Jazz Jackrabbit 2: The Christmas Chronicles (PC) Review

It's usually a bit exciting to reach the end of not just a game, but an entire series and say "yeah, I finished it" but I knew that wasn't gonna happen here. The Christmas episode for Jazz Jackrabbit 1 set about what I expected from this game: with a very short session that does little new but draped in snow... yeah, that's exactly what I got.

Jazz Jackrabbit 2: The Secret Files (PC) Review

After the first game (and it's Christmas shareware episode) I can not say this is a franchise that started on the right foot with me. Between being way too zoomed in to run at the speeds the game wants you to and "clever" level design that served more either bounce the player around to take damage or send them a ways backwards, it just did not feel like a good game. However, it seems Epic Megagames learned from their mistakes the first time and released something that, while not spectacular, is certainly MUCH better this time around. Come on in.

Jazz Jackrabbit Collection (PC) Review

This collection has been a long time coming. About 5 years ago, I picked this one up as part of a holiday sale dirt cheap, wanting an old classic I remembered fondly as a kid. At the time, I only played the shareware and even then only because a friend had that. But I remembered having fun as a kid, and for literally a buck, I was able to give it a shot. Unfortunately this is not a game that aged well.

Now before we begin, this is not so much one game as a game pack, containing both the main title and a little Christmas episode, so I reviewed them both in sections. Also, while this experience I reviewed is BASICALLY out of the box, it is not exactly. As per most MS-DOS games, modern controllers are not exactly well supported. As such I used a program to emulate keyboard buttons to an Xbox controller to gain that functionality back. I have listed the program in my specs at the end of the review, but whether you use that or another of your choice, I highly recommend doing so.

• Jazz Jackrabbit CD-ROM versions
• Jazz Jackrabbit Holiday Hare '95