Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Anniversary Bash 26: The Recap

(Pardon the low-res Spaz, it was 2 in the morning when I made this and I couldn’t bother to go find a higher-resolution image)

For the previous two years I’ve been doing blog writeups on the Anniversary Bash, a yearly event held by the community of Epic Games’ Jazz Jackrabbit 2 to celebrate the anniversary of said game’s original (shareware) release. For this year, my drive to participate has been the same as all the Bashes I joined since 2022: to give a community that doesn’t get a lot of attention the recognition it deserves.

The Anniversary Bash was the most active between 8PM and 12AM CET, which translated to 2PM and 6PM in my timezone (EST). Friday and Saturday ended up being the most active days of the Bash and the days where I was present for the entire length with a few breaks here and there. Normally these two days would be considered the “standard” days of the event—Day 1 is Battle, Day 2 is Capture the Flag (commonly shortened to just “Capture” in the JJ2 community). For this year, the hosts decided to try a different format: For each time the level rotation for Battle looped twice, the game mode would swap to CTF and after two full loops on the CTF levels, the inverse would happen.

For all four days, the server was run alongside mod files known as “mutators” that altered parts of the game. As a Jazz player, one particular mutator would give the game’s titular star a buff to his super jump uppercut, now coming out instantly with zero delay and making it more useful to reach higher platforms and serve as a useful, albeit situational, getaway option. The other of the Jackrabbit Bros., Spaz, was played by roughly 90% of the Bash’s player base thanks to just how good his double jump is as both a traversal tool and to help him get some much-needed height while in combat. As with 2022 and 2023, I swore with Jazz for the entire event as I’ve become too used to the helicopter ears and high-jump technique, but I would briefly swap to Spaz and third playable character Lori with another mutator that let players change characters on the fly without having to back out to the main menu. Despite being a really useful idea (and a great QoL feature in general) on paper, the mutator was shut off after only a few rounds of being active as players could simply switch mid game whenever they wanted a different set of abilities and what character the player picked did not carry over from level to level, reverting back to their default pick once the current match was over.

One mutator that was able to stick around was True Fur, a mod that I indirectly contributed to (or inspired, I’m not sure). It implements a form of extended custom character colors in a manner similar to Sonic Robo Blast 2 that works on all three of the main playable characters. Having released late last year, this was the first Bash to implement True Fur, and I pretty much used it for every day after the first to play as a dark blue Jazz Jackrabbit. The remaining mutators mostly served to enable the alternate game modes that became more common on the last two days of the event, but a few did sneak into the first half as teasers to liven up the experience. The roster of game mode mutators included the likes of a randomizer (spawn with a random weapon that you must use, or have a chance of transforming into a bird/frog on each life), Multiflag (players can carry more than one flag), Last Rabbit Standing (each player gets only one life per game), Pestilence (aka the Zombies mode), Free Bird (a mode in which dead players become birds and must be “de-birded” to return to the game), “SWAT” (All players spawn with 1 hit point), and Treasure Hunt (Players gain gems from defeating enemies and must cash them out back at their base).

Not every community-made game mode made the cut for this year's Bash: A mode where players pick a team leader and then hunt the opposing team’s leader was nowhere in sight. Another particular game mode that I greatly anticipated and associated with the finale days of the Bash, Ground Force, in which players use weapons to demolish the stage and ring-out other players, failed to make a presence this year. It’s unfortunate that not every mode was able to come back, but considering the dip in players as the event went into its second half, the drive to play these modes was not strong enough to warrant playing them considering they best work with bigger player counts in mind.

The final hour of the Bash would feature a few games of the "SWAT" mode I mentioned above, and it made me realize that it may be one of if not my strongest mode in all of Jazz Jackrabbit 2 as you no longer had to time your shots around other players' post-hit invulnerability and could just go wild with what weapons you collected till you gained enough points to win. Afterwards, a joke level with nothing but a horde of Jazz raining down from the screen to the castle level background was all that was left before everyone was disconnected from the server. Overall, even with a few setbacks and technical issues that arose, the event was a blast and I applaud the organizers for working their hardest to gather the Jazz Jackrabbit 2 community together for another special weekend. Although in the end it does make me wish for more, as typical for many of the annual events I attend each year.

So what else do I have to mention about the Bash? Well... not much in all honesty. As it’s been well over a month since the Bash came to an end after the first weekend of April, I was running well behind my personal schedule going into April and even May due to preparing for a more active lifestyle (mostly because of all the conventions in my area, more on that in my next blogpost maybe). The only other thing I could discuss regards to the Bash that I didn’t already is the input lag, though that’s on me for playing the game from across the Atlantic Ocean and by now I’ve gotten used to playing with the handicap anyways. And considering the age of the game, it wouldn’t be fair to expect a huge net code update to make server responses near-seamless.

In conclusion, I would like to give my sincere thanks to the the Jazz Jackrabbit 2 multiplayer community for organizing another great Bash. As for myself, I’ll be catching up on blogposts for this blog since I’ve been falling behind this season after a rather slow and busy April.