Jazz Jackrabbit (GBA)

Today I'm taking a look at Jazz Jackrabbit, for the Game Boy Advance. Despite the name it's actually not a port of the original PC game, though you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise as that's a perfectly normal reaction to seeing two different games with the same bloody title.

Yeah it turns out that they made three of these games in the end, but I didn't learn about this third one until recently, so it's apparently not all that memorable. For a while the world was getting a new Jazz Jackrabbit game every four years, but this managed to derail that tradition and sent the series crashing right into a metaphorical wall.

I've never played this before and I haven't checked the reviews so I don't know yet whether it was a tragic end or a mercy killing, but I'm trying to stay optimistic. Well reasonably optimistic anyway, I don't expect it'll be as good as Jazz 2.

Nice to see the difficulty select cartoons making a return. The game doesn't show them all at once so I had to stitch them together like this myself again to show them off.

There's something terribly wrong about this image though: the guy's got pants on!

Jazz Jackrabbit 2 (PC)

There's three kinds of anthropomorphic cartoon characters, you see. There's the kind who wears clothes as if they were human (like Speedy Gonzales, Sam from Sam & Max), there's the kind who wears clothes as if they were human... but only from the waist up (Chip and Dale, Scrooge McDuck), and then there's the kind that go full on butt-naked (Bugs Bunny, Garfield, Sonic, Tom and also Jerry). Jazz has always up to this point been a category three character.

Granted he did used to dress up for the level posters parodies, plus he does like to wear superhero costumes when he's just hanging out.

Jazz Jackrabbit (MS-DOS)

But when it comes his platforming job he's always gone out naked and armed with a gun that looks like a blue crayon, but now he's given that up given that up as well! He's even dropped his iconic red bandana, the last hint of his old identity, so now he looks just like every other generic green anthropomorphic space rabbit.

'We join our fearless hero as he is finishing what he believes to be his last mission'... is what the message box says at the beginning. I wasn't told what the mission was, but I do know that it's not going well, as Jazz is currently stuck behind a pole surrounded by dopey looking chameleons.

"I hope that [thing] doesn't happen," says Jazz, possibly out loud (I can't tell).


CUT TO:

Oh no, [thing] happened!

Not the best use of that editing technique I've ever seen but they've gotten the point across: the rabbit has been captured, and now it's up to me to resolve this situation.


CHAMELEON WORLD LEVEL ONE: "ESCAPE!"

Well that was simple; the dumb chameleons forgot to lock the cage. In fact it never even occurred to them to put a door onto the cage to add the lock to, though they at least had the sense to take away Jazz's gun. Animating a new unarmed walking animation for 2 seconds of gameplay would've been a bit of a waste though, so Jazz is running around with an imaginary gun right now.

Oh there's my pistol over on the right, hovering in the air inside those targeting brackets. I'll just sneak over and grab that then

These guys have the dumbest death animations: they collapse and melt like inflatable chameleon suits with a puncture. Shame it takes so long to kill them though. I'm used to enemies dying instantly in the Jazz Jackrabbit games, but these chameleons take three rounds of burst fire to go down each. It's really slowing things down.

Hey the pop up tutorial messages were right, I CAN fire diagonally to kill enemies on ledges above me! These helpful hints are going to get old fast if they keep interrupting me, but right now we're getting on okay. I think Jazz 2 also had tutorial messages but I don't remember them being so desperate for attention back then.

Oh, I'm just collecting money this time? How... practical.

I miss the days when game developers would just put whatever crossed their mind as pick ups their levels. Because what crossed their mind was often also the stuff that crossed their desk, like... floppy disks for example.

Oh, hang on, I didn't think this jump through did I.

I've kept my helicopter rotor blade spinning ear trick from the last game, but it doesn't matter how slowly I glide onto a ledge full of enemies, as they're just going to shove me back off again. Seems that I'll have to drop all the way down to the start and walk over to the right of the level to jump back up the ledges again. Then when I'm ready to make this jump again, I'll stop where I am instead and keep firing blind across the chasm until all the yelling ends.

Would've been nice if the screen was wide enough for me to see what I'm shooting at, but the GBA only has a tiny 240x160 resolution display. You might argue that they should just have used tiny sprites then so they could fit more of the level on screen at once, but... actually that's a really good point. Okay fine, you win this round.

The carrot gate, huh? I suppose it must be like a stargate, except instead of stepping through the event horizon of the wormhole manifesting in the center of a giant ring, I must have to, I dunno... eat it? I'll just walk towards the thing and hope that Jazz can take it from here.


CHAMELEON WORLD LEVEL TWO: "DIE CHAMELEONS".

There's more enemies carrying guns on this second level, but I've learned an awesome new trick to avoid getting shot: I... duck down. While I'm crouched like this they can't hit me, so I can just hold down the trigger until they all eventually die.

1... 2... 3... that's one dead. 1... 2.. 3... got another one! 1... 2.. 3...


LATER.

I've found myself a switch, hidden well away from anything it could activate; not a good sign. It'd be fine if I'd ran past something that needed switching along the way, but I haven't, so I really have no idea what will change if I pull this lever.

Oh it scrolls the screen across and shows me what's changed! Well okay then, can't complain about that. That's the level exit, so I'm done here already.


CHAMELEON WORLD: KING OF THE CHAMELEONS.

Hey dude. So are you, like, the king then?

Oh shit he's beating my rabbit to death with a club! This is horrible!

Every time I stop and shoot at him with my weak-ass burst-fire pistol he charges right at me and I barely have a chance to leap out of the way before I get impaled with a nose horn.

Wait, waaaait... he's not going to be one of THOSE bosses is he?

Haha, yep! It's the boss that likes to charge right at you, then gets stuck in the wall when you jump out of the way at the last second. As seen in E.V.O, Arkham Asylum, Metroid: Zero Mission,   Evoland, and about 15,000 other video games. I think I've got this routine figured out now, as I've had plenty of opportunity to practice over the last few years.

Dude, you've been collecting money.

Anyway I defeated the boss, and the game cuts to Jazz flying away in his spaceship. Oh he has a spaceship now by the way. Maybe he always had one, I don't know, the other two games weren't all that bothered with having an actual story. This cutscene malarkey is a bit of a break with tradition.

Man, this GBA game really does love to find any opportunity to interrupt the game with more message boxes.

Margsly is Jazz's boss by the way, currently communicating with him from his office back in R.A.B.T. HQ. If you ever wanted to see a grizzled mean old three star general who is also a rabbit, fortune smiles upon you this day.

But... that's still collecting something! Though at least it's not mandatory, well unless I have to buy things.

Agent Zoe Cottontail meets Jazz at the R.A.B.T. weapons depot to explain about the new weapons policy. Basically their new policy is that I have to buy all my own guns from now on, so I'll need to be collecting plenty of money for ammo.

Funny how I never saw this woman in the earlier game, or Jazz's boss for that matter. In fact I didn't even know he had a boss. You know, I'm starting to suspect that nothing in this game has anything to do with the older games at all.

This is the worst weapons depot ever. I have to ride these lifts up to reach the shelf with the weapon or ammo I want, but they're playful lifts who'd rather live a life of carefree whimsy than take me where I want to be, so I got bored and tried leaping across to my chosen gun instead and ended up bouncing off the shelf above and landing on the carrots by mistake

Fortunately the game lets me save after every level so I just loaded it up and chose the right item this time. No level select though.


SPACE CITY - CARROTOPOLIS LEVEL ONE: "SPACE DOCK".

Turns out that evil Saurian mercenaries have taken over the city, stealing all the keys and wrecking havoc, and I am their only hope as they don't have any military or police force on this planet. Their only hope is just one man and whatever ammo he could afford. And that man is a rabbit.

I like the sprite art on Mayor Rabbitbear there, it's a shame though that the background is so obviously 3D rendered. Could this look any more like a GBA game right now?

This Uzi I brought with me kills enemies a little faster than my infinite ammo starting weapon but it's the game's still a long long way from something like Metal Slug (or Jazz Jackrabbit 2 for that matter). I walk up to an enemy, put myself where it can't hit me, then hold down the fire button until it dies. Repeat.

Hey you in there, flick that lever for me would ya? Or you could always just stand perfectly still and be entirely useless, that's cool too.

I'm starting to wonder if those 'keys to the city' the Mayor mentioned earlier were actually literally keys to open doors in the city.

Ah, there you go, the enemies are holding the keys. I just have to kill the correct merc and they leave the key behind when they deflate.

Oh I should mention that the game has switched back to a life bar after Jazz 2's use of hit-point hearts, and I'm doing a crappy job of holding onto my health. Jazz is so tough and the combat so tedious that I tend to stand still and soak up damage just to get the shoot-outs over with faster. That floating health kit up there should fill my bar back up though if I can reach it.

I've found a ricochet gun! This thing is awesome as it kills enemies in one hit and I can bounce the bullets around corners to hit switch targets. But I need to save the bullets for the switches so I can't shoot anyone with it. D'oh!

Oh crap, they actually managed to gun down Jazz! I'm actually kind of glad, as I was starting to worry I'd never find out what happens if you lose a life in this. And now I know that he immediately reappears on the spot with a full life gauge and his accumulated arsenal intact.

Great, now they're bringing out the armoured missile turrets. Now the merc takes twice as long to kill, while still being as harmless to me as ever. I can fire while ducked and his missile launcher can't hit me here, so this isn't even a fight.


SPACE CITY - CARROTOPOLIS LEVEL TWO: "DOWN IN THE DUMPS".

Uh...  might I inquire to the location of the next platform? This is the very start of this level by the way, I haven't climbed up anywhere yet.

I suppose I should jump for the carrots. Carrots are always good for me in this as they're grenades that I can lob with a tap of a shoulder button, but these particular carrots are also likely marking a safe landing place.

Aww crap. Just because I know where to go doesn't mean I can't accidentally overshoot and land in an instant death pit...

... especially when this is the view I get during every jump.

Way back when I looked at Jazz Jackrabbit 2 I mentioned that playing the game in a window was like playing a GBA game because of how absolutely tiny it was on my monitor. Well here's that tiny window scaled up the same way as I've scaled up these GBA shots:

Jazz Jackrabbit 2 (PC)

Look at how much space I've got around my character! I could even see what platforms I needed to jump onto, it's amazing. Now of course the developers can't program the GBA to display in 320 by 240, the screen just doesn't have enough pixels packed into it, but they could've shrunk the game to the same relative scale as this.

Meanwhile in the GBA game:

Oh, nice try with the helicopter hover, but far far too late I'm afraid Jazz. I don't really have much of a chance to pull myself back over to a platform I've missed because by the time I see it coming it's already flying past.

Man this game got so much more difficult when they took the floor away from me. I'm already all out of lives and I must be barely five screens across from the start of the level.

Game over. I am an inadequate rabbit.


SEVERAL MORE DEATHS LATER.

Okay blind jumps are stupid but this is just ridiculous. I can't jump onto that platform down here because there's a Saurian stomping around on it and he just knocks me right back off. But I can't seem to shoot him from here! I've already lost several lives to this and my patience is honestly running on empty right now.

Oh, OH! Carrot grenades! The game gave me carrot grenades at the start of the level and it's only just occurred to me to throw one over to kill him. I must be getting frustrated now, I'm not thinking things through anymore.


SPACE CITY - CARROTOPOLIS: "SAURIAN GENERAL".

It took me around 25 deaths to finish that level in the end. That's 6 whole game overs. It wouldn't be so bad, but it's artificial difficulty caused by shitty game design. If I could've actually seen where I was going I could've managed the platforming effortlessly as Jazz actually has great control and the jumps weren't exactly tricky.

Anyway, now I have to defeat the Carrotopolis end boss, who stomps around with a massive gun and opens fire at me whenever he gets close.

So I shot him from a distance. Simple as.

Not that I'm complaining. The boss had a routine to solve and when I figured it out I still had to use my platforming skill to keep away from him without missing a jump and letting him catch me. It wasn't a challenge, but I got a little satisfaction out of it at least.


ICEBOX3 LEVEL ONE: "FIRST FROST".

Is this Jazz's ship then? Was the pixel artist busy that day or something?

The lighter pixels around some of the edges makes it look like a drawing that's been scaled down and that's some nasty colour banding up there. Real ugly design either way.

World 3 introduces these turtle enemies who have machine guns like me and can duck down to fire, meaning I can't hide any more. Well the Saurian mercs ducked too sometimes, but they were comparatively rubbish at it.

My first thought was to leap over their heads and attack them from behind, but then I remembered that every enemy in this is a miserable bullet sponge that takes forever to kill even when I have an Uzi so I might as well just stand here and soak up the damage, and hope there's a health kit coming very soon.

Or I could just turn the game off.


CONCLUSION

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I think it would be fair to say that I didn't like Jazz Jackrabbit GBA a whole lot.

Good things:

• Jazz is a well animated little space rabbit who gets around the screen well.
• The music is decent. 
• They went to the trouble of pixelling an animation to show the turtles panicking if you throw a grenade at them.

Bad things:

• It's a run and gun with a tiny screen and giant bullet sponge enemies. Turns out that this is a bad combination.
• Shooting an enemy doesn't stop them from shooting you, so get used to taking damage.
• Oops you tried jumping and now you can't see the ground anymore. Good luck with that.

Even when I got hold of the ammo I needed for guns like the Uzi, ricochet gun and flamethrower to kill the tough enemies faster I burned through through my supply quickly and was right back to using my infinite ammo pea shooter again. Oh and it doesn't automatically switch, the gun just stops firing when it's dry leaving you standing there with your arm out looking like an idiot. I really don't find wearing enemies down with sustained machine gun fire to be much fun in a platformer like this, especially when half my shootouts took place with the enemy off screen for safety reasons (or because they sent a bullet to greet me before making an appearance in person).

I tried cakewalk difficulty for a bit afterwards and found that even when the enemies die in two hits instead of three it still wasn't a great experience for me. There's no flow to it, no joy in the procedures of making progress, and compared to its predecessors you proceed at a painfully slow pace. Though on the plus side I think I may have solved the mystery of why there hasn't been another Jazz Jackrabbit game in 12 years.

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