Earthworm Jim 2

Earthworm Jim 2 for PlayStation is a single-player action-platform game released in Europe in November 1996 by Virgin Interactive. It brings the 1995 sequel to Shiny Entertainment's absurdist Earthworm Jim adventure to Sony's console, with Screaming Pink handling the PlayStation conversion. Jim is still an ordinary worm who happens to operate an impossibly powerful supersuit, and his latest rescue mission sends him after Princess What's-Her-Name and the villainous Psy-Crow through a cartoon universe that treats every serious-looking threat as an opportunity for a gag.

At its foundation, Earthworm Jim 2 is a side-scrolling run-and-gun platformer. Jim runs, jumps, fires his blaster, and cracks his own worm body like a whip to attack enemies or interact with the scenery. Health comes from the suit's power meter, so careless contact with hazards or hostile creatures can rapidly turn a joke-filled stage into a difficult retry. Weapon pickups add short-lived alternatives to the standard blaster, including unusual options designed for sudden, screen-clearing chaos rather than military realism. The sequel also gives Jim additional ways to move through the world, making traversal as important as shooting.

His green companion Snott is central to many of those additions. Carried on Jim's back, Snott can cling to designated sticky surfaces, form a swinging line, or act as a small parachute after a jump. These abilities turn ledges, shafts, and gaps into timing challenges rather than simple obstacles. A level can shift from conventional enemy encounters to a route-planning problem in seconds, and the player must respond to the particular joke and rule set behind each area instead of relying on one routine for the entire game.

That variety is Earthworm Jim 2's defining feature. Early stages such as Anything but Tangerines and Level Ate retain the series' familiar platform action, but the journey repeatedly changes format. In Villi People, Jim travels in the unlikely disguise of a blind cave salamander and later faces a deliberately nonsensical quiz-show sequence. Inflated Head makes his head balloon-like as he rises through a vertical course while avoiding punctures. The Flyin' King changes the perspective and puts Jim on his Pocket Rocket, where protecting and guiding a bomb-bearing balloon becomes the immediate objective.

Other episodes push the humor into challenges that are mechanically specific. Puppy Love asks Jim to keep a puppy from coming to harm while hostile beings approach, turning an escort situation into a frantic defensive exercise. The finale, See Jim Run Run Jim Run, turns the showdown into a race through an obstacle course against Psy-Crow rather than a standard stand-and-shoot boss battle. Familiar figures including Princess What's-Her-Name, Evil the Cat, Major Mucus, and Bob the Killer Goldfish appear among the game's deliberately surreal cast, while the conclusion continues the series' habit of undercutting triumph with a visual punchline.

The PlayStation Earthworm Jim 2 edition is a CD-based adaptation of the original 16-bit game rather than a new sequel or a 3D redesign. It preserves the full set of original stages while presenting its own background artwork and graphical details, and its CD format supports enhanced audio and additional voice material compared with the cartridge releases. The same version was also issued for Sega Saturn, making this PlayStation release a useful snapshot of how the hand-drawn, sprite-driven series crossed into the 32-bit era without abandoning its 2D identity.

For players exploring the Earthworm Jim series, the PlayStation release remains closely connected to the first game's fast platform action while widening the range of stage concepts, tools, and comic interruptions. Its mixture of precision jumps, blaster combat, Snott-assisted movement, and sudden genre changes makes every level feel built around a different comic premise. Earthworm Jim 2 on PS1 is therefore best approached as a sequel that keeps Jim's elastic, exaggerated action intact while making unpredictability part of the challenge.