Jazz Jackrabbit 2 (PC)

Huh, is that red rabbit's arm bracer melting? Oh wait, I think that's actually his tongue dripping.

It's been over two years since I played the original Jazz Jackrabbit for the site and I figured it was about time that I got around to the sequel. Plus I keep getting requests for it, so that was another big hint that it's overdue.

The game begins with a cartoon cutscene (+20 points) animated in the classic pixel art style (+200 points) showing our heroic hare modelling for a shampoo commercial. I assume.

Ear shampoo I mean, obviously.

These colours are definitely mangled here as it's an animated gif, but they didn't look much better in the game. It could be how it's always been, or it might be a side effect of me running it on a PC from THE FUTURE, I don't know.

Ah, it seems that he was just enjoying the breeze for a moment before getting down to the business at hand.

Not quite sure who he's shooting at, though I've noticed he's dropped that giant bazooka crayon thing he was carrying around in the first game and switched to a much smaller hand-held assault crayon.

He's shooting at this guy? Man these rabbits need to let that Tortoise and the Hare thing go already. It's sickening how they've let the outcome of one race turn into centuries of violence and hatred.

Then again, perhaps he isn't quite as passive and defenceless as he seems. Behind his innocent eyes and pathetic demeanour may lie the devious mind of Hannibal Lector combined with the training and instincts of Rambo.

Nope, he really is just a harmless innocent turtle.

Well was. Now he's modern art.

The senseless slaughter carries on for a bit with no context or explanation until Jazz tries to step backwards and quickly comes to the chilling realisation that he's going to be sore in the morning.

But then, salvation! His buddy drops a rope down for him and with it he's able to swing to safety. So long you dumb-ass turtle!

Rabbits, fuck yeah!

As the intro cutscene hinted, I have a choice of characters this time: Jazz or his buddy... Spaz? Funny how you never get video game characters called Spaz these days.

Well I would give the new guy a try, but in the state he's in now I'm worried he might die on me or worse, so I'll stick with Jazz for the time being.

(Not a real screenshot)

There's three difficulty settings, each with a different image to illustrate the level of badassness required to reach the end. To save showing six pictures though I thought I'd stitch them all together into one grotesque Frankenstein's monster of a screenshot for you.

Actually the character art looks pretty decent (aside from the pillow shading) and that background is hypnotic in motion, though you'll have to take my word for that one.

I guess Jazz is still into cosplay then. At least he hasn't brought the Wonder Woman outfit out this time.

There hasn't even been the slightest hint of a story in game so far to put any of this into context, but there's one thing I'm sure about: they're never going to let me drive that bike.

Whoa shit, he's so tiny! It's 640x480 res, twice that of the original game, but they haven't scaled up the art to match. Well I least I probably won't be getting lost.

I've got no idea what I'm doing in a dungeon though or what any of this has to do with The Artist Currently Known as Prince. Unless... it's supposed to be a Prince of Persia themed level maybe?

I've switched to a windowed view and managed to get it down to 320x240 instead, and it's looking a lot more like a normal platformer. The downside though is that now he's even tinier for me! It's like playing I'm playing it on a GBA, I have to put my head right up to the screen.

The game is very slick though, with responsive controls, multiple background layers flying by behind me, and fluid animation. Also I have a gun that makes turtles explode into dust in a single shot, leaving behind only their shell... which I can then shoot and send skidding across the floor to kill his buddies.

This level's got plenty of floating coins and fruit around for me to pluck out of the air and stash in my invisible infinite bag of miscellaneous swag, but I'm can't help but notice that I'm not finding any floppy disks around.

Jazz Jackrabbit (MS-DOS)

The first Jazz Jackrabbit has purple disks lying all over the place as a helpful and comforting reminder that I'm not really a rabbit and that this is really taking place in a fake video game world. But it also has a time limit and a life bar instead of hit-point hearts, which is less good.

Both games seem to have the same kind of sprawling levels though, with passages branching off and twisting all over the place. Fortunately there are helpful arrows on the background to let me know if I've gotten myself turned around.

Huh, what just hit me? Wait, it wasn't the statue was it? Because I smashed that thing already just in case.

Oh I see it now: a little purple bat half-camouflaged against the brown background. These little bastards do this to me in practically every platformer they appear in.

The turtles on the other hand are virtually no threat at all. They snap at me if I get too close, and I often ran right into the creatures in Jazz 1, but that's not likely to happen in this because the zoomed out view means I can see them coming a mile away.

Speaking of zoomed out view, any gameplay screenshots without the score, lives, hearts etc. on them, have been cropped by me to focus on what was happening at the time. They are second class screenshots, unworthy of your respect.

BOSS FIGHT!

Man, boss fights kind of lose some of their impact when the camera's zoomed out so far that my nemesis is tiny and most of the screen is just bricks. The bricks themselves on the other hand haven't lost any of their impact, so I should probably dodge out of the way when they start falling from the ceiling. The evil bunny does a stomp animation to knock them down, so there's a way to tell when they're coming, but I'm dumb (and she's tiny) so I didn't pick up on that for ages.

Apparently I'm supposed to be shooting this bunny orge until she falls backwards onto the springs, but it's sure taking a while. It's a good thing my submachine pistol's got infinite bullets really.


LATER, AFTER SOME SUSTAINED GUNFIRE.

I do have other weapon types though, which I can cycle between at will Earthworm Jim style, like this handy flamethrower! I haven't yet figured out why I'd want to use it over my one shot kill infinite ammo gun, but hey I'm just happy it exists.

I'm not sure what these creatures are, but they like to go hovering around the screen with their helipacks trying to kill me. I on the other hand like to shoot them off their helipacks and then burn them into ash, so it all works out.

Also check out how many enemies I caught on screen this time! I've been having trouble getting screenshots with more than one enemy on it, mostly because I've been having trouble finding anywhere with more than one or two enemies around. It's not exactly a run and gun slaughter so far on medium difficulty.

Oh shit, now you lizard things are totally screwed: I've rescued my winged sidekick from Jazz Jackrabbit 1 from out of a cage, and now it's following me around providing air support two bullets at a time.

I gotta be honest, I'm deliberately holding my finger off the trigger here just to give my bird something to do while it's still around.

The game hasn't exactly been throwing platforming challenges at me so far, but this tomato's being a little trickier than I'm used to. It rotates around a pivot in the wall, giving me a chance to ride it up to the ledge if I can get on top at the right time. The thing is, it rotates through the wall, where I can't see it, so by the time I know it coming it's almost too late to get onto it.

Sorry, but this is the most interesting thing that's happened in a while.

Oh wow, I'm loving this shield effect. This thing gives me unlimited special weapon ammo while it lasts (or so the sign claims), but I'm more interested in the reflections. But I must not let it distract me; I need to get moving while the thing is still active, so that I can see how other stuff reflects in it.


LATER.

It's all gone a bit Sonic the Hedgehog all of a sudden. Actually these pipes were in the first game too, so it's just continuing with the tradition. Plus there's a beautifully pixelled Windows 95 cameo over on the left, which almost makes up for the absent floppy disks.

This came out in 1998 by the way, four years after the original game and two years after Super Mario 64, placing it firmly in the era where 3D polygon games had taken over the world and 2D platformers were shunned and unloved. Fortunately we've come a long way since then.

The controls in this have been great so far, better than in the first game, but I'm really struggling to get Jazz to land on these hooks. He keeps flying right past them because he's a speedy little rabbit even when I'm not holding the run button. The hooks could do with having a wider catch range I reckon, so I don't have to be so dead on accurate to clip onto them.

I'm just glad there isn't an insta-kill death chasm under me. I can't remember seeing a single bottomless pit in the game at all in fact. They're not necessarily a bad thing in games at all, but it sure is less frustrating without them around.

Here birdie birdie! Why don't you come alight on my shoulder?

Damn that was nasty. How cruel of fate to gift this rabbit with both the ability to lure birds down into the darkest grimiest depths and a insatiable craving for raw avian flesh. You know, I always thought rabbits were herbivores, though then again Spaz isn't exactly... typical.

Oh hey did I mention that I found a box and shot it and now I'm playing as this guy all of a sudden? He seems to be mostly the same as Jazz, except he has a double jump in the place of Jazz's helicopter ears hover technique, and a horizontal flying kick in place of Jazz's vertical super jump. Not a huge difference as far as I'm concerned seeing as I've rarely had a reason to use either move.

Another bloody bonus bunny. I've been coming across this guy on every every level and I've never once had enough coins to find out what the bonus is. They game likes to hide them in hard to reach areas and secret rooms so they take a bit of initiative to collect.

Whoa, it turns out that I have just enough cash on me this time! It seems that at last I can finally present to you... Jazz Jackrabbit 2's bonus stage!

Oh, it's just a room with three barrels in it.

Well they give me ammo and gems so I suppose I should be grateful. Not that I've ever had any shortage of ammo. I only ever really use the other guns when I reach a block that needs to be shot with a specific type of weapon, or a frozen spring that needs to be defrosted.

Damn, the game can definitely be fluid when it wants to be. By the way I didn't land on that rat at the end to blow it to pieces, it was a last second gun shot. Jumping on enemies is a bad thing... unless I do the butt stomp move, then it's fine.

I wish I could say this was pure chance that the character change power up wore off at that exactly moment, but it seems to be scripted. Smart place to do it though.

Man, I've just noticed that not only does the game actually throw in a kitchen sink as well, it's also animated. Well I suppose it's next to a toilet, so it may be more accurate to say it's the bathroom sink... but then it's also next to a PC so who even knows?

Oh no, it's the evil turtle mastermind from the first game and he's brought an evil remote controlled robot to kill me! Though I'm not sure that the robot can technically be said to be evil, if it has no mind of its own. It's more like a tool used by evil, and considering that evil is currently invulnerable to my attacks, I think I'm going to concentrate my fire on the tool.

I think I got him! I'd love to brag about out how I skilfully evaded its attacks and figured out all of its patterns, but the truth is that I just filled the air with bullets and this was the result. Somehow though, I'm still satisfied.

The evil turtle slinks away and the episode comes to a close.

Back to the Future really did have an awesome poster didn't it? It was painted by the legendary Drew Struzan, the same artist who also did the iconic posters for the Indiana Jones series and the Star Wars prequels.

What's that fact got to do with Jazz Jackrabbit 2 you may ask. Well, what's this image got to do with the game? Absolutely fuck all as far as I can tell, unless there's a time travel storyline going on somewhere that I've missed. Anyway, I'll press the any key and get back to my bunny hopping.

A sewer level? It's even got 'le sewer' written on the wall just in case there was any doubt. I've still got plenty of doubt about what those lamp posts are doing down here though. They're not lighting the place up, that's for sure.

Alright I have to admit, this definitely isn't the most frustrating time I've had trying to collect pizza in a sewer. In a video game.

But that's the trouble with this game really: it's too damn easy, but also too damn well made so it's giving me nothing to rant about! Jazz doesn't even instantly drown if he lands in waist deep water, and you can imagine how much trouble I'm having fighting off this vicious onslaught of enemies. Uh, enemy.

I think I'd better end this here before one of us falls asleep.

Oh, wait, I forgot to mention that the game has all these multiplayer modes, which can be played using split screen, over a local network, or online. Well that's fine and all, but now it's made all other platform games look inferior and incomplete by comparison. Nice work guys.

It doesn't have a proper level select, just an episode select, so you can only choose what quarter of the game you're playing through (though it does comes with a level editor.)

Finally I can fulfil my lifelong dream of making a platformer level with a thousand giant stereo systems in the background.

After two minutes of clicking buttons at random I feel confident in saying that this tile based editor seems powerful enough to make custom levels on par with anything in the game, even down to constructing the individual layers of the parallax backgrounds.

Here's an artist's interpretation of what four player would look like, cut together from a bunch of screenshots. That's four player co-operative split-screen gameplay right there, with each rabbit getting their own custom colour scheme. The world needs more co-operative split-screen in my opinion; it may be the only way to bring true world peace.

Also this episode's set in a redrawn version of the original Jazz Jackrabbit planets, complete with authentic "Rabbits Stink" signs! Plus it's even filled with... where are the disks? There's no disks here! Right that's it, I really am turning this off now then.


Alright, I'll try to sum up my opinion on Jazz Jackrabbit 2 in several short paragraphs for you. It looks fine, the music's good, it plays well, it's mechanically solid, it avoids a ton of platformer design traps that have caused me endless frustration in other games, and I always found myself wanting to play just one more level of it.

BUT, it's been a little bit tame so far. Sure I'm only playing on medium difficulty, but the biggest struggle I've had in the game up to this point has been trying to jump up those bloody hooks. Fortunately the hard difficulty adds more enemies around the level without falling to the dark temptation of turning them into tedious bullet sponges.

I can't tell you if the game has continues, because I never ran out of lives, but fortunately that'll never be an issue because it lets you save anywhere and (unlike the first game) when you reload you appear right where you were standing. The game has checkpoints too, ones you can activate with a gun shot from across the screen if you're feeling lazy. Speaking of shooting things from across the screen, you can even shoot down those floating fruit pickups if you're not in the mood for jumping. You can also stomp on enemies if you're not in the mood for shooting, but it's quicker just to run and gun.

The game feels like they've taken the good bits from a dozen classic platformers and stitched them all together without forgetting to cut out the flaws. I didn't love it, but it's a better game than the first one and it definitely ain't crap, so it gets a star.

---

Thanks for reading! I'd thank you for leaving a comment too, but I wouldn't want to presume too much.