https://www.thegamer.com/earthworm-jim-4-cancelled/

I'm unable to even bring myself up to the level of apathetic biting sarcasm to express how unshocked I am.

Okay, time to explain a few things.

Tommy Tallarico is an egotistical fraudster who robbed the grave of Keith Robinson by buying the rights to the Intellivision name from his estate. In doing this, he was able to launch his idea for a console, the Intellivision Amico.

To say it was a circus would be a slight understatement. While it legally has yet to be declared investment fraud and sued accordingly as such, it all but legally is. Imagine taking 18m$ of investor money and it's now three years later with not even a product to be found.

Earthworm Jim was announced among many other properties they didn't have clearance for in a vain attempt to make this vanity project a reality.

Which I suppose neatly leads into:

What the hell was the Intellivision Amico?
It was a System on a Chip based on a hardware specification that could barely push Android Kitkat 4.4; hypothetically. The more overt reality is as I described above; investment fraud. There's pages of inquiry from the Security Exchanges Commission asking Intellivision very nicely to explain why they claimed that J Allard (of Microsoft fame) was claimed to have had a material role.

How far along in development was Earthworm Jim 4? Oh, about as far as animation test. (It wasn't.)

It can't be as Earthworm Jim 3(d) never happened.

Oh no, not an unnecessary sequel to a long dead series that already had problematic people attached to it despite having legitimately good games.

Will we ever have another Battle Arena Toshinden with him in it?

I'm surprised at the amount of people who are not aware of 3, rather than denying it occurred. Even if not involving the creator themselves, it still manages to have questionable to problematic content.

Making your game an Amico exclusive is practically begging to fail. I imagine playing the Amico would be like eating pasta without sauce or seasoning. It doesn't have the flavour or identity that the main three consoles have. I hope I'm not being too savage with my comment.

I'm shocked to be honest. I was certain that the game is real and that after the fall of Intellivision Amico console developers would release it on all the other platforms. And I thought Interplay were doing something since the announcement back in 2008.

Oh well, we might get Earthworm Jim: Beyond The Groovy series still

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxlhLLxgXcA

Please, be more savage. INTV took 18 million dollars and have nothing to show for it. It'd be worse.

Remember, the Intellivision Amico controller had no face buttons, a touch screen, and a 1 MB memory space. So you have to imagine controlling EWJ on a 64 direction pad while doing who knows what in order to try and do all the things Jim could do.

It's interesting to note that the Europe side of their shop is no more, yet their US/Canada side of shopify is still up for "pre-orders". Wonder why...

It gave it much credit that several of the key people had been involved in games/consoles back in the day, including one hardware guy whos been creating a fantastic electronics and PCB design series over at Udemy, so of course some bought it whole.

While I thought the Amico was cool retro wise, it never appealed to me personally as their games was mainly marketed towards children. I never thought it would be released in Europe or anywhere outside of US anyway. Too "niche" for that and more importantly - most children today would rather play something better than crappy old games. I did hope they would actually redesign the console and the controllers but no luck.

Shame about EWJ4, though.

Relevant; The Intellivision Amico Flute Tune. A Hymnal for the Old Man Cringe Community & Tommy Tallarico.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M7J57B4Bug

Well if the ugly as sin teaser was anything to go by, we weren't going to miss out on much.

I don't mind, most video games comebacks are usually terrible anyway.

What killed me about the whole Amico saga is I think that 2D still did have at least a generation left in the tank like Kojima-san said and the industry jumped WAY too early to 3D.

I would still love to see a Phantasy Star 4 in HD 2D and would be willing to pledge for that along with a Shining Force 4 in 2D HD also.

2D isn't dead. Just that the Amico wasn't the machine that'd bring back the detailed 32 bit sprites.

Tommy Talarico was behind Earthworm Jim 4?

I admit I'd never even heard of him before watching hbomberguy's rather bewildering takedown of him.

Most of those tend to have an asterisk next to them; being only published from his studios rather than the work of himself. Joey Kuras, Mark Miller, and other names were erased with ease thanks to his egotripping ways.

Well, behind would be a vast overstatement, but he certainly did get the staff from the original game to take a photo op with him where he looks like an attention grabbing 6 year old; mugging the camera.