PrintStar’s Blog

Today’s screenshots are compliments of Mobygames - please go have a look at their site

Jazz Jackrabbit is a classic platformer from Epic Megagames that will knock the socks off anyone playing console platformers in the 1990s.  This game is a quite different than the earlier Epic offering in this Retrochallenge, ZZT.  Epic truly built a masterpiece with Jazz Jackrabbit.

The first thing a player notices when starting Jazz Jackrabbit (after getting past some silly setup demands) is the high production value.  Prior to the title screen the game plays a smooth full screen animation of Jazz himself sliding onto the screen, then running off.  This nice touch jammed into a shareware game is the player’s first glimpse of the polish that went into creating Jazz Jackrabbit.

The point of Jazz Jackrabbit is to defeat some evil turtles who have run off with your girlfriend, Eva Earlong.  For reference, all turtles in the game are therefore enemies.  The shareware version is quite limited, as I’ll explain, but I would guess Epic sold a boatload of Jazz Jackrabbit registrations based on the quality of the game.

In Jazz Jackrabbit, the player travels to different planets to fight the turtles and collect some pointless junk.  The game is similar in action, speed, and gameplay to Sonic the Hedgehog, only it’s free and doesn’t require a Sega Genesis.  In fact, I would argue that Jazz Jackrabbit is the better game since it also incorporates guns and Jazz is a much bigger badass than Sonic ever was.  I can back up that statement by pointing out that Jazz can kill what I assume are baby turtles on the Easy level setting.

In the shareware version, the player can visit three worlds:

• Diamondus - Generally a green world with water and lots of gemstones
• Tubelectric - A darker world filled with electrical dangers and those air tubes they have at bank drive-throughs
• Medivo - A castle-centric red world with far too many loose, floating swords

The world Diamondus appears below:

The weird black clouds and sun above are some sort of graphical artifact - they were in fact white.  Jazz starts the game with a basic blaster, but other weapons are aquired later, including a much bigger gun, a missile launcher, and a grenade launcher.  While the basic blaster comes with unlimited shots, the other weapons’ ammunition must be collected in the game.  However, at least in easy mode, all the weapons do exactly the same damage (apparently).  I was able to find plenty of ammunition during gameplay.  Jazz also seems to be able to withstand a significant amount of damage, but there are plenty of life-giving carrots scattered across the levels.

Finally, one interesting twist in Jazz Jackrabbit is the time limit for each level.  In the screenshot above, one can see approximately 10 minutes remaining to complete the level.  I would assume that increasing difficulty might lower this time limit.  I don’t know if Sonic featured such a limit, but it does add a sense of urgency to Jazz.  I actually came within one minute of losing in one of the Medivo levels.

One aspect of the Jazz level designs I did enjoy was that there seemed to be multiple paths available to the player to progress to the level end.  The levels weren’t as linear as I had expected, and it appeared that the player could make a choice at particular points in terms of what direction to take, but would end up finishing regardless.  The levels also contain arrows as hints suggesting which way the player might like to explore.

After completing Medivo, I was ready to call it a night since I had defeated six levels in all.  The next world after Medivo was labeled “Guardian,” so I stuck around to see what the next level held.  Sure enough, the game left me in a Medivo-like level to fight a boss.  The boss in Easy mode was comically easy to defeat.  At that point, the shareware game ended.  Actually I liked how they concluded by showing Eva all tied up asking the player to hurry up with a turtle threatening her.  From that screen, it progressed directly into a screen outlining how to order the full registered version.  The sales pitch was effective, and it almost made me call Epic begging for the registered version.

Jazz Jackrabbit is a spectacular game for MS-DOS systems with VGA cards.  I highly suggest people give this classic a shot.  The game is fast-paced and exciting, although a beefy machine (a 486) might be necessary to play.  For a challenge, I would recommend playing the game on at least Normal difficulty.  With a game like Jazz Jackrabbit, it’s no surprise that Epic grew into the successful behemoth it is today.

• Jazz Jackrabbit

The screenshots today are all referenced back to the Mobygames website.  Normally I create all my screenshots just before writing the entry, but Jazz Jackrabbit had some serious issues under DOSBox.  Specifically, the arrow keys didn’t work, which makes choosing menu items difficult.  The game did not run at all under Dosemu either.

However, those who wish to play Jazz Jackrabbit on modern systems are in luck!  The OpenJazz project has rebuilt the game as open source to run on just about anything.  For example, I have Jazz Jackrabbit on my Wii.

Tags: 31 Games in 31 Days, Games, Vintage Computing //