RARE ROMs Atari Jaguar, download quicker

[EmOneGarand]

What I am interested in is neither here nor there, all I'm saying is 'welcome to the internet', and if petrol (it's petrol yanks, not gas. Gas is something you have in your stomach when you're not well) could be posted on the internet, people would do so, and other people would download it, that's a fact.

'gas' is short for 'Gasoline' that is not the 'gas' that is in your digestive track. Petrol is a shortening of Petroleum Spirits.. which if you look it up is nothing more then a synonym for Gasoline.. for you to say that my term is incorrect is very ignorant, I think you need look at it from a culturally unbiased point of few before spouting your BS about how we 'yanks' are incorrect.

[doctorclu]

This has been a good discussion on this topic, and I appreciate the respect shown by Steve (gorf) and Greg (dclu) and Albert and other fans towards licensed properties published or owned by Songbird. Right now, I do not have time to think about or discuss this in great detail, so please do not post or distribute any Songbird properties (e.g. ROMs).

 

Good to hear from you and thanks for the answer. The invitation is open if you change your mind latter down the road.

 

And don't forget the "cripple ware" offer if you can ever swing that.

 

 

I would also like to point out that Phase Zero is a property licensed by Songbird for the Jaguar from the original developers. It was a bit of an oddball situation, because the ROM was made available publicly prior to Songbird acquiring the license, but it is not public domain.

 

Thanks for letting us know that. Noted. (One less prototype to have to find out where it came from.)

 

So far we have heard from Songbird, Gorf, currently asking Matthias his take on if we can post some of his demos here.

 

Want to ask Scatologic if we can at least feature their demos here, and ask Telegames just be complete. Anyone know a good contact at Telegames?

[Fredifredo]

I would also like to point out that Phase Zero is a property licensed by Songbird for the Jaguar from the original developers. It was a bit of an oddball situation, because the ROM was made available publicly prior to Songbird acquiring the license, but it is not public domain.

 

In 2001, I made 2 carts of this game ( one for me , the other I sold ), without having any infos about that

I'm sorry to have been the first french pirate of the Atari Jaguar

 

forgive me Carl ...

[doctorclu]

I would also like to point out that Phase Zero is a property licensed by Songbird for the Jaguar from the original developers. It was a bit of an oddball situation, because the ROM was made available publicly prior to Songbird acquiring the license, but it is not public domain.

 

In 2001, I made 2 carts of this game ( one for me , the other I sold ), without having any infos about that

I'm sorry to have been the first french pirate of the Atari Jaguar

 

forgive me Carl ...

 

In 2001 this is probably when the Phase Zero was "released to the public". I remember that. I remember couldn't do crap with it though not having a Flash Cart.

 

Since that time looks like Carl took the time to get permission from the developers. (And got better binaries or source code maybe... hmmmm.. we are left to wonder.) Well anyway, if Carl can make it a useable project he will make it available (sell) so not like this is going into a locked vault forever.

[jvas]

It's no more or less their right to release this material as it is for others to post ROMs of the same game.

 

It's not even close. This stuff was thrown out apparently. It's quite obvious Atari did not care

about these.

 

 

The rights are still belongs to Atari wheter they throw something into the dustbin or not. What they through away is some data storage devices not the rights. I don't understand you.

Edited October 28, 2008 by jvas

[Songbird]

I would also like to point out that Phase Zero is a property licensed by Songbird for the Jaguar from the original developers. It was a bit of an oddball situation, because the ROM was made available publicly prior to Songbird acquiring the license, but it is not public domain.

 

In 2001, I made 2 carts of this game ( one for me , the other I sold ), without having any infos about that

I'm sorry to have been the first french pirate of the Atari Jaguar

 

forgive me Carl ...

Don't worry about it. That was a long time ago and most likely before I contacted the developers.

[doctorclu]

The rights are still belongs to Atari wheter they throw something into the dustbin or not. What they through away is some data storage devices not the rights. I don't understand you.

 

I agree with you Jvas, the information on those devices belong in the backwaters of a rights of a company that has passed through three hands since. The rights for the information off those hard drives that Jason sells due to his time compiling them, and the game binaries, are all rights of that company.

 

Those rights existed till this happened...

http://www.atarihq.com/news/1999/990514.html

 

"Beverly, MA (May 14, 1999) - Leading entertainment software publisher, Hasbro Interactive announced today it has released all rights that it may have to the vintage Atari hardware platform, the Jaguar."

 

There is no other Atari gaming platform that can claim this. Released ALL rights.

 

I think the latter part of this announcement tells their intensions the best:

 

"We realize there is a passionate audience of diehard Atari fans who want to keep the Jaguar system alive, and we don't want to prevent them from doing that. We will not interfere with the efforts of software developers to create software for the Jaguar system"

 

In other words, the owners of Atari when this statement of released rights wanted Jaguar fans, true to leave them alone about making new games for the Jaguar, to continue the platform and have fun. They wanted to encourage the hobby efforts of an old (and historically failed) Atari platform, and wanted to keep good will with Atari fans, probably in hopes that we would buy their newer products. And I would have to say it worked for me because I have bought their PC, Nuon, GameCube, and Dreamcast titles since. Well, games made by Hasbro and Infogramms as "Atari".

 

So let's break it down. Naturally "Atari" would not want us going out and SELLING products that they completed, but at the same time, based on what I see above, I think "Atari" would like for us to have that information above to learn from, share, & enjoy.

The commercial roms of the prime Atari era, the material in the dumpsters, all came from that time segment that I would put under the umbrella of "it has released all rights that it may have to the vintage Atari hardware platform, the Jaguar". Those are all materials Atari contracted to be developed, paid for, and released years later. It could be interpreted that way. The statement does say "All rights." with no other specifications.

 

Now there are developers that made materials for the Jaguar, the prototypes never released, that were never bought by Atari and are the rights of the developers, or whoever they passed those rights onto (as we saw with Phase Zero where the developers passed on their rights to the game to Carl). We will need to be careful in cases like that, and will need to approach the current owners of those properties before we make links here or feature them here.

 

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Ultimately, if AtariAge never features binaries directly like the other platforms here, I think the fact that we understand the spirit of the information that we have available... the binaries, the source codes, the wealth of material saved by Jaguar hobbyists and developers, if we move forward with less paranoia to how this information is used and freely discuss it as hobbyists... we're on the right track.

 

I'm already seeing us move in that direction, and I like what I already see and the input we've received from many on this thread.

Edited October 28, 2008 by doctorclu

[ballbuster]

I look at emulation and roms as a double edged sword. If it wasn't for emulators and downloading roms, the retro gaming scene would just be a small percentage of what it currently is. There wouldn't be enough of a demand for things like the VC or XBLA to exist. You wouldn't have remakes on the hand helds that are coming out. And there wouldn't be a demand for new games for the old systems.

 

Sure if game is still being sold as new, then it isn't right to illegally pass it along. But if a company doesn't do anything with a property for years, then it's fair game as far as I'm concerned. I really have no respect for someone who doesn't do anything with a property because they feel they can't make a profit on it, yet get pissed when people distribute that property for free.

[doctorclu]

But if a company doesn't do anything with a property for years, then it's fair game as far as I'm concerned.

 

Agreed with a lot of what you said, but we really need to be careful with the statement of "Well they haven't used this for years so I can use it." Not true. According to some copyright laws they would sit on that material for 70 years until that copyright would expire, and they can renew that copyright somewhere in that time.

 

Companies come and go, developers move onto other things to bring bread to their table. Question is, who had the rights in the end? Was the rights bought by a company (like the games released on cartridge by Atari) or did the developer release their own games or never sell those rights to a company to publish (as we see with the prototypes since Atari's time with the Jaguar.)

 

With companies long gone and developers moved on to better things the best we can term it as "Abandonware" and considered the material borrowed. If the true owner shows up we explain what we are doing, if need be apologize and take the material down if requested and hope the owner is cool about it.

 

That is why we need to try to ask hobbyists and developers one who owns what information for the stuff since Atari's time. That is a bit easier.

 

The stuff from Atari's time might be fun to get Atari to even remember they even own/owned it. Then again, we have the statement during the Hasbro era releasing all rights to the Jaguar hardware platform. In the Jaguar's case if ever approached we can show that, and if things are pushed further and some other interpretation brought forward, we apologize and take whatever the requested material was down at that point.

 

The way I see it, the above will probably not be challenged until the day "Atari" tries to make a Flashblack 5:The Jaguar with 20 built in games. At that point they will probably start looking around and making statements then (we saw this kinda when the first two Flashbacks came out.) Until then, they have more important irons in the fire.

 

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You know what I would find interesting to know from Al, what is the story of Activision and Telegames and the archives here? Was it pretty well known about their stance on downloads, or did they approach here.

 

I find the Lynx archives particularly interesting since we have pretty much all games there except the Telegames titles. Guess I want to know what history already exists between AtariAge and Telegames in regards to that to get ideas as I draft a letter to Telegames.

[ballbuster]

Agreed with a lot of what you said, but we really need to be careful with the statement of "Well they haven't used this for years so I can use it." Not true. According to some copyright laws they would sit on that material for 70 years until that copyright would expire, and they can renew that copyright somewhere in that time.

You are correct, but I wasn't talking about the legalities, just my own personal feelings on the matter. I'm sure if you dig deep enough, 90% of the roms available have a true owner who hasn't given any kind of permission for use. But couldn't care less because legal costs are higher than the games worth to them.

[doctorclu]

You are correct, but I wasn't talking about the legalities, just my own personal feelings on the matter. I'm sure if you dig deep enough, 90% of the roms available have a true owner who hasn't given any kind of permission for use. But couldn't care less because legal costs are higher than the games worth to them.

 

And that is the true economics of what we're dealing with here. So what makes us at AtariAge different from other sites? We ask on the ones we know, we feature the others, and as those true owners (people who hold rights to old companies or developers themselves that still hold the rights) surface and we find them, we ask them for their blessing.

 

If they say no, we could be a jerk and say "what are you going to do about it?" But instead we here at AtariAge will say "sorry, we only featured to honor, not offend, we're taking the game down now."

 

In the case of Atari as I'm seeing it it's really simple, there is Atari for everything up to 1997, and then there are hobbyists, collectors, and developers after that. And again, for all that stuff up to "Fight For Life" (Atari's last Jaguar game), we have the statement from 1999. Pretty sweet really.

[BuddyBuddies]

I think releasing some betas and prototype ROMS is cool and even other materials for developing and tools to help coders/ progammers ect. Im not a fan of releasing commercial released ROMs though, i think that most Jaguar titles with the exception of Battlesphere and Gorf can be bought and found at reasonable prices. The thing is there arent that many titles for the Jaguar and i think it is more hassle than its really worth, given the fact that it "could" create "more" problems in the Jaguar scene, which is something the Jaguar community doesnt need. However, this is just my opinion and people will continue to do what they want, just my $.02 buddies!

[doctorclu]

I think releasing some betas and prototype ROMS is cool and even other materials for developing and tools to help coders/ progammers ect. Im not a fan of releasing commercial released ROMs though, i think that most Jaguar titles with the exception of Battlesphere™ and Gorf can be bought and found at reasonable prices. The thing is there arent that many titles for the Jaguar and i think it is more hassle than its really worth, given the fact that it "could" create "more" problems in the Jaguar scene, which is something the Jaguar community doesnt need. However, this is just my opinion and people will continue to do what they want, just my $.02 buddies!

 

Basically the hard ones to find are the protos and the ones that Songbird, Telegames, Scatologic, Stooges. Interestingly enough, not the ones being suggested for the archives here.

 

The ones that we would feature here would be fairly commons. Two ways you can look it at this point:

 

1) they are commons, people can try them, and quickly buy the real thing.

2) Hard to claim piracy when we were featuring the "crappier" titles that really are not the ones that rom hunters are typically looking for.

 

So why bother if they are commons mostly?

 

1) To give people a chance to find games to try out from a reputable source.

2) To give people a backup image of the commons at least when they do buy them, and mostlikely they will when they start collecting, because as you mentioned, a good number are fairly easy to get on Ebay.

 

Bottom line, people want to check out the Jaguar, and regardless people will hit the rom sites. But we can offer the games (the earlier stuff and other things approved) in an environment where people can learn more about the games, and why the roms that aren't there are not being featured. Like we've seen, some people did not realize some titles were Songbird titles and apologized when they found out. I think the educational value to Jaguar hobbyists and developers make it worth it.

[BuddyBuddies]

I think releasing some betas and prototype ROMS is cool and even other materials for developing and tools to help coders/ progammers ect. Im not a fan of releasing commercial released ROMs though, i think that most Jaguar titles with the exception of Battlesphere™ and Gorf can be bought and found at reasonable prices. The thing is there arent that many titles for the Jaguar and i think it is more hassle than its really worth, given the fact that it "could" create "more" problems in the Jaguar scene, which is something the Jaguar community doesnt need. However, this is just my opinion and people will continue to do what they want, just my $.02 buddies!

 

Basically the hard ones to find are the protos and the ones that Songbird, Telegames, Scatologic, Stooges. Interestingly enough, not the ones being suggested for the archives here.

 

The ones that we would feature here would be fairly commons. Two ways you can look it at this point:

 

1) they are commons, people can try them, and quickly buy the real thing.

2) Hard to claim piracy when we were featuring the "crappier" titles that really are not the ones that rom hunters are typically looking for.

 

So why bother if they are commons mostly?

 

1) To give people a chance to find games to try out from a reputable source.

2) To give people a backup image of the commons at least when they do buy them, and mostlikely they will when they start collecting, because as you mentioned, a good number are fairly easy to get on Ebay.

 

Bottom line, people want to check out the Jaguar, and regardless people will hit the rom sites. But we can offer the games (the earlier stuff and other things approved) in an environment where people can learn more about the games, and why the roms that aren't there are not being featured. Like we've seen, some people did not realize some titles were Songbird titles and apologized when they found out. I think the educational value to Jaguar hobbyists and developers make it worth it.

People that are interested in the Jaguar should just buy the games in my opinion, especially the common ones and they should already have a Jaguar. If you need a backup,buy extra cartridges then,its simple. In my experience owning nearly 300 Jaguar cartridges, currently i have only had one bad cartridge. Jaguar cartridges are very durable and just need a good cleaning from time to time.

It doesnt matter if the game is "crappy" like Checkered Flag,piracy is still piracy in the end buddy,but you are correct in the fact that people wont care as much though. Nobody is going to buy the game when its free to download unless they are serious Jaguar fans. Yes,people want to check out the Jaguar and some people do hit the ROM sites, however in the end it opens the doors for people to start pirating games like Battlesphere and Gorf, SongBird titles along with many other titles because they see other Jaguar ROMs being dumped. Im not trying to start a flamewar,but im giving you my opinion. We already have seen the ROM issues regarding the Jaguar CF and its ROM copying possibilities and look what happened to the Jaguar community! It has become nearly divided! Since most of the games are common and cheap,i really cant see the point in this and is it really worth it? No. We have people that are working on getting more Jaguar games to support the system and now they have a reason to be worried because of more people and sites supporting ROM dumps. Im sure 3DSSS isnt that happy about this idea since they have many games in the works, i know Carl cant be too happy about this and why the hell would he give permission to let people download his ROMs?? Carl is selling them to make money and get a return on his investment and i would too. The thing is,unless it is something useful like development tools or unique betas or prototypes and things like that,its going to hurt the community more than help it,just for the few people who want to try out the Jaguar. Also keep in mind the the "common and "cheap" games dont give the Jaguar a good first impression either.All im saying is its really not worth releasing commercial ROMs,but many people will disagree and many people will remain silent on this issue. Those who wanted to give games away for free released them as freeware.What is the education and value you are talking about for Jaguar hobbyists and developers by releasing commercial ROMs?? This will open the doors and cause more heated problems in the Jaguar community......so i say if they want Jaguar ROMS find them on some other site! , in the end i guess its Albert who makes the final decision. Thats just my $.02 buddies....

[+Sauron]

The above is simply a one-sided opinion from the "other half" of the community, and it's a false one at that. ROMs have been freely available for all of the other Atari systems on here for years. Yet we've seen an upsurge in development for those systems instead of the opposite effect, as the "other half" of the community erroneously believes. I haven't heard the "piracy" complaint from any other classic gaming community when it comes to ROMs. Why is the Jaguar community so different?

 

Statements like the above stating that having common game ROMs freely available will just lead to pirating games from current developers is like saying that marijuana is a "gateway" drug. Both statements are broad generalizations that have no basis in reality. Not trying to pick on you BuddyBuddies, but giving the flip side of the issue.

[+remowilliams]

The solution to 'growing the community' if there is such a thing, is surely not continuing ad nauseum the ridiculous pretense that the Jag is somehow different from every other commercially long dead platform. Nor is it continuing to throw up walls, nor is it the promotion of some sort of elite exclusivity, nor is it the continuation of the divisive shouting of herd mentality.

[BuddyBuddies]

The above is simply a one-sided opinion from the "other half" of the community, and it's a false one at that. ROMs have been freely available for all of the other Atari systems on here for years. Yet we've seen an upsurge in development for those systems instead of the opposite effect, as the "other half" of the community erroneously believes. I haven't heard the "piracy" complaint from any other classic gaming community when it comes to ROMs. Why is the Jaguar community so different?

 

Statements like the above stating that having common game ROMs freely available will just lead to pirating games from current developers is like saying that marijuana is a "gateway" drug. Both statements are broad generalizations that have no basis in reality. Not trying to pick on you BuddyBuddies, but giving the flip side of the issue.

I dont think its being one-sided, nor is it a false claim. I just cant see how releasing commercial ROMs will "help" out in anyway and development of new Jaguar titles wont increase because of this,so there is no real benefit. You can call my opinion "one-sided" and say the "other half" of the community and i could do the same for what you said, remember it takes two halves to make a whole community buddy. Its not really worth arguing and i wont debate this,especially since i already have all the games , i just dont think it will benefit the community much and wanted to give my opinion.In some ways the Jaguar community IS very much different than the other Atari systems. No offense taken Sauron,we just have different opinions on this subject.

[Nukey Shay]

You're right. Being able to study thousands of binary files, which lead to more advanced tools (disassemblers, etc) to study them, which leads to more advanced tools used to create new binaries, is a dangerous prospect. Then you have a whole lotta people designing games that have no business doing so...waaaay too much information freely available to draw examples from for use in new projects.

 

Scary. A Jaguar homebrew scene should be discouraged at ALL costs!

[+Sauron]

I dont think its being one-sided, nor is it a false claim. I just cant see how releasing commercial ROMs will "help" out in anyway and development of new Jaguar titles wont increase because of this,so there is no real benefit. You can call my opinion "one-sided" and say the "other half" of the community and i could do the same for what you said, remember it takes two halves to make a whole community buddy. Its not really worth arguing and i wont debate this,especially since i already have all the games , i just dont think it will benefit the community much and wanted to give my opinion.In some ways the Jaguar community IS very much different than the other Atari systems. No offense taken Sauron,we just have different opinions on this subject.

 

That's fine, you can disagree all you want. I'll just have to prove you wrong.

 

If you really think that having ROMs available won't benefit the community, you simply haven't been paying attention to any of the other communities. You need to look no further than the 2600, which has a thriving development community behind it.

 

For proof, just witness the number of hacks and homebrews available for the system. Having ROMs available is an important programming tool for aspiring developers to be able to get their hands dirty with hacking a game and learning more about the system that way. If you don't believe me, go ask PacManPlus over in the 7800 forum how much he learned by creating Pac-Man Collection by hacking the 7800 version of Ms. Pac-Man. Then take a look at the game if you haven't already.

 

Also, Jag games aren't nearly as cheap as you make them out to be. Not everyone has hundreds of dollars to throw at compiling a collection of games. You can build up a pretty extensive library of 2600, 5200, 7800, and Lynx games for under $100. You simply can't do that with the Jag while expecting to get anywhere near the bang for your buck with it as you'll get for the other systems. Jag collecting is expensive compared to collecting for most other systems. Stating that it's not is far from the reality of it.

 

Again, I'm not picking on you. I just find it hard to fathom how anyone can think along those lines when there's an extensive body of evidence that says otherwise.

[BuddyBuddies]

You're right. Being able to study thousands of binary files, which lead to more advanced tools (disassemblers, etc) to study them, which leads to more advanced tools used to create new binaries, is a dangerous prospect. Then you have a whole lotta people designing games that have no business doing so...waaaay too much information freely available to draw examples from for use in new projects.

 

Scary. A Jaguar homebrew scene should be discouraged at ALL costs!

nobody has yet put to good use all those Jaguar source codes that were released by Curt,Jason and others,nor made tools to help developers,but yet you can find most of these commercial ROM binaries on ROM sites other than AA so why hasnt that lead to "new"binaries,dissassemblers ect.??? The only thing ive seen was the Doom conversion demo by Matthias on youtube and that wasnt too much and i believe he hasnt done much else on it. Many people know that id love to see the Jaguar homebrew scene pump out the games, im a huge Jaguar fan,but commercial ROMs wont do any good in getting more games out to the real fans! Most of those games are done using the sloppy 68k code anyway, are you going to study thousands of binary files to help lead us to new tools and new game binaries?? if not then who will?? probably nobody.

[doctorclu]

You're right. Being able to study thousands of binary files, which lead to more advanced tools (disassemblers, etc) to study them, which leads to more advanced tools used to create new binaries, is a dangerous prospect. Then you have a whole lotta people designing games that have no business doing so...waaaay too much information freely available to draw examples from for use in new projects.

 

Scary. A Jaguar homebrew scene should be discouraged at ALL costs!

 

LOL!! I love it.

 

Yeh it was really inspiring seeing how you could disassemble Atari 2600 roms, make corrections to work on the Supercharger for the 2600 (making slight memory map changes so they would work on unmodified Superchargers) that made me think how cool it would be for the Jaguar to have the same. To hopefully one day have a good 68K/GPU/DSP disassembler for the Jaguar that could take an image and almost perfectly disassemble into useable code. Still years away, but the 68K disassemblers are out there, so that's a start.

 

And I remember the tweaking that I think you did on Pepsi Invaders where it was a longer game (I believe you did that). It would be nice to make some revisions and inprovements to some Jaguar games too.

[doctorclu]

nobody has yet put to good use all those Jaguar source codes that were released by Curt,Jason and others,nor made tools to help developers,but yet you can find most of these commercial ROM binaries on ROM sites other than AA so why hasnt that lead to "new"binaries,dissassemblers ect.???

 

Maybe Nukey Shay can give us an idea of how many YEARS it took for the disassemblers used in the 2600 scene to come about.

 

Fact is, what we have out there, and even the "romz" out there have not been for nothing.

 

I talk to people all the time who are studying the source codes a lot. People who want to try things, make modifications to existing code, and they are making moderate headway. Jason and Curt ARE making a difference in this. It's just that all those people have only so much personal time and our tools for disassembly and what not are still primitive in comparison.

 

So what if the binaries have 68K code and some think that to be sloppy, it is still an example. An example maybe of how NOT to do something, but still a working example right?

 

 

Thanks to a "romz" I was able to throw Bubsy into a 68K disassembler tonight (had someone explain more about that process to me tonight). Fascinating. The disassembler didn't understand the GPU or DSP processes, but the rest was really interesting. Hope to see a clearer picture of it all with a bit more work.

 

Anyway binaries are not nearly as nice as source code, but hey it's something, and hopefully what source code we don't find we can take a binary and unravel. And eventually someone along the way will get better at unraveling those binaries to the point they say "Screw this, I could make a tool to handle this..." And it just goes from there.

[BuddyBuddies]

I dont think its being one-sided, nor is it a false claim. I just cant see how releasing commercial ROMs will "help" out in anyway and development of new Jaguar titles wont increase because of this,so there is no real benefit. You can call my opinion "one-sided" and say the "other half" of the community and i could do the same for what you said, remember it takes two halves to make a whole community buddy. Its not really worth arguing and i wont debate this,especially since i already have all the games , i just dont think it will benefit the community much and wanted to give my opinion.In some ways the Jaguar community IS very much different than the other Atari systems. No offense taken Sauron,we just have different opinions on this subject.

 

That's fine, you can disagree all you want. I'll just have to prove you wrong.

 

If you really think that having ROMs available won't benefit the community, you simply haven't been paying attention to any of the other communities. You need to look no further than the 2600, which has a thriving development community behind it.

 

For proof, just witness the number of hacks and homebrews available for the system. Having ROMs available is an important programming tool for aspiring developers to be able to get their hands dirty with hacking a game and learning more about the system that way. If you don't believe me, go ask PacManPlus over in the 7800 forum how much he learned by creating Pac-Man Collection by hacking the 7800 version of Ms. Pac-Man. Then take a look at the game if you haven't already.

 

Also, Jag games aren't nearly as cheap as you make them out to be. Not everyone has hundreds of dollars to throw at compiling a collection of games. You can build up a pretty extensive library of 2600, 5200, 7800, and Lynx games for under $100. You simply can't do that with the Jag while expecting to get anywhere near the bang for your buck with it as you'll get for the other systems. Jag collecting is expensive compared to collecting for most other systems. Stating that it's not is far from the reality of it.

 

Again, I'm not picking on you. I just find it hard to fathom how anyone can think along those lines when there's an extensive body of evidence that says otherwise.

How will you prove me wrong?? The new games that come out for the Jaguar will come out without any influence from other commercial ROMs. They will come from actual coders who program their own games. Many source codes and ROMs have been available for years! ,but yet aside from the Doom hack,i havent seen any others yet! Where will these coders come from that will make new tools and new games since the commercial ROMs have been posted on AA??

The Jaguar IS very much different than the 2600,7800,5200. First off it takes ALOT longer to code a good game,unless you are counting Frog Feast quality games on the Jaguar. Second the other Ataris got much better tools to work with and lastly how many coders are there currently in the Jag scene compared to the 2600? not nearly as many buddy! I dont see any hacks for the Jaguar anytime soon,especially since they were coder horribly using the 68k code and more so without any good development tools.

As far as collecting goes i also disagree.The 2600 has way more games and accessories compared to the Jaguar. Id say the 2600 could be more expensive,but there are alot of things to take into consideration when collecting. I cant see the average Jaguar collection costing more than the 2600, the Jaguar was only out for a few years and the 2600 has some rare titles too.

I know your not picking on me buddy,we just got very different ways of looking at things,but i just dont see this extensive body of evidence that you claim exists, atleast in the Jaguar community.

[+Sauron]

nobody has yet put to good use all those Jaguar source codes that were released by Curt,Jason and others,nor made tools to help developers,but yet you can find most of these commercial ROM binaries on ROM sites other than AA so why hasnt that lead to "new"binaries,dissassemblers ect.???

 

How much of the source code that's been released is truly freely available? From what I see, most of the source code is only available through packages purchased through JSII or through B&C. You can't charge for this stuff and expect there to be an explosion of development to follow. And that's not even going into the legality of selling this information, which in and of itself makes all arguments against having ROMs freely available moot. Also, why has development of the few Jag emulators halted? Lack of interest due to lack of freely available ROMs coupled with a community that is beaten down by a few prominent developers whenever someone so as much whispers the word. Funny how you don't see this happening with the other system communities. Having the use of an emulator in development is much easier and cheaper than having to purchase extra equipment that's available in very small quantities. This reason alone is a large part of why I dropped all attempts at Jag development years ago.

 

Many people know that id love to see the Jaguar homebrew scene pump out the games, im a huge Jaguar fan,but commercial ROMs wont do any good in getting more games out to the real fans! Most of those games are done using the sloppy 68k code anyway, are you going to study thousands of binary files to help lead us to new tools and new game binaries?? if not then who will?? probably nobody.

 

I bet you'd rather see games released using sloppy 68k code rather than no games at all. And if you want to see any kind of quick development occur on the Jag, using the 68k is going to be a must. Not everyone is a programming genius like Gorf. Again, your argument simply isn't based in reality when compared to the scene on the other systems. Unlike those other systems, the Jag has remained closed off for years, and development has been at a trickle. Making ROMs freely available couldn't possibly make it any worse.

[Nukey Shay]

The cart before the horse, investments and sacrifices, call it whatever you choose. The fact still remains that if nobody (i.e. nobody on the planet) had easy access to binary files of any type...there would have never been modern homebrews created for any system (or at the very least, a much smaller collection). Nothing to look at...so how does it work? Nobody knows but the elite. Those that DO understand it are in a dying minority if there is no active interest in the system.

 

In the meantime, people will continue to do what they've always done. Create games for the 2600, NES, etc. The active interest is already there for them, along with a wealth of reverse-engineered sources, examples, and tools readily available. It started on a very small scale.

 

Personally, I couldn't care less. I have zero interest in the Jaguar. I cannot speak for everyone, so try not to discourage your own interest base