7.6 KiB
| title | date | score | game_release_year | howlongtobeat_id | howlongtobeat_hrs | game_name | game_developer | game_genre | tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jazz Jackrabbit | 2023-09-02 | 2 | 1994 | 4819 | 5.6 | Jazz Jackrabbit | Epic Megagames | 2D Platformer |
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Are you ready for this? POW! followed by a wonderful amalgamation of a Robert Allen's tracker music mixed with a bright and colorful menu was more than enough to completely blow away nine year old Jefklak in 1994. I remember playing the shareware episode to death on my grandfather's 486, looking forward to each family visit just to get to play the green rabbit again. Jazz Jackrabbit was the August 2023 DOS Game Club game, and after more than 28 years, coming back to Jazz was a bit of a shock to me.
A shock in terms of the sheer speed in which Jazz flies through the levels---or at least, tries to. A shock in terms of how mediocre the gameplay really is, now that I get to take a thorough second look at the game. After playing through most episodes, the abrupt alteration of my happy childhood memories even left me in a bit of a depressed mood. Perhaps some games are better left as happy memories?
Jazz Jackrabbit is the creation of now legendary game designer pair Cliff Bleszinski and Arjan Brussee. They envisioned a Rambo-style rabbit speeding through planets, decimating endless heaps of turtles, in order to rescue a female bunny (including obligatory cleavage) taken captive by the evil Devan Shell. The underlying problem they tried to solve was the capability to run fast-paced 2D sprites in VGA mode on the PC. Unlike the SNES or MegaDrive/Genesis, the PC wasn't designed with moving sprites in mind. Brussee's talents as displayed in the demoscene back then were more than enough to onboard him in order to help create the perfect Sonic clone for PCs.
The end result is indeed a very bright looking game with extremely fast-paced 2D action. Booting up the game in DOS or DOSBox in 2023 still leaves a big impression, visually and auditory speaking. There was nothing quite like it on the PC, and the "apology mode" cheat code that slows down the game and turns it into a visual mess as a pun to Apogee's slower and lower-resolution platformers, childish as it might be, was not far from the truth.
The problem, however, becomes very apparent as soon as you take control of Jazz. The game is simply too fast for its own good. It even makes me wonder how the creators tested the gameplay. On the one hand, the game wants you to breeze through the levels: to show of its mind-boggling sense of speed, its capabilities to not even stutter while neatly scrolling in and out background and foreground layers. But on the other hand, as soon as you start running, you get hurt by bumping into enemies, their projectiles, or sadistically placed spikes.
The game screams: go fast! but at the same times whispers take it slow... This incompatible feedback loop not only feels odd but often left me frustrated, as endlessly getting killed by a projectile that I didn't even see yet gets old quick. The sprites are big and bright, but because of that and the zoomed in camera, you simply go in blind. A strategy to somewhat mitigate this is to repeatedly jam spacebar---the shoot button---and hope that those bullets will catch the still-invisible enemies and projectiles. This doesn't always work, as I sometimes had the feeling my bullets were slower than the game scrolls into the next enemy.
A bit of level inspection will immediately tell you Jazz is trying very hard to imitate SEGA's Sonic, up to the point that they blatantly copy in televisions with speed boosts (that make controlling the rabbit even worse). I wish that the people at Epic then played more Sonic. With Sonic, speed isn't an issue: simply press down and the hedgehog will start spinning, thereby destroying enemies as you touch them, making zooming through levels a breeze instead of a hassle.
For fast-paced 2D platformers such as this one, level design is very important. It's not bad, but it's not up to Sonic's standards either. There are alternate pathways, plenty of secrets to discover, and even the odd hidden level. The semi-secret bonus stages are another straight rip off Sonic CD's stages, where contrary to Sonic's bonus stages, collecting blue diamonds involves zero challenge. Speaking of zero challenge: the bosses at the end of each episode are mainly just dumb damage sponges.
I did have the feeling that some of the later episodes---the GOG.com CD-ROM version of Jazz includes three extra episodes A, B, and C---felt less stellar compared to the first few. In Sonic's levels, apart from the odd dead stop, I know I can safely keep on rushing, while in Jazz's levels, I have to employ a run-stop-shoot-run-stop-shoot strategy that's just not a lot of fun.
The visual style of each planet is also a bit inconsistent. There are only so many times where you can employ sandy dunes with pyramid-like subterranean tunnels until you have to start color palette swapping. I can't quite put my finger on it but in one level, some platforms were very reminiscent of the Oil Refinery levels of Sonic 2.
Luckily, the amazing soundtrack is still fantastic. One of my favorites is of course the Tubelectric planet that's included in the shareware version, which is permanently burned into my brain, but later tracks are far from inferior. If the GOG.com version came with the official soundtrack, that alone would have been worth the $10. Jazz's soundtrack is easily one of the best video gaming has to offer.
The CD-ROM version comes with a few additional Christmas holiday-themed levels called Holiday Hare '94 and '95, where santa-hatted turtles in snowy levels wander around chewing on parts of gingerbread man. They're a fun diversion for the occasion that only take 15 minutes to finish, but their run-of-the-mill level design didn't give me those warm and fuzzy holiday feelings.
Is there a point in revisiting Jazz, then? That's a good question. I think Jazz Jackrabbit is a technically very impressive game that paved the way for bigger and better VGA games. The game itself, though, is nothing extraordinary. I prefer the Windows successor Jazz 2 myself, as it also includes local co-op and multiplayer options, and the play field is zoomed out to a more manageable level. They also thankfully dropped the "look, it's Sonic but on a PC!" act.
The open-source engine OpenJazz tried to mitigate the biggest flaws of the 1994 original by providing, among other things, scaling options, as you can see in the above screenshot. It doesn't completely fit the gameplay style, however, as it was never intended to be played like that. It's nice to know it's there.
I wish I loved the gameplay as much as the soundtrack, stunning artwork, and flashy visuals. Perhaps if they hadn't chosen to imitate Sonic, we didn't have to wait for a successor in order for the green rabbit to become playable. Even the comic-style manual oozes charm (and shamelessly hints at the Sonic thing).
If you're looking for a great 2D platformer with a superior implementation of speed mechanics, you're far better off with either Pizza Tower or Sonic Mania.