Jazz Jackrabbit Collection

I was absolutely OBSESSED with this game as a kid. It fast, colorful, has great soundtrack and visuals, there are tons of secrets, and it's just a lot of fun. The screen is maybe a bit too much zoomed in, so if you're a first-time player you may find it difficult to avoid enemies. You're really supposed to just hold the fire button and run, though. Locate the blue Rapid Fire guns as soon as a level starts, and don't let go of that fire button. Overall, the game is absolutely fantastic and I recommend it to any 2D platformer enthusiasts out there, though I'd say it's tad too expensive for how old it is. I wouldn't pay more than $5 for this.

Overall, great classic. But the pricetag is simply too high, not going to say much more.

I am so happy that Jazz is on GOG, I'm writing my first review ever here. I have been expecting this release forever. But my child's memory is sad, as the included Christmas add-on is only the Holiday Hare95. But the best version was the Holiday Hare94 with more fun graphics, music and design. Hope GOG can add this missing piece and it will get a 5 stars from me!

This one combines "fast" with "pew pew". Which isn't a bad idea. However, how does it handle the camera issues where you often don't have time to react to obstacles, enemies and porjectiles that come off at the edge of a screen due to your character moving too fast, a bane of many bad Sonic clones? Sonic would do it by changing core gameplay to have ring health system to make it less of issues, having level design with enemy placement not to be cheap, and you were attacking enemies by rolling, not having to jump straight from the top of them, as well as being able to roll while moving down slopes. Now, does Jazz do anything to handle such camera issues? Not at all, it fully flops into this flaw face-first, earning the title of "bad Sonic clone from 90s". So if it came out on Genesis instead of PC, it would have met a critism, I am sure. Oh well. Even taking it slow is not easy as your character accelerates near instantly and projectiles can come from sides of screen just as fast and sometimes you have to jump blindly as well. Not much fun in gameplay to be found there. It does however has slow-mo mode on T button but 50% slow-motion is way too slow to be much exciting and physics still feel sloppy. Cute graphics and music tho. I like that it has animated cutscenes at the end of episodes. Also, if you are going to play it, make sure to download the fan patch that fixes one of the levels, as physics changes in official patches seems to have made it near-impossible to beat.

Played the hell out of this game as shareware way back when, but I never owned the full game. I'm not even sure it cost $10 back then. Regardless, it's a fantastic platformer with a great soundtrack. This was back when Cliffy B knew how to make a game. :)