Introduction/storyline/summary

As such, I feel no qualms about enjoying the good quality older stuff. Also, I recently put our Mega Drive in my bedroom where it gets a lot more use than it once did, so I went hunting through second-hand stores etc to try to find good games. And I succeeded, because I found this gem which I'd hired once or twice from a video store back when Mega Drives were the popular console to have, and I'd really wanted to play it again.

ToeJam and Earl is a game about two highly funky aliens from the planet Funkotron. ToeJam is a three-legged red alien, who is smaller and more intelligent than Earl, who is fat and slower but funky nontheless. One day they were travelling around in their most cool rapping spaceship, and Earl decided he wanted to drive. Well, you should never let Earl drive. He crashed their ship and it landed on a planet - a planet that the residents of Funkotron had been forbidden to land on, because the residents had no sense of Funk - a planet called EARTH.

Now ToeJam and Earl must travel through worlds and find the ten pieces of their spaceship so they can go home. This is a unique style of game. ToeJam and/or Earl can wander around (they walk in a truly funky way, along with the cool music in the background ^_^.), avoiding psycho Earthlings, picking up presents that lie around on the ground in each world, picking up food and cash and whatever else they find, while looking for the ship pieces and the exit to each world.

Why is this unique? Well, thing is, all you can do is walk around and handle your presents. If an enemy Earthling appears, all you can do is walk away (and most Earthlings are a good deal faster than you, so you gotta try to lose 'em somehow, or jump in water, or whatever) or open a present.

Gifts are awesomely cool. They're why I like the game. I like surprises. ^_^. See, there are a buncha random gifts lying around on each world, and you pick up whatever ones you walk across. Each style of present (like, different gifts are different colours/shapes/sizes) contains a particular content, which is secret, until you open it. You could open the gift to find something that will allow you to escape or kill the Earthling, or you could find something that will make the situation much worse...

Sometimes this can be extremely frustrating, because you feel so defenseless. If you have no good or useful presents, you're stuffed. Sometimes you just don't want to part with your best gifts except in a critical situation - but with no other defenses, even one lone Earthling can soon become a 'critical situation'. Another annoying thing is that a gift does not last all that long. It can become frustrating when all you can do is walk around because you don't have any Super Hi-Tops.

The only way you can kill Earthlings is if you open a gift that contains "Tomato" or "Slingshot" (or if you commission a friendly but rare-ish Earthling opera singer to sing and kill everyone on screen). Tomato lets you throw tomatoes a short distance, Slingshot lets you throw tomatoes more quickly and a further distance. The TJ+E instruction manual, and various FAQs, seem to think that Slingshot is an excellent gift to receive. I suppose it might be for a really good player. Personally, I find that it sucks - shooting tomatoes is really cumbersome and difficult to aim - and it takes a while to aim, and then it takes several shots to kill the enemy. If you could kill them with one hit it would be useful, but by the time you've hit them half a dozen times, they're usually on top of you and you're dead.

I am not a good player. I haven't got further than about level 14 so far. This is because I am a highly impatient person. This game is not so good for impatient people. I get no higher than level 14, not because I lose all my lives, but because I get fed up with something and turn the game off in a huff. In the higher levels (for me, 'higher levels' is anything over level 7 - as said, I'm not a good player - getting up to L25 is an impossible dream for me*, and I find this game pretty challenging), things are too strong and they hit you several times so that you lose a lot of power at once before you can make a clean getaway. This annoys me. Also, you tend to get thrown off the edge of a world a lot, and have to get up again. This annoys me. And the final thing that is likely to make me lose my temper and turn off the game is if, after making a fair bit of progress in the game, I suddenly hit the Randomiser...

* The day after I uploaded this page, I decided to actually patiently try to get as far as I could. I finished the game, with four or five lives to spare. So, I guess I don't *entirely* suck. ^_^. I'll add more at the end of this page. ^_^.

Here are most (or all, if I managed to remember 'em correctly) of the gift contents you can get...

Gifts

Spring Shoes - mmm. This is a good gift, I guess. It means you 'walk' slightly faster, because you're bouncing. And you can take big jumps. So this isn't bad. It's just not enormously helpful. Since Earthlings are mostly quite fast, when you take a big jump over them, by the time you finish landing (you have to go through this annoying routine every time you land, where you bounce a few times before you can walk again) the Earthling is probably on top of you again. Still, Spring Shoes *can* get you out of tight spots.

Super Hi-Tops - these are good. You need far more of these. Better still would be if ToeJam and Earl could both walk a little faster naturally... it's like, impossible to escape in a lot of situations without Super Hi-Tops (or some other gift). These just make you run fast. I wish they lasted longer. You start the game with four pairs of these (two each in a two-player game).

Un-Fall - again, good. You're (okay, I'm) constantly falling off of one world onto the world below. This can be really annoying since you have to face the dangers of that world all over again and refind the exit. But 'unfall' means you're instantly zapped back up to the level above without having to find the elevator again. In a two-player game, this gift means "Togetherness" which means whoever opens it is zapped to the same location as the other player.

Total Bummer - you open this gift, your player goes into some sort of seizure and all their energy is drained. In other words, this gift means instant death. Not very nice. Still, it could be worse - at least, after you open this gift once, you won't get it again (unless you open a mystery gift).

Mystery Gift - these are gifts with a ? on them - when you open them, they can produce *any* gift. Fortunately, there are these dudes in carrot suits (don't ask...) who you can ask to identify what's inside gifts... for a small fee, of course. The thing is, more gifts are good than are bad, but most good gifts are only good in a certain situation (for example, you don't want a Fudge Sundae if your health is nearly full, and you don't want an Innertube when nowhere near water, and you don't want a Promotion when you're very close to the next rank anyway) so it's best not to waste these gifts by just opening them.

Extra Buck - as said. You get one extra dollar. Dollars can be used to order particular presents from mail order boxes, or to pay a friendly Earthling. There are three friendly Earthlings you can buy services from.

Jackpot - you get five extra bucks. This is really good. Usually you can only get a buck at a time, by finding them on the ground or by opening a gift with an extra buck.

Promotion - Super Hi-Tops and Icarus Wings are two of my favourite and most useful gifts, but a Promotion is right up there. Promotions *rock*. See, in a game you start off with a rank (Wiener) which improves as you open more gifts/uncover more game tiles (that is, cover more territory in the worlds). With each new rank, you get a slightly longer health bar, and every third rank, you get a free life. Promotion gifts give you an instant free promotion in rank - saves a lot of time and hassle - good stuff!

Telephone - sometimes in this game, you'll hear an annoying, shrill ringing sound. When that happens, you look around you in the hopes that you'll find the source of the noise - a telephone. If you reach the phone before it stops ringing, it will uncover a few game tiles so that you can see places on the map that you haven't actually visited. Opening this gift automatically produces a telephone next to you.

School Book - with these, the player gets out a book and falls asleep. This means they're fair game for an Earthling to come along and attack. However, you wake up as soon as you get hurt... how reassuring... ^_^. So yeah, this is not a good gift.

Randomiser - AAAAARGH YUCK HATE HATE HATE HATE. These are the WORST gifts. See, when you pick up a gift you've never opened before, it's unidentified but after you open it (or get carrot-man to identify it) it will always have the contents of the gift listed in your gift index. This is good. For a while, most gifts will be a bit random - when you open them you don't know if you'll get something that will help or harm you - but as you open more and more, eventually you'll be able to keep a collection (you can only hold a certain number of gifts at once) of gifts you particularly want and use them when the situation calls for it.

However... Randomiser, that most evil of evil gifts, undoes all this. It switches the contents of all boxes, making every gift once more unidentified. You have to go through that trial-and-error once again, of working out what you have. It's extremely frustrating. I usually turn off my game when I open a Randomiser. The way to stop their evil effects is to pay the carrot man loads of money to identify a buncha gifts, which is inconvenient and expensive if the Randomiser is not in one of the first few you get him to check. It can also be irritatingly difficult to find a carrot man when you want one. If carrot man does ID Randomiser for you, you're in great luck - you can just never open that gift, and you'll always be safe, knowing what's in each gift without worrying about it all being screwed up.

Apparently Randomiser can be good - the logic is that some gifts are rarer than others, but Randomiser doesn't discriminate and you might find yourself with some good, rare gifts (free life, promotion, jackpot, etc). In my opinion, the bad *far* outweighs the possible good. I only like this gift when I'm not playing at all seriously and just feel like wasting my gifts for fun. ^_^.

Boombox - this is one of the best and most useful gifts. Every creature on the screen will stop chasing you and start dancing instead, as a boombox appears giving out a funky beat. ^_^.

Tomato - you can throw tomatoes for a set period of time. You can't throw them far, and it's kind of slow. Also, it takes multiple tomatoes to kill Earthlings, by which time they've probably killed you.

Slingshot - like Tomato but you shoot further and more quickly.

Icarus Wings - these *rock*. Unfortunately, they really don't last long. Basically, you can fly around, which means nothing can touch you, you can fly over to otherwise inaccessible parts of a world, and you can travel a good distance fairly quickly and safely.

Food - the worlds are full of food, good (restore some of your health) or bad (deplete some of your health). The rule of thumb tends to be that the unhealthier the food, the more it restores your health. ^_^. This gift is good because you can carry the food around with you and use it whenever you need it. However, it could be either good or bad and you won't know which until you open it.

Fudge Sundae - fudge sundaes are one of the best foods, and so being able to carry these around are good.

Rootbeer - oh, these are stupid. There's nothing seriously wrong with them but they're stupid. You drink one, and you get a very small amount of health back - and then your character burps for, like, half an hour. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but it does seem like they burp for longer than is necessary. This can impede your ability to sneak - your belching will wake sleeping Earthlings up.

Rosebushes - these are a good gift but I don't like them much. I don't find them much use. What happens is that you can plant one rosebush at a time, immediately behind you. These rosebushes can be an impediment to chasing Earthlings. The rosebushes can hurt you if they touch you, and in my experience, they don't block the Earthlings very effectively in most cases.

Raincloud - a lovely little gift which will enrich your life by creating a cloud over your head to follow you around and periodically zap you with lightning. This, as you might imagine, is detrimental to your health.

Doorway - a good gift; they make doorways appear that take you to another, random part of the world. These are good if you desperately need to escape Earthlings and have no other option, or if you're on the opposite side of the world from where you want to be (of course, the doorway might take you to an even less convenient place, but there's a good chance they'll be useful).

Jetrocket - I would tentatively classify this as a bad gift. It's like Super Hi-Tops on steroids. Basically, you're suddenly on a jetrocket which careens around wildly. All you can do is hold on. Sometimes this is a good gift, but if you open a random gift and get this before you know it's what you're going to get, it's usually bad. Thing is, you can't *stop* the jetrocket, and it really goes very fast, so unless you're on a big piece of flat land, you'll go flying off the edge onto the world below... and may continue to careen off the edge of *that* world... etc. It can be distastrous. On the other hand, it can be an excellent way to cross a large piece of terrain or water.

Innertube - when you have the opportunity to use it properly, this is a good gift. You can float on the water and not lose health by swimming.

Tomato rain - tomatoes rain down for a while. They can hit Earthlings - or you - and do damage.

Earthling - a random Earthling will appear near you. This can be anything from a Phantom Ice Cream Truck to a Santa Claus, from a Hampster-in-a-ball to a Wiseman. It's more likely to be a baddie though. Might be good if you desperately need a Wiseman or something, but generally not worth the risk.

Decoy - can be very useful. A copy of you appears, and the theory is that enemies will attack the decoy instead of you. My experience is that this does not always work as well as it might sound.

As you can see, there are lots of different gifts you can get (and there are a few I couldn't think of off the top of my head). It makes the game interesting, and it takes a long time to be able to identify all the gifts. This is one reason why Randomiser is so annoying. The worst of it is that after it's randomised all the gifts, you then don't know what the new Randomiser is, so it might happen again! (Okay Leto, time to stop ranting about Randomiser...)

Here are Earthlings you might encounter.

Earthlings

Devil - these are little, red devils with pitchforks. They don't do too much damage when they attack you... They're one of the least threatening enemies in the game; not only do they do little harm, but they are not all that fast - you can actually outwalk them, kinda - and they don't chase you doggedly like some enemies will.

Wizard - looks like a truly bizarre girl, but apparently is a wizard. He is one of three mercenary (but good) Earthlings. For $1 he will heal you totally.

Wise man - this is one of the three mercenary Earthlings. ^_^. Wise man is a good Earthling. He wears a carrot suit, and he is the guy who will identify the contents of a gift, for a fee of $2.

Opera singer - this fat lady is the third mercenary Earthling. For $3, she will follow you a bit, singing and killing all other Earthlings on the screen.

Wahini - irritating hula girls who dance. They don't hurt you but when you're near them, you tend to dance too - which means you're stuck in one place and other Earthlings can hurt you.

Lady with brat in shopping cart - not too much of a threat, because they're not very fast and don't usually chase you with too much passion. They don't hurt much either.

Man with lawnmower - very dangerous, and thus annoying - they are fast, and do a fair bit of damage, and they often hit you several times in a row.

Mailbox monster - some mailboxes are normal mailboxes from which you can order presents - and others are monsters in disguise. If you go too near to these, they run at you. These are horrible; I think they're my most hated Earthling. You can only get away from these if you have a suitable gift - otherwise, you're a goner, because they move *really* fast, and hit you quite a few times, so they kill you pretty fast once they're on the move.

Chicken regiment - a bunch of army chickens with tomato-shooting cannons. Quite irritating, especially if there are a lot of them around.

Hampster-in-a-ball - nothing too scary. They don't move very quickly, although they can do you some damage if they do hit you.

Tornado - forget what I said about mailbox monsters, THESE are the most annoying villains. They don't necessarily hurt you, but man are they irritating. They're fast and always blowing up when you just want to get from one place to another, for heavens sake, without trying to weave and jump in water and back-track and get bogged down in quicksand, and so on... tornadoes catch you up and blow you around on their own whim... often they will fly right off the edge of a world, so you get flung down to the one below. This makes me seeth.

Mole - I keep changing my mind but these are really really really annoying creatures, possibly the most annoying. They steal your precious gifts. If there are a couple on the screen they might grab, like, four gifts before you can get away. They're quite fast too so you usually have to open a gift to get away from 'em.

Bees - another annoying set of Earthlings. These don't do *so* much damage but they're reasonably fast, gaps are no obstacle to them, and the deadly bees chase you and chase you... even when you're under water, they hover around your head until you're forced to surface... darn irritating. Well, I don't mind bees as much as I mind tornadoes and mailboxes and bogey men and moles...

Nerd cloud - a bunch of nerds together. I've only even seen a couple of nerd groups, one of which was out of range and one of which was sleeping, so I sneaked past them. So I can't tell you much about them but they can do you some damage.

Bogey Man - I don't like these either... they're invisible when not moving, and just a shadow when they are moving... if you don't notice them and suddenly one materialises, doing you a fair bit of damage and shouting "BOGEY BOGEY BOGEY!!" it scares you half to death. ^_^. But they're not as fast as some creatures, so they're not so bad.

Santa Claus - an actual good guy. If you sneak up on him the right way, he drops some gifts that you can pick up. ^_^.

Shark - they make the water unsafe. They chase you if you go in the water and it can be hard to escape from them because your swimming speed is so slow. Can also speed your death, because you can only swim while you have energy left. (When you swim, it drains your energy so you have to get out before you die - when you get out, your energy is instantly restored. Sharks make it less likely that you'll get out the water before you die.)

Cupid - these guys are okay. They crack me up when they sing. They are bad guys but they don't do you any damage, and they are pretty slow. They shoot arrows, and if one hits you, you temporarily fall in love - that is, your orientation gets screwed up, and when you hit the d-pad one way, you move in another direction. Can be quite annoying/inconvenient/dangerous, but the arrows are easy to avoid.

Insane dentists - Gotta love the maniacal laughter. ^_^. I don't like 'em but at least they sleep sometimes so you can sneak past them... they do some damage and they run around with these big loping steps, but I haven't had too much trouble with them and thus don't find them terrible.

Phantom Ice Cream Truck - I've not encountered one of them. Suffice to say that means they're dangerous, 'cos they thus only appear in the higher levels.

Uniqueness

I reckon the best thing about this game is its randomness. I was reading an FAQ (on gamefaqs.com - it was the longer FAQ - yes, I do read these sorts of documents for fun - yes, I am sad). It made me realise just how random the things are. The games aren't predictable.

For one, the worlds are randomly generated (unless you play the 'fixed world' mode). For another, gifts are randomly allocated contents, and aren't the same for any two games. For another, there seems to be a fairly random placing of Earthlings. For another, in some games there seems to be more money to find than in others. For another, enemies can sometimes act in unpredictable ways. For another, there's the Randomiser gift and the Mystery gift. For another, sometimes different things will affect you differently (a Wahini might not hypnotise you, or it might - a Cupid might orientate you one way or another). For another, with gifts, doorways open to a random part of the world, un-fall takes you to a random place, food opens a random food and Earthling produces a random Earthling. For another... well, you get the idea.

ToeJam and Earl has a sequel - Panic in Funkotron or something like that. However, this is a platformer, if I remember rightly (I still have a vague memory of reading a review of it in an ancient Megazone mag ^_^.). So I'm not so interested in that - I like this game. There will apparently be a ToeJam and Earl III, I hear it'll be in a similar style to the first game, but that won't be for Mega Drive, so it won't help me. I'm sure not gonna buy a whole console for one game. Besides, since it will be a modern game, it'll probably be a million times harder and less fun. ^_^.

Ending

I did encounter a couple of Phantom Ice Cream Trucks, but they weren't half as bad as I expected. I had this mental image of something that would suddenly appear from nowhere (like a bogey man) just in time to run you down flat, zooming across the screen in half a second before you could even react to its presence. But they weren't that bad at all - they honk to warn you of their impending appearance, then they appear in a cloud of smoke. Trucks can be killed by only two or three tomatoes, and they're big enough to be a decent target, so it's not too hard to slingshot 'em into oblivion before they even hit you.

The enemies I had the most problem with were Bogey Men. They were annoying, and there was, like, a plague of them... I lost one or two lives, one from a Lawnmower Man and the other, I forget how. Insane Dentists and Killer Bees were other main opponents. I'm sure I've had other games that were a lot harder. In fact, levels 20+ weren't all that difficult at all, except for an excess of Bogey Men.

The game ending has you with your finished ship - you jump in and cruise out of our solar system while a few credits roll - and the you land on a planet that's like a different coloured Earth - Funkotron! Then you are on Funkotron, which is like Earth but all different colours and you don't have an energy bar to lose. You wander around and there are all these other funky aliens who greet you and welcome you home. Finally you end up at the finishing line (aliens are lined up on each side of a road to greet you) where your family and your partner's family are. ToeJam has two little sisters, a mum and dad (female ToeJam-species are bigger than males ^_^.) and baby sibling, and Earl has a younger sister and brother. Cute ending. I hate endings that just say "yay, you did it" and then roll credits, so this was pretty cool.

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