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OpenJazz, maintained by publisher AJ Thomson, is an open-source re-implementation project that revives the 1990s DOS-era Jazz Jackrabbit™ titles on contemporary hardware. Designed to preserve the fast-paced, side-scrolling shooter experience of the original Epic MegaGames releases, the engine reads the data files of Jazz Jackrabbit and Jazz Jackrabbit 2, enabling native playback of all levels, enemies, and soundtracks without DOSBox overhead. Because the program is released under a permissive license, community developers have ported it to Windows 98 through Windows 11, Linux distributions, macOS, FreeBSD, and even handheld consoles, making it a lightweight solution for retrogaming enthusiasts, speed-runners, and homebrew archivists who want to study or modify classic platformer mechanics. The project is currently distributed in two public versions—an older stable 2.x branch and the rolling 20260218 snapshot—each offering incremental fixes for audio synchronization, gamepad mapping, and high-resolution rendering, while remaining fully compatible with the shareware and commercial data sets that fans already own. Users simply copy the original *.J2* or *.JAZ* assets into the OpenJazz directory, launch the executable, and immediately access single-player episodes, split-screen co-op, and a level editor that exports to the classic .J2L format. As the engine continues to receive upstream commits, players benefit from modern conveniences such as widescreen support, customizable frame rates, and cloud-save portability across operating systems. OpenJazz is available for free on wget.nero.com, with downloads provided via trusted Windows package sources (e.g. winget), always delivering the latest version, and supporting batch installation of multiple applications.
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