CC99: January 2000.
JJA: December 2002.
NOTHING SINCE THEN.

Clearly, waiting for Epic to take an interest in Jazz again isn't working. Here is how low Jazz is on their priority list:

• They have no plans for another Jazz game.
• They don't even care about a Jazz Jackrabbit mod for UT2004.
• www.jazzjackrabbit.com is down - what more do you need?

Our other hope was Game Titan - but Game Titan lost interest in making Jazz games after the world received JJA, bought it, and said it wasn't really very good at all. To clarify, I do not mean the people at this forum, I mean the world in general. Waiting for Game Titan isn't going to work either.

What we need to do is get rid of that word, "Waiting". We are acting like the United States Democrats. We are rolling over and letting the game industry walk all over us. What we should be doing is taking the fight back to them, and putting Jazz Jackrabbit in the public eye.

Here is why it isn't in the public eye. A few comparisons!
HOW TO CHANGE MUSIC:
Sonic: Wait years and years until someone develops a hacking tool which only a select group of people ever hear of.
Jazz: Edit the field in level properties.

HOW TO MAKE NEW LEVELS:
Sonic: Wait years and years, OR make a fangame!
Commander Keen: Wait years and years, OR make a fangame!
Jazz: Use JCS.

HOW TO USE NEW GRAPHICS:
Sonic: Make a fangame! I suppose technically there are hacking tools these days, but I don't think anyone knows how to use them.
Commander Keen: Make a fangame, or a mod.
Jazz: Open up MS Paint and create a bitmap image, then load it in JCS.

HOW TO USE A NEW STORY:
Sonic: Write a story and post it on some popular fan fiction site.
Commander Keen: Make a fangame.
Jazz: Make a level pack out of .j2l files.

WHAT DOES THE COMMUNITY DO?
Sonic: Creates fangames, edits sprites, makes sprite comics, writes fan fiction, and complains that every new Sonic game is absolutely horrible.
Commander Keen: Creates fangames and edits sprites.
Megaman: Edits sprites, creates sprite comics, writes fan fiction.
Jazz: Makes .j2l and .j2t files, and remixes old Jazz music in formats nobody knows how to use because they're not .mp3.

Do you see the problem yet? Because we have JCS - because we can do infinitely more than any other game community - for that VERY REASON nobody notices us. Suppose there's a download site. A guy called Jamie Bailey posts a Sonic fangame on it. It's an .exe file. Everyone (who uses windows) can download it and play it, whether or not they own any Sonic games at all. A guy named Kejero posts his JJ2 level pack. It's a series of .j2l files. The only people that can play it are the people who ALREADY have Jazz 2, and thus don't need to be attracted to it by downloading this file.
Likewise goes for stories. We tell epic tales of evil forces being summoned from the depths of hell and doing battle with an old moldy pastry - in the format of .j2l files. Sonic fans tell stories of Sonic and Tikal having a tea party with Knuckles, who is tied to a chair because he didn't want to come, and the stories are in the format of ordinary text documents. Megaman fans create sprite comics where all their favorite robots have really big fights and then praise the author. These sprite comics are then put online in the format of ordinary image files, where anyone can read them.

What we need to do is move out of .j2l and .j2t files and into the visible world of gaming and game fans. Here are a few ways to become noticed:

• Put Jazz in your signature. My typical signature has links to J2O, JCF and Haze's Hideout's downloads page. Yours can be like this or it can be more eye catching.
• Use Jazz as your avatar. This is good as everyone sees it! Here's what I use, steal it or make your own, whichever.
• Find various places looking for images, and put Jazz in there. I saw a Sonic fangame looking for billboards, I edited the J2O logo a bit. Hey, you never know.
• If you write a Jazz story, publicize it. There's already the Jazz Jackrabbit section at fanfiction.net, use that. And go out into that big open internet and find other places you can post your stories!
• If you draw Jazz or one of the other characters, put it out on the internet wherever it's appropriate! One easy place is the Jazz Jackrabbit section at Fanart-Central, but that's only going to attract people already looking for Jazz Jackrabbit, right? Find other sites and post your stuff there. Deviant Art is excellent for this - and if people recognize the character, post some links!
• If you have cooperative english or art teachers, feel free to showcase your work there! Hey, the people in your school could play Jazz too!
• If you have uncooperative teachers, put Jazz on your shirt or your backpack or something! Hey, I had the Jazz doll sticking out of my backpack at the start of WC2004, that's how Mike recognized me. Jazz is noticable.
• This is an obvious one... if there's a poll someplace you visit about the best games, or just a topic about games in general, be sure to mention Jazz.
• Just because you're part of the community doesn't mean you can't start Jazz discussion elsewhere, by the way. Don't always wait for someone else.
• Find companies which could go well with Jazz. DC Comics does a lot of liscensing, and Archie Comics creates the Sonic the Hedgehog series. Would it be possible to interest them? What about toy makers?
• If you can't draw big pictures, but you can do sprites, make some Jazz sprites. Put them somewhere where there are lots of sprite artists. There is an enormous spriting community out there, most of which consists of game players. Probably the best places to go would be the Megaman and Sonic communities, although there might be some other game/s I'm not thinking of.
• Or, for that matter, make a sprite comic. Remember Iam Canadian's Jazz comics? Everyone who saw them liked them - but only we saw them. And they're not too hard to make. Think of a story which would work well illustrated, take a few screenshots of sprites, assemble a few backgrounds in JCS, and you're doing fine. Then post it somewhere where there are lots of sprite comic fans and/or creators. Suggestions would include the Megaman, Mario, Metroid and possibly Kirby communities. Don't try Sonic, they hate sprite comics these days.
• If you CAN draw big pictures, and you have some time, why not a real comic? JSZ Jazz did it!
• If you can program at all, make fangames. You don't have to be skilled to do fun stuff. You can screenshot a lot of JJ2 sprites, or use Doubble Dutch's JJ1 extractions, or even draw your own (or get someone else to draw them for you). ET did it, but we've been slow to follow on this one. Then post your games anywhere that's appropriate, and use the forums for your development environment (E.G. Gamemaker, Darkbasic, MMF) while the game is still being made. Promotion!
• Are you in the community of some game that supports modding or at least graphic editing? Guess what I'm going to say to do.

That's a big list. There are probably other things you could be doing that I'm not thinking of, and which you are free to post. But that's a lot to start off on.
Why should we do all this? So that people notice Jazz Jackrabbit who aren't already in the Jazz Jackrabbit community! It's possible. I'm part of Sonic Fan Games HQ, and I didn't own a single Sonic game until sometime afterwards when a friend gave me one. Let's get some people like me, and we can encourage them to buy the games afterwards.
And even if they don't join the community, they have still been seeing Jazz Jackrabbit all over the internet by now (because I trust you guys). People have memories, and they talk about this. Eventually, maybe a game company notices. Maybe something happens. The absolute worst thing that could happen is nothing at all, so we have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

On a final note, it wouldn't hurt to make a few allies. Sonic has always been similar to Jazz, and he's imitating the green hare even more these days with that new Shadow game. A lot of Sonic fans know who Jazz is. Let's take advantage of that. Commander Keen used to be an ally, but I think only about eight people play it these days, so don't bother. Who else? There are a lot of games out there...



"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world, indeed it is the only thing that ever has." ~Margaret Mead

I'm already participating in this by making Guilty Gene and Jazzy artworks. But sure, I'd like to see more people to do something from that list. I think the same way but never thought of it to make such thread. Since Epic doesn't care anymore, the future of Jazz is in our hands. Who knows, maybe one day they will notice us again and say "wait... isn't that our green bunny who's now an underground franchise?"

Well i've sparked some really excitment round the gamemaker forums....suprising how many people love jazz and used to play it waiting for the game !
I am looking into the sonic forums you pointed out now, looks ok...ive had a hunt around other modeling sites before looking for popular forums to post in, however its suprisingly hard tofind em !
Well i'll seeya later... great thread by the way !

If you ever see someone that might be interested in jj2 feel free to point them in a direction to where they can find it. I am personally an advocate for distributing jj2 for free (not on j2o ok). But let's not turn this into an arguement since I have a feeling at least one person here wants to berate me for that.

JJ2? I've already tried inviting some people to the Razz Arena. Didn't work yet, but I'll try more.

Congratulations, you just made me grin.

To the eye of the public, which either forgot about JJ2 or never knew about it at all, Jazz is childish. Sure, Jazz might wield a gun, but he is green and his gun is blue. The mainstream gamer, which you are supposedly aiming at, will not suddenly go playing a 7-year-old game with a "kiddy" main character that needs several patches before it plays like it should. They won't be willing to pay for it either, and as far as I know you are mordicus against "piracy". They will probably laugh at the one in their class who reads a story about a green rabbit on an imaginary planet who is fighting against turtles. I don't think using Jazz as your avatar or signature would help much either. I am a frequent visitor of a forum that's mainly about gaming, and obviously a majority of the forum users show a game character in either their avatar or signature. Currently a lot of people use a Resident Evil 4 character, because that game is hot. This doesn't suddenly make me, or any others who weren't interested before, want to play RE4. The same applies for the art subject idea: it doesn't make people want to play JJ2. I see a lot of art containg game characters when browsing DeviantArt, but I never think "Hey, this is Megaman, let's play megaman!". Viewing nice fan-art of some forgotten eighties-band doesn't make me want to buy their CD's either.

Sure, it might catch the interest of a few retrogaming freaks. Those will probably download the game off some abandonware site, play it, get bored of the low-quality singleplayer game, shift to the multiplayer part, and notice it doesn't work. Some will then ditch the game, some will google this site and eventually find the patches. Some of them will still not be able to play because of for example router problems, so they get frustrated and leave. Only very few will even get to play the game online, and those might not even like it. The only thing that might work is telling people personally of this site - and let them decide if they like it or not.

Originally Posted by sers^^

To the eye of the public, which either forgot about JJ2 or never knew about it at all, Jazz is childish. Sure, Jazz might wield a gun, but he is green and his gun is blue. The mainstream gamer, which you are supposedly aiming at, will not suddenly go playing a 7-year-old game with a "kiddy" main character that needs several patches before it plays like it should.

Oh, so Sonic and Megaman aren't kiddy, even with those lame TV shows? Yet they still get a lot of fans.
Besides, everyone in my class knows I'm a JJ fan and they don't consider me as childish. They even enjoy looking at all those Guilty Gene inks and sketches, even if they can't tell what are these about.

Aiming at mainstream gamers is stupid, like you pointed out. I doubt violet was suggesting that.

There are more people than you think who like old games and a surprising amount of people who like 2d action games. I don't think liero is popular any more, but there is a game out there called soldat which is currently pretty popular. JJ2 is obviously different, but it's obvious that not everyone is drawn to mainstream games.

Of course, there's one key difference about those games I mentioned. It is not that they are more violent or more "mature", it is that they are freeware. The jj2 community has a rather hardline anti-piracy stance, at least officially.

Basically if the game is really easy to get for free, more people will get it, especially since it is relatively small. It won't become popular though. Getting the source code would also work but we all know how likely that is.

Also, getting the patches for jj2 isn't as hard as you would think. The most popular abandonware site out there has a useful link on the download page, and every other download site I know of makes patches easily availbe.

And no, I am not going to give any links here or mention anything specifically, so keep your hands off that edit button you dirty admins. >:(

Congratulations sers^^, you just double posted. ^^;

Well, I agree with Violet CLM more here, even though you have some good points sers^^, I think we should try though.

Originally Posted by EvilMike

I don't think liero is popular any more, but there is a game out there called soldat which is currently pretty popular.

I'm working on a Jazz mod for Soldat right now. Check the gamemaker forum here.

Originally Posted by ?JSZ¿ JaZz!

Oh, so Sonic and Megaman aren't kiddy, even with those lame TV shows? Yet they still get a lot of fans.
Besides, everyone in my class knows I'm a JJ fan and they don't consider me as childish. They even enjoy looking at all those Guilty Gene inks and sketches, even if they can't tell what are these about.

But the Guilty Gene comics are way more "mature" (in search of a better term :P) than the original Jazz Jackrabbit games, and have a darker athmosphere. Jazz Jackrabbit is all about "defeat the nerd who tries to conquer the world", your comic has, from what I've seen, a slightly different story - and Dark Jazz (=That grey bunny?) has a less "kiddy" image, in my humble opinion.

Besides, with all this hinting at how the Sonic community could be an example, it seems to be pretty isolated as well - not many people know about it when they're not in, at least I never heard anyone mentioning a Sonic fansite/forum, though I never discuss Sonic anyway. It's a lot bigger indeed, but that might as well be because Sega releases new Sonic games every now and then - and indeed, the Sonic characters act in TV series. This obviously makes Sonic more "famous", and the community bigger - more people know about it. Too bad there's no Jazz TV series . I honestly wouldn't know if Megaman is isolated or something or not - I actually never heard of an active Megaman community.

A few weeks back, I tried to persuade the owner of this site: http://www.reinerstileset.4players.de:1059/englisch.htm to join our community and maybe do a few stuff/drawings on Jazz, but he didn't have time. We should really step out into the big, wide world and shout out JAZZ JACKRABBIT!

Everyone who has a website of ANY sorts, and is a member of this community, should draw attention to Jazz Jackrabbit and make special link and/or description sections for the game. The same goes for blogs, livejournals, and similar stuff. We should even start advertising, provided it isn't considered spam, Jazz Jackrabbit on big misc. games forums (I'm sure you ppl know of them ).

Originally Posted by EvilMike

Of course, there's one key difference about those games I mentioned. It is not that they are more violent or more "mature", it is that they are freeware. The jj2 community has a rather hardline anti-piracy stance, at least officially.

Basically if the game is really easy to get for free, more people will get it, especially since it is relatively small.

Yes, um, that was part of the original point... which is kind of where the fangames and things come in.

And sers, while I know you like to disagree with me, I kind of disagree with you as well. Just because you seem to be a mainstream gamer and you have never become interested in a game by seeing it advertised, I have. And there are other people like me out there. And I have trouble trusting your opinions on mascot games anyway when you seem to be unaware that people play them.

I do not like disagreeing with you, but your opinion is generally not the same as mine. I'm not trying to provocate by saying something completely different.

I wouldn't call myself a mainstream gamer - I still enjoy playing the Commander Keen series, and the only recent games I own are XIII and Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, in fact I like older games more than newer games: advertising doesn't really influence me either.
I do not really understand what you mean with your last sentence, because I never said nobody played Megaman or Sonic, I said I didn't know about their communities. Just like the Megaman community probably doesn't know about us.

I know quite a lot Sonic fans personally and one Megaman fan. From a, let's call it, research upon Sonic fans, they make sprite comics quite often because they're the most common Sonic fan stuff and thus seem easy to do. My thesis is: generally begginers will apply to produce the most common thing in community. And our most common is a JJ2 level. Battle or CTF (most often battle as a first level) for 1.23 and test or hotel for TSF.

If my thesis is true, then we can encourage people to do sprite comics by doing some on our own and putting them together in a highly visible place.

Reading through this somewhat inspired me to continue my game using Jazz 1 tilesets/planets, but with Jazz Advance characters/enemies/sprites.
Speaking of which: There is a user called Dolphman, from a forum I visit called Pixeltendo he is currently making a Knuckles Vs. Jazz Jackrabbit game(With a pretty nifty edit of Marberla) I redirected him over here a while back, but he has been having problems, and it won't let him post.

EDIT - (-)(-)(-)(-) wrong thread ! sorry !

Originally Posted by n00b

Reading through this somewhat inspired me to continue my game using Jazz 1 tilesets/planets, but with Jazz Advance characters/enemies/sprites.
Speaking of which: There is a user called Dolphman, from a forum I visit called Pixeltendo he is currently making a Knuckles Vs. Jazz Jackrabbit game(With a pretty nifty edit of Marberla) I redirected him over here a while back, but he has been having problems, and it won't let him post.

Well then could you give a link to this forum? I might aswell register there.

I have made a sprite comic in last few minutes. Now, where should I put it?

sprites.fireball20xl.com
EDIT: And BTW, I'm known as Lijik there.

I've been thinking for a while of making a sprite comic containing sprites from Lost Vikings 2, Eternal Daughter, Commander Keen, Jazz 1, and other classic platformers. I recently lost my sprite sheet of Mia from Eternal Daughter, though, but if someone could help me replace it i'd be ever grateful.

Eternal Daugher is hardly, uh, classic, but sure, go with it.

Originally Posted by n00b

sprites.fireball20xl.com
EDIT: And BTW, I'm known as Lijik there.

Hmmm, I didn't notice TSR had a forum. We should provide them Double Dutch's spritesheet pack.

-edit- posted in wrong thread

you strike inspiration and hope in all of our hearts.

dude that's a pretty clever point. i think we should just make an ftp and let people download jj2 for free though. epic don't deserve our money anymore.

There are already various places to download JJ2 and Epic doesn't care. No, I'm not pointing them out here.

Looks like there is some JJ fanart outside the community.
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/18128854/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/18128955/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/18129009/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/18129112/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/17539010/
These two are usually Sonic fans.

Victims!

There's random Jazz stuff all over the place if you know how to look.

I know, but usually I don't find it so easy to seek as this time.

Browsing the net often, I noticed that many games are more popular because you find links about them when you're looking for something else.

let get back on topic.
we are searching for ways to tell everyone how cool jazz is.
thats hard if we are trying to do that by letting them draw or cut out tiny pixel firgures that they dont know and let them play a game that does not work if you wont patch.

we need to prove jazz is cool without asking them to do anneything. it needs to be like seeying the light. in these days that wont happan with an old retro game. Epic knows that but wont take the risk of making another jazz game.

but we have nothing to looze so we can make things that rock, new things! not modded ripped and patched things from epic. those are only cool to the ones that are allready in.

i think baggers and me are walking the write way by making NEW stuff with less ripping from origonal epic thingy's.

(i know i use a lot of jazz1, jazz2, and even jazz 3d things in my game but i am re making all of them step by step untill its all new.)


just a thought

Exactly! What I was trying to say was (in other words) that this is an idea to make sure Jazz gets noticed.
For example; a link like "Jazz Game". When someone types the word "game" in Google (though that's not very likely) this link could appear in the list. So, Jazz gets noticed.
Well... my idea is that if we really want everybody to notice Jazz, a comic book or TV show would be the best way.

Originally Posted by piet

let get back on topic.
we are searching for ways to tell everyone how cool jazz is.
thats hard if we are trying to do that by letting them draw or cut out tiny pixel firgures that they dont know and let them play a game that does not work if you wont patch.

we need to prove jazz is cool without asking them to do anneything.

Wait, when did the non-affiliated ever have to do anything? All they have to do is see stuff being done by other people.
(And... uh... JJ2 works just fine. Except for the list servers, but internet play is only one small part of the game.)

Mircea: Interestingly, the 18th result for "Jazz game" is actually about Jazz Jackrabbit. Not that I know why people would search for that.

Originally Posted by Unknown Rabbit

Wait, when did the non-affiliated ever have to do anything?

nvm that part about them drawing, clicking a link in a signature is to mutch work for most of the ones we are trying to get here.

i know cos i dont click links in signatures.

comic of tv show whould to the trick, tv show is to hard but maybe some good artist can make a commic about jazz for some non jazz game site.

But is it legal to release a comic book or TV show about Jazz without asking Epic?

Originally Posted by Mircea

But is it legal to release a comic book or TV show about Jazz without asking Epic?

Nope.

TV show has been tried already though, for those that didn't know yet. But Epic gave up after nobody showed interest in the concept. Fancomics for the moment should be okay, but if you want to do it on a bigger scale getting Epic's permission would be the way to go.

fan based creations for profit or non profit can be illegal, take a look at what funimation did to bid for power.

the question is does epic care that mutch about jazz as funimation does about dragonball?

A. it does and it will stop us making realy big things like TV-Shows or a realy good game with lots of online players. sounds bad but if they do care about jazz they might be working on a jazz game themselves.

B. it does not care about jazz. good now we can do more with jazz before epic says "stop". but to bad since they dont care about jazz we wont be having a new game made by epic like jazz III.

Epic is evil for throwing their JJ games into limbo... The community is dying, yet they don't care. They don't need the game anymore, yet they won't release the source code. It's illegal to distribute JJ2 as abandonware, yet they turn a blind eye. Epic must be the perfect example of complete neutrality. They literally do nothing about the game. Sure they claim they will support any professionally-made non-fan games, but they haven't actually done anything by themselves.

so what if we made a cool jazz game that realy rocks and we can get outsiders to play it.

epic will support us... if they did problem solved.
new game means new players, new players means problem solved again

so that would be like B and a little of A.

epic does not mind thair jazz beeing used in a non fan-game. what makes a game a fan game, creators of jazz2 are fans of the green hare only they are paid.

But what if we make a really cool Jazz game and we present it directly to Epic when it's finished. If it's really really great and Epic knows Jazz has so many fans they might accept it. Maybe they somehow feel sorry for not listening to their fans and they would like to show us that they care...

i think we must look at the programmers and animators of epic, they love the rabbit maybe they can do something.

en de groeten