The year is 1991, the World Wide Web was being showcased outside of CERN for the first time, the cold war would soon be over, and alternative rock was riding the waves of the FM radio and MTV with the insurgence of the grunge movement. 1991 also marked the release of one of the most odd and over-the-top cult classics of the Sega Genesis: a rogue-like game where two alien rappers crash-land on earth after a collision with an asteroid.

Toejam and Earl starts out with a self-introduction of the main characters, originally from an alien planet called Funkotron: Toejam, slim and three-leggedly fast, wearing a gold medallion and a baseball cap; and Earl, fat and strong, with huge sunglasses and high tops – cool dudes all-around, cruising on the Righteous Rapmaster Rocketship, cranking funky tunes throughout the cosmos.

As luck would have it, or soon to be found not lucky at all, the aliens crash on an asteroid and land on Earth – a planet curiously alien to the main characters. Toejam and Earl find themselves stuck in land amongst beings of a weird kind called Earthlings. They need to find all the scrap parts of the ship in order to rebuild it and leave this crazy place. No problem!

The Righteous Rapmaster Rocketship, as seen in the game’s introduction

Gameplay⌗

The gameplay is Rogue-like, it happens in a world in faux-3D perspective where the protagonists are controlled by players on a 2D map filled with enemies, hazards and items, while experience points are accumulated in order to level up.

The objective of the game is to traverse the map, divided in 25 floating islands called Levels, looking for scrap parts of the rocketship, all while avoiding contact with bad earthlings, and optionally trading with good earthlings. The game starts at Level 1 – sea-level – where you can find an elevator to take you to the second level. Elevators are the means of advancing onto the upper levels, and falling down will bring you a level below.

In game capture of level 2 showing the elevator to level 3 and Toejam about to fall to level 1

Earthlings⌗

There are earthlings of various types, ranging from stinging bees to thieving moles, devils poking you with a trident to cupids making you fall in love and walk amok, hula girls trying to distract you while lawn-mowing fat men run over you, phantom ice-cream trucks that appear out of nowhere, boogiemen, maniac dentists and haunted mailboxes that wait until you get close to attack you. Those are few of many – and I say many – others.

Not all earthlings are bad though. There are earthlings that help our alien friends in their journey, a wiseman in carrot costume, a singing viking woman, even santa claus himself can be caught giving out presents, as long as you are sneaky enough around him.

Earl distracting a pack of nerds with a boom-box before they run over him, in order to get a piece of the rocketship and get the hell out of there through a doorway

Presents⌗

With all those earthlings wracking havoc on the two funkotronian’s plans, how do they even manage to survive? Well, Earth is also full of presents! Presents are spread out through the levels to be collected by the player or bought through mail.

There are as many wacky types of presents as there are earthlings, you can open a present and find a pair of Super Hitops allowing you to run from enemies, rosebushes that block the path if you’re being followed, a couple of bucks to trade with good earthlings, wings that make you fly, a slingshot to throw tomatoes at earthlings until they go pop, et al. But not all presents are good, there are bad presents that can spawn an earthling, give you expired food or straight up kill you. Total bummer!

Presents are misterious, there is no way of knowing what lies inside of a present box until you open it for the first time – that is, unless you pay the carrot-wearing wiseman to identify your presents for 2 bucks each.

Present selection menu, showing some presents that are known and some unknown to the player

Leveling up⌗

As any other good Rogue-like, the game has a character leveling system. Experience points are earned by exploring the map and killing earthlings. Levels increase the maximum health of the player and give an extra life every 3 level increases.

Levels are not numeric though, that would be too boring. Instead of “leveling up”, the player is rather promoted, earning titles that are as more prestigious as the level is higher. You start the game out as a mere Wiener, but with enough experience you can be promoted to a Homey, a Rapmaster or even to highest praise ever of a Funk Lord yourself!

Co-op⌗

The game is best played with a friend. If you don’t laugh as you get chased by earthlings and rush to open a present, only to find out you now have a raincloud over your head, I don’t know what to say. The game gets very difficult on the later levels where it throws everything it has at you. Playing with a friend means that you can carry double the presents and can divide to conquer the map, which is a deciding factor towards the end of the game.

The game is funny and unpredictable, playing in co-op doubles these aspects of the game.

Random maps⌗

A unique feature of the game is that it’s able to generate all 25 maps from a random seed, so everytime you play it the maps, items and enemy placements will be different. The replayability of this game is huge compared to games of the same era of home consoles.

Soundtrack⌗

To some people, the most memorable part of the game is the soundtrack. A game with such an over-the-top premise could only be accompanied by an equally awesome and funky soundtrack.

The soundtrack is a mixture of late 80s funk and hip hop. The composer, John Baker, took inspiration out of Herbie Hancock and The Headhunters to compose one of the most original and memorable soundtracks of the 16-bit console era.

Six different funky tunes set the mood of the game, skillfully put together through FM synthesis on the Yamaha YM2612 chip, with slap bass, muted guitars, harmonized horns, booming drums and vinyl scratching. The game also features a mode where you can play along to the tracks with all built-in WAV samples from the game.

My favorites are Big Earl Bump and Toejam Slowjam. I recommend DUSTINODELLOFFICIAL’s channel for the highest fidelity recordings of any Sega Genesis soundtracks.

Sequels⌗

After a slow initial selling period, the game became a cult classic, and as expected some sequels followed it. Toejam and Earl: Panic on Funkotron continues the story after the aliens returned to their home planet Funkotron on the restored rocketship, only to find out that earthlings snuck up inside the rocketship and are now causing troubles in their home planet. It changes the Rogue-like gameplay to a 2D platformer, but it’s still a fun play, expanding on the awesome soundtrack and developing the backstory of Funkotron and its inhabitants.

Most notably, a recent remake of the original called Toejam and Earl: Back in the Groove! was launched in 2019 by HumaNature Studios, founded by the series creator Greg Johnson, with executive help of Macaulay Culkin – yes, the actor, and a life-long fan of the series – and none other than Cody Wright composing new tunes and remastering the originals.