Bliterations
Thoughts/Gaming

VGM of the Week
24
Apr

(Part of a continuing series spotlighting an individual piece of music from a video game.)

Villi People/Jim’s Now a Blind Cave Salamander! (Moonlight Sonata, 1st Movement)

Game: Earthworm Jim 2 (1995–96)
Composer: Ludwig van Beethoven (arranged by Tommy Tallarico)

For all of the wacky and irreverent humor that the Earthworm Jim series is known for—and indeed, its manic, schizophrenic style is one of its most enduring qualities—Shiny Entertainment’s platformer/shooter/cow launcher games exhibited true craftsmanship and artistry at the time, sometimes at the expense of gameplay (attack distances and collision parameters can be hard to judge because the animations are so fluid, for example). While the first Earthworm Jim is more of a standard jump and gun platforming title—albeit with a refreshing taste of self-depreciating humor—Earthworm Jim 2 actively sought to erase players’ expectations by making each level a complete guessing game as to what the objective would be and how your character would control. By the time the game’s fourth level is reached (really the third, but the first of three “catch the falling kittens” mini-levels has also taken place), the notion that “all bets are off” has already been well established.

Which is what makes the level itself so strange and poetic. Main character Jim disguises himself as a cave salamander and must slowly drift and swim through a gastrointestinal tract, avoiding its walls (as they are lined with pulsating villi) and dodging pinball bumpers and cellular organisms. Think of the underwater bomb diffusing in the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game for the NES, but slightly less frustrating. In a series known for its brisk hi-jinx, having the pace slow significantly and requiring the player to carefully navigate through a tranquil but very dangerous minefield creates a surreal meta-mindscape, allowing room to breathe and reflect, even while in the midst of heavy concentration (some of the collectibles scattered about the level are extremely difficult to get to, especially considering the sprite spatial issues mentioned earlier.)

A large part of this section’s weird beauty and uniqueness is due to Tommy Tallarico’s arrangement of the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, eerily represented with synthesizers to invoke a melancholy mood as a backdrop to the level’s cold and sterile biology:

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And before you start coming at me with pitchforks and accusing me of being too Nintendo-centric, here’s the Genesis/Mega Drive rendition:

I’m going to give the edge to the SNES version, however. While there’s nothing wrong with the more plucky harpsichord-sounding instrumentation of the Genesis arrangement—and it does inherently have a more “Classical” feel—the more sustained E. Piano sound of the SNES rendition, with notes that are held longer and decay more realistically thanks to the system’s sound chip, achieves a more emotional and haunting effect (something that is actually more faithful to Beethoven’s original instruction to pianists performing this work to keep the sustain pedal held down throughout).

Before I’m taken to task, yes, there was a version released for the Saturn and PlayStation with a proper acoustic piano sound, but it sounds a tad thin to me and lacks the “warmth” of the other-worldly electric piano that seems appropriate for traveling through a hot and stifling intestinal maze. You be the judge:

Moonlight Sonata returns for the last level of Earthworm Jim 2, with the kinetic final movement of Beethoven’s work serving as a Looney Tunes-like accompaniment to the race against Psy-Crow, the main antagonist of the series. That’s more of a traditional application, however, which makes the moody journey of the blind salamander all the more bizarre and wondrous.

Posted by Kurt Shulenberger on April 24th, 2010 :: Posts :: Tags : , , , , , , ,
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