Earthworm Jim

Earthworm Jim for Nintendo DSi is Gameloft's 2010 DSiWare remake of the celebrated 1994 action-platform game. Released in North America on May 10, 2010, this downloadable version places the famously unlikely hero—an ordinary earthworm inside a powerful robotic suit—back in his surreal science-fiction adventure. It is a Nintendo DSi-only release rather than a conventional Nintendo DS game card, and it was developed and published by Gameloft under the Earthworm Jim license.

The game is a side-scrolling platformer with run-and-gun action. Players guide Jim through dangerous horizontal stages, jumping gaps, dodging traps and enemies, and using his blaster to clear a path. His flexible worm body also doubles as a whip, giving him a close-range attack and allowing him to interact with objects such as overhead hooks. This mixture of shooting, platforming, timing, and movement is central to the game, so progress comes from learning each area's hazards as well as reacting to its enemies.

Jim's journey retains the offbeat premise that made the series distinctive. After gaining his high-tech suit, he is drawn into a conflict with a gallery of exaggerated villains while pursuing Princess What's-Her-Name. The adventure moves through bizarre locations, and its individual stages regularly shift the rules instead of relying on one repeated challenge. Some sections focus on ordinary platform navigation, while others introduce racing, underwater movement, escort-style objectives, or confrontations with bosses. The result is a compact tour through the original game's deliberately cartoonish world.

Gameloft rebuilt the game for its late-2000s remake line rather than simply presenting the 16-bit release unchanged. The DSiWare edition uses updated presentation and adapts the action for the DSi's controls, while preserving the core two-dimensional structure and many familiar scenarios. It also offers Normal and Original difficulty settings. Normal is intended as a more approachable option and includes guidance at the beginning of certain stages, whereas Original provides the tougher style of play associated with the earlier game.

The Nintendo DSi version has one feature not shared by the standard remake: optional facial-expression challenges that use the system's inward-facing camera. In these short activities, the player attempts to match the expression shown by Jim; successful attempts can earn an in-game reward. It is a small, device-specific detour from the platform action, but it ties the release directly to DSiWare and distinguishes it from the mobile edition on which it was based.

Earthworm Jim for Nintendo DSi belongs to a longer-running series whose first game introduced Jim's absurd heroics in the 16-bit era and was followed by Earthworm Jim 2 and later spin-offs. This 2010 version is best understood as a modernized handheld download of that original adventure, not as a new sequel. Its combination of alien settings, elastic whip attacks, blaster combat, and unpredictable stage ideas preserves the character of the first Earthworm Jim while adding a feature designed specifically for Nintendo's camera-equipped handheld.