ToeJam & Earl

n/a

ToeJam & Earl

System(s): Sega Mega Drive, Virtual Console, PlayStation 3, Steam

Publisher:

Sega

Developer:

Johnson Voorsanger Productions

Genre: Action

Number of players: 1-2

Release	Date	RRP	Code
JP	1992-03-13	¥6,800	G-4066
US	1991-10^[2]^[3]	$59.95^[1]	1020
CA	199x	$?	1020
UK	1991-11More...^[6]	£34.99^[4]^[5]	1020
FR	1991-11More...^[6]	?F	1020
DE	1991-11More...^[6]	DM ?	1020
ES	1991-11More...^[6]	?Ptas	1020
AU	199x	$?	?
BR	199x	R$?	?
KR	199x	₩?	GM8027JG


JP ▼	2006-12-02^[7]	600^[8]pts
US ▼	2006-12-25^[9]	800^[9]pts
EU ▼	2006-12-22^[10]^[11]	800^[10]pts
DE ▼	2006-12-22^[10]^[12]	800^[10]pts
US	2011-01-26^[14]	$4.99^[13]	71166
EU	2011-01-26^[14]	€4.49^[13]	71166
UK	2011-01-26^[14]	£3.99^[13]	71166
AU	2011-01-26^[14]	$6.99^[13]	71166


US ▼	2012-11-06^[15]	$4.99^[15]	NPUB-30796
EU ▼	2012-11-07^[16]	€4.49^[15]	NPEB-01001
DE ▼	2012-11-07^[16]	€4.49^[15]	NPEB-01001
UK ▼	2012-11-07^[16]	£3.59^[15]	NPEB-01001
AU ▼	2012-11-06^[15]	$6.25^[15]	NPEB-01001
KR ▼	2012-11-07^[17]	₩6,200^[17]	NPHB-00500
TW ▼	2012-11-07^[18]	NT$156^[18]	NPHB-00500

ESRB

PEGI

OFLC

CERO

ToeJam & Earl (トージャム＆アール) is an action game developed by Johnson Voorsanger Productions, and published by Sega for the Sega Mega Drive. It stars two extraterrestrial rappers who, by way of pilot error, end up crash-landing on Earth. While there, they must search for the missing pieces of their spacecraft in hopes of reassembling it. The game frequently parodies and satirizes 1990s urban culture, and includes common 90s slang and a funk soundtrack. Much of this charm is what drew people toward the game. The game was followed by ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron.

Gameplay

The game takes place in a surreal isometric world representing Earth, where land is in the form of a stack of randomly-generated floating islands. In each of the game's 25 island, the player must find the elevator that will bring them to the next level. Occasionally, a rocketship piece will be hidden somewhere on an island, although the player is not required to collect it right away before moving onto the next island. Every island besides the first is surrounded by a void, falling in at any time will cause the player to fall to the previous level.

Presents are scattered around the island that can be collected and used at any time. The effects of each present box are randomized each time the game is played. Some presents have helpful effects, such as restoring health, temporarily bestowing special abilities, or revealing hidden sections of the map. Others, however, can do more harm, and can do things such as summon enemies, cause the character to fall asleep and leave them open to attack, or randomize the effects of all the presents.

While most inhabitants of Earth will attack or otherwise hinder Toejam & Earl when they spot them, some will help them in exchange for money. The man in the carrot suit will identify presents, and the wizard will fully restore a character's health. On occasion, Santa Claus can be found, if the player is successful in sneaking up to him without alerting him, he will drop a few random presents.

The player has a rank shown on the bottom of the screen with their health and number of extra lives, and begins the game at the rank of 'Weiner'. As the player scores points by uncovering squares of the map and opening presents, their rank will increase at certain point values. When the player increases in rank, their maximum health increases, and for every second increase in rank, the player receives an extra life. The player is able to increase in rank eight times.

The game can either be played with one or two players. In two-player mode, if Toejam & Earl wander too far apart, the game will go into a horizontal split-screen so both players can keep track of their characters, with the screen returning to normal once the characters reunite. If Toejam & Earl walk into each other, they will high-five, causing the player with the most health to give a little to the player with less health. If one player loses all of their lives, they can also take a life from the other player to come back into the game.

The game ends when the player finds all 10 pieces of the spacecraft.

sneaks and causes a character to use a present's special ability, when applicable. pulls up an item screen. switches to a map of the current island.

Achievements

Main article: ToeJam & Earl/Achievements.

Trivia

Trivia sections are bad
Try and incorporate this information into the main article. See the manual of style to find out why.

One of Greg Johnson's main influences for the design of ToeJam & Earl, was the video game Rogue^[19], a dungeon crawling video game, developed around 1980 for Unix-based mainframe systems and released as public domain software, a game that Greg Johnson first played while studiyng bio-linguistics at the University of California in San Diego, staying up to early hours of the morning playing it.

Production credits

Game Design: Greg Johnson
Game Program: Mark Voorsanger
Additional Programming: Robert Leyland
Music Direction: Mark Miller
Music Composition: John Baker
Artwork: Greg Johnson, Avril Harrison
Sound Fx: Robert Leyland, Mark Miller
Invaluable Aid: Paul Reiche, Fred Ford
Producer: Scott Berfield
Awesome Support: Hugh Bowen

Digital manuals

Steam manual

Magazine articles

Main article: ToeJam & Earl/Magazine articles.

Promotional material

Main article: ToeJam & Earl/Promotional material.

Artwork

Physical scans

Sega Retro Average

Publication	Score	Source
ACE (UK)	20	№53, p98^[5]
Beep! MegaDrive (JP)	73	№1992-04, p33^[20]
Beep! MegaDrive (readers) (JP)	73	№, p84^[21]
No results	80	№3, p8
Electronic Gaming Monthly (US)	73	№28, p24
GamePro (US)	84	№27, p38-40^[22]
No results	70	№5
Games-X (UK)	90	№28
Game Zone (UK)	89	№3, p24
Hippon Super (JP)	80	№1992-04, p84
Hobby Consolas (ES)	87	№4, p34/35^[23]
Joypad (FR)	94	№1, p65-67^[24]
Joystick (FR)	88	№20, p164^[25]
Sega Mega Drive Advanced Gaming (UK)	72	№5, p95
Mega (UK)	91	№9, p23
MegaTech (UK)	87	№1, p81^[26]
Mean Machines (UK)	87	№14, p106-108^[27]
Player One (FR)	75	№14, p60/61^[28]
Sega Power (UK)	91	№27, p34/35
Sega Pro (UK)	93	№1, p62/63^[29]
Sega Pro (UK)	88	№18, p68
Sega Force (UK)	94	№1, p30/31^[30]
Video Games (DE)	62	№4/91, p32^[31]

	80
Based on 23 reviews

Mega Drive, US
Cover
Cart Manual

Mega Drive, EU
Cover
Cart

Mega Drive, JP
Cover
Cart Manual

Mega Drive, AU

Mega Drive, BR
Cover
Cart Manual

Mega Drive, KR
Cover
Cart

Mega Drive, CA
Cover

External links

Sega of Japan Virtual Console pages: Mega Drive
Nintendo catalogue pages: US, UK
ToeJam & Earl on Steam
ToeJam & Earl on PlayStation.com: US, KR
ToeJam & Earl on PlayStation Store: US, UK, AU, KR, TW

References

↑ File:CGW US 089.pdf, page 83
↑ File:SegaPro UK 01.pdf, page 9
↑ File:GamePro US 026.pdf, page 64
↑ File:SegaPro UK 01.pdf, page 63
↑ ^5.0 ^5.1 File:ACE UK 53.pdf, page 98
↑ Sega Power, "November 1991" (UK; 1991-10-04), page 10
↑ https://www.nintendo.co.jp/wii/vc/software/01.html (archived: 2017-11-23 05:03)
↑ http://vc.sega.jp:80/vc_toejam/ (archived: 2007-02-19 21:36)
↑ ^9.0 ^9.1 http://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/7Zk0t7PUx42bzBtZGvHAv8XuFYK0yddT (archived: 2010-11-22 23:51)
↑ ^10.0 ^10.1 ^10.2 ^10.3 http://www.nintendolife.com/games/megadrive/toejam_and_earl (archived: 2017-06-28 09:11)
↑ https://archive.is/slt1Z
↑ https://archive.is/kJ7SM
↑ ^13.0 ^13.1 ^13.2 ^13.3 http://steamdb.info/app/71166/ (archived: 2013-05-22 20:03)
↑ ^14.0 ^14.1 ^14.2 ^14.3 https://steamdb.info/app/71166/ (archived: 2017-05-25 03:24)
↑ ^15.0 ^15.1 ^15.2 ^15.3 ^15.4 ^15.5 ^15.6 http://blogs.sega.com/2012/11/06/funk-is-brought-toejam-earl-games-out-now-on-xbla-and-psn/ (archived: 2016-06-08 09:00)
↑ ^16.0 ^16.1 ^16.2 File:TJ E Release Announcement vFINAL.pdf
↑ ^17.0 ^17.1 https://store.playstation.com/ko-kr/product/HP0177-NPHB00500_00-SVC313TOEJAMEARL (archived: 2018-04-05 01:27)
↑ ^18.0 ^18.1 https://store.playstation.com/en-tw/product/HP0177-NPHB00500_00-SVC313TOEJAMEARL (archived: 2018-04-05 01:27)
↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_(video_game)
↑ File:BeepMD_JP_1992-04.pdf, page 35
↑ File:SSM_JP_19950901_1995-09.pdf, page 86
↑ File:GamePro US 027.pdf, page 40
↑ File:HobbyConsolas ES 004.pdf, page 34
↑ File:Joypad FR 001.pdf, page 65
↑ File:Joystick FR 020.pdf, page 164
↑ File:MegaTech UK 01.pdf, page 81
↑ File:MeanMachines UK 14.pdf, page 106
↑ File:PlayerOne FR 014.pdf, page 60
↑ File:SegaPro UK 01.pdf, page 62
↑ File:SegaForce UK 01.pdf, page 30
↑ File:VideoGames DE 1991-04.pdf, page 32