Jazz Jackrabbit 2 is a fantastic game and is well worth your time. Unfortunately, it's not very easy to come across anymore, as the game has never been re-released digitally or otherwise to my knowledge, and finding physical copies online aren't exactly easy to come by. I'm still really hoping Epic revisits Jazz someday, if not for a proper sequel, then at least a version of these games for modern systems.
But that's not the only thing that I wanted to talk about today. First up is Holiday Hare '98, a set of Christmas-themed levels in the vein of the previous Holiday Hare games for Jazz 1. It was released in a jewel case in the US, but also saw a very limited boxed release in Europe as the Christmas Chronicles with some extra content included, as in an extremely rare thing to find indeed.
In these editions, you get three levels of Christmas-themed goodness, with everything covered in snow, Santa hats and Christmas lights, acting as a fun little holiday diversion and holiday promotion for the full game. And finally, there was Jazz Jackrabbit 2: The Secret Files, the only official expansion pack to the game. Although, this was never released in America to my knowledge, it's worth tracking down a copy from Europe, as it not only updates the game code and adds another full episode, but you get an additional character to play as: Lori.
According to this game, she's the sister of Jazz and Spaz, although originally she was meant to be the love interest of Spaz, as shown in the ending cutscene of the base game. Who knows, maybe Lori's both. I don't know what kind of incest laws they have on the planet Carrotus, so I'm not going to judge. Anyway, she's got her own set of abilities, but is basically an amalgamation of the original two characters, where she has Jazz's helicopter ears and a variant of Spaz's kick, which is more of a roundhouse thing.
Otherwise, she plays the same and isn't really a huge addition, except for the fact that having a female to play as is always a really cool option. The new episode itself is kind of...not that great, if you ask me. It starts off with an Easter-themed set of levels because... I guess, ha ha, they're rabbits. So, yeah, chocolate bunnies and whatnot? But all the enemies and some of the tile sets used are just ripped straight from the previous four episodes.
And not only that, but I'm just not a big fan of the level design here in general. But still, it's more content and updates the game with some cool stuff. Another thing that is worth looking into is Jazz Jackrabbit 2+, which is a fan-made patched version of the game which fixes some of the bugs and updates the game with other capabilities, many of which are useful to level designers.
This is free but requires the base game. Whatever version you decide to play, Jazz Jackrabbit 2 is a fantastic game and is well worth your time. Hey! Hey, come on! What's up? LGR: And if you enjoyed this review on some jazzy awesomeness, then why not check out some of my others? I've covered the original Jazz Jackrabbit, one of the Holiday Hare games, and a ton of other stuff.
I upload new videos every single week, and seeing that this is YouTube and subscribing is a thing, subscribing... is a thing. So you can do that and be notified whenever I upload more stuff. You can also follow me and interact on Twitter and Facebook, as well as back me on Patreon to help support the show, or you can just sit there and continuing listening to me like a weird person.
Not doing anything at all. Just kind of looking at these pixels on-screen with my voice in your ears. Who knows, maybe you're asleep. Maybe you're not real. Maybe everything has been stolen by an evil turtle in space. I don't know, but as always, thank you for watching.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enIn 1994, Epic MegaGames releasedJazz Jackrabbit onto the shareware sceneand it made quite the impact.Sonic the Hedgehog-inspired gameplay on the PCwith bright cartoony graphics,solid gameplay and amazing music?Oh, yeah, people were all over that mess,including myself as a wee lad.Of course, most of us neveractually bought the full gameand instead just played the free episode over and over,or innocently copied the rest ofthe episodes at a friend's house.But hey, demand is demand,and it wasn't long before a sequel was in development.The eventual result was Jazz Jackrabbit 2,published by Project 2 Interactive andGathering of Developers in 1998 for Windows PCsand by Logicware for Macintosh the following year.And like the first game,lead programming was by Arjan Brussee,this time under his studio at Orange Games,and was produced and co-designed by Cliff Bleszinskiand others at Epic MegaGames.A duo that in 2014 joined up againto create the indie studio Boss Key.This is the US release here,showing depictions of Jazz Jackrabbitand his newly playable brother Spaz,on a plain white background.But being a game developed largely in the Netherlands,it's natural to expect a European release,and I have to say I prefer this one's packaging.It's more colorful and the box feels more substantial,and it not only comes with Jazz 2 butthe first game for MS-DOS inside as well.However, this manual is all black and whiteand doesn't have as much content as the US release,so if you want that, it's back to America.Just like the original Jazz,this comes with a full-color manualthat includes not only all the infoabout the game you need to knowbut a comic strip in the beginning, setting up the storyand providing a waft of lagomorph-related humor.Starting the game pushes someintroductory logo animations in your face,as well as a nicely animated cutscene by Dean Dodrill,the same guy who in recent yearsis most known for making thegame Dust: An Elysian Tail.After this is finished letting you know howawesome it thinks the protagonists are,you're greeted with an updated renditionof the Jazz Jackrabbit theme song.As well as the main menu and itsobnoxious cartoon sound effects.Beginning a new game allows you to playsingle-player or the new multiplayer modes,though we'll start with single-player.You have four episodes to choose from in the full game,many of which spoof something from pop culture,though only the first one is initially unlockedand the rest are unlocked as you play.There's also a smaller shareware episodeand the option to play custom levels.Although the intro video established thatJazz and Spaz work together as a team,you can only choose one of them to play as at a time.You then choose your difficulty,which takes cues from the first gamewith its absurd and awesome artworkdepicting each level of play.Finally, you're dropped into the game,surrounded by the art and design of Nick Stadlerand the absolutely fantastictracker tunes by Alexander Brandon,the same dude responsible for Epic'sepic Tyrian and Unreal soundtracks.If you're any kind of familiar with theoriginal Jazz Jackrabbit from 1994,Jazz 2 is an immediatelynotable and substantial change.The basic run-and-gunplatforming gameplay is still here,as are the basic goals for each level.But thankfully gone is the excessiveknock-back from getting hurt,gone are the twitchy controls and movementthat's so fast it gets out of hand,gone is the often claustrophobic level design,and gone is the zoomed-in camerathat made moving very fast a hassle.Although you can kind of bring it backif you enable 320x200 resolution mode,but why would you wanna do that?No,this is an objective improvementin playability in almost every way.The premise is simple:an evil genius turtle known as Devan Shellhas been a total dick to rabbit-kind for what seems like forever,although here he's not destroying planets or anything.Instead, he's simply stolen a wedding ring.That's it. Petty larceny.It's the job of Jazz and his brother Spaz to retrieve it,so Jazz and Princess Eva Earlong can get married.Apparently, they're either flat brokeor it's a seriously unique wedding ringbecause they can't just hop on over to a localpawn shop and grab another one or something,but must instead ruthlessly murderhundreds of turtles to get it back.You start off with a basic blaster weaponwith infinite ammo, just like the original game,but you also have several specialmoves you can pull off at any time.Each character can butt-stomp at will from mid-air,allowing to take out enemies as well asbreak certain crates and blocks in the level.There are also unique abilities,like Jazz who can perform a highjump/punch directly upwards,as well as glide around with helicopter ears,straight out of Looney Tunes.And the spastic Spaz who candouble-jump to reach higher platformsand perform a flying kung fu kickdirectly to either side for quite a distance.Beyond this, you have yournormal weapons and power-upswith the originals from the first game making a return,as well as several new ones.Nothing too fancy, just your typicalsplit-rockets, flame throwers,machine guns, homing missiles, bouncygrenades, lasers, freeze rays, TNT–Okay, so there are some prettyfrigging cool weapons, actually.Ammo for these is scattered all around as well,so you almost always have something fun on-handto vaporize your reptilian foes.You can also enlist the help of Hip Hopthe parrot by shooting open bird cages,gain rapid-fire pickups from downed enemies,as well as make use of several types of shields,and even a weapon power-up that ridiculously increasesthe firepower of whatever weapon you've chosen.There are also a bunch of random things to pick upas you would expect from a platformer like this,but they're not all just for points this time around.Collecting candies and other sweets willeventually lead to something called a sugar rush,which give you invincibility and allows you to bustthrough and destroy blocks and enemies alike.You can also collect various gems to gaineven more points and even extra lives,as well as coins which are usedas currency at coin warp locations.If you get enough, you can spend them to be warpedto an area filled with ammo, power-ups and lives.And yeah, there's a lives system,and thankfully this is a gamewhere you can get hurt repeatedly before you lose a life,where your health is indicatedby the hearts in the top-rightand is refilled by finding and eating carrots, naturally.And as you'd expect, lose allyour lives and you get a game over,so saving your game often is advised,although it makes the wholelives system a bit redundant.Also expected, at the end ofeach level there is a boss battleand they really haven't improved much since Jazz 1.It's just a thing that tries to harm you,and you shoot it until it perishes.Maybe you get a few patternshere and there to watch out for,but it's nothing multi-tiered incomplexity or particularly memorable.In fact, some of them are downright glitchy,like this one that keepsblasting off the side of the screen,making the game unfinishableunless you reload your game.Glitches and weirdness don't end there, either, sadly.Sometimes it's needlessly tough toget through a certain spot in a level,or stomping on blocks and boxes doesn'talways work and is oddly particular about it,or the game will just outright crash atrandom on any system I've ever played it on.But this is nothing common enough totake away from the overall experienceand the game really is just apure joy to play through even still.I love all the references and updatesto the original Jazz Jackrabbit,as that was one of my absolutefavorite platformers for DOS as a kid.And I love the variety in level designs, tile setsand all the awesome music and sound effects.Now sure, there isn't much inthe way of variety in gameplay.I mean, they even took out the bonus roundsin between worlds from the first game.But you do get the occasional token underwater level orwicked turtle witch morphing you into a frog.But being that you can finishthe game in just a few hours,it's not long enough for thisstuff to become too repetitive.And when you get tired of the single-player, there's always multiplayer modes.Yes, multiple players!Pretty novel concept.You can play several split-screen modes locally,everything from the whole game in co-opto several competitive modes consistingof deathmatch, capture the flag, racing,as well as a mode where you try tocollect more gems than the other player,often by shooting them untilthey hate you with a fiery passion.And in the short time between the release ofthis game and Epic's own Unreal Tournament,this was one of the bestmultiplayer experiences around,at least among my circle of friends at the time.And everything multiplayer was available online as well,either via LAN or over the Internet,and yes, there are still people playing to this day.Granted, the servers aren't exactly very populated,but if you go sites like Jazz2online.comand keep an eye out for events,you can still join in on some awesomemultiplayer battles from time to timeas well as download all sorts of fan-made content,much of which is made withthe Jazz Creation Station softwarethe full Windows game comes with,allowing you to edit existinglevels and build your own levelsand custom episodes, too.And it didn't stop thereas there ended up being some expansionsand spinoffs to the game in the following years.First up is Holiday Hare '98,a set of Christmas-themed levels in the vein ofthe previous Holiday Hare games for Jazz 1.It was released in a jewel case in the US,but also saw a very limited boxed releasein Europe as the Christmas Chronicleswith some extra content included,as in an extremely rare thing to find indeed.In these editions, you get three levelsof Christmas-themed goodness,with everything covered in snow,Santa hats and Christmas lights,acting as a fun little holiday diversionand holiday promotion for the full game.And finally, there wasJazz Jackrabbit 2: The Secret Files,the only official expansion pack to the game.And yes, it is a game and not a kid-centric cereal box.Just looking at the artwork, you couldbe forgiven for thinking otherwise.Although, this was never releasedin America to my knowledge,it's worth tracking down a copy from Europe,as it not only updates the game codeand adds another full episode,but you get an additional character to play as: Lori.According to this game,she's the sister of Jazz and Spaz,although originally she was meantto be the love interest of Spaz,as shown in the ending cutscene of the base game.Who knows, maybe Lori's both.I don't know what kind of incest laws they haveon the planet Carrotus, so I'm not going to judge.Anyway, she's got her own set of abilities,but is basically an amalgamationof the original two characters,where she has Jazz's helicopter earsand a variant of Spaz's kick,which is more of a roundhouse thing.Otherwise, she plays the sameand isn't really a huge addition,except for the fact that having a femaleto play as is always a really cool option.The new episode itself is kind of...not that great, if you ask me.It starts off with an Easter-themed set of levelsbecause... I guess, ha ha, they're rabbits.So, yeah, chocolate bunnies and whatnot?But all the enemies and some of the tile sets usedare just ripped straight from the previous four episodes.And not only that, but I'm just not a bigfan of the level design here in general.But still, it's more content andupdates the game with some cool stuff.Another thing that is worthlooking into is Jazz Jackrabbit 2+,which is a fan-made patched version ofthe game which fixes some of the bugsand updates the game with other capabilities,many of which are useful to level designers.This is free but requires the base game.But whatever version you decide to play,Jazz Jackrabbit 2 is a fantasic gameand is well worth your time.Unfortunately, it's not veryeasy to come across anymore,as the game has never been re-releaseddigitally or otherwise to my knowledge,and finding physical copies onlinearen't exactly easy to come by.I'm still really hoping Epic revisits Jazz someday,if not for a proper sequel, then at least aversion of these games for modern systems.But it seems like ever since the canceling ofJazz 3's development, they've never looked back.Which is sad, because these gamesremain some of my favorite platformers.Not just for the PC, but for anything.So until that day comes,track down a copy of JazzJackrabbit 2 however you can,because this is probably one of the last hurrahsfor pure '90s 2D platformers,and I cannot recommend it enough.JAZZ:Hey!Hey, come on! What's up?LGR:And if you enjoyed this reviewon some jazzy awesomeness,then why not check out some of my others?I've covered the original Jazz Jackrabbit,one of the Holiday Hare games,and a ton of other stuff.I upload new videos every single week,and seeing that this is YouTubeand subscribing is a thing,subscribing... is a thing.So you can do that and be notifiedwhenever I upload more stuff.You can also follow me andinteract on Twitter and Facebook,as well as back me on Patreonto help support the show,or you can just sit there and continuelistening to me like a weird person.Not doing anything at all.Just kind of looking at these pixelson-screen with my voice in your ears.Who knows, maybe you're asleep.Maybe you're not real.Maybe everything has beenstolen by an evil turtle in space.I don't know,but as always, thank you for watching.\n"
