I’m gonna say it. The original Jill of the Jungle is a total babe. I challenge you to find sexier animations from that period. Have you seen her climb a vine? Maybe you should.
Jill was produced in ’93 by Epic Megagames, who would later go on to create Jazz Jackrabbit in ’94, the classiest game ever. I Think I like Jazz because of how much of a derivative of Sonic he was. It would be the closest I’d ever get to playing a sonic game for years. Strangly enough Jill pops up in one of the Jazz Jackrabbit episodes. They made her boots green so I guess she’s been foraging for new shoes since her own game.

There’s also a cameo by Commander Keen, produced by id Software. Apparently they thought that the mightiness of Jill would crush the likes of Duke & Keen. Protip: She didn’t. Although I guess you could say that Epic did sort of win in the end. In 96′ they produced the Unreal Engine which has been used in a huge number of games since, including their old Nemesis, Apogee/3D realms for Duke Nukem Forever (which stunk out loud apparently).

The game production world is a small place, and eventually everyone bumps into everyone else. I just wonder where all the little game studios plugging away at their indy titles will be in ten or twenty years from now. Doubtless a few of them will be juggernauts producing the next generation of tools for future generations to build upon.
Unless they all get eaten by EA or something.