Jazz Jackrabbit 2

Moby ID: 1348
Windows Specs

Description official descriptions

Jazz the jackrabbit was just about to marry his girlfriend Eva Earlong, when his arch-nemesis, the turtle Devan Shell, stole the wedding ring. To add insult to injury, Eva's hostile mother has locked Jazz and his brother Spaz in a dungeon. The two hares must escape, retrieve the precious jewel, and punish Devan for his evil deeds.

Like its predecessor, Jazz Jackrabbit 2 is a platform shooter. Unlike the previous installment, the sequel allows the player to control Spaz as well. Jazz retains his ability to hover in the air by using his ears, and Spaz can stomp and smash enemies. The hares use a default blaster gun with unlimited ammunition and can later acquire more powerful weapons, a few of which (e.g. a freezing gun) were not found in the first game. Coins can be found throughout the stages and then given to vendors to access bonus areas.

The party mode allows up to four players to use the same computer with split-screen, or up to eight players to compete on two screens via modem. The level editor JCS (Jazz Creation Station) is also included in the game.

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Credits (Windows version)

30 People (22 developers, 8 thanks) · View all

Lead Programming
Programming
Graphics / Artwork
Animation
Design
Level / Scenario Design
Additional Level / Scenario Design
Music
Additional Music
Sound
Sound Engine Programming
Cinematic Animation
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Co-producer
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Marketing Manager
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[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 72% (based on 30 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 48 ratings with 7 reviews)

A totally wacky platform game, fun for everyone!

The Good
The graphics are great and detailed. There are few side scrollers in those hi-res graphics. At that time 3D was used for most platform games, but this game proves that 2D games are just as fun. Everything looks detailed and colorful and it's all drawn in a great cartoon style. The gameplay is OK too and gives you a lot too shoot at just like in the first game. There's a vast array of weapons such as dynamite, ice beam and flamethrower. (my favorite) You can play as either Jazz or his crazy brother Spaz. Spaz starts and different points and has different abilities making the game replayable at least once. The multiplayer is excellent here. You can just play with two players as both brothers in a mode wherein you work together or against each other. There are also modes such as capture the flag which are usually only found in 3D games which is great. The best part of the multiplayer, however, is that you can play online, which greatly increases the replayability of the game. There's some great music too with, you guessed right, some jazzy tunes in it. There are also three difficulty levels. The story does the job too: Devan Shell, a turtle and the nemesis of Jazz, has stolen the wedding jewel Jazz wanted to give to his girlfriend princess Eva Earlong. Devan uses it to power up his time machine to change history to has advantage. Jazz and Spaz have been thrown into the dungeon by Eva's mother, a mean queen. Now the brothers must escape the castle and retrieve the jewel. Finally there is a versatile tool to create your own levels, but this is difficult in use.

The Bad
The first game was very fast and difficult, much like Sonic. This game is not as quick and quite easy. Thankfully there are three difficulties, as I said, with more baddies on higher modes. Too easy at times. The creators took the complaint about the first game a bit too serious. In high resolutions it can be difficult to see what you are doing at times. The level editor is too difficult in use for most people, too.

The Bottom Line
Despite a few small flaws this game is great fun for the whole family. And is fun to play with friends, even if they live abroad.

Windows · by Rensch (203) · 2005

Better than Jazz or Sonic, despite a few bugs

The Good
In Jazz Jackrabbit, Devan made plans to destroy Carrotus, but not before Jazz thwarted his plans, causing him to escape. Now in this sequel, Devan is up to his tricks again and steals Eva away from Jazz. He then plans to wed him, so Jazz must stop him once again.

The introduction shows Jazz and his wacky brother Spaz (the guy who made a cameo appearance in Jazz Jackrabbit: Holiday Hare 1995) fighting a turtle together. In Jazz2, you can also play Spaz as well as Jazz. They both have different abilities. For example, Jazz can jump into the air and use his ears as helicopters, whereas Spaz can double-jump to reach some platforms that are sometimes impossible to reach.

There are four episodes in Jazz2, plus the 3-level shareware demo. Each registered episode has six levels instead of just three, with a total of 24 episodes in all. One level involves you going underwater to get to the next area. The episodes have to be played in sequence (ie: You can’t play episode two without complete episode one). This is to prevent gamers from playing them out of order.

Enemies in the game include turtles, rats, monkeys, mosquitos, and wasps. Some enemies who have a method of attacking you are quite bizarre. For example, each turtle in the game tries to take a chunk out of you whenever you get too close to them, while the monkeys throw bananas to hurt you. Out of all these enemies, the wasps are the worse: you can attack them with any gun and still miss them. Some of those heat-seeking missiles work well in this situation.

You also have the option of playing single player mode or party mode. Party mode is where you compete against two or more friends locally, through a local area network, or over the Internet. When you play locally, you and your buddy play through a split-screen view. The games that can be played locally include Co-operative, Battle, Race, Treasure Hunt, and Capture the Flag. When you play through single player mode, the object of the game is to run through each level, shooting enemies with your pistol, and collecting gems (finding 100 of these results in an extra life), coins, weapon power-ups, and food. Some of these items may be hidden in crates, in which Jazz or Spaz can break by slamming into them. Collecting several amounts of food will result in a “sugar rush”, where you are invincible for a short period of time.

Halfway through each level, there is a vendor that can gain your access to bonus areas if you have the required amount of silver coins found in hidden areas or hovering in the air exposed. These bonus areas usually contain rows of food. Gold coins can also be found which gives you ten silver coins.

A health indicator is displayed on the top-right corner of the screen consisting of five hearts, and as usual, when they have expired, you lose a life. However, if you collect one or more carrots like in Jazz Jackrabbit, one heart is added to the health indicator.

You’ll likely to see blocks that can be broken either by shooting pellets at them or by slamming into them. But sometimes you’ll see blocks with a certain weapon power-up on them. This means that you have to use a specific weapon to shoot them.

Jazz Jackrabbit 2 can also be played in a higher resolution other than 320x200. That means that you can also play the game at resolutions like 400x300 and 512x384. The maximum you can set the resolution to is 640x480, but the sprites look a bit small. There’s also a listing in the Episode Solution called “Home-Cooked Levels”, which is not an episode at all. If you select this, you can play additional levels created with JCS, the Jazz Creation Station. With JCS, you can create your own stuff, including tilesets, single player levels, and levels that are designed for multiplayer. You can even create full episodes and add your own music.

The music in Jazz2 in this game is far from average, especially the music from “Funky Monkeys”, and also the music when you revisit the levels from episode one in Jazz Jackrabbit in “Flashback”. The sound effects are excellent too. I like when Spaz makes weird noises when a spring bounces him up in the air. In the underwater level, the sound effects are sensational.

The Bad
Jazz Jackrabbit 2 may be the game that outdates Sonic the Hedgehog, but at least Sonic doesn’t have bugs. While playing one level, I occasionally got an “Access Violation”, forcing me to restart my system. I also had a message telling me that my sound device was busy, but in fact, there was no other application I was running that also used my sound card.

The Bottom Line
A lot better than Jazz Jackrabbit. Too bad about the bugs. ****½

Windows · by Katakis | ă‚«ă‚żă‚­ă‚ą (43092) · 2003

A good game for whole family

The Good
I really enjoyed playing this game. It contains many different locations and enemies, like first "Jazz Jackrabbit". There are also the same weapons, but Epic added some new ones, such as freezer, heat-seeker and pepper spray. But it's good to conserve ammo for bosses, and killing regular enemies with blaster. Blaster has once again unlimited ammo.

Game is much easier than it's prequel. There aren't insanely hard levels like Orbitus from "Jazz 1". But fights with bosses can be a real pain in a butt (especially queen, bolly boss and Devan himself, while other are fairly easy, like tuf turtle boss and robot).

You can select two completely different characters to play: Jazz or Spaz. Jazz, for example, use his "ear-copter", while Spaz can smash enemies by his feet.

Graphically it looks good, even today. Everything looks like taken from cartoon movie. "Jazz 2" also introduces more complicated backgrounds than "Jazz 1". I really enjoyed "psycho" and "jungle" levels design. Sound effects are brilliant. Music is like from first "Jazz" but in much better quality.

"Jazz 2" also contains multiplayer! You can play on split-screen, through LAN or Internet. Multi has five types of gameplay: cooperative (you're playing the same levels like in single player, but with friends), deathmatch, race (you've got to run through level several times), treasure hunt (collect 100 diamonds and run to the exit) and capture the flag (yes, CTF in platform game!). When you buy this game, you also get "Jazz Creation Station" (abbreviated to "JCS"), which let you create your own levels!

The Bad
When you want to play "Jazz 2" by LAN or Intenet, you can't play race and cooperative. I completely don't know why they aren't included.

Maximal screen size is 640x480. That's odd - other games released in 1998 had much bigger screen size. One episode contain levels based on three first planets from "Jazz 1": Diamondus, Tubelectric and Medivo. Designers were run out of ideas?

And the worst thing are walls - you can sometimes jump into walls and get stuck. You can see it in the end of "castle" levels, when you defeat queen. While in original episodes it only appears in this level, in some user-made levels it appears very often, especially in levels converted from "Jazz 1", which had many narrow tunnels, like in Diamondus.

The Bottom Line
Well, "the good" section is much longer than this "bad" section. Despite these bad things, you will probably enjoy this game. I always keep this game for parties - simple rules and split screen for max. 4 players make this game perfect for such things.

Windows · by Sir Gofermajster (485) · 2008

[ View all 7 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Cover art LunarLoony (424) Feb 18, 2017
Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Dan Zeal Oct 28, 2012

Trivia

Automatic hardware detection

The game detects your computer power and shows the intro in low or high res... You can't change this manually!

Cancelled sequel

A sequel to this game, entitled Jazz Jackrabbit 3D was to be released sometime in 2000. However, since Epic was unable to find a publisher, the project was cancelled.

Extra Games

The full UK CD version of this game installs as version 1.21. Also on the CD is a folder called 'Shareware' which contains shareware versions of the following games: * Fire Fight by Chaos Works * Jazz Jackrabbit Episode 1 plus Xmas * Tyrian Shareware version 2.0 * Extreme Pinball : the Rock Fantasy table * 7th Legion

Lori Jackrabbit

In the ending cutscene of Jazz Jackrabbit 2, there is a bucktoothed female rabbit who Spaz Jackrabbit has a crush on. She is actually Lori Jackrabbit in prototype form. Lori was initially supposed to be Spaz's love interest as well as Eva Earlong's distant cousin, but Project 2 Interactive accidentally described her as the lost sister of him and Jazz. Additionally, Lori's creator, Dean Dodrill, wanted her to be a playable character. Hence, for The Secret Files, Lori was changed into the Jackrabbit sister and was made playable.

References

The Dopefish (from id Software's Commander Keen series) is mentioned on a signpost in the stage "A Diamondus Forever". The sign reads "Spaz ate the Dopefish".

Spaz

Spaz, Jazz's younger brother in the game, was actually the result of a joke. During JJ2's development it was full of bugs, and one day artist Nick Stadler was so frustrated by the game that he sketched a parody of Jazz on paper, underlined with the words "SPAZ SLACKRABBIT." The drawing was so amusing to the JJ2 development team that Spaz was eventually added to the game as a full-blown character.

Additional information contributed by B14ck W01f, Fangusu, Maw, piltdown man and Satoshi Kunsai

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Related Sites +

  • Haze's Hideout
    Blog site containing extensive information on the Jazz Jackrabbit games, the second one in particular
  • JCSref
    Comprehensive site to the Jazz level editor; Jazz Creation Station
  • Jazz 2 Online
    Another site dedicated to Jazz2. Here you can download tilesets, custom levels (both battle and single player), and even full episodes that are made by Jazz2 fans. You can even download games not relating to the game itself.
  • Lori Central
    The first and only web site dedicated to Jazz's sister, Lori! And it is the only place on the net featuring all the music of Jazz 2!
  • Stronghold Jazz
    Level-editing help site for Jazz Jackrabbit 2

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 1348
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Accatone.

Macintosh added by Jeanne.

Additional contributors: Itay Brenner, Katakis | ă‚«ă‚żă‚­ă‚ą, Maw, Fangusu, Patrick Bregger.

Game added April 17, 2000. Last modified September 8, 2023.