14 DAY TRIAL // After no less than 15 years of hopping around through our heads, Earthworm Jim is making a comeback. Earthworm Jim Returns isn't the game that's making the news but just a simple Earthworm Jim, digitally remastered. It was announced for the WiiWare, Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and iPhone and will bring several special features. The game will be remade from the first code line to the last, so as to implement difficulty levels, online leaderboards and HD graphics. The special "Big Bruty" level from the PC and Sega CD versions will also be available. The new graphics for the console haven't been revealed yet, but the iPhone did get a screenshot sneak peek.
The remake of Earthworm Jim will have a separate developer for the Wii version. The graphics will be optimizes for the lower resolution of Nintendo's console but are bound to easily be a world apart from even the visuals of Earthworm Jim 3D. Gameloft, the game developer, also promised "some surprises, which will be revealed later" but wouldn't offer anything concrete. Asked if it planned to also make a PSP version of Jim, the company replied that it was thinking about it but had other titles at the moment that were being prepared for the PSP. The game will be launched by the end of the year and will enjoy a month of XBLA exclusivity.
The original team that developed Earthworm Jim, Shiny Entertainment, won't be involved in the project, but the original creator of the game, David Perry, offered TheFanHub.com a special heart-to-heart about Jim. “Personally, I look forward to the day when the original team works together on a 'new' Earthworm Jim. We wanted him to be like Batman, where Batman is re-invented, not just the exact same one every time. Interplay has done a licensing deal here, so that will just bring the old game back. A few years ago I started re-connecting the core team members to make the 'new' Earthworm Jim and was successful getting them interested, but this happened at a time when Atari was winding down projects, not starting them up, so sadly they never signed the contracts.”
Earthworm Jim was a run and gun platform video game released back in 1994. It had a wacky earthworm as a main character, Jim, that fought evil more often with a brilliant “Looney Toons”-humor than with his laser gun.