to Heck (hell) and had to do a boat ride through the river Styx.

Jim was all mopey because he was dead, and the Grim reaper turns to him (in the small boat) and says "Cheer up Jim...it's not that bad." [in a terribly over the top British accent] and whips off his robe to reveal the Zuit Suit (you'll see it in my concepts). At this point, it was going to be a whacky musical boat ride into Heck, to the tune of the Squirrel Nut Zippers song Afterlife/Hell. There would have been dancing skeletons, and demons and stuff as they travel down the river.

When asked about the Cyclops monster in a coliseum he said:

He was a boss, for a level made entirely of cheese. Imagine Rome, constructed of cheese, with the citizens all being mice, wearing togas. He was the "Gorgon Zola". Made of cheese, with a pimento olive for a head (the red pimento being his eye).

There would have been a showdown/boss-battle within the Fondue Coliseum, with cheering/jeering mice in the crowd.

Earthworm Jim PSP

Although having more development time than the previously unknown game from 2003, this game was terminated in its development stages.

During 2006 work had begun on Earthworm Jim PSP. This was touted to re-introduce people to Earthworm Jim and to renew interest in the franchise.

Atari had acquired the hand-held rights for Earthworm Jim. Shiny Entertainment were to develop it, which seemed like good news at the time. Doug TenNapel and Mike Dietz - original team members from the first two Earthworm Jim games were working on the project in an advisory/creative role to try and aid the development team. David Perry had recruited them to help the EWJ PSP team.

It was difficult to write objectively about Earthworm Jim PSP. I was contacted directly by a team member and sales rep at the time it was being developed. It was a very strange experience.

It was late April, going on May. The publisher had no official site. It was very low-key. I was contacted directly by a sales rep asking me to put up the press release two days before it's publish date. I was also told to put a link to a forum they had set up at the time, and get an advert for the game on my site. In hindsight, I should have had nothing to do with it. But I wanted to help as I had supported Shiny in the past. Unfortunately things were not the same as they had been in 1997. This wasn't the same team of people.

A week or so later from receiving the Press Release the development team leader contacted me. I was worried about the project and expressed my concerns. I was told not to worry and given an opportunity to do a written interview with the team by email.
My interview was a mixed bag. The answers they gave to my questions were what they probably expected fans would want to hear. I published it to the site and asked people what they thought. It was met with poor reception. A new character called "Tapeworm Slim" was mentioned. Doug TenNapel was not pleased to find that out via a fan-interview instead of via the team. He was supposed to be in "creative control" of the project. Clearly something wasn't right.

Some promotional images were published. These consisted of a three dimensional render of one of Michael Koelch's Earthworm Jim box illustrations and a poster of the PSP Jim leaning against an Atari logo.

A mock-up of the game engine had been made. What we were shown was a 2D-3D version of New Junk City from EWJ 1. They were planning to do a remake that wasn't a remake...it was ambiguous.

In order to please "old-school" fans they would have the nostalgia in the first level. So it would be a remake of New Junk City, and then turn into a different adventure altogether. A video showing game play from the remake of New Junk City level was published to the internet. The footage was not promising. Things that had been made by the original team members were (almost) completely taken out of the version aired to the public.

As mentioned before the development team were supposed to be aided by original team members on the game. However the PSP team appeared to have no respect for the more experienced developer's time or expertise. Despite the good judgment of Perry to involve his fellow original team mates from the originals the PSP team went against it and still expected to come out of the whole debacle smiling - without the creator of Earthworm Jim's approval.

EWJ PSP was canned by Atari not long after, either by financial difficulties or other reasons.

The following year Shiny were sold after its founder David Perry decided to leave the company. What was left of Shiny Entertainment was dissolved as an independent development studio and merged with another.

---

References / Sources:

EWJ PSP: First hand experience in 2006 & information from Doug TenNapel.
2003 canned game info: Zach from Unseen64.
Thank you to Zach for sharing the original emails from one of the developers, and the developer for sharing the concepts and information.