SNES Game of the Week 118 - Clock Tower

[dr_st]

I think the SNES version of EWJ1 is the first one I played. Somehow I managed without discovering the secret air supply point in Tube Race, but it required many retries.

It doesn't stand up to the Special Edition (Sega CD / Windows 95), of course. I didn't feel it was 'airplane hangar' level design (like Cool Spot), but some of the later levels can be frustratingly difficult (For Pete's Sake and Buttville). But, hey, that's the era where games were supposed to be hard, no?

[spanky]

C is about right. Earthworm Jim gets pretty far with great animation and music and a very wacky 90s cartoon style (bodily functions! farm animals!) but I think the core gameplay isn't great. While the run and gun stuff isn't bad, I always find myself eating tons of hits and the gimmick levels are really hit or miss. For Pete's Sake is pretty fun but both the tube race and snot bungee jumping give me fits. EWJ was huge there for a bit though, even getting a cartoon and toyline but the series petered out very quickly. I've never seen anyone say something positive about the N64 game.

[excelsior]

Aug 6, 2023 15:54:07 GMT -5 dr_st said:

I think the SNES version of EWJ1 is the first one I played. Somehow I managed without discovering the secret air supply point in Tube Race, but it required many retries.

It doesn't stand up to the Special Edition (Sega CD / Windows 95), of course. I didn't feel it was 'airplane hangar' level design (like Cool Spot), but some of the later levels can be frustratingly difficult (For Pete's Sake and Buttville). But, hey, that's the era where games were supposed to be hard, no?

Not so much on the SNES I would say. Certainly games like Mega Man and Castlevania were already trending towards being easier in this generation. Based on the games we've covered so far though, perhaps there was a bit of an East/West divide when it came to difficulty within game design.

[dr_st]

Aug 6, 2023 19:48:05 GMT -5 spanky said:

C is about right. Earthworm Jim gets pretty far with great animation and music and a very wacky 90s cartoon style (bodily functions! farm animals!) but I think the core gameplay isn't great. While the run and gun stuff isn't bad, I always find myself eating tons of hits and the gimmick levels are really hit or miss. For Pete's Sake is pretty fun but both the tube race and snot bungee jumping give me fits.

This is definitely close to the feelings I've had with the game. Might as well link to the comparative analysis I've done a couple of years back. It spotlights the DOS and Windows versions, but solid chunks of it also apply to SNES vs Sega CD versions (the DOS and Win95 were ported from these).

[retr0gamer]

I didn't really find EWJ hard. I remember once I found the hidden air supply point and cleared that level that I managed to get to the final boss in one sitting. Final boss is just rote memorisation.

[dsparil]

I'm a little split on Earthworm Jim. It does have plenty of gameplay faults, and it seems too self consciously weird all the time. On the other hand, the graphics are nice and maybe that makes up for enough of the faults? My gut feeling is that a C is too harsh so I'll go with B.

[ommadawnyawn2]

Aug 7, 2023 2:52:16 GMT -5 dr_st said:

Aug 6, 2023 19:48:05 GMT -5 spanky said:

C is about right. Earthworm Jim gets pretty far with great animation and music and a very wacky 90s cartoon style (bodily functions! farm animals!) but I think the core gameplay isn't great. While the run and gun stuff isn't bad, I always find myself eating tons of hits and the gimmick levels are really hit or miss. For Pete's Sake is pretty fun but both the tube race and snot bungee jumping give me fits.

This is definitely close to the feelings I've had with the game. Might as well link to the comparative analysis I've done a couple of years back. It spotlights the DOS and Windows versions, but solid chunks of it also apply to SNES vs Sega CD versions (the DOS and Win95 were ported from these).

Nice work on this! 

I think just a couple of tweaks would make EWJ play quite a bit better - tighter scrolling especially when moving right so it's easier to react to danger, and more of a "coyote jump" near platform edges. Perhaps also having to press towards a ledge to actually grab it. 

[Snake]

Earthworm Jim
Have to agree, the Sega CD/Mega CD version is the best of the Earthworm Jim 1's, with extra stages and redbook audio.

But SNES Earthworm Jim is where I got my start, and I actually quite enjoyed it overall. Reasonable challenge, fitting upbeat soundtrack. Great great hand drawn animation, with a cartoony kind of smoothness that makes it all feel so colorfully alive.  The worlds and characters are all just so weirdly interesting. My only real gripe with the gameplay is how loose it feels when you're firing at something with the regular gun; as if you're kinda aiming at something that should hit, but not really.

Rank B.

[lurker]

I have the GB version somewhere, where they mapped the whip and gun to the same button.

[dr_st]

Aug 7, 2023 17:26:55 GMT -5 lurker said:

I have the GB version somewhere, where they mapped the whip and gun to the same button.

It's a good thing they haven't mapped the left direction to the same button too.

[🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀]

I played this back in the day, but I'm struggling to remember what version it was... It's definitely one of those games where I played it when I was like 5 or 6 and couldn't get past the first or second stage. The cartoon was also still airing when I was a kid, and I even remember playing Earthworm Jim 3D back in the day, so it definitely seemed like a bigger franchise as a kid than it actually was. Nowadays I think it's mostly mentioned for its style rather than because the gameplay really holds up, and for Doug TenNapel being a culture war dipshit.

[personman]

I'll be honest: I'm baffled that most people think the Megadrive/CD versions looks better. I may have some bias since I grew up with the SNES version but Evil's boss fight is just a blank screen, there is really ugly dithering all over the place, the wavy effect for Down the Tubes just looked plain bad in the Sega versions so its absence is an upgrade I say. The first stage had a cool lens flair effect and most of the backgrounds in general had more depth to them I feel thanks to paralax scrolling. I know Pete's sake had some weird screen wrapping effects with the background but I liked the cooler color pallet much better. Sure the CD version had redbook audio which is nice but the additional stages aren't worth writing home about. Big Bruty is okay but clunky and Intenstinal Distress is only remarkable for its stage track that sounds like it belongs in a lovecraftian horror game which is way out of place. I guess if you had to pick one port to play and no others then I'd understand the appeal for the CD version for the audio alone but personally I prefer the SNES version the most.

In any case I do like this game a lot. I'm a sucker for things that are so 90s it hurts and as far as platformers go I think it still stands out on its own which I appreciate things that can feel unique in an industry full of copycats and stuff (though what industry isn't?). I personally don't feel its level design is completely airplane hangar as there is enough of a defined critical path and as the game goes on its get more and more guided but still feels different. Its like the Genesis Aladdin game, which no surprise since Perry worked on them both. However it comes with weird quirks like a constant need to take short steps or else you're going to get waylaid by everything which to some I'm sure can be annoying. Then there is the Tube Race level that I managed to beat my first try last year but yeah, I remembered the near secret oxygen thing that you need to make it to the end. That was just a mean and spiteful thing to do. See many people get frustrated with Snot a Problem as well but no one ever seems to realize you have attacks to shove the dude into the walls and you can pretty much end those levels in like 3 seconds.

It's a mixed bag. I think most of the platformer stages are pretty good, the gimmicks like the Psycrow races are painless but get tedious with how much they repeat. Snot a Problem is easy once you know how it works and it just feels unnecessary especially since it you have to do it twice. Then of course the Tube Race which I think people blow out of proportion a little too much but the fact a key part of the thing is hidden from you is pretty bullshit and I can't blame anyone for hating it. I still think its a solid game but its a pretty tough recommend this day and age. Plus Tenapel and Tallerico are attached to it and many people won't want to touch it just on principal alone which fair enough.

I want to give it a B but I think it's got enough issues that a C is best for it. I wish the series managed to keep going but it just petered out so fast, I didn't care for the direction they took in 2 for both if game play and style and 3D well... I still want to give it a try sometime just out of morbid curiosity but I've heard very little kind things about it. Looking now I just found out they were planning to make a 4th game that just got cancelled, huh go figure. Then there's the new animated series that uh... I can't tell who its for lol. Surprised that hasn't been cancelled too.

[ommadawnyawn2]

Did anyone though? I don't mind the dithering but you can use a filter in retroarch if you're emulating or don't want to use composite since it's blurry, that's how it was intended as it creates the illusion of more color. The wave effect is nice (and it's still there on SNES, just different), except for them placing the upper edge a bit low so you can see the tiles move like an escalator if you focus on the background. The SCD version does have better animation and the higher horizontal resolution improves gameplay as well as portrays things in the correct proportions instead of stretched in some cases. And there are other extras that make the SCD one play better which I mentioned in my mini review.

The ID level's music is a self-deprecating joke about the MD sound chip that only really works on that console!

[dsparil]

It was a fifth one! The GBC game, Menace 2 the Galaxy, is basically forgotten. If you want to get super technical, it's the fourth one since it came out a week after 3D. The Amico one was even a third failed revival. The first one was being developed by Shiny but went kaput when Shiny shut down in 2007. Then Interplay announced a new game the next year, but apparently no real work was done on it or they announced it before all the details were sorted out.

[dr_st]

Huh. So it seems like the wave effect is one thing that didn't make it from the Sega CD to the Windows 95 version. For good or for bad.

And yes, in most cases where there are meaningful differences, I prefer the SNES (DOS) graphics to the Special Edition graphics.