So Epic has just released all their Unreal titles on Steam. Anybody wants to wager on whether or not they'll bring Jazz to Valve's distribution platform as well?

To me it's a realistic option, though for technical reasons I can't see anything other than Jazz Jackrabbit 2 being considered. And even if it were re-released I honestly don't see a revival coming. The title itself I guess would sell moderately well, given the similar nostalgic value of many Steam-titles. But I don't see any revived interest in the Jazz Jackrabbit IP coming any time soon.

What's your opinion on this? Would releasing any Jazz-games on Steam benefit the community?

Oh, and hi all.

Revival of what?

Steam is spyware.
Personally I believe it would benefit us to some degree, but not as much as freewaring jj2 and releasing the darn code.

Originally Posted by Cpp

Steam is spyware.

You say this a lot but have never given any concrete evidence as to how it spies on you. It uses the internet for copy protection purposes but does not harvest any important information and works offline without throwing a fit. Out of all legitimate complaints one can make about steam, this is possibly the flimsiest and only serves to make you look foolish.

Edit: Just to clarify so this doesn't get out of hand. By "important information" I mean personal information. It's well known that steam does collect information on things like usage, how often it crashes, etc. It is all anonymous however, none of it being able to be traced back to you. Only the most paranoid of people should really have a concern about that, and even then it's an irrational concern. Unless you are running an international terrorist network that somehow uses video games, of course. Don't want to get caught.

As for PERSONAL information, which can be used to identify people, steam will prompt the user before doing anything, making it simple to opt out. Personal information includes stats on your hardware, for example.

Originally Posted by EvilMike

Personal information includes stats on your hardware, for example.

You can consider me one of those most paranoid people so that's exactly what concerns me. I have seen such programs sniff data like window names, process image names, process memory fingerprints, window menu layouts, MAC addresses, disk, CPU, and even motherboard BIOS serial numbers and send those (hashes, or not) back to the main server. While such information might not seem important to a person like you, it does indeed concern me a lot. Perhaps it's not as bad as punk buster, but it's still a data miner and as such, I don't trust it.

Let's stick to the topic now.

I hate Steam, but if JJ2 is released on it, that'd still be good.

But I'd still rather see JJ2 on XBLA.

Originally Posted by Haze

So Epic has just released all their Unreal titles on Steam. Anybody wants to wager on whether or not they'll bring Jazz to Valve's distribution platform as well?

To me it's a realistic option, though for technical reasons I can't see anything other than Jazz Jackrabbit 2 being considered. And even if it were re-released I honestly don't see a revival coming. The title itself I guess would sell moderately well, given the similar nostalgic value of many Steam-titles. But I don't see any revived interest in the Jazz Jackrabbit IP coming any time soon.

What's your opinion on this? Would releasing any Jazz-games on Steam benefit the community?

Oh, and hi all.

You can buy the "iD Super Pack" from Steam, which includes every iD DOS game, emulated via DOSBox. If Jazz Jackrabbit were to be released via Steam, they'd probably do the same.

Anyway I highly doubt Epic Games would release anything Jazz Jackrabbit to Steam since Mark Rein only cares about Unreal.

Originally Posted by Cpp

I'm going to back away from a topic I started while still asserting that my point is correct.

Okay.

The Kotaku blog post about this is ablaze with people wanting either Gears or the older Epic games. One person in favor for Jazz, Jill of the Jungle, OMF and others suggested renaming the blog post to "Epic Failure".

It does seem from a user-base standpoint, there is a good possibility for a revived interest in Jazz.

Originally Posted by n00b

The Kotaku blog post about this is ablaze with people wanting either Gears or the older Epic games. One person in favor for Jazz, Jill of the Jungle, OMF and others suggested renaming the blog post to "Epic Failure".

It does seem from a user-base standpoint, there is a good possibility for a revived interest in Jazz.

Gears is tied into Microsoft's Windows Live subscription service, which is basically "spend $50 a year to play Halo 2 and Gears on Windows online". Also, One Must Fall has been released as freeware (scroll down a little).

I'm not sure how much it costs someone to sell a game via Steam, but whatever it is, Epic can certainly afford to spend it on selling classic Epic games, even if there is little profit.

Please note, when I said people at Kotaku blog post, I did not mean "me".

Originally Posted by n00b

Please note, when I said people at Kotaku blog post, I did not mean "me".

I jus' sayin'.

I wouldn't put it past them to release jj1/jj2 on steam. The problem isn't so much that they don't care, though. It's two or three things. The first is that JJ1 is difficult to emulate with DOSbox, as I'm sure many of us have found out. Issues with sound and input lag are common when it does run.

The second problem is that JJ2 has online play, and for epic to properly support the game they would either need to bring their own servers back online, or just leave things the way they are now by redirecting to the community listserver and hope the community run servers continue to hold up.

Another problem they might have is figuring out how exactly to sell JJ2. I mean all the episodes in total are basically spread out across three seperate, and largely incompatible versions. The smartest thing to do would just to release 1.24 with the 1.23 episodes + demo copied over to the main folder, but that requires work (even if it's only like 10 seconds). Plus it might have licensing issues, since the game was developed by more than just epic games, unlike Unreal which is all them.

Doing some googling shows there are people who post wishes on the same topic on various news websites. I still highly doubt any classics will appear on steam, but who knows.

i think this could benefit the JJ2 community, this has helped skulltag(the best online multiplayer doom port) a fair bit

Originally Posted by Black Ninja

I hate Steam, but if JJ2 is released on it, that'd still be good.

But I'd still rather see JJ2 on XBLA.

I'm not fond of Steam either, but it has a few options and things that make me stick to it.
Anyway, I think it is very unlikely for JJ1 to be released on Steam, due to its lack in multiplayer. JJ2 is an option, but if Evilmike is right, it will be a little troublesome for Epic to get things right.

Originally Posted by EvilMike

I wouldn't put it past them to release jj1/jj2 on steam. The problem isn't so much that they don't care, though. It's two or three things. The first is that JJ1 is difficult to emulate with DOSbox, as I'm sure many of us have found out. Issues with sound and input lag are common when it does run.

...

Plus it might have licensing issues, since the game was developed by more than just epic games, unlike Unreal which is all them.

I've only had slight lag issues with JJ1 in DOSBox before (back during a previous version). I'll dig up my copy of JJ1 and try it again.

Also I imagine the licensing issues would be by far the biggest hurdle in releasing JJ2. Even if all parties would agree to releasing JJ2 via Steam, getting them all together would prove an arduous task at the very least, as we've seen before with attempting to obtain the source code.

Sorry to bump quite an old thread but I think it’s worth mentioning Assassin is trying to drum up some interest in getting the Jazz Jackrabbit Series on Steam.

Maybe it’s worth showing your support for the idea on the Steam forums thread

If Jazz ever did make it on to Steam it could help the Jazz community quite a bit, especially if the sales are as good as some of the older games on Steam, Assassins Idea.

Jazz needs GameSpyArcade support.

Never used Steam. Any good?

Steam isn't like Gamespy Arcade. If you want to know more about it, read this: http://store.steampowered.com/about/

So yeah, I thought it would be a good idea to have it on Steam for the obvious reasons that it will probably attract more new players and maybe even generate any hope for a future jazz game? Anyway, if you agree and have any hope at all, it wouldn't hurt to help the cause.

Steam is like the Xbox Live / Playstation Network for pc, it has great community features and in my opinion the best digital distribution platform on pc. Unlike other distribution platforms *EA cough* you can download the games you own anytime and you are not forced in to using any unreasonable DRM.

Indie games such as World of Goo have really done well on Steam, if JJ2 was sold on Steam it would be a place the majority of people could buy the game any time. Steam always have a good deal on most weekends, it would only be a matter of time before Jazz had his own weekend deal and a lot of new people purchase Jazz and possibly join the JJ2 community.

Jazz becomes popular on Steam, Epic takes notice of the series once again maybe?

Either way I own the majority of the games legally and I would gladly buy it again on Steam, its one of the few games i keep coming back to over the years.

Let's hope Jazz comes to Steam... I think that could mean quite a lot for online play.


However, to join the community these new people need to hear about jazz2.online.com somehow. How?

By making them include plus!
And if BlurredD could change www.jazzjackrabbit.com into www.jazz2online.com

Man, if i ever won a large sum of money, i'd buy all the Jazz Jackrabbit copyrights and code off of Epic and post it for free and advert on like Gamespot, etc.

But then again ikm not exactly winning large sums of money anytime soon