The Original Earthworm Jim Games

Team Earthworm Jim

In 1994 Shiny Entertainment founded and led by David Perry, developed the first two Earthworm Jim video games.

David Perry was the lead programmer. He had enlisted the help of many talented artists, designers and programmers. Some of which he had employed from Virgin Interactive where he first worked. These included Nick Bruty, Mike Deitz, Ed Schofield and Steve Crow. Later on four more came to work at Shiny. Andy Astor, Nick Jones, Tom Tanaka and Doug TenNapel. They all went on to other projects over the following years. Some of them are sadly not with us anymore.

Doug TenNapel created the original concept for the game. Earthworm Jim was his character. TenNapel created all the major characters including Jim, Evil the cat, Peter Puppy, The Evil Queen Pulsating, Bloated, Festering, Sweaty, Pus-filled, Malformed, Slug-for-a-Butt, Psy-Crow, the Princess, Chuck and Doc Duodenum.

He was Jim's voice in the games. He came up with his sayings such as "Groovy!" and "Whoa Nelly!", and was the driving force behind the whole concept. With the help of Mike Dietz and Ed Schofield, the world of Earthworm Jim was fleshed out and planned in detail. Worlds, planets, characters. A lot of this concept work wasn't even shown to the public. Earthworm Jim had depth that most video games didn't have at the time...this was to enable it to go into different genres.

Concept Art

Screen Shots

Mike Dietz - his exceptional animation skills helped to breathe life into the game. Both Earthworm Jim 1 and 2 used traditional hand drawn animation techniques combined with digital technology - which made it very fluid and realistic. This was called Animotion. Earthworm Jim 2 used Animotion II (evidently they perfected the process) combined with Silicon Graphics. This helped give some elements in the game a three dimensional appearance using early 3D technology.

Tommy Tallarico did the music for both games. The quality of his work helped to make them more memorable. His use of classical compositions by artists such as Beethoven and Mussorgsky, was also a reoccurring theme in the Earthworm Jim games.

Most of the poster, manual and box artwork for the games and advertising was created by Michael Koelsch. He produced promotional illustrations for both games. The illustrations and box art were some of the best video game art produced during the 1990's.

Both games were released for multiple platforms.

By today's standards the originals are outdated. However the Earthworm Jim games marked a landmark at the time because of their quality and originality. The originals were said to have used effects never seen before on a Snes, and set the bar for games of their genre.

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References / Sources

High Score! The Illustrated History of Electronic Games by Rusel DeMaria and Johnny L. Wilson.
Earthworm Jim The Whole Can O'Worms Instruction Manual
Earthworm Jim: The Making of (Shiny Entertainment Video documentary).

Many hours gleaning through old videogame magazine articles.