The more Nostalgia pieces I write, the more I question if it would still be the same now. Would I still have the same views on games of old as I think I do? Obviously the best way to test this is to play Earthworm Jim, which is what I did.

Here is where I should leave the link to read more, to bait the reader in with their mild curiosity into how I felt about it. But screw it… that game is so very great. What will come of page views now? I honestly don’t care because I can go play Earthworm Jim. You know when you’re a kid and your parents take you to an aquarium, the thing you first remember is how big that stingray was as it glided over your head. When you’re an adult you assume that sense of awe would have worn away. Going back to Earthworm Jim is like watching that giant stingray grow twice the size you recall and then proceed to kill a semi-retarded bogan who abuses crocodiles and snakes for a living.

For those who have not lived yet, Earthworm Jim is a videogame where you play as an earthworm probably named Jim… his name is never really brought up. After an epic space battle, an Ultra-high-tech-indestructible-super-space-cyber-suit plummets to Earth and happens to fall on said Earthworm named Jim. The suit then transforms the microdile into an enormous genius worm-thing (at least in worm standards anyway). The evil space conqueror, Queen Pulsating, Bloated, Festering, Sweaty, Pus-filled, Malformed, Slug-for-a-Butt who had commissioned the suit for evil space conquering then goes away some place. Jim follows the Queen to some place in hopes of saving her twin sister, Princess What’s Her Name. Everybody clear? Good, great, we can move on.

That description probably doesn’t explain what the game actually entails, or really what makes it so great. Instead of going into an in-depth review-like procedure of gameplay description I will use an anecdote from my time with the series.

I was flying across the screen, swinging from grapple point to grapple point using a conscious being of intergalactic goo, when I came to a set of staircases. The only way to ascend the stairs was to sit on a mechanical chair that would elevate up the stairs path. Whilst enjoying the jolly ride, random old-ladies began to fall from the top of the screen, after several minutes of struggle I avoided all the Grannies to be teleported away in a giant light bulb. Immediately preceding this Psy-Crow (the Queen’s bounty hunter) is shown atop a tower throwing puppies to the ground. Using a giant marshmallow, I bounced the puppies to the safe arms of Jim’s best friend (a dog named Peter, for all those interested). I had forgotten what would happen if I just allowed the puppies to splatter against the ground. To my surprise, it turns out Peter can transform into a bigger dog-pit-bull thing and malls your poor worm body in an incredibly cartoony dust-ball of claws and screams for help… depleting my remaining health. If this seems like random incoherent rambling to you, then you shouldn’t go lick cubes of salt, because you are smart… maybe. The game is zany, uncompromising, random, hilarious, stupid fun.

This is the example I would fall to when making a point in my mind and it remains as a steadfast epitome of gaming potential. You may think that is complete tripe, but you may be wrong, wrong and stupid and should go lick cubes of salt… maybe. The story is basically save the castle, screw the princess. Except the castle is a space-suit and the princess is a bee-thing that gets crushed by a cow as you steal her crown… I’d call that screwed and a half. The story follows a stereotypical path merely to mock itself and in-doing so also creates the sense of freedom that I seek in every game. Most importantly when I look back on how Earthworm Jim has influenced my sense of Nostalgia and more importantly these articles, he was not sold to me by Bobby Kotick. This is obviously why I hold such hatred for the evil CEO of 8th Reich Activision; Kotick didn’t bring me Earthworm Jim and never will. I bet he feeds worms to crows, laughing manically, dancing a merry jig of intolerance while spitting on pictures of baby worms. That would be just like him… allegedly… oh screw it, his lawyers didn’t say anything about the other article… it’s true, not alleged, all true [Editor's note: it's not true].

I wonder what writing an article in an Earthworm Jim-esque way would be like… probably be a satirical stab at previous articles in the series, destroying the preconceived format for cheap jokes. Might insult the pretentious in-depth comparison between old and new game concepts usually displayed, whilst making references to the over-arching points of those articles with over-simplification. All this would of course be ruined at the end when all the sarcasm and satire is explained, rendering the whole process useless. Yeah I don’t think I’ll write an article like that… sounds horrible.