GC '09: Hands on with Earthworm Jim iPhone

Back in 1994, Earthworm Jim was a brick through the window of traditional platforming games. Its detailed animation, surreal humour and tight run, jump and gun gameplay set it apart from the Marios and Sonics of the age, establishing Shiny as a brave new force in 16-bit gaming.

Fifteen years later, as we sit down to an iPhone demo of Earthworm Jim in Gameloft’s booth in the business area of the GamesCom event, it’s heartwarming to see that much of Shiny’s original vision has stood the test of time.

Sure, the graphics aren’t what you would call fluid by today’s standards, but there are plenty of games out there that would do well to take notes on Earthworm Jim’s top-notch art direction. The humour that soaks Earthworm Jim pours from every pixel and New Junk City, Earthworm Jim’s first level, is an object lesson in how to establish a game’s tone from the off.

There are, of course, the controls to consider. The iPhone has proved versatile enough to handle many different genres, and platforming games don’t tend to demand too much from the touchscreen. It would be nice, then, if Gameloft could bring some of the expertise it lavished on Castle of Magic to bear on Earthworm Jim as at this stage there are some niggles.

Running, jumping and firing are handled by a D-Pad and buttons positioned on the left and right side of the screen. The firing and jumping buttons work well enough but sometimes, when you're standing still to aim with the gun, the D-pad can prove unruly, a problem that occasionally scuppers running jumps too.

More worrying is the possibility to get stuck, where the only escape is a restart. This happened to us twice on New Junk City during our play-through, but an embarrassed Gameloft employee assured us that these problems are a result of the build we played being at such an early stage.

Let’s hope so. History has not been kind to the Earthworm Jim license, with the excellent first two games still being the series’ peak. For whatever reason, Earthworm Jim has failed to achieve the rebirth that so many other licenses of the same era have, and the cancellation of the promised PSP version was just another in a long list of setbacks to the game’s profile.

Hopefully, assuming the controls and bugs are tightened up for the game’s release, Earthworm Jim will establish a new burrow for himself on the iPhone. Look out for a review in the coming weeks.