Well, the Bash is nearly over, and I'm sad to report that due to port problems, I was able to make only a few brief guest appearances. However, I don't want that to be all I have to do with this Bash; I mean, ten years is huge!

As a result, I'd like to say a few things. These things I'd like to say don't necessarily warrant their own topic, and I won't be offended if an admin or mod moves this into the Anniversary Bash thread. However, it's my hope that as many people as possible will read what I have to say and feel compelled to also share what this game has meant to them.

And that's exactly what I'm going to share right now.


When our family bought first Windows-based PC from a family friend, it included a box of floppy diskettes containing numerous game demos. The diskettes were all official releases, with nice cover pictures and such - all the diskettes except for one. In the back of the box, labeled with only a home-made sticker marked in felt pen, was a demo of the original Jazz Jackrabbit. For a long time, I never played it. At the time, I was obsessed with the Tyrian demo included in the same box. However, upon completing said demo for around the twentieth time, I decided I'd take a look at Jazz Jackrabbit.

Suffice it to say, I was impressed.

It was around Christmas time, and I knew immediately that Jazz Jackrabbit would be on the top of my "list."

Christmas came and went, and I received Jazz Jackrabbit CD as a gift (it was about all I'd asked for, so I guess it makes sense that's what my parents got for me, though they weren't especially happy about me spending all my time playing video games). As so many of the rest of us in the community, I absolutely loved the game.

Time passed. Finally, in 1997, our family decided to bite the proverbial bullet and subscribe to a dial-up connection. I remember to this day how enamored I was with the twelve kilobits per second glory. After surfing the web for a while, I became bored. I decided I'd search for Jazz Jackrabbit, and sure enough, I found The Daily Carrot. When I discovered that there was a demo for Jazz Jackrabbit 2, I was ecstatic (though I hated the idea of there being a rabbit other than Jazz). I downloaded the demo that very night (yes, it took all night).

At the time, I was a huge fan of Tillamook's fine dairy products. In particular, I adored (and still do adore to this day) the sharp cheddar cheese. As a result, my JJ2 nickname became Tillamook, and I started playing online. For a brief time, I even ran a Tillamook-based clan (I don't remember the names of many members, but I do remember TillaMark was a great guy; haven't heard from him sense).

More time passed, I beat the demo countless times, and eventually I received my hot fresh copy of Jazz Jackrabbit 2 in the mail. Shortly thereafter, I changed my nickname to Black Ninja (which is a story in itself, but perhaps I'll save that for another time).

And now ten years have passed. Many of my friends from back in the glory days of JJ2 are now gone, yet for some reason I remain. Rather than bore you with more history, I'd like to explain what that reason is (though I'd be happy to tell humorous anecdotes about Wakeman and some of the "old gang" if anyone is interested).

Throughout my life, I've been a involved with many communities, gaming and otherwise. However, the only one that's stuck with me throughout all these years is this one.

It's truly remarkable for the community of a game, especially an old platforming game for children, to have lasted ten years and be stronger than ever. In fact, it's unheard of. I'm willing to bet that I could count the number of such communities on one hand, in fact.

The reason we've lasted so long is really quite simple. It's not because JJ2 is one of the best games out there; it's certainly not because the original developers still support it; so why, then? I'll tell you why.

The people.

I'll say it again: the people are the reason why Jazz Jackrabbit 2 is still around.

I am willing to bet that no gaming community in the world is comprised of such great people as this one.

To prevent myself from rambling further, I'll end this post with one final thought.



I truly believe that this is the strongest game community on the entire web, and I am thoroughly convinced that Jazz Jackrabbit will live on for at least another ten years.

I'm also convinced that I will be here for those ten years.


Please, feel free to discuss, and feel even more free to post your thoughts regarding the tenth anniversary of our prized bunny game.

Dunno, I thought "the people" are the reason JJ2 is not very active.

As for my story, I played Jazz when I was like 34 years old, I gut a computer with Jazz 2 when I was 6. A year and a half ago I gut bored and thought about how I used to love this game, I tryed the online option, and I'm playing ever since o:.

Also, the threads name has nothing to do with what you said.

*pinks away a tear* That's some story. Would you believe it if I said I used to call myself TillaMark?

Despite the slight "everything was better in the past" undertone, I really enjoyed the read. I, too, have no doubt it will last another 10 years

Originally Posted by Grytolle

it will last another 10 years

moar

i think i played jazz the first time on my friends' computer

Hell yeah. I can't agree more. I remember how when I was about 8 or 9 I came over to my friend to play on ('wooooow') his PC (I only had a Commodore 64 back then). I played many different games, but the one that had the most impact on me was Jazz Jackrabbit (back then I couldn't even remember the name). Years passed and so I forgot about it, generally, but when I saw a demo of Jazz Jackrabbit 2 at cousin's place in 2001, it all came back to me and I was simply obsessed with it. Soon, I managed to buy myself TSF, the first game I actually bought and wasn't from a magazine.

Nearly 7 years have passed, and it's still my favorite game. But it was the people that really got me into it. Elrick of BOD showed me Jazz2Online, Sharky of the same clan taught me special moves, and so on.

No doubt I'm staying here for as long as possible and no doubt I'll still contribute to the community. I should probably stop here so I won't repeat myself from my own wall-of-text thread.

Originally Posted by Erik

i think i played jazz the first time on my friends' computer

To be honest, that is my case too. I got addicted almost immediately after playing through Dungeon Dilemma.

Edit: Meant you either the original JJ, or JJ2, I got the mood for both from the same friend.

Originally Posted by IconGuy

Dunno, I thought "the people" are the reason JJ2 is not very active.

As for my story, I played Jazz when I was like 34 years old, I gut a computer with Jazz 2 when I was 6, a year and a half ago I gut bored and thought about how I used to love this game, I tryed the online option, and I'm playing ever since o:.

Also, the threads name has nothing to do with what you said.

Save poor Iconguy, he's getting younger by the second

Originally Posted by IconGuy

Also, the threads name has nothing to do with what you said.

I originally had a lot more typed, but I decided to heavily edit my post and decided that the part that remains was what I really wanted to get across.


But yeah, you're right. :P Perhaps I will edit my post and add that stuff back in later.

I remember getting jazzjackrabbit 2 , in 1998 , back when pc games came in those big boxes. Well it did for me. I remember i used to play as "coolkid" i played it fr a month then i lost all intrest. Then years later I found my jazz CD. And i was happy . Uhh this community isn't the strongest one iv seen. Bt its pretty fun.

dude you were like 6 years old back then you've got to be (-)ting me

For me, I found a demo of Jazz Jackrabbit when I was 8 (Golly, that must have been 1996!), and seeing the rabbit shooting the gun in a action pose just screamed cool for me. (The game really impressed me as a kid, as I had never seen anything the like of it involving rabbits, of all animals!) I played that demo again and again, off and on until I got the full version from epic classics in 2000.

In 1999, I learned of Jazz Jackrabbit 2 (++internet searches). I did not pay much attention to it until a little later, when we got a Imac that was capible of playing the demo. I was further amazed by the music and gameplay. I got the full version of jj2 in 2001

I started playing around with JCS, and that's what caused me to come to this community: asking annoying questions on how to work JCS. I seemed to stick around, even during a long period of inactivity between 2003-2005.

Why? My guess is the regulars tolerate me and the community is small enough that you get to know them.

Originally Posted by Erik

dude you were like 6 years old back then you've got to be (-)ting me

your saying 6 year olds can't play games. I think everyone here played a game at 6 , i played games when i was 3 , there the most things i rmember about being 3.

Jazz Jackrabbit, I remember first playing the old Christmas version of JJ1 a long time back and I liked it, but my parents had a thing against buying videogames so I pretty much forgot until I found the JJ2 demo. Somewhere, I really cannot remember when I actually played it. Either way, after sufficient begging my parents broke their anti-videogame habit and got me JJ2 for Christmas (and after that, all subsequent holidays included videogames). There was always something about this game that appealed to me and no matter what new games I got I always came back to playing JJ2. Of course, I really only stuck to single player and local play with my bro (The internet was a blasphemous idea back then). Then I found this website years later after the disc cracked and desperately searching for the game, oblivious to any policies to abandonware.

Now here I am, really I am not sure where would I be without Jazz Jackrabbit. Probably the exactly the same, except less anxious to see that film Dean Dodrill is working on and possibly with higher self-esteem.

I think the earliest memory of it... I'm not sure if I had seen it prior to this but whoopdidoo i forget
My dad worked as an IT consultant (still does) and a primary (or elementary for you people across the sea) school he was working at in... around 2000ish, in Broadmeadows I think? About half an hour from both houses (parents are seperated in case you're a bit slow). There was a library, and my dad often got copies of games that I liked that they had there. Long story short, one of them was JJ2. I think the whole school was a bit nuts over it, they all played it. Anyways last recollection of playing it there was the school fete, the library was set up so kids could play whatever games they wanted on there. Naturally, the whole library was playing JJ2. I know, yay. I did alright for a little seven year old lass playing a bunny game with guns back then, so I asked my dad to get a copy of the game. Unsuprisingly enough he did! I can't remember what comes next, I think I played it for a while and then found other things... 2001 at my school, the school catalogue was offering JJ2 Holiday Hare. With a demo of AOL on the same disc the evil (-)s. So I got the CD, played through it, then remembered JJ2... played it again for a few weeks, then forgot about it. Next few years I don't remember very well because "im lazy and i suck"

In 2002 I think it was I accidentally ran into Lori Central, but I don't remember anything else...

2005, was going through old games I had, one was JJ2. Hopped aboard the Google Express, found this place, joined as ShadowRabbit. The rest you all should know by now.

In 1997, I was 6 years old, my aunt gave me a computer of my own. It was the computer she had at work, but they would get new computers there. It had a massive 407 MB hard drive and the awesome Windows 3.01 installed. After about half a year, she asked me if I wanted to return it so she could give it to a colleague so he could build in a CD-player and install the freshly shipped Windows 98 SE on it (a copy of it, though). I were glad, as I weren't as great in English as I am now (Windows 3.01 wasn't available in Dutch AFAIK, and if it was I still had the English version), at that time. When she returned it, she told me her colleague had installed one small game on it which he liked, and I were alright with that.
The game was called "Jazz Jackrabbit 2", a welcome change in my never-ending Pacman addiction. It had four multiplayer gametypes and as my cousin (he was 5 by then) was sitting next to me I proposed we played "Treasure Hunt". It was getting dark when we finished the levels 5 times or so and we started doing the Race levels, esspecially the fourth one, called "Race Game D" was hard. All multiplayer levels had letters at the end of the name, like "Treausre Hunt A", "Treasure Hunt B" etc.
I am not entirely sure what version I were playing as it clearly said 'Shareware version' on the splash screen, but it did have the same levels as 1.00g/h do. Because it was just a shareware, a year or so later I decided to ask my mum to buy the full version. We went to some stores and, because of complete stupidness, we bought Jazz Jackrabbit CD. It says 'Jazz Jackrabbit 1' and 'BB 008' on the side but somehow I didn't notice. When playing, it turned out to be the game I saw three years earlier on the aforementioned cousin's sister's computer (hehe ) while she was playing the bonus levels with a friend.
A week later we went to visit them. As Jazz Jackrabbit 2 was nowhere to be found in Wassenaar, we tried a shop close to their home. And yay! there I got my copy of Jazz Jackrabbit 2! Including: Jazz Jackrabbit CD (both without a cover image though). Me and my dad (usually not at the same time) played the game a lot, but at some point it got boring. It turned out to have a level editor too, which was very cool to use but somehow I lost all my levels except for my complete edit of Battle1 and my own level Battle4, which I still have and have worked on until late 2006.
In the beginning of 2004, I somehow I got to play it again with a few friends. I were almost 13 years old and some of my classmates laughed at me for playing a bunny game, but still it was fun and I didn't stop. Frequently I played battle games with friends.
One night, I was bored and wanted to try the online mode as the last time I tried was months and months ago (and I couldn't get a list of active games 'somehow'). It turned out I were still unable to get this list and when closing the game again I saw the Jazzjackrabbit.com link. I thought: maybe they have a solution there. Jazzjackrabbit.com didn't work either, though, so I tried Google. Some site named 'Jazz2Online.com' showed up and I tried to see what it could offer me. It had update patches and a registry patch that should get my online playing working again, and it did. I also downloaded the highest rated Battle level pack. It was 'Blade's Battle Pack' and it offered new tilesets as well.
It was the beginning of April, 2005, and not that great weather so I played Jazz Jackrabbit 2 online for a few hours the next day. I saw there was chatting, so I tried some buttons to find out how to chat and at last I figured out I had to press T to chat. I came in a world where people all had two or three (mostly uppercase) letters behind their nicknames and I wondered what they meant, so I asked: "What's TF?", soon followed by GpW. A few levels later I asked "What's CC?", already realising that it was another clan. "a clan, jerry" was the response that came while I were typing "a clan, okay, but what does CC stand for?". "What's CC?" was the very first stupid question I asked on a Jazz2 server and I'll never forget that one. Some people also had colours in their names, and I wondered how they did that. "you can do that with JazzED." "where do I get it?" "J2O". J2O turned out to be the only connection bedween Jazz2 and its players, other than the game itself.
Two weeks later, after hosting my own battle server "World War JJ2" almost each day, suddenly no-one entered my server anymore and I didn't find it on the GIP-list on J2O either. That made me enter the JCF and write my first few posts: it turned out the USA listserver was down and I had to change to the European one (why I were connecting to the USA lists in the first place? God knows). Since then, I've been a pretty active member of the JCF.
Five days later, on my sixth post on the JCF, I got my first moderator edit. "Derby: Filter bypass removal. Allow the filter to do its own work." It was a post in the 1.25 suggestions thread and, as excited as I was about the existance of a 1.20-1.23 update, I asked "Is that [F-word with * on the second letter]ing code released? I can't wait any longer" and it was the half-filtered F-word that got edited out.
On the 2nd of August, 2005, I started RR with Hipper after having played together for some time. That day, we ended up with just the two of us in the InstaGib server I was hosting and at the same time we said "I'm thinking of starting a clan". Since then, I've been pretty much known on the community and thus I don't see a reason to continue my life story Jazz Jackrabbit history. =)

Originally Posted by Jerrythabest

biography

Wut's so stupid about asking wut's CC?

Well I actually knew the answer as soon as I sent that message. In the fifteen minutes before asking that I asked "What is TF?" and "What is GpW?", which resulted both in the reply "A clan". As soon as I sent that message I thought: "CC is just another clan, I'm making a fool of myself in the first few minutes on this game".

Originally Posted by IconGuy

It's not a biography, you idiot!





It's an autobiography

Originally Posted by Jerrythabest

It's an autobiography

I never gut the difference.

My arrival to this thread is a little late, but I do share the same sort of story. The first time I 'met' Jazz was a day in 1994 when my father got the shareware from his work and installed it on his computer. We were both very impressed by the fast animation and colors.. I also remember a dream about a Jazz sequel around then, and this actually became true somewhere in 1998 when I searched for 'Jazz Jackrabbit' at school, where they had a dial-up connection.. Of course I too came to the Daily Carrot and found out about Jazz2, haha that day my concentration at school was as good as gone and I was really looking forward to this game more than any other release back then. When the day finally arrived (again my father managed to get a copy via his work) I became 'obsessively' addicted to Jazz2. I started playing online in 2003 when I got my first internet connection, but played a few games in 1998 at my fathers PC with dial-up.

Jazz is the number1 game of my life, not because of quality, but I suppose it's the community that keeps it impressed even in these late days.!

I'm certain that my life would be/have been very, VERY different had I not learned about the existence of Jazz Jackrabbit 2.
However, I'm starting to accept the fact that my generation of 'Jazzers' are fading away.
Things aren't anything like they used to be.

It's been a great 8-9 years, and I sincerely thank the community, and especially 'the staff' for keeping things under control and making things interesting for all these years.

Yeah the good ol' Feb 2005 generation... Gotta love 'em

Hmmm. Right now, I'm sitting here in a new city in my "own" apartment, listening to music and eating relatively good formerly deep-frozen pizza.
Where would I be without Jazz Jackrabbit...

Quite possibly under the earth feeding plants.

JJ2 pretty much saved my life by introducing me to the internet and the nice people of the JCF. By extension, it also introduced me to escapism and turned me into the lazy and internet-addicted slob that I am, but at least me and my potential are still alive. And that's something I'll have to thank Jazz for.

carpe diem, man

that's what JJ is all about