Haze's Hideout - Jazz Jackrabbit information more daily than the Daily Carrot

It's probably not such a good thing that our previous anniversary post is located on the second page of this site. But nevertheless, despite missing all the news from the past few months, we're not dead yet!

And we're coming back, one way or another! But we'll be needing all the help we can get. We're cooking up some plans to determine how people can contribute to the Hideout. Plus you can look forward to another redesign; the current one got stale around November of last year! :p

In the meantime we're glad to know that everyone is still supportive of people like us! ;) Here's to another 9 years at the very least!

No sooner had we reported that Unreal Tournament 3 was released or Mark Rein steps up to announce that the Sony PLAYSTATION 3 version has gone gold.

We got news last night that Unreal Tournament 3 has been approved by SCEA and has been released to North American manufacturing.

The PS3 version of the fourth game in the Unreal Tournament series is expected to be on North American shelves in the week of December 10th. European gamers will have to wait for the localized versions which should show up early 2008. Those without a PS3 can expect the Microsoft Xbox 360 version to follow soon after.

It was a long time coming but finally it has happened: Unreal Tournament 3 is available from your local game-retailer. That is if you're living in the United States. European gamers will have to wait a few more days, until the 22nd, before they can get their hands on a shiny copy of the game.

Both a regular- and special edition are once again available for those who like to choose between plain vanilla and custard with chocolate pieces in it. Linux and Mac OS X versions are expected in the near future with a Sony PLAYSTATION 3 version following somewhere later this year. A Microsoft Xbox 360 version is planned in the long run.

So which brave soul will step out, buy the game and then thoroughly sift through it to see if there are any hidden references to green lagomorphs?

One of the things we have missed in our unforeseen hiatus was EvilMike launching a new Jazz Jackrabbit 2 blog. In it he reviews new and classic levels, trying to highlight some of the best (and worst) out there. If you're not reading it yet go over there now and start. Perhaps this snippet from a review of Queen of Board will convince you to do so:

Today there are far better examples of the kind of gameplay and level design that Queen of Board helped pioneer; ones that won't leave you smashing your keyboard on the floor in frustration. The fact that this episode managed to break new ground is enough to save it from a score of 1.0, but not enough to make it worth playing for more than the curiosity of it being the first to do something.

Now we haven't seen any new reviews for a little while but with such quality and controversial statements it's hard not to look forward to new ones hopefully coming soon.

Recently veteran Jazz Jackrabbit-composer Alexander Brandon released a new album titled "Era's End", with an accompanying website located at Alexanderbrandon.net of all places. Described by gaming website GameSetWatch as "non-soundtrack catchy synth" and as "really awesome" by commenters on his own site Alex himself puts it this way:

Parts of the music were written in a tracker, of all things. Parts were written in Nuendo, the high end of PC based studio digital audio workstations. It uses ancient 90s samples and more modern Waldorf and Absynth. It is a conglomeration of the old and the new, but the whole thing says "I defy standard albums because I have many different song styles". I truly hope you enjoy it.

You can listen to and buy music from the album over at Alexander Brandon's website.