Jazz Jackrabbit 2 is a fairly liked game. However, some don't realise it was actually a financial failure. It came with plenty of flaws, such as:

1. The bugs that caused the game to crash. And bad solutions to levelmaking errors, that also caused the game to crash.

2. Online play had been really half baked. Team chat not working properly, poorly thought out "netcode", laughable balance, lack of server management options. No matter what, the imbalances with weapons and characters will always reside as part of the game.

3. The large difficulty drop with nothing to compensate it. Although I disliked JJ1's resolution (I don't like not being able to see much), there was nothing done at other ways attempting to make JJ2s level design more challenging. Spam blaster, run and jump to win. Timer got removed.

4. The amount of annoying bugs in general. TSF did nothing to fix them, and generally did not add much revolutionary features, along with a rather broken character. I don't think TSF is really bad, though there wasn't enough features to make people actually buy it (and yes, I'm quite aware it wasn't released in the US).

5. Not enough unique about the game. While I don't consider this much of a flaw, Jazz Jackrabbit, for the most part, is a hodge podge of features from other games, combined into one. Some may have saw it as a total ripoff and therefore got put off by the game. I actually don't mind features from different games being put together, as long as they are executed well. I may sound like I'm contradicting, though I'm just looking at it from another perspective.

Fortunately, plus did fix/improve some of these issues, especially with server management.

However, once a person gets a bad first impression or experience, the first thing on their mind usually isn't "Did any fan fix the bugs and improve the game?", but rather move onto something else. Most people who did end up downloading plus was through their interest in the game, and a desire to see the game's potential. Oh, and the flaws of JJ2 had remained for a long time.

I made this thread because I'm sure there are fans that don't realise that JJ2 wasn't as successful as they thought, and keep hounding for a new one. Another reason a new official game may not be as successful, is because much of the fanbase has moved on, whether they lost interest in the genre or the franchise itself. I firmly believe that JCS and the fan programmers is what made JJ2 an enjoyable game, though the developers provided the framework and a fairly (though poorly programmed) smooth engine.