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While the US got a holiday expansion with Holiday Hare '98, European players never got to experience these levels. That is until that same expansion got an upgrade and released as The Christmas Chronicles, or version 1.24x, a year later in 1999.
The Christmas Chronicles, unlike the original Holiday Hare '98 release, came in a nice big box, much like the original European Jazz 2 release and the other expansion The Secret Files. This time there were not a lot of extra's included, only the disc in a jewel case, but not even a paper manual. The jewel case did get artwork for this release, while previous European releases got a blank case. The manual is included in several languages on the disc in pdf format. It isn't really Christmas Chronicles related either, and is just the regular Jazz 2 manual with some Christmas Chronicles screenshots and artwork added in.
The Christmas Chronicles is basically Holiday Hare '98 running on the TSF version of the engine, meaning you also get to play as Lori this time. There is also a very nice new main menu in green with snow falling down. The levels are mostly the same, except for some text changes, like the greeting at the start referring to Project Two instead of Gathering of Developers, and the message at the very end. In this version, after defeating the final boss, the game will give you a password, "xmasbunny". Just like in The Secret Files, you are told to use this password on the Project Two website. It seems like there never existed a place where you could enter this password though, since Project Two went out of business shortly after.
The Christmas Chronicles also comes with a number of home cooked levels. These levels consist of contesting levels created for the The Secret Files level contest. One of these levels, "easter hunt", is unfortunately slightly incomplete, since its music file was not included on the disc. Luckily, the level and the music file were uploaded to Jazz2City as well, so you could get it from there. You can also download the file here, to complete your own Christmas Chronicles setup!
Full Game:
You can download and play the shareware version by downloading it here. Get the full final game by purchasing Jazz Jackrabbit 2 from GoG - you will be supporting game preservation done correctly.
The Christmas Chronicles, unlike the original Holiday Hare '98 release, came in a nice big box, much like the original European Jazz 2 release and the other expansion The Secret Files. This time there were not a lot of extra's included, only the disc in a jewel case, but not even a paper manual. The jewel case did get artwork for this release, while previous European releases got a blank case. The manual is included in several languages on the disc in pdf format. It isn't really Christmas Chronicles related either, and is just the regular Jazz 2 manual with some Christmas Chronicles screenshots and artwork added in.
The Christmas Chronicles is basically Holiday Hare '98 running on the TSF version of the engine, meaning you also get to play as Lori this time. There is also a very nice new main menu in green with snow falling down. The levels are mostly the same, except for some text changes, like the greeting at the start referring to Project Two instead of Gathering of Developers, and the message at the very end. In this version, after defeating the final boss, the game will give you a password, "xmasbunny". Just like in The Secret Files, you are told to use this password on the Project Two website. It seems like there never existed a place where you could enter this password though, since Project Two went out of business shortly after.
The Christmas Chronicles also comes with a number of home cooked levels. These levels consist of contesting levels created for the The Secret Files level contest. One of these levels, "easter hunt", is unfortunately slightly incomplete, since its music file was not included on the disc. Luckily, the level and the music file were uploaded to Jazz2City as well, so you could get it from there. You can also download the file here, to complete your own Christmas Chronicles setup!
Full Game:
You can download and play the shareware version by downloading it here. Get the full final game by purchasing Jazz Jackrabbit 2 from GoG - you will be supporting game preservation done correctly.
