Firefly201085
Smash Rookie
- Joined
- Jul 19, 2020
- Messages
- 17
ToeJam & Earl has been called a surreal, comic satire, and a "daringly misanthropic commentary on Earthly life". ToeJam is red and has three legs. Earl is fat and orange. ToeJam wears a large gold medallion and a backwards baseball cap, while Earl is marked by high-tops and oversized sunglasses; both outfits are "over-the-top appropriations" of 1990s urban culture. Their speech features California slang. The game is set to a soundtrack which has been described both as jazz-funk, and as hip hop. For the game's unique sound, composer John Baker was inspired by Herbie Hancock and The Headhunters.
In the game's opening sequence, ToeJam explains that Earl's erratic piloting abilities have resulted in a crash-landing on planet Earth. He says that they must find the widely scattered pieces of their spacecraft’s wreckage to return to their home planet, Funkotron. The player guides the characters as they avoid Earth's antagonistic inhabitants and search for the debris. Should the player succeed, the final sequence depicts ToeJam and Earl escaping the planet in their reconstructed spacecraft. Under the player's control, the characters proceed across a purple landscape that represents Funkotron, and are greeted by their friends and family.
ToeJam & Earl has been called "weird", ”strange", and "thoroughly odd". Critics have difficulty in determining a genre for the game, it has been called a platform game and Roguelike, as well as action and action-adventure. While ToeJam & Earl's success did not match that of the Sega Genesis's other popular titles, it has been considered a "classic", and a "cult" game.
ToeJam and Earl became "one of Sega's second tier mascots, alongside Sonic", and one of the Sega Genesis's "key exclusive franchises".
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