Jazz Jackrabbit Collection

I knew this game existed when I was younger, and I wanted to play it. I finally got around to playing it. Sadly, it does not live up to expectations. Jazz moves at a ridiculous speed, and the controls are slippery. The camera doesn't help. When you're running, enemies show up out of nowhere. There's not a lot of space on the screen, so you have less than a second to react. I have no control over him. There is a slowdown mode, which you have to turn on at the beginning of every level. It gives you more time to react, with the side-effect of making the game sluggish and tedious. Fast or slow, this game gives me a headache. Level design is frustrating. The first few levels were straight-forward. Keep moving right, and you'll find the exit. Or at least, there's a logical path to follow. Before long, you're thrown into labyrinthine mazes. In the level where I gave up, I went around in circles three or four times before I found out how to proceed. It's confusing and frustrating. I wanted to give this game a chance. An obvious Sonic clone that's cheeky about it, putting a gun in the main character's hands. Varied worlds that are bright and colorful. A goofy story about an evil turtle or something. It's clear a lot of love went into this game. The cheeky goofiness is charming, but the gameplay gives me such a headache, I have to pass.

On Fedora 39 I had to do the following to make the game run: 1) Download `libFLAC.so.8` to `game/dosbox/libs/x86_64/` 2) Set `usescancodes=false` in `game/dosbox_jazz.conf` After this, the game runs fine. Saving a game shows a blank line in the saves list, but loads successfully.

It's an alien space rabbit with a laser gun. Floppy bunny ears and face-paced action, how can you possibly go wrong? The story is simple: You hand it to those pesky, goodie-two-shoes turtles with their "slow and steady wins the race" crap. Eat hot lasers, shell-freaks! If this doesn't sell it to you, nothing will. Except, "selling": We must talk about the elephant in the room. Jazz Jackrabbit 1 Turtle Terror and Holiday Hare 94 and 95 are all FREE Shareware titles. You can play them online or offline any time you want, you don't have to pay. The free editions give you roughly 8 levels plus 3 bonus levels to beat, and will keep you busy for about 3 hours. If all you want is a quick game for nostalgic reasons, the free version might be sufficient. You only ever need the collection, if you absolutely can't get enough space rabbit goodness, and feel you absolutely have to own ALL 9+2 episodes with 81 regular and 30 bonus levels, and approx. 30hours of content. It all comes down to the question: How much rabbit do YOU want?

An Ok platformer for PC. Back when there were few games of these kind for PC, this was quite unique. However, although It looks and sounds good, the controls and level design aren't the best, so I wouldn't recommend it unless you have a certain degree of nostalgia for it.

I first played this game as a child in the 90's. All these years later, it still holds up!