Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Online

Jazz 2‘s development took no less than two and a half a year. During that time, several versions of Jazz 2 in moderately early development were sent to various testers, and three of them made their way to a public audience. Two of the versions were distributed along with some of Intel’s hardware (the result of an Epic-Intel deal), and one of them was a press release which surfaced publically around May 2004.

1.00g/1.00h (OEM versions)

The 1.00 beta versions originated in June 1997, when Jazz 2 was in the middle of its development. In the result of a deal between Epic and Intel, these WIP (Work In Progress) versions were distributed along with Intel’s hardware – hence why they’re called OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer). The OEM copies were released the same day as the complete game was published (April 9th 1998). They made their way onto the web instantly, as everyone who acquired them assumed they were the retail version. The most common beta version is 1.00g (even though most people who claim to have obtained JJ2 with hardware have 1.00h).

Engine differences

• The level/tileset format is different. Instead of .J2L and .J2T files, levels and their tilesets are together in form of .LEV files.
• The game doesn’t support .J2B files. Instead, the original music in the form of .S3M and .IT files are used.
• The physics are different. Weapons don’t fly faster when one shoots while running (aside from Water Shield‘s Whammo Ammo), they vanish more quickly, and Bouncers’ durability increases as they bounce. The collision detection also seems different – it’s impossible to wallclimb or to shoot Bouncers or Water Shield’s Whammo Ammo through the wall.
• The last two weapons (#8 and #9) are different. Instead of being Pepper Spray and Electroblaster, they’re now respectively Fireball and Blade Gun. Aside from different sprites and Fireball’s ability to come through objects, they behave pretty much like the Blaster.
• There’s no Multiplayer option aside from Splitscreen. Also, CTF mode isn’t implemented.
• There’s no 16-bit colour mode. There are no advanced video options like Low Detail, and no windowed mode.
• Buttstomping in battle games does 1 damage, sidekicking does 2. However, sidekick roasts don’t count towards the player’s roast count.
• Players drop all the ammo of the weapon they were using before they died (as CliffyB once put it, “you can share (sort of) the weapons with the other players”).
• The range of textured background’s fading is much smaller.
• The screen doesn’t shake upon activating a Rotating Rock.
• The alpha translucency is glitchy.
• The smoke ring effect is different. The layers don’t spin around and the palette doesn’t change. The background changes its centerpoint and begins spinning fast.
• The water effect works differently.
• The layers in the menu rotate much faster.
• There’s no glow effect below the options in menus.
• The invincibility effect looks different.
• The event responsible for activating the snow isn’t there – the first Inferno level (A Cold Day In Heck) uses tile-based snow in a scrolling foreground layer instead.
• The pinball paddles‘ collision detection is buggy. Also, the right paddle tends to bump the player downwards rather than upwards.
• The bridges are glitchy. The object always appears several tiles below the actual event.
• Objects can’t be pushed while they’re frozen.
• The game doesn’t crash after freezing a Gem Ring. Instead, a vast area around the event turns blue (see screenshots).
• The bosses work differently. More boulders fall as the Queen stomps, that also hurt on contact. The Tuf Boss walks back and forth between flailerang attacks instead of always heading toward the nearest player. Uterus doesn’t open his shell. Bolly Boss wasn’t finished and so wasn’t put in the official levels. Devil Devan Boss doesn’t have the first battle phase (running around and shooting) coded. Instead, he fights in his devil form alone.
• The game gets an Access Violation once the player buttstomps one of Uterus’ spike balls.
• The bosses are activated upon entering their field of view (31-tile radius from the event), rather than by touching the Activate Boss event.

Non-technical differences

• The level order is different. After playing the Colon levels, the Beach levels (with the second level being called Generic Water Level rather than Marinated Rabbit) come next, followed by Psych.
• The Carrotus levels have their tilesets switched. Tossed Salad uses the night set instead of the day one, and vice versa.
• The second Colonius level (Colonial Chaos) uses the unused Medivo music.
• The Colonius levels don’t have their background layers textured.
• The Shareware Demo levels can’t be accessed without modifying the .J2E files.
• There are numerous significant differences in the Shareware Demo levels. Also, the Labrat level is named No Name Yet, and the following two levels (Psych and Diamondus) are called Funky Grooveathon and Fourteen Carrot respectively (like the official levels the layers were taken from).
• The witch‘s dying animation is different.
• There’s no boss in the second Medivo level (Hare Scare), and the secret level in the first (Medieval Kineval) doesn’t exist.
• Several sounds (like Spaz’s while kicking, or Copters’) aren’t coded in. Also, collecting a carrot makes the same sound as collecting a gem.
• The gems use a different sprite. Also, the animations library contains rectangular gem sprites.
• The Soda Pop and Soft Drink food pickups use different sprites. Soda Pop’s can has Coca Cola’s logo on it, and Soft Drink’s has Pepsi’s logo.
• The Jungle tileset uses different layers – three layers of tall trees.
• There is no music for boss battles and Sugar Rushes.
• There are two levels which were eventually excluded – battle4.lev and race4.lev, both of which were made by Jeh and suffer from gameplay issues.
• The game comes only with the Epic’s logo beginning cutscene.
• The menu looks different. The textures are purple instead of blue.
• The logo is different.
• The loading screen is different.

0.98k (1997 E3 beta)

The oldest known beta version of Jazz 2, discovered in 2018. The 1.00 and 0.98 versions are, understandably, very similar in their main engine particulars—e.g. the weapons all seem to behave the same way—so in the list below, only ways that 0.98 differs from 1.00 will be mentioned. This is probably not the most logical organization, flying in the face of chronology, but it will do for now while new things are still being discovered.

Miscellany

• Two text files are included with 0.98k: ChangesLT.txt, which lists the changes to the game made in past versions back to 0.98h, and Readme.rtf, which appears to be from an earlier version of the game and includes a list of old names for cheat codes. (The modern list was introduced in 0.98i.)
• Two different Jazz 2 executables are included: jazz2w for Windows, and jazz2d for DOS. It is currently unknown how similar they are, due to troubles getting jazz2d to run successfully.
• Demo files use the extension “mac” instead of “j2m,” and only two are included, Castle1n and Labrat1
• “High Scores” is not available from the main menu; instead there is a “Custom Game” option that does nothing when selected. From the Options menu, only configuring controls is implemented.
• The Party Mode menu has four different options: “Splitscreen,” “Internet,” “Modem,” and “Lan.” However, none of them appear to do anything; you start setting up a local splitscreen game no matter which of the four you choose. ChangesLT.txt suggests that there should be network code, but it is unclear how it should be accessed.
• Unlike 1.00, 0.98k can run in a window. The dropdown Video menu has options for setting resolution and color bit depth, but not Low Detail, Ambient Lighting, etc.
• A lot of information gets written to jazz2w.log, including records of every cheat code.
• The JJCPU cheat code, which does nothing in the final game, here makes JJ2 frequently write some debug info to the log until JJCPU is typed again.
• The game’s final F1 screen is not yet implemented; instead pressing F1 brings up the debug info shown by F10 in 1.00 (and F9 in 1.20 and above). Pressing F1 twice shows strings counting the current numbers of objects, sprites, particles, as well as the current level of ambient lighting.
• The F7 and F8 keys adjust the ambient lighting level for debug purposes.
• The F4 key reduces the screen size by adding black borders, similar to the final game’s F3 and F4 keys but using a series of predefined reduced sizes instead.
• Pressing F12 to take a screenshot only works in 8-bit; trying in 16-bit mode writes an error message to the log.

Specific Levels/Enemies/Bosses

• Battle Game D (battle4.lev) includes a number of Big Rock events.
• The text string after defeating the Queen boss reads “Good job! Now go get Devan Shell!”
• The sign introducing frozen springs says simply “This spring is frozen.” without suggesting the use of Toaster.
• The tree background layers in the Jungle tilesets in 1.00 are not present in 0.98, suggesting they were only in the game for a very brief period.
• Instead of playing a sound continuously while flying, bats make a single sound when they start flying and are afterwards silent.
• Sucker enemies, once deflated from their Float Sucker forms, are unable to turn around and simply stop moving when they reach a wall or cliff. This is likely to be a placeholder behavior, given that the animations library includes sprites of Sucker enemies walking on walls and ceilings.
• Stand Monkey enemies do not animate while not attacking. Their walking counterparts sometimes have troubles turning around and can get stuck in place.
• Defeating the Tuf Boss turns him into his unused-in-later-versions sprite of a spiked turtle shell. The shell simply sits there unmoving until the level ends.
• Devil Devan seems to have no code. He can be placed in the level as an invisible object that players can shoot and get hurt by, but he never draws any sprites or moves around.
• Bilsy stands in place and animates quickly but does not move and has less health than usual.

Bugs and Other Unfinished Code

• Crates and barrels are not solid while frozen, and nothing comes out of them if they are destroyed before unfreezing. (Big Rocks and Big Boxes work the same as in the final game when frozen, though.)
• Shooting a Destruct Scenery event on a non-animated tile freezes the game.
• Many sounds are missing (e.g. getting hurt) or occasionally just different (e.g. standing on a ledge).
• When playing as a bird, you always face right, even when moving left.
• There is no special animation for shooting up while hanging from a vine, so your bullets go up at a 90 degree angle from your gun.
• It doesn’t seem possible to get a sugar rush, neither from the JJRUSH cheat code (though the game does register it as a valid cheat) nor from collecting 100 food pickups.
• Unlike in 1.00, bridges are always at the correct height.
• Players are able to control themselves a little while inside sucker tubes or after going through a warp. (The former in particular can occasionally result in getting stuck.)
• TNT is much less sensitive and will only explode prematurely if very near to another object.
• Buttstomp scenery blocks can be trivially destroyed by buttstomping either below them or to their sides, making them useless as ways to force the player to use uppercuts or sidekicks.
• Pressing the 1-9 keys to switch weapon doesn’t work while the shift key is being held down.
• From time to time, with unknown cause, a single repeating character (usually 5 or the infinity sign) will be drawn across the bottom of the screen.
• Cheat codes can be used in splitscreen, including battle/treasure/race. (Some of the codes apply to multiple local players, and others do not, but they still shouldn’t be usable at all when “j” is player 2’s default run key.)

Major Differences

• Instead of showing the 3D animation of the Epic MegaGames logo when the game starts up, there is a hand-drawn version of the logo in the menu palette, accompanied by an ingame animation of Jazz eating a carrot then dashing off.
• Except for Flashback, all the episodes have different names. “Formerly a Prince” is “Formerly Known as the Prince”; “Jazz in Time” is “Jazz to the Future”; and “Funky Monkeys” is “Doomed, Too” using the image from the shareware episode in the final game. (0.98k does include the Share1, Share2, and Share3 levels, but offers no way to access them from the menu system.)
• Beating an episode sends you back to the main menu instead of the first level of the next episode. You are shown a black screen with the words “End of Episode” in the center and “not done yet” at the bottom.
• The camera tries to predict the player’s movements and centers above them while they are jumping and below them while they are falling. This is actually pretty unpleasant to look at.
• Collecting 100 gems in single player gives you an extra life, just like the sign in Rabbit in Training says it should. No sound plays, but there’s a brief animation at the bottom of the screen of the strings “+1” and “Extra Life.” (The JJGEMS cheat code always gives you an extra life, even in multiplayer.)
• When you visit a coin warp but don’t have enough coins, the display at the bottom of the screen tells you how many more you need, e.g. “need x18.” This is changed in 1.00 to show the total number of coins needed by the warp, instead of the difference between that number and your current supply, but reverts back to 0.98’s behavior in the final game, albeit with an additional word “more.”
• When you visit a coin warp and do have enough coins, the coins are animated flying out of you to the top left corner of the screen, where they linger for a little while before flickering out of existence. The coin collection noise is also played multiple times.
• Only enemies give points, not gems or food or ammo or anything else.
• You can’t buttstomp too often; buttstomping, using a special attack, or pressing down to fall off a vine all reset a counter until the next time you’re allowed to buttstomp. (Crouching while on ground does not reset this counter, though.)
• The Red, Green, and Blue parameters of the Set Light event are all fully functional and tint the level’s ambient lighting, albeit only in 16-bit color.

1.10o (Press release version)

Aside from the versions sent to Intel, there were also various beta versions sent for many dutch gaming magazines. One of them was Eigen PC (now bankrupt). On May 2nd, 2004, a son of one of the workers posted a thread on the JCF about the beta version, which was back then unknown. It also came with a JCS, which was apparently capable of editing and creating Battery Check levels and tilesets.

Engine differences

• The game’s much more unstable. Once someone exits the gameloop and loads a level from the episode list, the game crashes with an Access Violation.

Non-technical differences

Screenshots

Related content outside the wiki