alt title(s): Toejam And Earl
Ouch, man. That's cold.
Supremely funky alien homeboys ToeJam and "Big" Earl, proud residents of the planet Funkotron, have crashlanded on the decidedly lame and non-funky planet of Earth. The impact, while leaving them unharmed, scattered pieces of their spacecraft all over the planet, and finding all of these pieces is the only way to get back home. Sounds simple in principle. The Earth's natives might be a bit of trouble, though...
ToeJam & Earl is a series of video games known mainly for its first entry, released in 1991 on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, although two more games exist. The first game, with the same name as the series, is an exploration-oriented
Action Adventure game with
Isometric Perspective and (the option of) randomly-generated
levels. The sequels are
ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron, an extremely different two-dimensional
Platform Game released on the Mega Drive in 1993, and
ToeJam & Earl III: Mission to Earth, a three-dimensional
Platform Game released on the Microsoft Xbox in 2002.
This series provides examples of:
- Abnormal Ammo: The original game features tomatoes as the titular Funkotronians' weapon of choice. Panic on Funkotron features bottles that capture enemies.
- Chest Monster: Items come in presents. A few types of presents (Which types of these are are randomly determined at the beginning of each new game) contain food, which may harm you if it's bad. Also, presents may contain Earthlings, who are usually enemies, and to take this further, there is the dreaded Mailbox Monster who will totally send you to Lamerville if it gets you. Let's not forget the "Total Bummer", either.
- Easy Mode Mockery: "Lil' Kids" mode in Panic on Funkotron makes it impossible to die, but ends the game after level five, thus robbing players of the chance to collect the Funkopotamus' favourite things and get the good ending.
- Demonic Spiders:The Lawnmower Men, The Chicken Infantry, The Ice Cream Truck and the Mailbox Monsters in the original. Lawnmower men move very fast, and are difficult to outsmart. The Chicken Infantry fire harmful tomatoes from their cannon, with longer range than your own. The Ice Cream Truck is extremely fast and is almost impossible to avoid without item assistance, and the Mailbox Monster, the worst enemy in the game, disguises itself as a helpful mailbox from where you can order presents, and attacks you if you get too close.
- Floating Continent: Each level in the original is a piece of land floating in a void. If you drop off the edge, you will land in the previous level, implying that they are arranged in a vertical stack. Try falling off the bottom-left corner of Level 1.
- Fragile Speedster: ToeJam is faster than Earl but has a shorter life bar.
- Earthlings Are Bastards: Well really, they're just lame.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: Food items heal you to varying degrees, generally corresponding to the tastiness or richness of the food (e.g. a hot fudge sundae will heal you more than a bowl of cereal). Some food items will harm you instead; these take the form of rotten foods, or a few stereotypically unpleasant "healthy" foods, like cabbage.
- I See London: Earl's shorts occasionally fall and he has to stop to pull them up. A rare example of this trope as a gameplay mechanic. (Ironically, his underwear is almost identical to his pants.)
- Mighty Glacier: Earl is slower than ToeJam but has a longer life bar.
- NPC: Helpful Earthlings include the Wizard, who will fully heal you for a buck; the Wise Carrot, who will tell you the contents of a given present in your inventory for two bucks; the Opera Singer, who will kill all enemies on the screen with her voice for three; and Santa Claus, who will drop presents from his sack if you can sneak up on him.
- One Hit Kill: Accidentally open a "Total Bummer" present, and your character dies instantly.
- Roguelike: Partial use. The first game is not a true roguelike, but it has elements of one in that it has two gameplay modes, Random World and Fixed World. In Random World, each level is randomly generated, along with the enemies therein and the locations of presents. In Fixed World, all of these things have set forms and locations.
- Also, you have to climb up floors, you gain experience points, and presents are challenging to identify. Lots of the presents are bad, including one little SOB that re-randomizes all the presents, including itself!
- RPG Elements: There are nine player rankings. Which ranking you currently have is based on your score, which is primarily increased by opening presents and exploring more of the map. "Wiener", as seen in the screenshot above, is the lowest ranking.
- Sassy Blue Alien (Latisha in Mission to Earth)
- Scrappy Mechanic: The goddamn RANDOMIZER!
- Secret Level: In the first game, the very first level has a hidden entrance to a level 0, where Toejam and Earl can get extra lives and chat with some cuties in a hot tub. Getting to the entrance requires a lot of swimming, so the players must first acquire some appropriate presents to reach it without drowning. Leaving the secret level returns the players to the highest level they've reached so far.
- Standard Disco Equipment: Disco balls appear over Earthlings in Mission to Earth who have been "funkified".
- Standard Status Effects: Quite a few. Schoolbooks put you to sleep, which makes you helpless to enemy attacks, Wahini will make you do a dance if you get too close to her, Cupids fire arrows which make you lovestruck, and finally, the Raincloud will randomly drain your health with lightning bolts.
- Totally Radical: It would be hard to find someone in Real Life who uses the games' peculiar blend of slang without irony.
