Phear

Bill Loguidice · February 13, 2018

Poster:Considering the slow pace during late spring and summer, I would still imagine 300,000+ users before the christmas season starts. Good quality games sell to a very high percentage of Jag owners. (T2000, AvP, and Doom are all still selling strong here) I hope that I have given you plenty of things to consider. I appreciate your taking time to read this, and I look forward to playing your games.

Funny that that poster added more than 100,000 units to what actual lifetime sales would come to be, even after the close-out pricing. There were overly optimistic Jaguar boosters even then.

pacman000 · February 13, 2018

Funny that that poster added more than 100,000 units to what actual lifetime sales would come to be, even after the close-out pricing. There were overly optimistic Jaguar boosters even then.

Some folks held off on buying one after Atari merged; they didn't want a system without any real support team.

If Atari had stuck around... I'm still not sure they could've made it a success after the PS1 was released. Folks who wanted a cheap system could've bought a SNES or Genesis for about $50, if memory serves. Those systems already had lots of well-regarded games. If more Jaguar games had been released in '95 or '96 it still would've had fewer available titles than the 16-bit systems, at almost double the price.

Edited February 13, 2018 by pacman000

Bill Loguidice · February 13, 2018

Some folks held off on buying one after Atari merged; they didn't want a system without any real support team.

If Atari had stuck around... I'm still not sure they could've made it a success after the PS1 was released. Folks who wanted a cheap system could've bought a SNES or Genesis for about $50, if memory serves. Those systems already had lots of well-regarded games. If more Jaguar games had been released in '95 or '96 it still would've had fewer available titles than the 16-bit systems, at almost double the price.

Atari only sold about 125,000 consoles before the remaining stock hit clearance, so it was probably a minuscule number that was holding off because of the merger. Atari's window was the Jaguar's first year. Failing to gain traction then doomed any hopes - no matter how slim - of any success after that. It certainly wasn't going to be an attractive option at any price versus something like the PS1, which hit the ground running and captured all the buzz.

KidGameR186496 · November 21, 2020

I don't know if anybody has seen this already but a former H2O Entertainment member named Christopher Bretz has a website featuring his old works including Phear (a.k.a. Tetrisphere) for the Atari Jaguar, where he reveals more about the project before being moved to the Nintendo 64...

http://www.christopherbretz.ca/pf/tetrisphere/

Edited November 21, 2020 by KidGameR186496

Clint Thompson · June 26, 2021

On 11/26/2014 at 11:06 PM, Willard said:

@Clint I doubt that the guys of H20 really cared much about the Jaguar, I wish I could find the old post they made on a newsgroup where they were talking shit about Atari despite already having secured a deal with nintendo.

You mean this one?

Stumbled upon this interview with programmer Chris Bailey, that I'd never seen before. Reading it makes you realize how ignorant and/or arrogant they were (or maybe just hopeful?) with taking H2O public right after the Nintendo deal, that they couldn't speak about.