Jazz Jackrabbit (1994)

Preliminary: I remember having a console-style gamepad that I could plug into my PC to play this game as a kid :-p

I seem to remember the game being much darker in color, I dunno how to explain it. And my goodness is it fast-moving, I see why wikipedia said it was trying to be a Zool/Sonic game. Not my favorite type of platformers. I know I played this a bunch tho. And I remember carrots? Hm was this the game I was thinking of? I thiknk it was like a demo free on the comptuer.

Definitely imperfect, but I played through 4 levels, the music was better than I expected, and I have a lot of nostalgia for it. So this deserves an honorary rating.

Look: 7.5/10 Nothing spectacular, but slight boost for nostalgia

Sound: 8.5/10 Excellent. Like that classic Commodore vibe.

Play: 7.5/10 Not really a hueg fan of this kind of platformer, but I did play this longer than expected, enjoyed finding alternative routes, and like the way you can stumble upon secrets. Very Sonic esque.

Feel: 7.5/10

Attachment: 7.5/10

Overall: 7.7/10

After playing and really enjoying Jill of the Jungle, I thought I'd give another PC platformer released by Epic Games a shot.

I did not like this one nearly as much.

I can appreciate the game's cheeky spin on the "tortoise and the hare" fable, but that's where its cohesion ends. The character movement and abilities feel like every early-90s mascot platformer put in a blender. The level layouts have a ton of branching paths yet still manage to feel claustrophobic. The special stages are like Sonic CD but boring. The animation and artwork may have been impressive at the time, especially considering Cliff Bleszinski would have still been in his teens while designing them, but this is still a pretty homely game by today's standards or even compared to other cartoony PC games of the time.

I made it a few episodes in before deciding this just isn't for me.