Version Differences
5 years ago
Germany

I maintain a webpage with Jazz Jackrabbit 1 version differences:

http://www.lixgame.com/jazz/versions.html

-- Simon

Québec
RetroChaosQueen
She/Her, They/Them
5 years ago

Hi! I intend to run Jazz Jackrabbit in the future and I have a question: can we run it with the "OpenJazz" (hi-res Jazz for Win 10)?

Germany

Hi!

If you'd like to learn the run in OpenJazz, go ahead -- we can make a separate category for that, or you can switch to Jazz 1 after you've learned the route.

I wouldn't mix OpenJazz and Jazz 1 on a single leaderboard. The physics and timings are radically different: OpenJazz is not a reverse-engineered Jazz 1, but a very liberal re-implementation of the rough physics. Notable differences of OJ to Jazz 1:

  • Long fadeouts, near-instant loads
  • Can't skip score counter by firing
  • Damage boost preserves horizontal direction
  • In mid-air, you can accelerate left/right quickly
  • Enemies compute/move before they would spawn in Jazz 1
  • Bullets fly further than the Jazz 1 screen size
  • Acceleration in general feels odd, but hard to describe

I've ground Diamondus 1 and 2 with single-episode timing. Good runs finish around 1:13 in OpenJazz when I can get 1:06 on average in Jazz 1 in Dosbox. Looks like OpenJazz runs will be roughly 10 % slower, it would be unfair to have OpenJazz and Jazz 1 on the same leaderboard.

If you have the Jazz 1.3 fullgame (e.g., the 2017 GOG release), you can get 1.0 (Floppy version) physics: Download the shareware of Jazz 1.0 or 1.1 at [1] below, copy the shareware's JAZZ.EXE and MENU.000 into Jazz 1.3, replacing the 1.3 files with these names. Run this hybrid in Dosbox. This will only play episodes 1-6 and will even claim "This is shareware" during the main menu, but physics will be like Jazz 1.0.

[1] https://www.classicdosgames.com/game/Jazz_Jackrabbit.html

Edited by the author 5 years ago
607 likes this
Québec
RetroChaosQueen
She/Her, They/Them
5 years ago

So "MS-JAZZ" runs faster? I guess that rules out OpenJazz! ;) Thank you for the reply, SimonN. :)

607 and SimonN like this
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