Earthworm Jim Game Announced: Homophobic and Transphobic Creator Taking The Lead
Announced on the Intellivision Facebook page on Wednesday, the 90s cult classic game series Earthworm Jim will be returning, with a new installment arriving exclusively on the Intellivison Amico when the console launches in 2020.
You may remember the pixelated side-scrolling classic, with its wacky humour and surreal aesthetic. Adults today will have fond nostalgic memories of this game and will rejoice at the idea of a new entry in the series. Unfortunately, Earthworms Jim's creator Doug TenNapel is heavily involved with the project.
On the face of it, bringing the series' creator onto the team sounds like a fantastic thing, having someone who knows and loves the series they created working on the game is wonderful. It's just a shame that the person is TenNapel, who is very outspoken about his transphobic and homophobic views.
In 2017 Kotaku posted a piece written by Heather Alexandra called "Earthworm Jim’s Mean-Spirited Satire Doesn’t Hold Up". It's a modern-day retrospective on the original 25-year-old platformer. On publication of the article, Doug TenNapel took personally to tweeted to Heather:
Heather, you're a good man and entitled to your own opinions. If you ever want to go into why we created the way we did in the 90s let's chat
What you may not know is that Heather is a transwoman. So referring to her as a man is much more of a personal cut than it looks. the Tweet garnered outrage and TenNapel decided to Tweet further transphobic things in regards to Heather.
This wasn't the first time TenNapel reared his bigoted head. In 2011 he went on a tirade spouting his opinions on Christianity, gay marriage, and why America is the best country in the world, yee-haw. When asked about his opinions of gay marriage, he responded:
The same argument I have against letting a man take a dump in the ladies room. And [sic] office appropriate for one sex isn’t automatically appropriate for another, no matter how much a man loves taking a dump in the ladies room
He is also a known contributor to conservative garbage-hole Breitbart. Thankfully, and against his wishes, gay marriage was made legal across the USA in 2015.
The Intellivison is marketed as a "family friendly" console which is poised to bring fun back into families' living rooms. As of yet, they have made no comment on TenNapels past. We hope that they will do the right thing and remove him from the project - or at the very least, seriously condemn his words and actions. There's nothing "family-friendly" about bigotry.
Jack Dixon is a gamer, cinephile, and more than likely he's the guy who's ignoring you on Grindr. Tweet him @Jackaphobia. Support his writing on Patreon!