There are a fair few games out there which are brilliant, just never got the attention they deserved, either because they were on a console no one liked, too late in the consoles life cycle or in this case far too far ahead of its time.

So what is this game? Well while Mario and Sonic duked it out on the consoles this little gem was made as a rival for the other gaming format, the PC. Of course since most of the popular PC games had shooting in them (Doom) we couldn’t very well negelct that audience. Guess what? It worked brilliantly.

It’s a simple concept, Jazz Jackrabbits 2 is a platform game where you play as one of 2 rabbits, Jazz or Spaz, through a huge variety of environments (from castles, ice worlds, jungles, Victorian times and Hell) while blasting enemies with a variety of weapons.

Now to say the levels are B-E-A-Utiful, well let’s just say it can give modern sprite based games a run for it’s money still.

Along with the graphics, the animation for the characters is fluid and expressive, I tried to find one of my fav idle animations for Spaz but no luck, but look out for the red rabbit greating little birdies!

The gameplay itself is solid, platforming controls are accurate and you have your standard gun, which kinda sucks at the start but can be upgraded with rapidfire to the point where it is almost the most destructive tool in your arsenal (espically if you find the secret upgrade). The extra ammo weapons range from bouncing bubbles, homing rockets, ice bullets, flamethrowers and TNT. Some of these weapons are needed to reach super secret areas with huge stocks of ammo, while others will help you take out the various enemies and bosses.

The other major factor of this game? Online games!

yes you could play this game both co-op and in various battle modes online. Of course back when it was released internet connections sucked, but this game still has online servers (admittedly fan made) playing games. I’ve only ever played it split screen but the levels for the battle, race and gem hunting modes are very well done and will offer extended gameplay with friends.

If you can find a copy of this game for a good price, pick it up, it’s rare as hell. I originally had this as a freebie with a PC pre-installed, but it took me 5 years to find another copy. if you do get into it, there is a huge community with custom levels (which are readly built into the game as Home cooked levels).

But honestly as far as PC games go, this is a cult classic for a good reason.