Jazz Jackrabbit: The classic DOS game of speed, guns, carrots, and turtles, combined into one amazing CD.
Jazz has the general 90's platformer give-me-a-basic-reason-to-play storyline: Turtle steals girlfriend, tries to take over the world, and it is your job to stop him. While simple, it works well.
The gameplay of Jazz Jackrabbit is absolutely amazing. It has the speed of Sonic, the gunplay of Contra, and the power of a PC--All in one little game. Speed-wise, Jazz is fast. Blasted fast. Jazz is as fast, if not faster, than Sonic in every way. Truly, this is efficient programming at its best. It can be a bit difficult to control Jazz when you first start playing, as the speed is a lot more sudden than in sonic or Mario. Jazz does not have an "acceleration time", so to speak; when he goes, he goes.
The guns in the game work pretty well, but they are a bit cumbersome at times. Due to the speed, it is not as easy to get an accurate shot at your enemies; you have to continually shoot, or else you be clobbered in seconds. That said, the weapons themselves are well-done. You have a basic cannon with infinite ammo, a fire ball "toaster", missile launcher, and a bouncing grenade gun. You can also find screen-cleaning TNT. Each weapon is different, and all of them have a good use. The guns are well tailored to the speed, which helps a lot. The toaster has a big blast, the grenades can bounce to every spot in a small corridor, and the missiles have a wide radius of where they can hit. If you have rapid fire, the basic gun also works well, as it basically becomes a machine gun. All in all, the guns work very well, especially for a high speed platformer.
The graphics are amazing. Not only does the game look beautiful just standing still, the graphics keep up at high speeds. Artistically, they are a joy to behold. Never is there a carbon-copy level; every world has its own wonderful graphics, from the inside of a computer to a frozen wasteland. Amazingly, they still hold up very well to this day. Never could a person say the graphics are outdated; they look as good as any GBA game, if not a DS game. The 3D bonus levels look a bit old, but they still hold up pretty well.
The levels, of which there are over 54, are very well designed. The sheer number of them is astonishing: There are (in the CD version) 9 worlds with six levels each, plus another couple in the Holiday Hare freebies. If there was ever a great value, this is it. Some are definitely better than others, but all are very good. Add this with four difficulty levels and you have a game that will last for a long time. Even after you beat it, it has a strong re-playability factor. All of the levels are huge, with hundreds of little secrets, including bonus levels.
The music is one of my personal favorites. Every single world has its own background music, and most (if not all) of it is beautiful. Specifically, the Holiday Hare music is absolute genius. The first has an epic rock-medley of a bunch of carols, while the second has an amazing remix of Carol of the Bells. This is definitely a good time to use DOSBox's audio recording ability, as the music is very, very good stuff.
Is Jazz better than Sonic? Maybe. Jazz, I believe, has the better graphics, music, and levels, but Sonic has slightly more refined and classic gameplay. Nonetheless, Jazz is an epic (pun intended) classic, of which it deserves to be not only in an old-school gamers collection, but in any gamers collection too. Jazz is one of the few games that is just as fun now as it was 13 years ago, an honor that cannot be said for a lot of old games. All in all, Jazz is a classic that will never be forgotten.