Jazz Jackrabbit 2 is the reason Digiex exists. Xtreem (@InsaneNutter) and I met playing it, and in 2004 the two of us set up the forum that became Digiex. A year before that, in 2003, I'd already started running the game's list server from a server in my bedroom: the service every JJ2 game server signs up with so it appears in the in-game server list. Twenty-three years later, Digiex still runs one of the three list servers the game relies on today.

Running a list server means every public game passes through us. The in-game server list only ever shows what's on right now, though. Once a server goes, so does any sign it was there, along with who played on it and what they played. So we built a website on top of our list server to keep all of that: the Digiex JJ2 List Server, at list.digiex.net. Nothing changes in the game itself. You find and join servers exactly as before, and the site watches the list and remembers what it sees.

What's on the site

• Live: every public server, who's playing, and the matches in progress with the score as it stands.
• Best time to find a game: when people are usually on, by day and hour, shown in your own time zone.
• Players: hours played, a leaderboard, milestones and clans, with every rabbit drawn in the colours its player last used.
• Servers and modes: which servers people actually play on, where they're hosted, and which game modes are busy at which time of day.
• Network: the three list servers talking to each other, live. If the server list in your game ever looks short, this is where you can see why.

A place of record
The part I care about most is that nothing gets thrown away. Every real match (two or more people) is kept with its score, every day gets its own page in a diary, there's a record book, and a chronicle of everything that happens on the list: servers arriving and leaving, records being broken, clans forming. It started on 14 October, so it's only a week old, but every day adds to it. In a few years you'll be able to look up what was being played on any given day, and who was there.

We only keep what the game already shows in public: hours played, the days you played, match totals and the rabbit you last played as. No addresses, no chat, and private servers are never asked who's on.


The Level Archive
For nearly thirty years people have made JJ2 levels and hosted them for friends and strangers. Most of those levels only ever lived on their author's hard drive and on the servers that ran them, and when a server goes, its levels usually go with it.

The Level Archive is our answer to that. It holds 18,101 levels right now, 19,805 versions of them, 2,714 tilesets and 2,863 music tracks, around 3 GB in all. Every one is free to download, packed with the tileset and music it uses wherever the archive has them. Where a level exists in several versions we keep them all and show you what changed between them.

It didn't start from nothing. Xtreem's game caches from 2000 to 2009 and a CD @Assassin burned in 2001 brought back 1,800 levels between them. Puke Nuk3m's collection added over 4,000 more, and djazz's caches, the retail CDs and the original betas filled in plenty of the rest.

New levels arrive on their own. When a public server runs something the archive doesn't have, a player called Level Preservation joins for a second or two, downloads the files the same way your own game would, and leaves. It never plays, never joins a private or full server, and never comes back for something it already has. In its first few days it has picked up 515 levels from 15 servers. If you host a server and would rather it didn't visit, tell us and it won't.


Browse it by date
One of the most useful parts of the Library is also the easiest to miss: the When filter. It lays out every year from 1997 to today, month by month, with how many levels we have from each, so you can jump straight to the summer of 1999, or whichever year you played most, and see what was around back then. Tilesets and Music have it too.


Look round any level
Open a level in the archive and you can explore the whole map in your browser, drawn the way the game draws it: every layer, the water, the lighting and the weather. No JCS and nothing to install. It's a great way to look back at levels you haven't seen in twenty years.


Got old JJ2 files?
The levels still missing are the ones played on servers that disappeared years ago, and the only way to get those back is from people who kept them. If you've got an old JJ2 folder, a cache, a backup or a CD lying around, it's worth more than you'd think. Your game saved every level it downloaded, along with the date it got it. Have a look at Help & submit on the site's Levels page, or just reply here.

Thanks to Xtreem and Assassin, whose Jazz Jackrabbit Archives were the inspiration for all of this, and to everyone still hosting and playing the game. JJ2 turns 30 in 2028, and hopefully a good chunk of its history will still be around to celebrate it.

Forza Horizon 2 was released back in 2012 for the Xbox One and Xbox 360, sadly never receiving a PC port. Like most Forza games the music seems to only be licensed for a couple of years, so the games get delisted for sale and essentially lost to time.

This is where Azimuth comes in. Azimuth is a wrapper that runs the Xbox One version of Forza Horizon 2 on Windows 10, 11 and even Linux through Proton. Azimuth translates the Xbox's WinRT calls to Win32 and Xbox DirectX 11.X to desktop DirectX 12. The end result is you can play Forza Horizon 2 on Windows and Linux without emulation.

As no emulation is involved Forza Horizon 2 even performs really well on low power handheld devices like the SteamDeck!

You have probably not doubt seen lots of decomps and recomps of old games recently thanks to the advancements of Ai. Azimuth caught my attention though as I believe this is the first ever Xbox One game that has got an unofficial port to the PC, a very good port at that I might add.

Azimuth's key features include:

• Resolutions from 720p up to your display's own
• Aspect ratios: 16:9, or your display's own shape (16:10, 21:9, 32:9)
• 30 fps, 60 fps, or higher, up to your display's refresh rate
• HDR10 output, with a calibration page
• Four graphics presets
• Anti-aliasing: off, MSAA 2x, MSAA 4x
• Every text language the game has, and a separate speech language
• Audio: Stereo, 5.1, 7.1, or what Windows uses

I've actually put around 4 hours in to playing Forza Horizon 2 on my Lenovo Legion Go so far and have been really impressed with just how well this works, so much so I thought it was news worthy for Digiex.

I'm playing the game at 1080p and it is pretty much locked to 60fps with the Legion Go limited to a 20w TDP to save battery. To make things even more impressive my Legion Go also runs SteamOS (Linux), so I'm running a Windows port of an Xbox game on Linux - rather inception like.

You can read more and download the PC port of Forza Horizon 2 on the official Azimuth release page.

The only downside is you need an Xbox One that has not been online for a couple of years to dump your own copy of Forza Horizon 2, however if you Google "FH2_Anthem_1.0.0.64_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe.rar" you might be able to find the files you need to test out Forza Horizon 2 on the PC.

The origins of Digiex can be traced back to 2001, although what eventually became the Digiex you know today started out in 2004 when the Digiex name was decided upon and the digiex.net domain was registered.

However the 2004 version of Digiex was eventually closed. The Digiex you are browsing today started out life in June 2007, meaning the forum database powering Digiex is over 19 years old now. It's quite possible Digiex has been around longer than some people browsing our site today have been alive, which is certainly a strange one to think about. It really doesn't seem like its been so long to me.

Anyway the point of this news post is to feature The History of Digiex post we have been occasionally updating over the years. You will find The History of the Digiex Website and The History of the Digiex Servers in this thread, complete with old screenshots going back to 2001 and some early photos of the Digiex server from when it lived in Nimrod's bedroom back in 2004.

Today we have posted a write up on both the recent upgrade to XenForo 2.3 and moving Digiex over to totally run from Docker containers. If you are interested in the more behind the scenes / technical side of things you might find our Digiex History Update 2026 Post interesting.

Hopefully we can keep Digiex online for many decades to come. We have certainly cleared a lot of technical debit that has built up over years, in addition to streamlining our hosting stack, resulting in Digiex been a lot more sustainable to run going in to the future.

Today we feel independent websites like Digiex are more important than ever, we shouldn't be allowing social media giants so much control over how and where people can discuss their hobbies and interests online. Even more so when some countries now require associating your ID, or even biometrics with larger social media platforms.

Thank you for browsing Digiex!

Some sad, however not totally unexpected news. Nintendo have announced the Pokemon Bank servers will close down next year on February 25th 2027.

This means it will be no longer possible to migrate Pokemon from the original Gen 1 to 7 games, to the current Gen 8 Switch Pokemon games and beyond.

Its always impressed me how you can officially transfer Pokemon from Ruby / Sapphire, released in Japan in 2002, right the way up to the current games on the Nintendo Switch.

Even more so if you have a homebrew enabled 3DS its possible to migrate Pokemon from the original Gen 1 GameBoy games, if you transfer your save from the cartridge on to the 3DS. Digiex has a guide on how to do just that here: Pokemon GameBoy / Rom Save Transfer To 3DS

Now might be a good time to finish shiny hunting Manaphy in Gen 4 if you'd like a shiny with you are the OT, or migrate any event Pokemon available in the Digiex Pokemon Archives that you might wish to use in future Pokemon Games.

That really does seem like the end of an era, the backwards compatibility has always been a featured Ive taken advantage of. It was really handy when working on my living dex and more recently on my shiny living dex too.

If you are reading this then you are viewing the newly upgraded Digiex, so please excuse any bugs and website inconsistencies.

Nimrod and I have upgraded the software that powers Digiex (XenForo) to version 2.3, this is a big change, so we have some theme and template issues to sort out over the coming days.

Digiex now totally runs from Docker containers, rather than a single dedicated virtual machine. This will give us a lot more flexibility on how we host Digiex moving forward.

Thank you for your understanding!

The security on the Xbox One has finally fallen, over 12 years after the consoles was released! Markus Gaasedelen, known as Doom in the Xbox Scene has presented a bootrom hack at RE//verse 2026.

This hack gives total control over the Xbox One at the highest level, from when the Xbox boots, in addition this is totally unpatchable by Microsoft. This hack is similar to the RGH hack on the Xbox 360, where the console is been glitched as it boots, enabling unsigned code to be run.

The hour long presentation from RE//verse 2026 has now been uploaded to YouTube:


A demonstration of the hack can be seen around 46:48 in the above presentation, its certainly worth watching the whole presentation however to appreciate the insane levels of security Microsoft implemented on the Xbox One. The Xbox One is the only console I can think of that was never hacked while it was the current generation console.

Hopefully we will eventually see a modchip release for the Xbox One, it's certainly a huge win for Xbox content preservation.

You have probably heard of Kodi, the popular open source home theatre software. What you might not know is that Kodi started out life as a homebrew application for the original Xbox. Back then Kodi was known as XBMC (Xbox Media Center) and was only available for the Xbox. At the time it was an incredible useful way to play Divx / Xvid video on the TV, as we didn't have other devices in our living rooms that could play such a variety of media.

Eventually XBMC was ported to Windows, OSX and Linux, with support for the Xbox been dropped. However XBMC4Xbox continued supporting the Xbox, so today we have modern Kodi running on 64MB of RAM and Pentium 3 CPU. quite incredible when you think about it!

GitHub repo: https://github.com/antonic901/xbmc4xbox-redux
Team XBMC: https://github.com/xbmc4xbox

Currently you can purchase Modern Warfare II (2022) and III (2023) at no cost on the Xbox store, as the games are a play anywhere games, you can also play them both on the PC.

Given even the Xbox 360 Call of Duty games are still sold for £25 / $30 we are not sure if this is a mistake or not. Either way if you are interested I'd claim them sooner rather than later.

Update: Most of the game actually remains locked with only the "DMZ beta" content available to play, so keep that in mind before downloading.

Links:

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (2022)
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (2023)

Its not an every day an event Pokemon distributed over 25 years ago can be backed up and archived, however today is a rare day when that happens!

Reddit user Neocaridina discovered he still had a UK Gen 1 event Mew distributed at the Bluewater Shopping Center in Kent, England back in the year 2000.

Gen 1 and 2 event Pokemon are living on borrowed time, as the Pokemon game cartridges have an internal battery which keep's the save, once this battery runs out the save is unfortunately lost. So its a great win for Pokemon Event preservation that another Gen 1 event Pokemon could be backed up and not lost forever.

Read more on the event download thread: Pokemon GEN1 Legit UK Mew Event Download

It's no secret that Digiex exists today thanks to Jazz Jackrabbit 2. @Nimrod and I were in the same clan for the game back then, the Carrot Clan. Having similar interests we would talk on MSN daily, which eventually lead to the founding of Digiex, see The History of Digiex for more info.

Anyway currently both Jazz Jackrabbit 1 & 2 on sale at GoG.

The Jazz Jackrabbit collection is currently on sale for 84% off, making the game only £1.29 here in the UK.
This includes the Jazz Jackrabbit CD-ROM version and Holiday Hare 95.

The Jazz Jackrabbit 2 collection is also on sale for 81% off, making the game only £1.49 here in the UK.
This includes The Secret Files expansion and The Christmas Chronicles (known as Holiday Hare 98 in the US)

If you love classic 2D side scrolling games, both Jazz 1 and 2 are well worth the money and still hold up well today in 2025.

Some fun trivia, Digiex hosts the list.jazzjackrabbit.com server, which allows internet play to still function today on unpatched copies of the game.