Prerelease:Jazz Jackrabbit 2

This page details pre-release information and/or media for Jazz Jackrabbit 2.

To do: Concept arts, see https://www.jazz2online.com/jcf/showthread.php?t=19747 Also screenshots, maybe these? https://web.archive.org/web/19980123212452/http://www.jazzjackrabbit.com/photos.htm https://web.archive.org/web/19980628114529/http://www.jazzjackrabbit.com/files/shot1809.zip

Development Timeline

1994

• During Jazz 1's development - Artist Nick Stadler vents his grievances with working on the game by drawing a goofy picture of Jazz, captioned "Spaz Slackrabbit". It gives his coworkers a laugh, and this leads him to develop the character further for the sequel.
• August 24 - Programmer Arjan Brussee seemingly accidentally confirms the game being in development, stating that "the basic graphics engine is done".
• September 19 - Arjan Brussee mentions the sequel again--"The sequel will probably have parallaxing and such stuff, and I'll try to keep the frame rate the same."

1995

• March 23 - Epic's Mark Rein reveals the game, as well as Spaz and the fact that he's Jazz's brother, at a show at Forum Hotel in Krakow, Poland.
• September 13 - Craig Lafferty, Epic's PR person, says that the game will be for Windows 95.
• November 5 - While responding to someone that Holiday Hare '95 uses the Jazz 1 engine, Craig Lafferty expresses enthusiasm over the development progress of the sequel, going as far to say "it makes Jazz I look like an 8-bit game".
• November 6 - Mark Rein says that "Jazz 2 is a long way off."
• November 9 - Mark Rein mentions the game in his announcement of Unreal. He promises "8 amazing levels of parallax scrolling and loads of special visual effects", and estimates "around April/May 96" for screenshots and videos of the game to surface.
• November 17 - Epic mentions Jazz Jackrabbit II, as was styled at the time, in MegaNews #10. They promise more information on their website in early 1996.

1996

• Epic's website says the release will be "late in 1996".
• May 16-18 - Information on the game makes it to E3.
• July 26 - Mark Rein says that a Mac port of the game is being looked into.
• August 12 - Programmer Michiel Ouwehand hints at his involvement with the game's development.
• October 19 - Arjan Brussee states that the team made a generic library for the game to allow for the exact same code to run on multiple different OSes. In a different thread, he also states he's programming the bonus stage that ends up getting scrapped before the final build.
• November 10 - Michiel Ouwehand mentions that he is working on the DOS and Windows versions of the game.
• December 25 - Arjan Brussee states that the team "just built in full multiplayer support".

1997

• January - Epic's website says the release will be "early to mid 97".
• January 26 - Jazz 2 Warehouse interviews Cliff Bleszinski and Arjan Brussee.
  • "Before Easter" is Bleszinski's release estimate. He also says a DOS version is being worked on, and that they're undecided on whether or not they'll sell the game through retail. He claims "over 30" levels, "at least 4-5" playable characters, and "at least 12" weapons.
  • Brussee says that the netcode is being totally rewritten, and that shareware players are limited to playing multiplayer with registered players only with shareware version content.
• February 8 - Jazz 2 Warehouse interviews Michiel Ouwehand, who talks about the network aspect of the game. He says he's in the process of removing DirectPlay support for straighforward TCP/IP. He also mentions the still-planned DOS version of the game, where it'd only support IPX for networking, and that it's beneficial for players looking for better performance. He also mentions the game's lines-of-code count reaching 74,000, with the sound library alone close to 15,000.
• February 8 - Craig Lafferty confirms the game will have no Bonus Stage.
• March 11 - Cliff Bleszinski states that the game is delayed and won't be out by the end of the month. According to the Jazz 2 Warehouse webmaster, Arjan Brussee estimates a release as late as summer.
• March 15 - Jazz 2 Warehouse interviews composer Alexander Brandon. He says "around twenty or twenty five" music pieces are used in Jazz 2, and that he was currently "finishing up a cinematic piece, some Jazz menu music, and the Medivo level song".
• April 21 - The Daily Carrot announces the addition of Dean Dodrill to the team, and his role of doing the intro and ending cinematics.
• May 30 - Craig Lafferty says the game will be released "sometime later this summer".
• May 31 - Cliff Bleszinski responds to concerns about the game's release--"FWIW, the game is basically done, we're just waiting on the network/modem code". He also confirms there being three brand new levels for the Shareware Demo.
• June 10 - The Daily Carrot announces that the game's level editor is renamed from MLLE (Multi-Layered Level Editor) to Jazz Creation Station.
• June 17 - Date of version 0.98k, which made it onto the Epic MegaGames E3 1997 Preview CD. It has builds for both DOS and Windows.
• July 11 - The Daily Carrot announces that German, Spanish, French, Italian and Dutch are language options other than English being considered for the game.
• November 15 - Date of version 1.00g.
• November 21 - Producer Robert Allen posts a status update on the official Jazz 2 MegaMessage Board.

1998

• Early - Basehead of Straylight Productions composes two level themes for the game. These levels don't even make it to the stage of having tilesets produced.
• March 13 - Creation date of Lori Jackrabbit.
• April 11 - The Shareware Demo of Jazz Jackrabbit 2 is released.
• May 1 - An upgrade patch from version 1.20 to 1.21 of the Shareware Demo is released.
• May 6 - Jazz Jackrabbit 2 goes gold. Additionally, an upgrade patch from version 1.20 to 1.21 of the full game is released.
• May 7 - Jazz Jackrabbit 2 is released for Windows in mainland Europe.
• May 14 - Gathering of Developers announces it will be publishing Jazz Jackrabbit 2 worldwide.
• August 12 - Jazz Jackrabbit 2 is released for Windows in North America.
• September 4 - An upgrade patch to version 1.23 for both the shareware and full versions is released.
• October 9 - Rebecca Heineman of Logicware begins working on her company's Mac port of the game.
• November 6 - Jazz Jackrabbit 2: Holiday Hare '98 is released for Windows in North America.
• November 7 - Rebecca Heineman says that the Mac port of the game "is coming along great", and that she's "just about halfway done with the networking code".
• November 15 - Rebecca Heineman confirms that the Mac port will not come with a level editor. She also says it is undergoing beta testing, and that "fixing a save / load game bug and then a few visual glitches" is all that's left.
• December 20 - Rebecca Heineman says she is "burning the final candidate", and that she intends to add the level editor down the line.

1999

• January 22 - Rebecca Heineman reports Jazz Jackrabbit 2 for Mac being mastered. She also says network support was pulled at the last minute due to bugs, but that an update will restore it.
• January 23 - Jazz Jackrabbit 2 is released for Windows in Japan.
• February 3 - Jazz Jackrabbit 2 is released for Mac OS Classic in North America.
• March - Jazz Jackrabbit 2 is released for Mac OS Classic in Japan.
• March 15 - Jazz Jackrabbit 2: The Secret Files is released for Windows in Europe. In addition, a German Mac OS Classic demo is released by Application Systems Heidelberg.
• March 28 - Jazz Jackrabbit 2 is released for Mac OS Classic in Europe.
• December 8 - Jazz Jackrabbit 2: The Christmas Chronicles is released for Windows in Europe.

Concepts

Spaz Jackrabbit

In an interview with Jazz 2 Warehouse, Nick Stadler revealed the process of how Spaz ended up being created.

J2W: Where did the idea for Spaz come from?

Nick: There was a point while working on Jazz 1 when I (or Cliff, or Arjan) would get into a rut and become irritated , and I'd take out my resentment on *Jazz* himself.

At one point, I drew a really goofy, stupid picture of Jazz with the caption "Spaz Slackrabbit." People around the office seemed to get a kick out it, so I ended up developing it a bit further as a seperate character for the sequel.

(Source: Nick's thoughts)

Lori Jackrabbit

According to Dean Dodrill, Lori was originally animated as the yellow bunny in the base game's ending cutscene, the one who Spaz falls in love with, and he intended the two to be in a romantic relationship. At some point, publisher Project Two erroneously states that she is Jazz and Spaz's sister, and this is what ends up being canon.

Noogy says about the creation of Lori:
Originally Lori was meant to be a distant cousin of Eva. Originally at the end of JJ2 I animated this yellow bunny in as a love interest for Spaz. He goes goo-goo over her and pursues. Well, I started to head the TSF project and thought it would be cool to add a new playable character. That yellow bunny seemed good (and I love female playable characters), but she was too goofy looking.

A few sketches and I came up with Lori. Jon Maclellan, my partner on TSF, helped me design her and we named her Lori, since it was a cute name, Kinda rolls off your tongue.

I had planned that she would meet Jazz and Spaz at the end of JJ2, and Spaz falls in love with her..... The intro to TSF (which never had time for) was to return to Jazz's wedding a second time... and Lori's being the bridesmaid. I had hoped that she and Spaz would get seriously together in JJ3, which would be cool since she's this hypercute teenage type, and Spaz is a total goof.

For the next game, I wrote up a bit more on her, she likes to paint and is a very passive type, cool with anything. She will take charge when necessary.

I created Lori because I like the cute innocent type.... Eva was meant to be the sexy one but I personally didn't like the character much at all... doesn't seem the action type imo. So I thought that Lori could fill that void of the cute one.. I love cute :)

She was meant to be Spaz's girlfriend, but to my horror I found that Project 2 had mentioned somewhere that Lori was the lost sister of Jazz and Spaz! I thought that was pretty lame and was pissed that they didn't bother asking before making that public. So now she's their sister. It's really not that bad, but I so wanted to get some romance between her and Spaz

(Source: About Lori - Lori Central)

Bonus Stage

The Bonus Stage was originally set to make a return from the first game, and Arjan Brussee was even working on it as late as October 1996. It seems by February 1997, though, that it was out of the cards after Craig Lafferty confirmed it wouldn't return.