JDC 34 finished on January 12th, and now the final matchup of JDCE 34 finally happened yesterday, with Superjazz finding himself defeated for a second time, and eliminated from the tourney.
The winner of this season’s JDCE, and consequently of the full season is, Krzysiek (114) at 2080 points! This is the fifth time Krzysiek has managed to come on top in JDCE, but his very first time winning the JDC season overall. Krzysiek also has the distinction of being the first Polish player to achieve the position of JDC Champion. Congratulations!
The most popular maps of this JDCE have been:
1. Titan Armory (PurpleJazz)
2. Rúnheimr (Seren)
3. A Titan, Ornery (cooba)
Click here to see the full mappool stats.
Stay tuned for the JDC 34 awards, and the 2024 JCS award voting, both coming soon…
August 1st 1994 was only the beginning, not the end, of Jazz Jackrabbit! On November 28th 1994 we got to play Jazz CD, adding three all-new episodes (plus bonus levels), then in December 1994 the first Holiday Hare came out. The version of Jazz CD with Holiday Hare 94 included has been the definitive version of Jazz Jackrabbit 1 ever since, so at this point, we’re truly thirty years in.
Holiday Hare 1994’s main contribution to the franchise, of course, was the idea of Holiday Hare itself, an idea that Epic would follow successfully in 1995 and 1998 (and less successfully in 1999). Because Holiday Hare 1994 and 1995 were freeware and appealed to people making lists of christmas-related games, they were incredible ways to advertise the game online. But Holiday Hare 1994 also introduced the idea of multiple palettes for the same planet at different times of day, which would feature prominently throughout Jazz 2. It’s also interesting for having the series’ only sprite-based cutscene.
Buying Jazz 1 through GOG includes Holiday Hare 1994
Download the original freeware release
Play Holiday Hare in your browser
Patch to combine Holiday Hare 1994 and 1995
Some fanmade Holiday Hare episodes for Jazz 2
Use Holiday Hare 1994’s tileset in Jazz 2
Use Holiday Hare 1994’s enemies in Jazz 2
With Hanukkah starting in just a week, as well as other winter festivals, Jazz 2 Online wishes you all some Harey Holidays.
As teased in last week’s uber-digest-newspost, JDC is returning for a winter season – as early as this month!
The opening event is due to take place on Saturday 14th December at 20:30 CEST, after which the season will be officially open for games. Please note that we do expect this will be a shorter season than the previous.
Despite the plans for a shorter season this time round, JDCE is also expected to take place.
A new logo banner for the season is also needed. Please get in touch with PurpleJazz and/or me for details!
A lot of nice things have happened recently – some a little more distant that have slipped through our radar, and some very fresh. Let’s have a look!
Universal Game Editor (pre-Jazz alpha) discovered
Already discussed in the last newspost, but I felt bad about pushing it down the list – an alpha version of the game engine used by Arjan to create JJ1 has been released! This is an addition to the Dutch article about the development of Jazz Jackrabbit.
Download the alpha here, and also check out the JCF thread for new findings.
New layout for J2O downloads
Notice how the download pages look different now? The more important info now occupies more space, reviews look better (and feature your JCF avatars), we merged reviews and quick reviews into one, and above all, you can now leave a like next to an upload!
As always, thanks Stijn for all your hard work.
JDC 33 awards
The awards for the last this summer’s JDC season have now* been posted! Personally I found this a very fun season, and I hope you did too. If you missed out on JDC, a new season is being planned for the winter – I cannot recommend it nearly enough.
Palette Suite updated to version 4.2
Turns out that every tileset designer’s favorite tool is still being worked on! In the words of AJ, “This should make the process of converting a 24-bit tileset image to an 8-bit JCS-compatible image a little easier”.
Download Palette Suite here.
Halloween Battle Contest now concluded
The contest I announced on a total whim yielded, to my surprise, four very enjoyable levels! Violet’s (mildly unsettling) entry won, but the competition was pretty tough, and every one of these levels is worth to be added to anyone’s regular Battle level rotation.
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Not bad for a month in the life of a dog food website, eh? I hope you’ve all been having fun.
The Dutch article from our last news post has been updated with a huge addition: the original engine made by Arjan Brussee that was turned into Jazz Jackrabbit! Many files are included with the engine, including a level editor and a program for creating tileset and sprites files.
The engine version is from March 1993, a year and a half before the game was released, so there are definitely format changes. For example, here the levels are 512×32 tiles, whereas JJ1’s levels are 256×64. Most of the graphics are unfamiliar, but several of the tiles from Megairbase in JJ1 turn out to have come directly from this alpha. But this release is barely an hour old, so who knows what’s in there to discover?
Video of the game engine
Video of the level editor
Forum thread for listing findings, reactions, etc.
The download link again
Wietse van Bruggen of Dutch game history platform Gamegeschiedenis.nl has a nice feature article about the development of Jazz Jackrabbit (1), putting together existing sources and a new interview with series developer Arjan Brussee to tell the story of how a Dutch demo coder ended up programming a game about a green rabbit for emerging American game publisher Epic MegaGames (they are no longer Mega nowadays). The article is in Dutch but translates well using the usual online tools. It has some probably-never-seen-before screenshots of the game too!
A game similar to Sonic the Hedgehog was exactly what Sweeney had in mind for Epic MegaGames’ shareware titles. Brussee: “So I sent that to Tim. And Tim saw it and faxed me back. The fax was on thermal paper, and it just kept going. I think it was about six feet long. And it had AWESOME written on it in big letters!”
Fun meta fact: the article uses our interview with series graphics artist Nick Stadler as one of its sources.
A new level contest for Halloween themed Battle levels has been announced! (By yours truly.)
Create a spooky/horror/etc. themed Battle level.
Sounds simple, right? That’s because it is!
More details available in the JCF thread.
It’s been a hard-fought few weeks, but we’ve come to a consensus!
The JJ2 manual describes Colon as “a spirited slosh through the sewers,” whereas Damn has Devan “open the gates of the inferno, unleashing demons, devil dogs and more to exterminate the rabbits of Carrotus for good.”
Colon is based on Pinocchio and Comix Zone. It features two unique enemies, some of JJ2’s most complicated, multiple level layout themes, and arguably two separate music tracks. JJ2’s official multiplayer levels are dominated by the easiest to use tilesets, but Colon manages to sneak in there for Capture2, “Colonius Wars.”
Damn seems to derive from The Lion King, though its epic background may be a Nick Stadler original. Appropriately for a final level, it features no original enemies but instead brings back favorites from the rest of the game. The music is thrilling, its lava tiles have found their way into many custom tilesets over the years, and of course it features the final confrontation with Devan Shell himself.
And the best location, by 11 votes to 8, is…
Colon!
That should be all for brackets for now. We already know the best JJA planet.
We’re three weeks into the Jazz 2 Locations bracket! Both the locations that benefited from random chance last time have been eliminated, as we lose:
- Psych
- Carrotus
These final locations remain:
- Damn
- Colon
You can vote on this last matchup right now, or any time in the next week.
