The Making Of: Earthworm Jim 2
SHINY ENTERTAINMENT’S debut EARTHWORM JIM required tireless effort and prompted an urgently required sequel. NICK BRUTY tells RORY MILNE how Shiny raced the clock to deliver a memorable and eclectic follow-up
Nick Bruty discusses racing against the clock to create Shiny’s groovy follow-up
By any measure, Earthworm Not only Jim was a success. title sell did Shiny’s 1994 launch a well, but it also accumulated won the Sega raft of glowing reviews, and inspired Game Of The Year award show and a comic a toy line, its own TV of this success, book. The upfront cost a gruelling year spent however, had been a distribution deal sourcing IP, arranging game. and delivering a chart-topping been forgiven for
Nick Bruty could have
Earthworm expecting a break following the former Shiny
Jim’s release, but as this was no time for art director reflects,
Nick concedes. rest. “It was very tough,” when we
“We started the company so there was so started Earthworm Jim,
I remember being much going on, and end. Then Sega pretty wiped out at the
Mega-cd version, wanted us to do the put another level so we jumped in and then we rolled together for that, and me, it was one of straight into Jim 2. For
I might the more difficult developments. more burned out have been a little bit handled a lot of the than the others – I’d it really was just original’s levels – but was hot.” striking while the iron
Jim, Shiny As it had with Earthworm of its sequel as approached the design to be filled with a blank canvas waiting wonderful ideas. “It its artist’s weird and
Nick muses. was always very organic,” first brought “When Doug Tennapel us there wasn’t really those characters to and they were all a world framing them, we could really so diverse. That meant
Jim. We would just do anything with get together and brainstorm; we would of the levels really discuss stuff, but a lot artists: came down to the background and Mark Lorenzen. myself, Steve Crow just designed out And we pretty much the levels that we wanted.” considered While Shiny’s art team began level concepts, its animators artwork using producing character developed while methods that they had
“On the working at Virgin Games. a technique that animation side, it was in Aladdin using was developed back we would scan cell animation, which didn’t have Disney in,” Nick says. “We awesome artists, but we did have
Ed Schofield and animators – Mike Dietz,
They were of course Doug Tennapel. nice characters illustrators, could draw work, and so had and would do cartoon animations.” the skills to pull off those
However, Nick had reservations animation, over one particular character objection although the Art Director’s aesthetics and more was less to do with given a mucus to do with Jim being from and use as a companion to swing
brought the characters when Doug tennapel first a world framing them, to us there wasn’t really and they were all so diverse Nick Bruty
a sore point for parachute. “That was
I didn’t like me,” Nick admits, “because more of a visual
Snott. It was really just else, but I just didn’t thing than anything the concept like the character; I thought was a little too easy.” liking was the
Much more to Nick’s for Shiny’s sequel, weapons designed destructive Barn which ranged from the
Bubble Gun.
Blaster to the useless about gameplay “They were never really just about being more than they were out. “Most of ridiculous!” Nick points with your main the time, you were stuck more about fun; we core weapon. It was lot of stuff to work didn’t really design a weapons.” against those extra-ridiculous there
As well as weapon design, task of was also the not-insubstantial dreamt up realising the level concepts a technically for the follow-up, including by Mark impressive stage devised
Jim to blast Lorenzen that required
“Mark had worked through walls of dirt. had a lot of on Vectorman which he knew a lot cool tech features, so remembers. of cool effects,” Nick breaking. It was
“But that level kept was doing the probably the thing that within the engine most different things that point, and so it that we had done at minute, and then would be working one the next. I think it would turn into a mess sleepless nights he probably had a few going to work!” wondering if it was ever
Eto produce qually challenging puppybouncing were Steve Crow’s which bonus levels, to be 2D Nick recalls having like the rather than into-the-screen stages had been. original’s interstitial it needed to be 2D “For that mechanic, to do a similar side-on. We didn’t want because it just thing to Andy Asteroids, just looking for wore thin. So we were and there was a a different mechanic, fun with, so we fireman game we had own version!’” were like: ‘Let’s do our its own surreal
Shiny also depicted show in an take on the US game set on an additional bonus stage
Nick firmly intestinal planet, although that this took refutes the suggestion his own TV viewing any inspiration from came from Doug habits. “That actually any of that stuff!
– I didn’t even watch and we loved
So he pushed that in, remember, all the the whole thing. If I nonsense, and the questions were just were just never answers A, B and C a way to make more right! And so it was inspired lunacy in there.”
Jim 2 Further lunacy for Earthworm into memories followed as Nick tapped for a level where of trips to the arcade pocket rocket and he stuck Jim on his a bomb charged him with guiding shootout. “Well I through an isometric
Nick recollects. always loved Zaxxon,” me, but I always
“It was a bit hard for games from had an affinity for isometric
It was pushing the the Spectrum days. really designed engine, because it wasn’t it was basically to do that. But, ultimately,
Jim wasn’t really just scrolling because ground plane, so that interacting with the a lot easier.” made the whole thing was a stage
Far from easy, though, where Jim would created by Steve Crow, mouth and puff to stick a thumb in his to float upwards expand his head in order worm-head-bursting into a mess of
“I can’t obstacles and opponents. that idea came actually remember where
“Sometimes they from,” Nick ponders. animators. You would come from the to see a certain know, they would want find a way to put it visual and they would led the way there, in. I’m not sure which
just made by us – for the decisions were the difficulty good and bad – and over the place curve was a bit all Nick Bruty
but Mike Dietz was a big fan of Tex Avery and that sort of stylised going from one big pose to another.”
On the background to a similarly bizarre level, Nick cites a real-life bureaucratic nightmare as the inspiration for Shiny’s Earthworm Jim sequel, including killer filing cabinets and mountains of paperwork. “The really grey dystopian level – ISO 9000. That name was some sort of corporate process. When we were at Virgin Games, some elder management came in and tried to force us to do it. It was just terrible, because these guys had no idea about games. It didn’t work at all, and when we left Virgin it was great to escape that, but it left a memory.”
Yet another of the eclectic stages produced for Jim’s second outing involved carrying cows, while a congratulation screen shown after beating levels featured two more and an epilogue following completion of the game contained a further three. On this obsession with cows, Nick reasons that you had to be there. “It was only outside of Shiny that it looked kind of weird. I think it just represented the spirit that we were approaching making those games. If you took all the energy of Earthworm Jim – all the madness and craziness – and made it into the shape of animal, then a cow would be that animal. It just seemed to resonate, and we kept going back to it, and the more of the game we made the more it made sense.”
But as work on Shiny’s sequel came to climax, Nick remembers there not being much playtesting of the game, either by Shiny or by the firm’s distributor Playmates Interactive. “There was no oversight from Playmates, really. They didn’t really know anything; they just trusted us because we were the experienced game makers. So the decisions were just made by us – for good and bad – and the difficulty curve was a bit all over the place.”
Despite its inconsistent challenge, the reviews received by Shiny’s Earthworm Jim 2 on its release were every bit as good as its predecessor, although by this point Nick was already dreaming of his next project. “I wasn’t really thinking about it in critical terms so much because I was so ready to move forward. I wasn’t having a great time, and I kind of put that chapter behind me. I would have for sure checked reviews, but my mind was definitely elsewhere.”
Adding to Nick’s distraction was
David Perry’s sale of Shiny to Interplay Entertainment, which partially explains why the next instalment of Earthworm Jim was outsourced. “There was so much other stuff going on that we were distracted from, but I think probably everyone was a bit tired of Jim. Not tired of the character, but just needing a break from him. It sounds weird to me when I think back that we didn’t make a Jim 3, that we left it to Interplay and some thirdparty team, but I guess we didn’t feel really strongly about it at the time.”
Casting a critical eye over Earthworm Jim 2 now, Nick can’t help but reimagine the inventive and eclectic platformer, but the seasoned designer is ultimately philosophical. “It has a much more bizarre aesthetic than the first game, but I think that’s okay. There are things I would change; I would have liked to have improved the mechanics of the first game rather than just coming up with more diverse levels. As an experience developing a game it was a tougher one, but I think if you have a chance to have anything that’s successful you should always be appreciative.”