>>4652373
Just because it's BEATABLE doesn't make it fun. You can't MASTER Earthworm Jim, you can only MEMORIZE it. With games like Contra, Castlevania or Megaman you get an actual skill at the game. If you sat a person who can perfect run Castlevania, but who never touched e.g. Castlevania Chronicles or Rondo of Blood to play these games - they will do pretty damn good, because they built a genuine skill.
EWJ games are as barebones as it gets. Enemies exist to hurt you in a way that is basically impossible to avoid first time through until you memorize it, and pathetically easy to avoid once you do. None of enemies are interesting, or combine with other challenges.
There is no tech, no expert skills. No backwards whipping like in Castlevania, no controlling boss patterns and weaknesses like in Megaman, not even keeping Spread like in Contra.
If you record play of a veritable master of EWJ who played the game for hundreds of hours - and compare it with a play of someone who beat the game once and has it still in memory - they are going to look almost identical.
The game has extremely low skill ceiling, and very little depth (defined as amount interesting choices the game asks of player). In EWJ, there is almost none, since once you learn optimal path (the ONLY path), there is nothing else to learn.
None of the weapons are good or fun to shoot, and anything other than excuse to show CRAAAZY animation.
Earthworm Jim was a harebrained idea from step 1, when someone decided that the best way to utilize all this edgy humour and pretty animation with zero design experience was an action platformer, genre requiring tight design - instead of a point'n'click Lucasarts-style adventure game, where the strengths of EWJ as an interactive Animaniacs cartoon would shine.
And now, that is the a reason why almost noone remembers these game, except for few nostalgic people who install the game, realize it was shit, and quickly uninstall it. That's the fucking truth.