Ancient DOS Games Episode 150 - Jazz Jackrabbit is online!

...hopefully the green ends up being a clever touch. While it would've been fun to go all out again and have something crazy happen like being sucked into Jazz's world and having to turn Axis into an LFG to fight turtles, I think as far as the more standard episodes go, this one turned out to be one of my better episodes. :)

But yeah, even though this is the last regular episode of Season 3 of ADG, there's still a few fillers to come during November and December, as well as one next Saturday just to talk about what to expect down the road.

Season 4 of ADG will be starting on Saturday, January 3rd, 2015! :B

Congratulations on 150 episodes! 😀

Don't think I can say much else really, you hit the nail on the head WRT Jazz's strong and weak points.

Indeed! Great episode, once again!

Some comments:

- The intro bit is very long at around 2:30 minutes before the review actually starts. Might put off some potential new viewers.
- Image quality is excellent as always
- LOTS of information which many viewers will apreciate
- Not on YouTube 🙁 Subscribers will lose interest if there are no regular updates
- In parts you have the video matches perfectly what you talk about like the weapons
- In other parts the video doesn't relate to what you talk about and it feels like a podcast rather than a video show. Could violate the YT terms regarding narration

For these licensing terms, the use of video games must be minimal unless the associated step-by-step commentary provides instructional and/or educational value and is strictly tied to the live action being shown.

- The stats screen is up for over 2 minutes while there is gameplay footage and you talking. Maybe use PIP or close the stats screen after a short while
- At the beginning you mention challenges with the controls and that you will die a lot yet show perfect, speedrun style gameplay
- Later you cover the bonus stage and seem to struggle going straight, bouncing into walls, but no mention as to why or what is going on
- You talk non stop! I struggle finishing your videos as I get a headache half-way through because of information overflow. I could turn off the screen and get basically the same experience

Keep it up!

philscomputerlab wrote:

- The intro bit is very long at around 2:30 minutes before the review actually starts. Might put off some potential new viewers.

Probably. But most of my intros aren't that long so once in awhile isn't going to kill my viewership. ;)

philscomputerlab wrote:

- Not on YouTube :( Subscribers will lose interest if there are no regular updates

I know. YouTube has been a minefield of failure trying to get my videos up on there. I'm almost halfway to being able to keep my YouTube channel up to date on a regular basis.

However, I keep to a regular schedule and announce dates ahead of time so people know when to return for more, plus I have an RSS feed on my website. Best I can do short of building an entire automatic notification system. :B

philscomputerlab wrote:

- In parts you have the video matches perfectly what you talk about like the weapons
- In other parts the video doesn't relate to what you talk about and it feels like a podcast rather than a video show. Could violate the YT terms regarding narration

For these licensing terms, the use of video games must be minimal unless the associated step-by-step commentary provides instructional and/or educational value and is strictly tied to the live action being shown.

If this rule was super-strict, 99% of the video game related shows on YouTube would be in violation of the YouTube TOS. Besides which, "educational" value can be assumed to be general information about the game in question, not the exact actions being shown in-game in that moment, which is what "instructional" would be and why it's referred to as "and/or". :P

philscomputerlab wrote:

- The stats screen is up for over 2 minutes while there is gameplay footage and you talking. Maybe use PIP or close the stats screen after a short while

Without giving anything away... I have something similar planned for Season 4. ;)

philscomputerlab wrote:

- At the beginning you mention challenges with the controls and that you will die a lot yet show perfect, speedrun style gameplay

I'm very good at games in general and adapt quickly... doesn't make it any EASIER. :P

philscomputerlab wrote:

- Later you cover the bonus stage and seem to struggle going straight, bouncing into walls, but no mention as to why or what is going on

Most of my bonus stage runs weren't long enough to fit the length of that voice segment so my options were limited. *shrugs*

philscomputerlab wrote:

- You talk non stop! I struggle finishing your videos as I get a headache half-way through because of information overflow. I could turn off the screen and get basically the same experience

And some of my fans do, and that's perfectly OK. :O

I kinda like the fact that my "videos" can also be (mostly) enjoyed as strictly "audio", so I don't want to change that. Plus, me personally, I actually prefer review-type videos with as little pausing in the voiceover as possible, except to emphasise certain things in visually expressive ways, so it makes sense that I should be performing in a style that appeals to me.

That last point you made really is just a matter of preference when you stop and think about it. ;)

What is the challenge with uploading videos to YT? What Internet do you have? Mine is quite poor, living in the middle of nowhere, but at least it's reliable. My biggest upload so far was 9 GB and that took days.

The YT rules about gaming footage seem to be indeed very weak. I just mentioned it because you had issues in the past.

Thought about doing a podcast? That other DOS video guy, Anatol, he has his episodes on iTunes.

Neat! A Jazz Jackrabbit episode! And a great way to end the third season of ADG 😀

The fountain scene was quite a surprise when I first saw it back in 1996; to make matters worse, my mother walked in my room right at that moment and all I heard was a comment about being perverted beyond reason :<

The game controls are indeed very sensitive. One wrong move or distraction and you're toast 😵 . Took me a while to get used to that (and it doesn't help that Jazz moves around so fast as well).

Now to wait for Season 4. Let's see what Gemini000 has in store next Saturday.

philscomputerlab wrote:

What is the challenge with uploading videos to YT?

Where do I even begin...?

Let's do this list in point form of all the things that have gone wrong on YouTube since I started using it:

1. Quality issues with my original renders because of how I coaxed them into MP4 files, requiring complete reconversions to AVI files using a different codec in order for YouTube to render them properly.

2. Videos being arbitrarily non-monetized because I need to "prove commercial use rights", following which you often never get a response and never get the video monetized. This even happened on a video which was 95% live action of ME.

3. Content-ID flags on bizarre things, like 300-year-old music, music in a game claimed by the creator of the music instead of by the company responsible for the game, or the video data (not the audio) of the Sims 3 title sequence.

4. Disputing a Content-ID match which muted a video, which then unmuted it, which then suddenly got muted again but THIS time without indicating it had been muted, thus making everyone think I was stupid enough to upload a video with no audio. >_>;

5. The whole comment system becoming broken for non-G+ users, not to mention the new useless and annoying ability for commenters to set it so that other people can't directly reply to their comments.

6. Temporary issues where I go to log in only to be forced into my non-"Pixelmusement" personal profile which I don't use at all, and end up not being able to set it back, thus not being able to interface with my subscriptions, videos, comments, etc.

7. The lack of any kind of real technical support whatsoever. Basically, if you can't fix a problem yourself because it's with how the YouTube system is handling something, you're screwed. You're only option is to report it as feedback and then pray it gets fixed within a year or two.

YouTube is just really high-stress to work with compared to the Blip system.

philscomputerlab wrote:

Thought about doing a podcast? That other DOS video guy, Anatol, he has his episodes on iTunes.

"Anatoly". ;)

And while I'm not really much of a podcast kind of person I have no aversion to ever helping someone out with one given the right circumstances. It's similar to how I love to write just about anything, but hate to read anything but comics. ;D

Gemini000: Manneken-Pis is the inspiration for the rabbit statue "taking a piss" out of his belly-button. Seriously if it is a joke, you were trying to do, then I did not get it. But great episode. And I had great fun playing the game back then also 😀

But seriously, if you really were really NOT "joking" about the statue, then stop right here. Cause some times it is getting out of hand with this kind censorship. Then NEVER review any kind of DOS game with pictures of real statues , like The Little Mermaid statue in Denmark, cause that one does indeed have partial nudity. it is after all, NOT duke3d or any other game with full-on frontal nudity. the "urinating" rabbit statue is in fact perhaps inspired by Manneken-Pis. So be happy it is just a rabbit statue "peeing" from a non existing part . Which is around its belly-button area.

Gemini000: Let people enjoy seeing alcohol in games . But stop being so judgemental. Seriously, it is that kind of attitude, that make games BORING. If you can not have any kind of humour. I am holding back my curses, but come on. Stop, there are other people around the world. Who curse, swear and also can and will speak soft. When the situation is needed. But what is next ? You begin bleeping out curse words , if they are in your video games ? Whether they are written or spoken. Seriously I can end this post with quite a few references to George Carlin, and his use of words. But I will leave at the imagination. After all, I doubt you are one those people, who believed in the rubbish, that "violent" films,games, and so forth made people violent.

*sigh* ...you're doing it again, Wolverine, inferring meaning from my words which isn't actually there. I never at any moment agreed or disagreed with the presence of alcohol in the comic, and yes, I'm aware of those peeing statues, I was just making a joke about how the statues in the game are NOT actually peeing because the water is not coming from the right spot for that to be the case.

And you seriously want to call me "judgemental"? I freakin' DARE you (or anyone else) to prove that to the satisfaction of everyone reading this, to the extent that I would somehow be more judgemental than the average person to justify being labelled as such.

Gemini000: Well, no worries mate. Sorry for my harshness. I think from now on, I will let skip the joking part of the video. Which is mostly in the beginning of your great episodes. Since I do not get your humour. When it comes to that. Since you are still doing a smashing great show 😀

I still haven't been able to get Blip to work.

Hey Kris,

Congratulations on three full seasons, 150 episodes of Ancient DOS Games! Oh, and don't let me forget 40 filler episodes of equal merit. You really fill a demand for content that is sorely needed.

From your most recent episode, I had no idea that JJ was so expensive to obtain legitimately. I assumed it was released as freeware or was on gog or another site. Nor did I know about the "apology mode". These are some of the many interesting facts I have learned from watching your videos.

Also, the 320x199 resolution doesn't produce any particular aspect ratio issues for me in DOSBox. Jazz seems to be one of the less common DOS games that works best in a 1.6:1 aspect ratio.

The game in my opinion is unplayable without a gamepad.

WolverineDK wrote:

Gemini000: Well, no worries mate. Sorry for my harshness. I think from now on, I will let skip the joking part of the video. Which is mostly in the beginning of your great episodes. Since I do not get your humour. When it comes to that. Since you are still doing a smashing great show :)

Fair enough. We all find different things funny. :B

But yeah, I try very hard not to take sides in extremely controversial topics because I'm the kind of person who sees and agrees with both sides of an issue and is able to defend or rebut either way... I'd get struck from a jury pool so incredibly fast once I said that. XD

(Almost had the chance, though the one time I had a jury summons it was cancelled. ;)

SKARDAVNELNATE wrote:

I still haven't been able to get Blip to work.

I recently updated Flash in IE and have no issues, while Firefox and the Blip player are still broken, despite Flash being the same version now for both. Might be worth stepping through Flash's support details: http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/flash- … s-video-or.html

Or you could try using a different browser or scaling back to an earlier version of Flash.

Me personally, I'm having troubles with YouTube at the moment in terms of maintaining stable connectivity, which is why I haven't gotten back to uploading since my Star Wars X-Wing episode cleared past its Content-ID dispute and I manually fixed the missing audio following.

Great Hierophant wrote:

From your most recent episode, I had no idea that JJ was so expensive to obtain legitimately. I assumed it was released as freeware or was on gog or another site.

Considering GOG was able to get System Shock 2 up, I've got a feeling if there's enough demand, they could get the Jazz Jackrabbit games up. ;)

Great Hierophant wrote:

Nor did I know about the "apology mode". These are some of the many interesting facts I have learned from watching your videos.

Ironically enough, Clint left a comment on my video on Patreon to mention that, despite his complete and total fondness for all things Jazz Jackrabbit, he never even realized there was no high score table. ;D

Great Hierophant wrote:

Also, the 320x199 resolution doesn't produce any particular aspect ratio issues for me in DOSBox. Jazz seems to be one of the less common DOS games that works best in a 1.6:1 aspect ratio.

Aspect ratio issues will only crop up if you turn on aspect ratio correction in DOSBox, run in fullscreen mode, and run a graphics driver setting that will stretch to fill the screen. So yeah, a lot of circumstances for it to go weird like that, but the resolution changes can also mess with video capture software as the resolution changes may trigger new files to be created, which could also break some capture software depending on codecs used since many codecs need to have resolutions that are multiples of 2, 4, or 8, which 199 is not.

Excellent episode...

Thanks for all your hard work.

Great Hierophant wrote:

Also, the 320x199 resolution doesn't produce any particular aspect ratio issues for me in DOSBox. Jazz seems to be one of the less common DOS games that works best in a 1.6:1 aspect ratio.

Gemini, in your video you seem to imply that the the 320x199 resolution is a bug with DOSBox, but it was my understanding that the game just uses an odd Mode-X modes to force swapping between 70Hz and 60Hz modes. This was discussed fairly extensively in a prior post of someone facing issues recording JJR footage via FRAPs.

kolano wrote:

Gemini, in your video you seem to imply that the the 320x199 resolution is a bug with DOSBox, but it was my understanding that the game just uses an odd Mode-X modes to force swapping between 70Hz and 60Hz modes.

I said it "confuses" DOSBox, which is technically what's going on since DOSBox can't account for what the proper aspect ratio should be at 320x199, so if you're trying to do aspect-corrected stretching it will suddenly fail to do this.

I find it interesting though that the graphics themselves for the status bar and everything only go down to 320x199. It's very possible that the way the game handles video timing involves intentionally skipping the very last scanline, which is what's making DOSBox think it's running 320x199. That's just a guess though, but would explain why it takes a few frames for DOSBox to actually perform the resolution switch when you go from the menus to gameplay. (If it happened instantly, it would be a different story.)

You do realize your game footage is stretched vertically now, right? AFAIK, Jazz Jackrabbit is the only game to use 320x200 as actual widescreen resolution, with square pixels.

jwt27 wrote:

You do realize your game footage is stretched vertically now, right? AFAIK, Jazz Jackrabbit is the only game to use 320x200 as actual widescreen resolution, with square pixels.

That... doesn't make any sense. No one had a widescreen monitor back when this game was new, so making a game do that would result in black bars at the top and bottom of the picture and people would complain that the game wasn't filling the whole screen. :P

But... I have no immediate means to prove you right or wrong, plus I never owned the game as a kid and thus I can't recall how it played on actual hardware... It would help if someone could take pictures of Jazz Jackrabbit running on a CRT monitor in real DOS so that the screen size can be compared between both the main menus and the gameplay.

I discuss aspect ratio issues in three blog entries :

http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2013/10/3 … for-ibm-pc.html

http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2014/09/c … mode-x-and.html

http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2014/09/o … tions-when.html

The last post discusses Jazz and I expanded it to reflect its issues.

I believe it is unlikely that graphics artists consciously designed for a widescreen aspect ratio. However, their drawing tools or commands may not always have taken the vertical stretch into effect.