THE EVOLUTION OF: EARTHWORM JIM
No matter how much freedom the creators of a licensed game are given, their design must include certain elements and avoid using others. Virgin Interactive’s in-house development team walked this line for several years during the Nineties, producing hits like Global Gladiators, Cool Spot and Disney’s Aladdin. Virgin’s musician on these titles was Tommy Tallarico, who remembers the experience as a pleasure rather than a chore. “We worked on a string of amazing games there,” Tommy reviews. “I think it just goes to show how gelled the team really was, and how important the friendships we all had were. We were pretty much all single guys at the time, in our early to mid-20s, and we just wanted to make great videogames. No one ever asked us to work late or work on the weekends; we just did. We were just so excited to be creating something that we felt was so special – with each one of those games.”
But however good things were at Virgin, the massive success of Aladdin convinced several of its in-house development team to part ways with their employer and form Shiny Entertainment. They hoped to work on another big licence, but as artist/designer Nick Bruty explains, things didn’t quite go to plan. “When we left Virgin to start Shiny we were hoping to convince Disney to give us The Lion King licence to follow up Aladdin,” Nick remembers. “But Disney stuck with Virgin, so that left us in search of a new licence or an original property for our first game. Doug TenNapel had joined Virgin shortly before we left, and Mike Dietz – our animation director – suggested we meet with Doug, because he was working on his own original character creations.”
“TEX AVERY WAS A BIG INSPIRATION TO THE ANIMATION TEAM. THE ANIMATORS HAD HIS LASERDISCS PLAYING ALL THE TIME WITH JOHNNY CASH IN THE BACKGROUND”
DAVID PERRY
A lack of licensed alternatives to soon led to Nick and Shiny founder David Perry doing just that, as the former coder recalls. “We just couldn’t find a licensed project we were excited by,” David notes. “But Doug was interviewing and we got to
