Hello!

Every time I get into the game after a certain amount of time the message "Hi there! Jump if you really want to play" pops up and crashes the game. Well, the game does not exactly "crash", but I can not do anything once this message pops up, forcing me to externally close the game via task manager. I have heard about people experiencing the same problem, however for me it appears every time I play, sometimes right after I get into the game or after about 10 minutes. This makes it impossible for me to progress through the game.

I have tried to find a pattern to figure out what triggers the message, but so far without success. Before I played on the GOG Version, I have played on the Steam version of EWJ3D. There, the message popped up occasionally during the first half of the game, maybe three or four times while playing through the "Memory" and "Happiness" section, but not as often as it would make the game unplayable. When I reached "Poultrygeist" and "Poultrygeist Too" in the "Fear" section of the game, the message always pops up after like 15 minutes. (To be fair, not knowing when the game will chrash truly comes true to the "fear" section of the game, increasing the immersion I guess :P). Also on the Steam version the message says "Please insert the Earthworm Jim 3D CD-ROM". Even though the message is completely different, I have observed that it has the exact same "functionality", freezing the game without option to continue.

Therefore, I have purchased the GOG version, hoping that the problem does not appear there. I copied my save game file from the Steam version into the folder of the GOG version, so I could continue my progress. Unfortunately, the message "Hi there! Jump if you really want to play" pops up instead of the "Please insert the Earthworm Jim 3D CD-ROM". I can say that the message pops up consistently during the first 15 minutes of "Poultrygeist" and "Poultrygeist Too" for me, and occasionally also in different parts of the game.

I have tried the approach discussed in a post on the Speedrun webiste, however it did not manage to solve the issue with it. Unfortunately, it seems like I am not allowed to mention links in my posts here, but you can find the post I am referring to by searching for "How to set up Earthworm Jim 3D on PC and have it actually work good" on Google.

It's such a shame, because despite the aged mechanics and the clunky camera, I think it's still a great and fun game, and I really enjoy the humour and clever puzzles. I remember playing it when I was like 5 years old with my older brother, and we could never make it past the "Memory" section of the game because it was too difficult for us at that time. Recently I picked it up again on Steam (because or old CD is damaged) and I was amazed about how awesome this game actually is, and I would love to finally beat it after all these years :)

I am playing on Windows 10 Home, Intel Core i7-10750H, 16GB RAM and Nvidia GTX 1650TI Max-Q and a 4K Display (that I usually scale down to 1080p for games), no disk drive.

Maybe also worth mentioning: I have tried various different display settings in the game, as well as the windows compatibility modes for Windows 95, 98 and XP. Also, I am usually playing with a Xbox Wireless Controller connected via Bluetooth. Attached you can find a screenshot of the freeze message.

Does anyone have some new info on how to fix it, or where I can find a version of the game where this problem does not appear?

Thank you!

I think it's an anti-piracy message, which randomly gets triggered by something. probably by how the digital versions of the game removed the CD check or something. Could be something residual that randomly triggers it. Haven't seen it happen in the CD version of the game, but after I applied a music fix so it would loop properly (which also uses a different .exe), I've seen it pop up a couple times.