Jazz Jackrabbit
Jazz Jackrabbit is a series of video games featuring the eponymous character of Jazz Jackrabbit, a green anthropomorphic hare, who fights with his turtle nemesis, Devan Shell, in a science fiction parody of the fable of The Tortoise and the Hare. Created by Arjan Brussee and Cliff Bleszinski and developed by Epic MegaGames, the series debuted on the personal computer in 1994 with Jazz Jackrabbit. The series consists of two computer games and a handheld console game. He was originally the mascot of EpicGames.
Games
Jazz Jackrabbit (1994)
The first Jazz Jackrabbit game was developed and released by Epic Megagames in 1994 for PCs running DOS. Jazz had to rescue Carrotus princess Eva Earlong, who was kidnapped by his nemesis, Devan Shell. The shareware edition was extremely popular and the game was named Arcade Game of the Year by PC Format.
Jazz Jackrabbit 2 (1998)
A sequel, Jazz Jackrabbit 2 was developed by Orange Games, produced by Epic Games and released in 1998 by Gathering of Developers in North America and Project 2 in Europe. Jazz and his brother, Spaz, team up to get back Eva's stolen wedding ring. Despite moderate success in Europe, it was the first game Gathering of Developers ever lost money on.
Jazz Jackrabbit 3
Jazz Jackrabbit 3 is an abortive project by World Tree Games. The game was cancelled in 2000 when Epic Games failed to find a publisher. The game's plot had Jazz entering Devan's dimensional machine (a modified version of the time machine used in Jazz Jackrabbit 2) into a three-dimensional Carrotus to save his children and remove any chaos Devan brought along the way.
Jazz Jackrabbit (2002)
Jazz Jackrabbit, developed by Game Titan and published by Jaleco under license from Epic Games, was released for the Game Boy Advance in 2002. It was controversial among Jazz Jackrabbit fans because of several changes done in overall design, oriented towards cosmic science fiction inspired by Star Wars. Jazz's appearance was changed, losing his trademark bandana, backpack, and wristbands, and portraying now as similar looking to Han Solo, with his blue large gun also being replaced by conventional weapons. Eva Earlong is missing from the game and Devan Shell, featuring a Darth Vader-esque appearance, is now known as Dark Shell.
Other appearances
Jazz, along with Devan and Eva, made a cameo in One Must Fall: 2097, which was developed by Diversions Entertainment and published by Epic Games, in single-player tournament mode. Each character piloted a fighting mech that was suited to their individual personalities. Jazz Jackrabbit 2 also has one cameo from One Must Fall: 2097.
In December 2010, Epic Games released development kits for the Unreal Engine for iOS. One of the tutorials for these devkits features Jazz Jackrabbit as a top down twin-stick shooter game.[1][2]