Earthworm Jim emerges one more time for a new animated show

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"His struggle to find meaning is surreal and comical, but it's also relatable."

A new Earthworm Jim animated series is on the way, from Interplay and animation studio Passion Pictures. The tagline is Beyond the Groovy, the Groovy being Earthworm Jim's ship, and the announce comes with an animated short of Jim discussing the show. This series will probably be a bit like the games inasmuch as the teaser is kinda funny at points.

I don't know whether to admire or be annoyed by Earthworm Jim's persistence over the years. It's a series where the best game was the first, the joke kinda played itself out, and it's struggled to stay relevant while never quite dropping entirely out of the picture. Part of that is Doug TenNapel's great design work on the character, and the fact it was so big in the '90s (there were Earthworm Jim action figures as well as an animated series) that there are intermittent bursts of activity as folk try to squeeze a little more out of it: there's even apparently a new game in development as an Intellivision Amico exclusive.

Trivia: Earthworm Jim was voiced in the '90s cartoon by Dan Castellaneta, best-known as Homer Simpson.

The head of Interplay's newly established films and TV division is Michel Parandi, who told Variety: "I remember loving Earthworm Jim as a kid. There's so much potential in this story universe: A galaxy full of animals battling for power. Jim is an earthworm in a universe where Earth is nothing more than a myth. His struggle to find meaning is surreal and comical, but it's also relatable."

Hmm. The series has no release date yet, but Earthworm Jim now has his own Instagram, Twitter, and so on. What a world.

Rich Stanton
Rich Stanton

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."

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