JJ1 Level, by 
I sort of remember promising I’d review this, so here we go ;-).
I don’t remember playing the very first versions of this as being a very pleasant experience for some reason. Of course the artwork is nice, the chosen enemies were awesome (except for one) and the level layout is just the way I generally like it. But there was one big something that sort of put me off.
When I started playing I immediately realized that it was the difficulty that put me off in the first place. So my very first action was to go back to the main menu and load the save game for the easy difficulty instead of the medium difficulty (thanks for adding those by the way). I’m a wimp, what can I say. I managed to get through the level only losing a single life this way. The things that made my life most difficult were the trigger happy turtles, and the toaster shooters. Okay, so that’s enough about the difficulty. On to the good stuff, because the difficulty really is the only bone I could pick with it. The level actually is a lot of fun to play.
I never really adored this tileset in particular, but I love the way it looks in JJ1. You made some clever additions too to make it fit in better, like black backgrounds and the splashing waterfall. If I wouldn’t know better I probably would have guessed that it was an original. I also really like the background in this level. It is an interesting purple that fades to blueish, black and even green colors. That might sound weird, but it doesn’t distract the player. I guess most people won’t even notice it during their first run through the level.
The layout of the level is enjoyable. There’s not a huge wealth of pickups and ammo, but it’s well balanced and carrots and checkpoints are in the right places. You can tell from cooba’s style that he enjoys puzzles. There are a few hidden passages and platforms that you need to find before you can advance to the next part of the level. It also occurs a few times that cooba sends you to an area to have you pick up an item that you need to access another area in the level. I personally am a big fan of stuff like this, but I can imagine it’s not everybody’s cup of tea.
A tiny point of criticism: I thought the silver bullet enemy was kind of disappointing. Especially when you look at how much time cooba spent on all of the other sprites. This might have to do with the fact that he decided he’d rather have a level out, than have it sit on his hard drive for another two years though. It’s a tiny flaw for me, but one I can live with. I can imagine that he might not even have bothered to finish the level if he would have had to put in much more time.
Overal: if you like puzzles, Jazz1 and a bit of a challenge, I’d say go for it. Good job cooba.
