I am a huge fan of Earthworm Jim. In my younger days, I spent countless hours playing the Win95 edition, and even downloaded a Sega emulator so I could play the original ROM. I knew where every bonus life was, every hidden level, and every trick to warp past levels I didn't feel like playing. As you can imagine, I was enthralled when I saw that there was an HD edition on XBLA, and I downloaded it immediately.
Sadly, my excitement didn't last.
The level designs are basically the same as the original, with graphical tweaks here and there to enhance the details that the old game wasn't capable of. All boss fights have a life meter onscreen, which the original didn't have. Everything has been polished to look good for the 360, especially the levels' static backgrounds (look at What The Heck? and Level 5 for the best examples of this). However, some of the additions really don't make sense. In the Andy Asteroids? levels, at the end of every race, there is a hyperspace warp-looking cutscene that shows Jim warping through the end of the asteroid field, then it cuts to the clip of him either celebrating or grumbling, depending on if you won or not. This new warp scene looks really out of place, given the old-school feel of the rest of the level, and it wasn't in the original. There are also several glaring absences: in the old versions, when you left Jim alone for a minute and no enemies were around, he'd do things like play with his blaster, flex his muscles, and other silly things. In the HD version, he plays with his blaster every now and then, but that's all. Everything else was cut out. Also, Jim looks basically the same as he did in the original. Same pixels, same old look, except scaled to fit in the HD version. If the developers spent so much time upgrading all of the other graphics, why did they leave Jim alone? The old-school Jim running around in the new-school environments looks... well... silly.
The audio is where I found the most disappointment. Jim's voice has been replaced by someone trying really hard to sound like the original voice actor, and most of the sound effects have been overhauled and made more cartoonish. The whip sound effect doesn't sound anything like the original, and the game's ambient sound effects are even more exaggerated. In What The Heck?, there are spurts of fire that follow you around, whether you're walking down the path or swinging on a chain, and they sound like a six-year-old boy making fart noises. It's obnoxious.
When it comes to the music, the entire soundtrack has been redone, and none of the music sounds anything like the original. I realize that for a game that calls itself 'HD,' all of its elements have to be HD-quality, and a lot of things had to be rebuilt from the ground up as a result. Still, I think the developers took too many liberties with what they were given.
As far as game mechanics go, using the whip is a nightmare. From what I remember of the Win95 and even the Sega versions, you didn't have to hit a hook spot-on to grab onto it; you could be pretty close to it and the whip would still grab on. In HD, you have to hit the hook right on the nose for it to work, which is why I can't beat the last level of the game. I'm at the beginning of part 2 of the level, after the 'Use Your Head!' introduction, and this is the place where you blow up the two hives and then there are two hooks way, way high up on the ceiling. I can't figure out how to get up to the first hook and grab onto it since you have to nail the hook with the whip. I've spent probably half an hour on this part, and I only managed to get the hook once, then missed the second one. It's very, very frustrating.
Also, the developers decided to go without the bonus content that the Win95 version had, which really annoys me. There are no homing missiles, no secret level (Who Turned Out The Lights?) hidden in Level 5, and you can't warp past Tube Race. Instead of keeping the additional content, the developers decided to add unlockable bonus levels that they had designed, and none of them appeal to me at all. Maybe other fans of platformers will like them, but they simply rubbed me the wrong way.
All in all, this game will definitely appeal to new fans of Earthworm Jim. I'd say that younger audiences will enjoy it, if they can master the whip usage (and maybe it will be easier for them, because they're not used to playing it on a keyboard or old gamepad). Honestly, the game might not even be as bad as I'm making it out to be, because I'm definitely a purist, and that probably colors my perception of all of the new additions and spices. Do with that what you will.
Gameplay: 3/5
Graphics: 4/5
Audio: 2/5
Average score: 3/5
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