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I remember going downstairs into the work area and I remember he was playing Jazz Jackrabbit on his old computer, and I remember thinking that this game must be epic.
Anyway, random story. It just evokes that memory for some reason.
Although I never played Jazz Jackrabbit, I remember in our town there was this guy (I think he was a picture frame-maker) and I think my dad was friends with him. I remember going downstairs into the work area and I remember he was playing Jazz Jackrabbit on his old computer, and I remember thinking that this game must be epic. Anyway, random story. It just evokes that memory for some reason.
I wish Jazz had been more popular. I loved Jazz Jackrabbit 1 and 2, and I believe there were plans to make a third, but they decided it wouldn’t sell enough copies. If anyone here can recommend platformers similar to Jazz that run on a Mac, I’d love to play them. I never got into shooters or 3D games, but always enjoyed platformers like Mario and Contra, and Jazz felt perfect for me.
a good chunk of the third exists and is playable it's not very good though (except the music, Alexander Brandon is still amazing)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gckYADZp0A
Yeah, it's interesting, but I think it's not a huge loss. Early 3D games have aged very badly, while many from the 2D era are still perfectly playable. So a higher res 2D followup might have actually been better.
OMG! Jetpack from Adept Software is still available?! https://www.adeptsoftware.com/jetpack/
Similarly OpenJazz allows playing Jazz1. It has even more quirks than Resurrection, and can similarly allow zooming out with higher resolutions
Ok, now I just need Earthworm Jim, Commander Keen, Raptor Call of the Shadows, and Uncharted Waters and my childhood will be successfully recreated.
As a minor observation, I'm pretty (pleasantly) surprised that the project provides a NixOS package for the application. As somebody who tends to flit between Arch, Fedora, and NixOS, seeing packages for NixOS before Fedora availability is a very surprising signal in terms of Linux distribution popularity.
Hell yeah! Jazz Jackrabbit 2 was amazing and I always thought it was sad it became abandonware.
I’ve always been curious… are there concrete definitions of “abandonware” in the various major jurisdictions? Or is it just a loose concept that remains legally dubious? I feel like “Adopt an Abandonware” would be a pretty great source of meaningful, educational, and productive projects for devs with extra cycles or looking to refine skills.
It's just a case of "the lesser evil": preserving games when nobody who owns them cares enough about them to sell them or make sure they can still be run.
But legal? No.