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During its drawn-out three year development cycle, Earthworm Jim 3D changed publishers several times. This caused some problems as the game was based on the Earthworm Jim TV series which by the time of release, had been off the air for over 3 years. Also many locations displayed in early versions of the game are nowhere to be found in the released copy (such as a level set in a house, where Jim is ant-sized), and locations that were kept from early screenshots changed drastically before release. In some cases, entire characters were changed – originally, Evil the Cat was to be the boss of Fear, but was changed to Professor Monkey-For-A-Head at the last moment, although his face can be seen on the records and record needles in the level “Boogie Nights of the Living Dead”. Additionally, Evil Jim, Earthworm Jim’s evil twin from the TV series, was reportedly a part of the game. Early screenshots also display Jim riding his Pocket Rocket. The characters of Earthworm Jim had to be redesigned for the shift to 3D. When the game was almost three quarters done, it suffered from framerate problems and poor animation. [Info from Wikipedia]
Also Makubeku noticed that the eye window its squared on the beta instead of how it was on the final! A beta demo was found by Nes World (as you can see in the video below), but we are not sure how many differences are in there.
Thanks to Lucas Araujo for the contribution!
Images:
Videos:
U64 is an archive with articles, screens and videos for cancelled, beta & unseen videogames. Every change & cut creates a different gaming experience: we would like to save some documents about this evolution for curiosity, historic and artistic preservation.
13 Responses to Earthworm Jim 3D [N64/PC - Beta]
Cubivore10
October 12th, 2008 at 5:55 am
Ah, these must be very early, evil the Cat is in one if the concept drawings, and he was cut from the final, as far as a know. Used to own that game too, it was hard though!
monokoma
October 12th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
there should even be some beta videos somewhere out there
Matthew
September 30th, 2009 at 3:51 am
I remember the last level of the complete one PORK BOARDING!!!!
Makubeku
November 23rd, 2009 at 2:15 am
i dont know why no one has spotted this, the eye window its sqared on the beta instead of how it was on the final
monokoma
November 23rd, 2009 at 11:41 am
Nice find! Thanks Makubeku :)
Makubeku
May 20th, 2010 at 11:25 pm
sorry, Square also the Video is Down, lately ive been seing stuff that is down so ill be triying to report it here
monokoma
May 21st, 2010 at 10:35 am
Ill try to find the video again, thanks Makubeku! If u see other videos that dont work, let me know and i’ll try to reuploade them (if i find them on my PC)
monokoma
May 22nd, 2010 at 8:21 pm
The video is now restored! :D
Herman07
January 6th, 2011 at 6:48 pm
Pork boarding before was Salami boarding (because the level was snowboarding on the junk food mountain i think).
Tuto
August 28th, 2011 at 7:19 am
so nice this gamje is
ConkerGuru
May 12th, 2012 at 7:15 pm
I liked this game alot. I have been an avid EWJ fan for over 10 years, and I’m chocked to see how much the game has changed througout it’s 3 year development cycle.(and of all the early content that has been cut out.)
Btw, anyone know where the prototype build of this game would be(the one nesworld has a page about)? I’ve searched all around on google and cannot find it anywhere. Don’t know for sure if it has ever been released to the public, but i’d really like to check out the differences in it.
monokoma
May 13th, 2012 at 9:47 pm
I think the prototype is currently not-public, only a few collectors have it, but as other protos reviewed by NesWorld, maybe it will be released sooner or later :)
makubeku
February 1st, 2013 at 11:39 pm
i noticed these werent here
http://web.archive.org/web/19980610055446im_/http://www.nintendo.com/n64/earthwormjim3d/4.jpg
http://web.archive.org/web/19980610055446im_/http://www.nintendo.com/n64/earthwormjim3d/6.jpg