Earthworm Jim 1 & 2
The Original Earthworm Jim Video Games
In 1994 Shiny Entertainment founded and led by David Perry, developed the first two Earthworm Jim video games.
Developer Team
David Perry was the founder of Shiny Entertainment and worked as a programmer. He had enlisted the help of other brilliant artists, designers and programmers, some of whom were employed from Virgin Interactive where he first worked. These included Nick Bruty, Mike Deitz, Ed Schofield and Steve Crow. Later on five more came to work at Shiny. Mark Lorenzen, 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.
Full credits for the snes version of Earthworm Jim.
Doug TenNapel created the original concept for the game. Doug 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 initial concept of Earthworm Jim.
With the skilled and imaginative artists and developers at Shiny, the world of Earthworm Jim was fleshed out and planned in detail. Worlds, planets, characters. A lot of this concept work wasn't shown to the public for many years. Earthworm Jim had depth that most video games didn't have at the time, to enable it to go into different genres.
Animation, Illustration & Concept Design
Mike Dietz, Ed Schofield & Doug TenNapel - their animation skills helped to breathe life into the game. Both Earthworm Jim 1 and 2 used traditional hand drawn cell animation techniques combined with digital technology - which made it very fluid and realistic. This was called Animotion. Earthworm Jim 2 used Animotion II (they perfected the process) combined with Silicon Graphics. This helped give some elements in the game a three dimensional appearance using early 3D technology.
Most of the poster, manual and box artwork for the games and advertising was created by the incomparable illustrator 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. Some promotional art for magazines in the UK, was also made by the Illustrator Paul Kidby - now well known for his Disc World art for Terry Pratchett.
Music
Tommy Tallarico did the music for both Earthworm Jim and Earthworm Jim 2. The quality of the music helped to make them more memorable. The music was produced in midi format for the 16 bit consoles. The PC version of Earthworm Jim 1 & 2 The Whole Can o' Worms had CD quality music. His use of classical compositions by artists such as Beethoven and Mussorgsky, was also a reoccurring theme in the Earthworm Jim games.
Both games were released for multiple platforms.
The Earthworm Jim games marked a landmark back in the 90's because of their high animation quality, artistic polish, unique musical score 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.