Earthworm Jim Game Gear

I recently picked up Earthworm Jim for my game gear. I think it was at a flea market.

I popped it in and it is pretty good for a game gear port. Music, animation, large stages seem to recreate the entire original game.

I read that the game gear is a colored port of the game boy version, but have no proof.

However, like most platform games on the game gear, it just feels a bit too slow, especially compared up against the genesis version. The biggest issue is using the same attack button for both the head whip and the gun. A very quick press and release does the head whip. But it's easy to press a little too long and then not execute it. And a press and hold does the gun. But due to the required delay to check for a head whip, there's a noticiable delay in firing the gun, and it tends to make it impossible to have quick reactions to enemies. They always get a "touch" off before I can shoot them.

Overall it's a bit like playing Sonic (1) for the game gear. As a standalone game, it's pretty good. But definitely lacks something from the original.

What surprised me the most was looking it up on e-bay. This game seems to be rather rare and worth around 30$! Anyone else feel it's that rare? I haven't been paying attention. The aleste/power strike games are the only ones I know of that are particularly rare. And galaga 91 I presume since it's the only US game gear game still on my "want" list.

I still love game gear. Nice piece of technology before its time. If only it had been architected to double the battery life, I think it would have survived.

I think the caps for the speakers are going on mine. The sound as max volume is pretty low now. I have another game gear with no sound I'll be doing a cap replace on as a test run, we'll see how that goes. If it works well I'll replace the video caps too to remove some of the ghosting.
 
Got a copy of Faceball 2000? Another rare game that will put you back some. Fun game though.
 
Faceball 2000, looks like that's another colorization of a game boy game (midi maze). I thought it sounded familiar. I think I've seen the SNES version before, but never the game gear version.

Also, you're welcome for the sharing.
 
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