The point has been made many a time that JJ1 didn't quite know what it wanted to be. The engine was built for speed, the camera really wasn't, and the level design didn't do the best job with it. The l33t Demoscene coding gave them a game centered around speed, but that wasn't something they really knew what to do with. Heck, if you go back and look at Google Groups archives from 1994 you can see people saying the game doesn't live up to the engine. JJA went in the reverse direction, and while I wouldn't mind the addition of a run key, I can't really fault them for realizing what speed their gameplay was most naturally built around.

So what about JJ2?

In multiplayer, as far as I can tell there's really no issue. Everybody runs pretty much all the time, to the point that JJ2+ added an Always Run menu option/command in addition to the existing capslock key and normal run control. But do we really have single player levels that expect you to run, or rather, give you any good reason to? The official levels have their moments with horizontal springs and h-poles and sucker tubes, of course, which amount to little more than cutscenes and which people don't seem to emulate very frequently.

For moments of actual interactive gameplay, the Wanderlust demo is the only level I can think of atm that really makes me feel like I should be running the whole darn time. It accomplishes this with very simple, open level design, lots of horizontal springs for effect, and not many sections of any complexity. When you do have to slow down, mostly to avoid the animated fireballs, JJ2's massive 640x480 resolution and flexible camera give you time to notice and get ready. It's a great experience, but sadly extremely rare.

We have a very fast game engine. What are the level-making tools we have to incorporate, encourage, or even reward that speed? How do we make speed not only feasible, but desirable or dare I say fun? Collapse scenery? Rotating rocks? Wind? Timed sections? Or some newer ideas, born of AngelScript?

(For bonus points, can speed and the normal enemy-killing-pickup-collecting-secret-finding gameplay work together in any way besides alternating, clearly marked sections of one vs. the other? Alternatively, am I wrong in my characterization of multiplayer as all-speed-all-the-time, or do you think there's room for variation there that doesn't exist currently?)