Last year, I wrote a small blog entry on the Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Anniversary Bash, an annual community event for Epic Games’ long-forgotten late 90’s run-and-gun. I took part in the 24th iteration of the Bash due to being in the right place at the right time, having just bought the game through GOG (including its expansion pack, The Secret Files, for free). And this year, the community was returning with another four-day weekend of rabbit roasting on Easter weekend. This time, it was a milestone event, celebrating 25 years since the launch of the original Jazz Jackrabbit 2 in 1998.
The game’s small but dedicated community hopped online to experience the Anniversary Bash early Friday afternoon (in US EST at least). The format was similar to the year prior: Day 1 was pure (Death)Match, Day 2 was Capture the Flag, Day 3 was various alternate rulesets with a focus on Free-for-All (Last Rabbit Standing, Zombies, Randomizer, and Spaceships), and Day 4 was a variety of team-based objectives (Deathflag, Multi-Flag CTF, Ruler vs. Ruler, and Team Spaceships) that would end with one final surprise: the free-for-all survival game mode Ground Force, where players must destroy structures and platforms to ring-out opponents without falling off themselves. It was part of the third day of last year’s Anniversary Bash but was initially not set to return for this year until player feedback caused it to serve as the event’s finale until the server would empty out (or what actually happened: everyone getting kicked due to the server crashing at the last minute).
The map set featured in the Bash contained a mix of new and returning maps, some being instantly recognizable from Anniversary Bash 24. When it comes to the maps themselves, there weren’t really any that I’d say I disliked playing on, though there was a few maps with pretty strong chokepoints, especially in the Capture the Flag map set. Other maps contained the rare setpiece that seemed to be designed with Spaz Jackrabbit in mind thanks to being far and away the most popular Jackrabbit of the trio of playable characters. That doesn’t mean the other Jackrabbits are completely unviable picks; I played as Jazz and managed to score a few wins and high placements, and a few other players were able to bring similar results with Lori.
Server latency was still very much an issue in Jazz Jackrabbit 2, causing actions to not exactly match up with how the the server was seeing and displaying the action. Understandable considering I was playing on a server from across the Atlantic Ocean and without serious rewrites to the game’s net code there’s pretty much no chance that we’ll see something that works better for players playing from long distances. That said, I believe my new, more powerful computer was able to mitigate the latency issues to an extent and I was able to use this to my advantage in a few games to score some surprise hits/frags and escape the bottom half of the rankings every now and then.
Overall, the event was fun and it was nice being able to experience a game I don’t end up playing that often nowadays with a community I’m mostly new to, especially when it comes by only once a year. Maybe in 2024 there will be more shakeups and fun surprises on Anniversary Bash 26? Only time will tell.
