This is the kind of game that gets called a “cult classic”. But who wants to be in a cult?

Released at the eleventh hour of platforming genre, Jazz Jackrabbit 2 sees you controlling the titular character against Devan Shell, a mendacious tortoise who has made the critical mistake of being the villain in a platforming game.

The game takes the concept of the first game and pushes it as far as it will go. Basically, think Sonic, but not as fast. Or think Mario, but a bit more edgy. Visually the game draws heavily from drug-trip psychedelia, and the soundtrack is mostly slap-bass acid funk. JJ2 is basically the hippie era put into a computer game, more so than any other game I know (except maybe Timothy Leary’s Mind Mirror). Jazz doesn’t smoke a bomber joint as part of his idle animation, but I guarantee the artists wanted him to.

You get to play as Jazz or his brother Spaz (Jazz can hover in mid-air like Mario in SMB3, while Spaz can double-jump), collecting jewels and killing enemies with guns, speed-dashes, even your ass (literally). The game simultaneously looks dated yet great. The background is an ever-morphing LSD light show of color, and the lighting effects of muzzle flashes (etc) are simple but dramatic. The hand-drawn sprites are fun and cartoony. You do stuff just to see how the characters will react.

The problem with Jazz Jackrabbit 2 is that it doesn’t seem like much of a game. The single player mode took me about three hours to beat on hard difficulty. The enemies are too easy, and the bosses are rote and predictable – crack the “code” and you can beat them blindfolded and in a body cast. The levels are not very interesting, and don’t invite another play-through.

It does, however, have an extensive multiplayer mode, as well as lavish level-editing and modding tools. Forget Mario or Sonic, this game’s true inspiration is Quake. Epic’s approach was to make a bare-bones product, and throw it over to the fans to put some meat on it. Their bet paid off. JJ2 spawned a community took this game and ran with it, producing all sorts of custom levels, mods, etc, some of which are pretty impressive (tip: download Tomb Rabbit).

The game itself isn’t much. It’s like a shitty movie that has a cult following who analyse every frame. It’s the fans that turned it into a product worth owning – JJ2 isn’t a game so much as a piece of real estate, something that’s only as good as what you’re prepared to do with it.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of cool stuff in JJ2. But it’s rushed cool stuff, thrown in without much polish or thought. What’s the point of giving the player tons of weapons if most of them are useless? I think I used the pepper spray once and then never touched it again. Even Jazz is pretty useless next to his brother, who can reach all sorts of high places thanks to his double jump. Jazz gets completely upstaged in his own game.

I had some fun with Jazz Jackrabbit 2 back in the day, but I don’t expect to ever play it again. Like the hippie era it pastiches, it came and went, leaving only memories. It still has a dedicated following, but somehow the Kool Aid wasn’t strong enough in my case.

“…As economists say, ‘the 100 dollar bills have all been picked off the pavement’. So I’m making it my life’s work to put a few back down. Hey, can I use the bathroom?”

Can I use the bathroom? Dana considered again the strange man in front of her. He wasn’t handcuffed, because that wasn’t her style. She felt they added an uncomfortable vibe to interrogations. There were no officers flanking him. Same reason.

Maybe these things and his obvious insanity had led him to misunderstand the situation, and think he was in less trouble than he actually was.

“Permission not granted, Mr Jensen.” She snapped. “We’ve now been talking for twenty minutes, and I still don’t understand why you did it. For what it’s worth, I think you’re fucking with me.”

“But it’s really simple,” he babbled excitedly. “Remember being a child, and seeing all the presents under the tree? Remember the mystery?”

Dana was Jewish, but she would not even give this man the dignity of a monkey wrench in the gears.

“And then you unwrapped them. A plastic wristwatch. A cheap Fisher-Price keyboard. Disappointing. You almost wished you could hit rewind and go back to when they were wrapped under the tree, didn’t you? That’s what I do. Most people solve mysteries. I create them. I leave wrapped presents around the world, for experts to find.”

Creating mysteries was a strange phrase for vandalising ancient works of art.

Yakub Jensen had been taken into custody earlier that morning, after he’d been caught defacing a priceless piece of pottery at Brooklyn Museum.

To the media, it was a storm in a teacup. Dana could attest that any storm seems big when you’re in the middle of it.

The Zuabu Bowl was an ancient piece of clay inscribed with imagery in auspice of an ancient Assyrian king. For historians, it was a seminal example of Levantine pottery. For modern day kings and princes, it was a source of national pride. The Brooklyn Museum had spent several million dollars in its acquisition.

Yakub Jensen had been examining the bowl behind its glass case, and had requested that the museum assistant leave him in private for a moment.

“I’m sorry, but your presence distracts.” His exact words.

The assistant – who was doubtless now spit-polishing his resume and ignoring all voicemail – had obeyed, shutting the door behind him. Yakub had been left alone with the Zuabu Bowl for a full five minutes, until a passing visitor had put his ear to the door and heard the chink-chink-chink of a hammer and chisel.

The vandalism had outraged and appalled the archaeological world, and had nearly sparked an international crisis.

For the past six hours since Jensen had been arrested, Dana had been hit with phone call after phone call.

Three museum curators. The head of the Archaeological Institute of America. The vice president of Syria. She’d even had the crown prince of Saudi Arabia – the fucking crown prince of Saudi Arabia – on the phone, jabbering away in remedial English. She’d instinctively held the phone receiver away from her head while talking to him, as if spittle was travelling through thousands of miles of cable to spray in her face.

They’d all said essentially the same thing. Death is too good for this man.

Yakub Jensen was now the meat in a delicate diplomatic sandwich, with various bodies and agencies trying to determine what to do with him. Dana had been summoned to get answers.

And now things were getting really strange.

“I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio.” – Hunter S. Thompson

“Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” – Mel Brooks

“I hardly ever talk- words seem such a waste, and they are none of them true. No one has yet invented a language from my point of view.” – Aleister Crowley

“If someone you never met calls you ‘arrogant’, it means he can’t find anything else. Otherwise, he would have called you “wrong’.” – Unknown, via Slate Star Codex

“Lies propagate, that’s what I’m saying. You’ve got to tell more lies to cover them up, lie about every fact that’s connected to the first lie. And if you kept on lying, and you kept on trying to cover it up, sooner or later you’d even have to start lying about the general laws of thought. Like, someone is selling you some kind of alternative medicine that doesn’t work, and any double-blind experimental study will confirm that it doesn’t work. So if someone wants to go on defending the lie, they’ve got to get you to disbelieve in the experimental method. Like, the experimental method is just for merely scientific kinds of medicine, not amazing alternative medicine like theirs. Or a good and virtuous person should believe as strongly as they can, no matter what the evidence says. Or truth doesn’t exist and there’s no such thing as objective reality. […] If you once tell a lie, the truth is ever after your enemy; and there’s a lot of people out there telling lies.” – Eliezer Yudkowsky

“These people don’t see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you. Make a habit of imprisoning Fascists without trial, and perhaps the process won’t stop at Fascists.” – George Orwell

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” – Douglas Adams

“Ask a scientist what he conceives the scientific method to be and he adopts an expression that is at once solemn and shifty-eyed: solemn, because he feels he ought to declare an opinion; shifty-eyed because he is wondering how to conceal the fact that he has no opinion to declare.” – Sir Peter Medawar

“Cats aren’t clean, they’re just covered with cat spit.”
– John S. Nichols

“[I]sn’t it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it?”
? Richard Dawkins

To describe something as ‘thought provoking’ usually means one can’t think of anything else to say about it. – Anthony Veitch

“I’m on a government watch list. But I’m not interested, because government watches only work twenty minutes out of every hour.” ? Jarod Kintz

“Just as there is a dichotomy in law: ‘innocent until proven guilty’ as opposed to ‘guilty until proven innocent’, let me express my rule as follows: what Mother Nature does is rigorous until proven otherwise; what humans and science do is flawed until proven otherwise.””

“Perhaps we go to the forbidden door or window willingly because we understand that a time comes when we must go whether we want to or not…and not just to look, but to be pushed through. Forever” – Stephen King