ToeJam & Earl III: Mission to Earth

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ToeJam & Earl III: Mission to Earth
System(s): Xbox
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Visual Concepts, ToeJam & Earl Productions
Distributor: Microsoft (Europe)
Genre: Action
Number of players: 1-2
Release Date RRP Code US 2002-10-22 $49.9549.95 64020 DE 2003-03-07 R13-00005 ES 2003-03-07 R13-00003 FR 2003-03-07 UK 2003-03-07 R13-00001 IT 2003 AU 200x

ToeJam & Earl III: Mission to Earth is the sequel to ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron. It was originally released for the Xbox in 2002, and is currently the first and only entry in the series to be presented in 3D. The duo are also joined by a new female friend, Latisha.

During development the game was known as ToeJam & Earl III: All Funked Up.

Gameplay

ToeJam & Earl III plays as a cross between the original ToeJam & Earl and ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron, with an emphasis on the former's roguelike elements, being built around the concept of exploration. Up to two players can traverse a world uncovering new environments with the aid of specified or random items in the form of "presents", which in turn can either help or hinder your experience. Collecting money also helps in making progress, special ordering presents, making deals with Earthlings and more. Keys also serve as a way to unlock new levels and environments.

The main objective is to spread the word of funk to the people of Earth, as decreed by the Funkopotimus himself, Lamont. To do this, all characters have the ability to perform Funk-Fu, which also acts as a means of self defense. Funk-Fu serves as basic attacks that look like physical attacks, but instead will funkify earthlings causing them to become friendly with you. Funkified earthlings can also give helpful items or aid in level quests.

Each action in the game rewards points, which then gives the ability to level up your character which also increases your belt-color ranking. Attempting to funkify an earthling with a rank higher than yours causes them to be invulnerable until your belt level matches theirs.

After the game has been completed, the "Random Mode" will be unlocked. Environments will be randomly generated as opposed to fixed that re-arranges the location of presents, keys, earthlings and more.

Playable Characters

Just like previous entries, up to two players are able to play simultaneously. However with the addition of Latisha as well as three secret characters, both players have the option to hotswap between the characters at the beginning or by finding a location in the overworld(s) that allow you to change characters. Each character also has specific abilities or perks that give them an upper hand over the other characters in certain situations.

The additional three characters must be downloaded to the Xbox hard drive.

	ToeJam
	Extra shot power Speed & jump powe Mailbox rebate Good Money Luck
	Big Earl
	Stronger Funk-Fu Can eat bad food Two-for-one Sushi Increased Life
	Latisha
	Double Rhythm Power Double treats Risky present luck Can ride tornadoes
	GeekJam
	(downloadable character) Super jump power Super money luck Super Rhythm Power Can ride tornadoes
	Earl Bot
	(downloadable character) Speed power Super Funk-Fu Super shot power Three-for-one Sushi
	Suteki
	(downloadable character) Speed & jump power Can eat bad food Increased life Triple treats

History

Development

ToeJam & Earl III was once set to be a Sega Dreamcast game, and was even pencilled in for release in November 2001, but the demise of the console led to development being moved to the Xbox.

Once development moved onto the new platform, there was consideration in bringing the game to other platforms after the Xbox version was completed. Namely the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube. It was noted that the same experience could not be brought to other platforms in the same way as the Xbox version. As a result, only came out on one system.

Production credits

• Developed by: ToeJam & Earl Productions
• Produced by: Visual Concepts
• Published by: Sega of Europe

Design & Management Team

• Lead Designer & Creative Director: Greg Johnson
• Project Manager: Mark Voorsanger
• Lead Programmer: Steve Scholl
• Production & Design Assistant: Suruchi Krieglstein
• Executive Producer: Scott Patterson, Visual Concepts

Programming Team

• Camera, Graphics & Game Engine Enhancements: Steve Scholl
• Artificial Intelligence, Mini-Games & Boss Battles: Matt Russell
• User Interface & Sound: Randy Tudor
• Character Controls, Software Tools & Utilities: Richard Fife
• Graphic Special Effects & Performance Optimizations: Robert Leyland
• Random Level Generation: Mark Voorsanger

Art Team

• Lead Environment Artist: Maida Kreis
• Lead Animator & Concept Artist: I-Wei Huang
• Animator: Rob Skiena
• Environment Artist: Hal Smyer
• Texture Artist: Maria Bowen
• Additional Artwork: Lee Ballard, Robin Lujan

Sound Music Team

• Music Composition, Sound FX & Sound Engineering: Burke Trieschmann
• Gospel Singing: Genevieve Goings
• Gospel Composition: Greg Johnson, Genevieve Goings

Character Voices

• Player-Character Voices: Greg "Big Earl" Brown, Sherrie "Latisha" Jackson, Kirk "ToeJam" McHenry
• Other Character Voices: Genevieve Goings, Greg Johnson, Rob Skiena, Suruchi Krieglstein, Burke Trieschmann

Visual Concepts Credits

• Executive Producer: Scott Patterson
• Library and Tools Engineers: Ivar Olsen, Eivind Hagen, Boris Kazanskii, Chris Larson, Chuck Batson
• QA Manager: Chien Yu
• Lead Tester: Damon Perdue
• Quality Assurance (In Alphabetical Order): Eric Andreassen, Brian Beavers, Stephen Benz, Benjamin Bracamonte, Chris Charles, John Crysdale, Andrew Davies, Christopher Gross, Jeremy Huddleston, Erik Lampi, Robert Nelson, Haven Rocha, Semmy Sebastian, Junior Sison, Derek Williams, Tim Walter

Sega Europe Ltd

• COO Sega Europe: Naoya Tsurumi
• Director of Product Development: Kats Sato
• Assistant Producer: Jens Geffert
• Senior Producer: Matt O'Driscoll
• Technical Producer: Elliott Martin
• Product Manager: Mark Fisher
• Commercial Manager: Mark Horneff
• Sega Europe Localisation: Eva Backmann (GER), Marta Lois Gonzalez (SP), Brigitte Nadesan (FR), Giuseppe Rizzo (ITA)
• Special thanks: Marcus Joseph
• Guest Writer: Jon Gibson
• Special Testers: Adam De La Torre, Dan De La Torre, Debra Lockridge, Eriko Johnson

Very Special Thanks To

• : Scott Patterson, Greg Thomas, Peter Moore, Shinobu Toyoda, Rob Lightner, Robert Leffler, Dave Halverson, Oliver Miyashita, Ken Lobb

Source:

?? manual

Downloadable content

Additional characters and levels were available as additional downloadable content for the game. They could be obtained either through the Xbox Live service (which was decommissioned on May 11, 2010) or from the Xbox Exhibition Disk Volume 2.

Title and description	Links	Releases
GeekJam		US 2002-11-15 FREEfree
Earl Bot		US 2002-11-15 FREEfree
Suteki		US 2002-11-15 FREEfree
Hades Maze		US 2002-11-15 FREEfree
Funkadelic		US 2002-11-15 FREEfree

Magazine articles

Main article: ToeJam & Earl III: Mission to Earth/Magazine articles.

Artwork

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Physical scans

Sega Retro Average
Publication Score Source

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Based on 0 review

Sega Retro Average
Publication Version Score Consoles + (FR) PAL 85 Electronic Gaming Monthly (US) NTSC-U 72 GameNOW (US) NTSC-U 83 GamePro (US) NTSC-U 88 GMR (US) NTSC-U 70 Hyper (AU) PAL 69 Le Magazine Officiel Xbox (FR) 55 Official Xbox Magazine (UK) PAL 79 Play (US) NTSC-U 90 Xbox Zone (DE) PAL 74

	76
Based on 10 reviews

ToeJam & Earl III: Mission to Earth

Xbox, US
Cover
Disc

Xbox, US (Hollywood Video)

Xbox, UK
Cover
Disc

Xbox, FR
Cover

Xbox, DE
Cover

Xbox, ES
Cover

Xbox, IT
Cover

Xbox, AU
Cover

Technical information

ROM dump status

System	Hash	Size	Build Date	Source	Comments
?	CRC32 MD5 SHA-1		2002-06-20	DVD-R				Page
?	CRC32 MD5 SHA-1		2002-08-06	DVD-R				Page
?	CRC32 MD5 SHA-1		2002-09-09	DVD-R				Page
?	CRC32 MD5 SHA-1		2002-09-19	DVD-R				Page
?	CRC32 MD5 SHA-1		2001-07-02	Dev Kit HDD				Page

External links

• Official website (archive)
• Official website on Sega.com (archive)
• ToeJam & Earl III: Mission to Earth on Xbox.com: US (archive)
• Greg Johnson SEGAbits Interview

References

Games in the ToeJam & Earl Series
	ToeJam & Earl (1991) | ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron (1993)
	ToeJam & Earl III: Mission to Earth (2002)
	Sega Vintage Collection: ToeJam & Earl (2012)
	Sega Vintage Collection: ToeJam & Earl (2013)
ToeJam & Earl related media
	ToeJam and Earl Rap (1991) | Sega Tunes: ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron (1996)