Earthworm Jim comes to DVD!

Small Screen Specials, Series and Direct-To-Video
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Earthworm Jim comes to DVD!

Post by gaastra » March 28th, 2012, 9:41 am


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Re: Earthworm Jim comes to DVD!

Post by Randall » March 28th, 2012, 9:56 am

Good news indeed. I've been waiting for this forever. Earthworm Jim was a pretty fun show back in the day.

GeorgeC

Re: Earthworm Jim comes to DVD!

Post by GeorgeC » March 28th, 2012, 2:13 pm

gaastra took the word out of my mouth! LOL

Great, kooky show in its day. The character designs and voice talent really made the series shine although I would have preferred that Jim sounded more like his videogame incarnation; Dan Castellaneta was hogging parts left and right back then! LOL

And yes, before you ask, I still have both of the original Jim games. I still have EJ 1 for Sega Genesis on cartridge -- arguably still the best version released(!) -- the CD-ROM versions load slowly and the SNES version has horrible slowdown issues that make the game too easy on that system; I have EJ 1 HD remix for PS3/PSN download -- an inferior port but still a nice scroller to play through; EJ 2 on Sega Saturn. The Saturn EJ 2 port had enhanced sound and graphics. Probably the best version of that game released. Nonetheless, the first game has a special quality about it that the second doesn't quite match.

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Re: Earthworm Jim comes to DVD!

Post by Randall » March 28th, 2012, 10:29 pm

I see EJ creator Doug TenNapel every year at a comics show, and always easedrop at his table to hear what he knows about DVD plans. Nice to know he'll have something to say about it this year!

GeorgeC

Re: Earthworm Jim comes to DVD!

Post by GeorgeC » March 29th, 2012, 12:21 am

I've said it before, and I'll say it again ---

TenNapel is one of those creators who makes me wonder if he's nuts.

I used to frequent his forum and while he's no Dave Sim he's definitely to the right of a lot of people.
Still extremely talented and has some of the nuttier ideas in comics.

Did meet one guy at a local store who was apparently so anti-religious that he couldn't read TenNapel's graphic novels. I've met guys like that a few times during my life... They have one bad experience or have such an unrealistic expectation of people's behavior that they can't be reasoned with. This fellow was extremely bigoted. I really didn't understand the guy's attitude. Yes, there's some philosophy in the books but I never saw TenNapel hit people over the head with what he believes in his books...

Earthworm Jim is definitely the biggest thing TenNapel has ever done although he's proven with his other books that his creativity never ended there. In some ways, EJ is kind of an anchor on him. He doesn't own the IP -- a company (Universal?) owns the characters. They can choose to consult him or not.

The unfortunate thing is that there hasn't been a new EJ game in about a decade but just a bunch of false starts, an HD remake of the first game for PSN and XBL, and a PSP remake that never made it past Level One.

My understanding is that if new work ever begins on Earthworm Jim again we'll likely see a reboot and redesigns of the characters. That was being worked on before TenNapel parted ways with Atari which was doing the PSP EJ 1 remake. That project fell apart shortly after TenNapel left it. It was one of the great "What if?" scenarios in gaming...

Nevertheless, something new with Earthworm Jim is long overdue. He was one of the great, original videogame creations of the 1990s. I hope it's not another 10 years before something gets done with the character again. Wouldn't want to see him turn into Kid Icarus. Nintendo finally did a new game with that character after sitting on it through 4 generations of consoles!

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Re: Earthworm Jim comes to DVD!

Post by Randall » May 8th, 2012, 10:54 pm

I've preordered this and encourage others to do the same. Based on prior experience with the distributor, there's a chance of this release getting cancelled if preorders are too low. Hopefully it won't be a concern, but just in case...

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Re: Earthworm Jim comes to DVD!

Post by kathymurphy » March 24th, 2015, 1:01 am

I think I should also reorder this as it will let others know that it is important to preorder to keep its release.

GeorgeC

Re: Earthworm Jim comes to DVD!

Post by GeorgeC » March 24th, 2015, 11:25 pm

Okay,

So it's NOT DVD-R (MOD) at least!

It's a decent show with some excellent voice talent. You have the voice of Homer Simpson (Dan Castellaneta) as Jim and Andrea Martin (SCTV) as Queen Slug-for-a-Butt. Still don't know if it would be a buy for me. The episodes I saw were all pretty good... (But the original game is still grosser and funnier IMHO.)

The price listed is good, though. This show hasn't had a full series release on home video yet and has been missing from TV for a long time!

It's a shame what happened to the videogame series. The last thing anybody did with EJ was redo the original game in hi-def for the PS3 and XBox 360 and even then that wasn't the entire game! There was an 'invisible' level where they lost the plans for and decided not to attempt to recreate. It's still the prettiest looking version of the original game (which is still the best in the series) and the best-sounding version, too.

They really, really should have made a brand-new EJ game but the IP owner doesn't know what direction to take the character in and they haven't listened to anything TenNapel has had to say for years!

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Re: Earthworm Jim comes to DVD!

Post by LastActionHero » June 8th, 2015, 10:45 am

I haven't seen the show yet, but I loved this game.
It had much much better animation and effect in that time as compared to some of the present games.
I will surely watch this show...
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Re: Earthworm Jim comes to DVD!

Post by Daniel » November 19th, 2021, 1:06 pm

A new TV series is in development! Groovy! Loved the original show and the video game was so much fun.

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