Originally Posted by Violet CLM

I wonder...

Don't wonder. You know it well, we all do, there's a crap ton (excuse the way I said that) of unused content.

If the content listed there would've been finished, or actually used in the game and not just left to JCS users, we'd have had:

- Two extra bosses (presumably with two corresponding levels)
- One new enemy (that is generally agreed to be frustrating to play against)
- One existing enemy with different behaviour (the sucker)
- Two extra guns
- 3D bonus stages!
- Some alternative sprites for otherwise already functional events
- Some more animated in-game "cutscenes" with bosses
- One secret level
- Two extra game mechanics (fast feet and freeze enemies)
- Powerups for guns that did not have one in the game
- Possibly more things about which nothing can be said because we don't know anything about them


That's quite a bit of stuff indeed. Though it's wise to remember that -

Originally Posted by Nick Stadler

There were many elements that needed to be dropped due to time constraints in finishing the game and there were probably an equal amount of elements that simply didn’t work. They distracted from the overall FUN of the game.

It's easy to think of all this content as "missing", but there is always the possibility that it was finished, tested, and found to not actually contribute to the game's quality.

Originally Posted by Stijn

It's easy to think of all this content as "missing", but there is always the possibility that it was finished, tested, and found to not actually contribute to the game's quality.

Case in point: Bilsy

TBH, I don't think any of these would have really improved the game in a big way. Tweedle and the extra level(s) would have been cool, but nothing earth-shattering really.

Originally Posted by Stijn

- Two extra bosses (presumably with two corresponding levels)

Or more likely, Bilsy would have been at the end of Jungle and Tweedle somewhere in Psych.

- Two extra guns

Nope. They were coded, usable, decided against, cut, and replaced. It's not like we would have gotten the blade gun and the electroblaster at the same time... for one thing, there are only so many number keys on the keyboard.

Meh. For any given "scrapped" feature, including the many not listed on that page, there are going to be a number of overlapping reasons it ultimately didn't make the cut, ranging from fun factor to programming difficulty to whether anyone ever thought about it. (I imagine the Spaz blaster powerup is in the third category. And probably "Max Weapon" wasn't so much scrapped as someone randomly wrote it down as an idea one day and then nobody ever looked at it again.) But is that proof that JJ2 somehow vastly outstrips other games in how much revision was done during development, or just proof that JJ2 is bad at hiding it? (And in some cases, hiding it against JCS, JSD, and JJ2+, tools that most other games don't have sitting around to hunt for unfinished ideas with.)

Some content definitely looks like casualties of lack of time, sure. The secret levels come to mind. But I don't want to fault Epic for making any revisions during development at all, because that's how making games is supposed to work. The alternate Beach background, the Tubelectric spikes... they were used, considered, and rejected. That's normal.

The unfinished JJ1 tilesets thing on that page pretty transparently doesn't belong there. That's JJ1 cutting room floor stuff, not JJ2--they're just there because they needed .anm files to test MLLE's code with, and then nobody ever bothered to remove those files from the folder.

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

Bilsy would have been at the end of Jungle

Why does everyone always place Bilsy in Jungle? The location of JJ2 bosses always makes sense, if you ignore Bolly, who clearly should have been in Tubelectric, so there's no reason a demon would be the final boss of Jungle. I can think of three more likely options:

• Bilsy was the final boss of Medivo, until found to be overpowered. They removed him, but then Medivo was missing a boss, so they moved the closest one, because they couldn't allow that to happen in the final stage of an episode. This would explain the misplacement of Bolly, although Medivo, despite its somewhat hellish appearance, is also not the best placement for a demon boss.
• Bilsy was the final boss of Inferno. Inferno is the only world to have a boss in its first level, and there are also clear visual similarities between Bilsy and Bubba, meaning they were likely to exist in the same world. This hypothesis is supported by the fact Nick Stadler calls them collectively the 'boss characters in "Hell" levels' in his interview from 1997.
• Bilsy was a boss in the first level of Damn. This is not supported by any evidence, but it's clear he would fit into the theme, and as Damn is the final world, it wouldn't be unreasonable to think it might have had two bosses.

Because bilsboss.j2l, included in 1.10o, puts him in Jungle.

Bolly is presumed to have been made the JJ2 Medivo boss because Bolly is a loose remake of the JJ1 Medivo boss.

Fair enough; that is a decent piece of evidence, although I'd say so is the word of Nick Stadler. Basically I think that if the decision to remove Bilsy from the game hadn't occurred, he would be more likely to be fought in a different level. The name of that file suggests it might have been created solely to test the mechanics of the boss, and thus the tileset used would be whatever was at hand.

As for Bolly, that doesn't convince me, mostly because that would be a very loose remake, and in part also because the mechanical body of Bolly is very clearly controlled by a single Sparks eyeball, an enemy exclusively found in Tubelectric. Perhaps Bolly was selected by someone else to be a Medivo boss, but I'd say that minimally the artist's intention was to place him in Tubelectric.

Originally Posted by Violet CLM

Because bilsboss.j2l, included in 1.10o, puts him in Jungle.

Counterpoint: flag.j2l from 1.10o puts two bases on the opposite corners of battle1 without rhyme or reason. I'm willing to bet this was the case for bilsboss too.

Originally Posted by Stijn

- One new enemy (that is generally agreed to be frustrating to play against)

New enemy? which one?

BeeBoy.

Originally Posted by cooba

Counterpoint: flag.j2l from 1.10o puts two bases on the opposite corners of battle1 without rhyme or reason. I'm willing to bet this was the case for bilsboss too.

I don't seem to have a flag.j2l...?

If there is such a level, though, counterpoint: they probably didn't have any CTF levels already designed prior to coding CTF bases, but 1.00 suggests they had the entire SP campaign desired prior to coding Bilsy.

I think Jazz 2 deserves a mention in the "Honest Game Titles" section, so ...


if (dennisKainz.banned == true)
dennisKainz.drawString("Totally worth it!")

Originally Posted by DennisKainz

I think Jazz 2 deserves a mention in the "Honest Game Titles" section, so ...


if (dennisKainz.banned == true)
dennisKainz.drawString("Totally worth it!")

Almost all games have unused content. :P

Back to the topic ...

I see a resemblance between Jazz 2's Holiday Hare 98 thingamajig and the snowy tiles of Donkey Kong Country 3.

The only resemblance is that they both have snow and pine trees.

These tiles in particular

I still see no resemblance.

Well it's no direct copy, that's for sure. But I do see what Dennis is trying to point out: the obvious similarity of the pathways with their position in the snow. It could be that Nick used that DKC3 set as 'inspiration' for his Holiday Hare set just for it's floor tile layout, or just as well not, it's not evident enough as proof yet it's definitely an interesting find.

Beach vs. Aladdin (Genesis)'s desert area. Thoughts? They're not identical but the shapes/positioning of the bottom edges look very similar, especially the weird lighter tendril things. A much closer match than Dennis's I think.

The bottom edges look really similar, yes. GJ finding it!

And now for the other way around. Today I was playing some Rayman Adventures (an iOS/Android game with assets from Rayman Legends) and found this section in a level that design-wise may've been inspired by TSF's included QoB level. That, or the order of the colored doors is very coincidental.

I don't know how Slaz's post ended up unnoticed for a year, heh.
Better late than never! I think is coincidental.

Not sure if this is offtopic, but I think I found the source for Palmtree Plaza. Well, minus all the grass.



EDIT: This and the tileset even have a similar theme.



Yes these are both Sonic games.

Chernabog (from Fantasia, 1940) looks a good bit like one of the Medivo gargoyles.