What Atari Jaguar games should have come out on other consoles

[Lost Dragon]

Seem to remember Mark H, trying to interview Jaguar Zool II coder for his book, a Gremlin In The Works, but he didn't want to chat.

 

Shame, as it would of been interesting to see how the Jaguar version fared at retail.

 

I remember Gremlin's Ian Stewart telling me the reason Switchblade II was their only Lynx release was because it bombed at retail (and that scored well with the UK press), so the Lynx wasn't seen as a commercially viable platform and he thought the same was true of the Jaguar version of Zool II.

 

If sales were that bad on something like the Jaguar..i doubt it would of fared any better on the N64..

Edited February 22, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[Lost Dragon]

Did a bit more looking it Imagitec Design's Freelancer 2120..spoken to a few more sources from the company etc..

 

You can basically sum it up as this...

 

An ambitious project initially planned for PC CD and Jaguar CD..

 

Which suffered from a very troubled development from the start,not helped by having an inexperienced producer in charge, the Jaguar hardware limitations and lacklustre performance at retail..

 

Attempts to save money on Jaguar version,by using an in house 3D engine, one which went onto power I-War?, came to nothing, as it soon became apparent it would fall way short.

 

Cash strapped Imagitec Design realise they will need to use an off the shelf engine, cue delivery of I.D's Jaguar Doom Engine.

 

Entire project moved onto Playstation, overhauled and redesigned before it itself became scrapped.

 

Prototype PC version idea for providing still shots, but ran very slowly.

 

It simply was a victim of it's time i have been told..

 

Even the intro, believed to have been done by Amiga legend,Tobias Richter..Who's 3D style was in danger of appearing dated by time the game was being developed.

 

The industry was moving at such a rapid rate we sadly never even saw it on the Playstation.

 

It's hard to get more concrete facts, as your asking about long forgotten titles which were just 1 of many from that era coders,artists etc worked on.

[VladR]

Are we talking about this particular Freelancer 2120 ?

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-jaguar-freelancer-2120-the-asaka-contract_s21746.html

 

Because from those 2 screenshots there - it looks like a Wolfenstein with textured ceiling and floor (e.g. AvP on jag). The PCs of the time were roughly Pentium 75 Mhz, which could power Quake, let alone something like this (technologically, this is like Blake Stone, just perhaps with 16-bit coloring).

 

I'm pretty sure at that time it made no sense to attempt PC market which was flooded with these games, so they tried PS1, but while much easier on a coder (with all its SDKs and documentation), it's still not exactly easy (though easier than on jag, for sure) to extract performance from those RISCs

 

I struggle to comprehend how I-War's engine was remotely adequate choice for an FPS genre

 

Were they financing the development or some other entity ?

 

EDIT: Alright - found this:

https://assemblergames.com/threads/freelancer-2120-imagitec-design-pc-jaguar-possibly-amiga.66482/

 

It's a long thread, don't have time right now...

Edited February 24, 2018 by VladR

[pacman000]

That Assembler thread summed up:

 

One person says he knew someone who worked on the game, & that it used an improved I-War engine.

 

Another person says that no interview has ever mentioned an improved I-War engine, & that they'd already licensed the Doom engine, & that Atari Corp wouldn't have paid for a 2nd engine.

 

PC version was supposed to use Argonaut's Brender engine; it may have had point-and-click adventure segments.

[Lost Dragon]

It was Space Junk..Imagitec Design's other high profile title..moved from Falcon to Jaguar CD and supposedly Sega CD, that mixed point and click adventure section with space travel sections.

 

As for Freelancer assuming here any screens taken from PC version as that was at a stage game was running.

 

Imagitec Design always seemed strapped for cash..so how much they themselves were funding and how much in terms of game assets were given to them, is something else.

 

I'd of liked to of seen Freelancer attempted on Playstation, just to see how Imagitec fared with another original title, rather than anot her conversion.

 

As for the Assembler thread

 

Some might as why the second person joined in so quicky, was so reluctant to name sources...etc.

Edited February 25, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[+CyranoJ]

 

Some might as why the second person joined in so quicky, was so reluctant to name sources...etc.

 

That would be the same person constantly defacing the Jaguar wikipedia page, linking to their own posts on forums as 'proof' and generally being a giant douche everywhere. Who in their right mind would want to work with someone like that?

[VladR]

Imagitec Design always seemed strapped for cash..so how much they themselves were funding and how much in terms of game assets were given to them, is something else.

So, they self-funded ? Ouch, that's quite -uhm- bold, given the market at the time

 

 

I'd of liked to of seen Freelancer attempted on Playstation, just to see how Imagitec fared with another original title, rather than anot her conversion.

I'd be also very curious to see how far they got on coding their PS1 engine. I don't, however, see them surviving the expensive process of approving the build or patches. There's a reason why so many PS1 games got canned so late in the dev cycle (many almost finished), when publisher literally just said "screw it and cut the losses". Self-funding that, now that would be beyond bold

 

But, perhaps the folks behind Imagitec had a different business that was funding their gamedev desires ?

 

Would you happen to know how much time they spent on PS1 engine ?

 

 

 

 

As far as I-War is concerned, I understand the initial screenshots were from PC prototype, but they could not have possibly reused more than 5% (and even that's generous) of the I-War's polygonal engine for the 2D raycasting engine.

 

From 3D engine perspective, I-War to AVP is like comparing Rayman to Attack of the mutant penguins, really...

 

I'm sure we would all love to see their second generation title on jag...

[Lost Dragon]

I honestly cannot comment on the funding of any Imagitec Design Jaguar projects.

 

All documentation i had was openly shared on that Assembler thread at the time.

 

The Atari documentation stating bought Doom Engine, was mentioned as it ties in with what Andrew Seed told Atari Explorer at the time and what i was recently told regarding Imagitec Design initially attempting to use an existing,in house engine, which they thought might of been used in I-War,then realising they would need an off the shelf engine instead.

 

Bear in mind,i'm asking people to recal work done over 20 years ago and different people working on different versions...memories will be hazy.

 

Regarding the PS1 version, again, all I have to go on,is what Martin Hooley told me at the time via the reply to my letter in UFG magazine and was stated in other UK press at the time..

 

Project had been moved to the much more capable Playstation hardware for an overhaul and redesign.

 

I personally never saw any screens in the Playstation press myself.

 

Martin more recently has said game was moved purely because it became obvious Jaguar CD was going to fail at retail,they would never recoup the investment..

 

A different story to his original reason of Atari wanting game to compete with texture mapped games on 3DO and Playstation.

 

There doesn't seem much love for the game from those who worked on it..

 

Described as a shitstorm from the start..best thing about it the concept art etc.

 

I do know who the producer was,but have not attempted to put Q's to him,as this looks like a title best left forgotten, rather than old wounds opened up.

 

Please understand that people who worked on unreleased projects often give very blunt appraisals of mangers, bosses,fellow artists,coders etc, which cannot be made public..

 

Jaguar games no different to any other lost games i looked into.

Edited February 25, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[Lost Dragon]

As a then subscriber to RetroGamer Magazine,i feel i should point people in the following direction :

 

Imagitec Design had a 5 page feature in Issue 111..beginning on Page 30, if anyone wants to look for it online..

 

I-War is mentioned, as is Freelancer 2120 and I quote,regarding the latter...

 

This led Martin to make a tough decision, "We called it a day on Freelancer 2120 and Space Junk,as it was obvious that the Jaguar CD was going to flop it's arse off and we had zero chance of recovering our investment"

 

 

I-War is later covered in issue 118, Minority Report:Jaguar, P47...

 

Text talks of game engine using flat shaded polygons and vibrant colours...

 

There is never any talk of an advanced or improved version of the game engine being developed, let alone ear marked for any Jaguar CD game, let alone Freelancer..

 

As i say, the articles can easily be found and downloaded online..people can read for themselves.

 

I bring this up, as if there is evidence of Martin Hooley claiming they were planning to use an advanced version, i myself have yet to see it, it's never appeared in any paid for publication i have purchased, nor has any Ex-Imagitec Design source i have contacted, been aware of it.

 

I was informed it was made clear in the Imagitec Design feature in Issue 111, after i... challenged the claims made on that Assembler thread.

 

Sorry, but it simply wasn't..

 

End of story.

Edited February 25, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[VladR]

Bear in mind,i'm asking people to recal work done over 20 years ago and different people working on different versions...memories will be hazy.

 

 

There doesn't seem much love for the game from those who worked on it..

 

Described as a shitstorm from the start..best thing about it the concept art etc.

 

I do know who the producer was,but have not attempted to put Q's to him,as this looks like a title best left forgotten, rather than old wounds opened up.

 

Please understand that people who worked on unreleased projects often give very blunt appraisals of mangers, bosses,fellow artists,coders etc, which cannot be made public..

 

I get that. Nobody likes to put the dead project on your CV, but it's a reality in a game dev world. I do wish you could share some of the employee feedback, though - must be real funny

 

 

This led Martin to make a tough decision, "We called it a day on Freelancer 2120 and Space Junk,as it was obvious that the Jaguar CD was going to flop it's arse off and we had zero chance of recovering our investment"

Kudos for calling it shots at that time. Very hard thing to do!

 

 

 

Thanks for sharing the story. It was a much more interesting read than , say, Gamasutra's "10 things that went wrong with our project" column...

[WAVE 1 GAMES]

Braindead 13

Myst

Primal Rage

NBA JAM TE

Tempest 2000

Rayman

Pitfall the Mayan Adventures

Flashback: the quest for identity

Alien VS Predator

Bubsy

Raiden

 

Surely one of these titles could be ported to other consoles. If only it would happen....

[sd32]

Braindead 13

Myst

Primal Rage

NBA JAM TE

Tempest 2000

Rayman

Pitfall the Mayan Adventures

Flashback: the quest for identity

Alien VS Predator

Bubsy

Raiden

 

Surely one of these titles could be ported to other consoles. If only it would happen....

Well, Jag Bubsy and AVP are indeed an exclusives. I would have loved a faster and smoother AVP on Playstation or Saturn. Bubsy in the other hand, is a lost cause, the Jag can keep it .

[WAVE 1 GAMES]

Well, Jag Bubsy and AVP are indeed an exclusives. I would have loved a faster and smoother AVP on Playstation or Saturn. Bubsy in the other hand, is a lost cause, the Jag can keep it .

 

Didn't Rebellion do an AVP for PC or PS2/3 or something that was SUPPOSED to be a remake of the Jag game? I checked Youtube but can't find this game. Maybe I imagined it?

[Stage_1_Boss]

Thete's a PC AvP but it's more like Quake in terms of build instead of the Jag version which feels a lot closer to DOOM / Wolf 3D. Not the same game experience, this of course coming from someone that can't lay out the reasons in tech terms.

[VladR]

Thete's a PC AvP but it's more like Quake in terms of build instead of the Jag version which feels a lot closer to DOOM / Wolf 3D. Not the same game experience, this of course coming from someone that can't lay out the reasons in tech terms.

AVP 1 (the "Classic edition" now) is a fully polygonal 3D game which creates the atmosphere by clever use of lighting - I don't even think it's possible to do properly in 16-bit color space. Forget 256 shades in CRY mode, that's not enough for those lights and would look very jaggy (incidental pun intended). You'd really need 24-bit lighting and that, combined with full 3D layout (plus 3D aliens) means the final framerate of about 1-3 fps. If we cheat on lighting, then it'd be a different game, period.

 

Other than technical requirements, it's the single scariest AVP game, ever. To this day, I compare the AI in all games against this particular one. The combination of random spawning and truly random jumps of aliens (plus crawling over walls) means no single playthrough is identical.

 

Also, you can't just camp in one spot as you'll run out of health in 2 minutes due to constant alien spawning. You just gotta keep running&gunning. Some levels took about 200 attempts - the best one is the one in the demo version where you start at the APC.

 

For me, the Rebellion is up there No 1 on the pedestal of game developers being able to deliver something like this.

[Lost Dragon]

@Jeffrey:No..You didn't imagine it..AVP was annouced on PS1, PC and Sega Saturn, early screens appeared in PS1 Press etc..

 

Read through this:

 

 

Alien Versus Predator Diary

by Jason Kingsley

 

Part 2

Cast your minds back to 1996. When in 1996? What month/season? Give the reader some kind of tangible timeframe. Football was coming home, Lara Croft was stretching her first Lycra top and the Spice Girls were telling us, at great length, what they really, really wanted. Doesn't seem that long ago, does it?

 

So, I suppose it would come as a great surprise to you if I said that, when we started work on AvP in late 1996, we were covering three formats: Saturn, PlayStation and the first generation of Pentium PCs. What's more, there was nothing to choose between them.

 

I'd caution against much mentioning of the cancelled platforms, it may cause rancour amongst the readers. PlayStation esp. could be bad. People understand dropping Saturn but people still WANT this game on PSX.

 

At Rebellion we didn't have too much time to think about Lara or the Spice Girls. We had managed to convince one of the world's largest entertainment corporations to trust us with some of their most famous characters and now we had to come up with the goods. Things were getting serious.

 

Not that serious though, as a quick look through some of original design documents confirms. For example, how serious could we have been when we suggested motion capturing Sigourney Weaver in her knickers? (For some reason, this idea seemed to disappear quite quickly.)

 

Or how about this for an idea: if you chose to play as the Alien, you would have to start as an egg, become a face-hugger and then inseminate another character before you could join the game? Needless to say, that idea didn't make it too far from the drawing board either. No, these aren't things we want discussed. How about talking about all the model building, the involvement of the guy who wrote the Colonial Marines Technical Manual or the use of actual movie props, instead?

 

Slowly but surely, though, a proper game began to emerge - and as it did it became clear that something was going to have to give on the hardware front.

 

Our main problem concerned the crucial decision as to whether the game should be built around sprites or polygons. Nowadays, of course, this is a non-argument, but we were still trying to develop a game for three separate hardware types and had painted ourselves into a corner by promising to match the graphics across all three. This meant that we had to base everything on the lowest common denominator, the Saturn.

 

The problem we encountered with Sega's ill-fated 32-bit machine was that it couldn't 'cookie cut' textures. (Cookie cutting is a process whereby you take a section of a large texture and map it onto a smaller object.) For this reason we decided to go with sprites.

 

I'd definitely gloss over this shady period (esp. this whole "lowest common denominator" stuff). I'd compress time a little so that these platforms were considered (and rejected) a lot earlier than they actually were. This stuff paints neither Fox nor Rebellion in a good light. I'd also cite more relevant comparisons to place the reader in the correct timeline (e.g. "we were considering sprites which seemed okay because Duke Nukem was doing very well with them" or "*and polygonal figures were a dream still 12 months distant to everyone*" or "*and round about this time a company called 3DFX started something big"). That kind of thing, more of what was happening elsewhere in games at the time.

 

In today's fast and furious, hardware-accelerated world, this decision seems ludicrous. However you should remember that we were still living in a pre-3dFX world. To make a comparison, in those days it was considered state-of-the-art if game characters were built of 80 to 100 polygons - in our final version of AvP the Alien Queen will use more than 2,000.

 

By the time that we were beginning to realise the error of our ways (the early Summer of 1997), Fox had just appointed a new producer on the product (Dave Stalker, who is still overseeing production to this day) and we decided to bite the bullet and approach him about switching our game to polygons.

 

By the early summer of 1997, we were beginning to come to a final realisation: sprites were not the way forward. We decided to bite the bullet and approach Fox about changing all of characters to polygonal models.

 

To his eternal credit, Dave agreed without hesitation...even though this meant that we would have to ditch virtually eight months of work. It also meant that we would have to wave goodbye to Sega's Saturn, but as so few people had waved hello to it in the first place, this wasn't too heart-breaking.

 

It was also round about this time that Dave Stalker came onboard as the Producer at Fox and he agreed without hesitation (a lot of the folks at Fox had apparently been having concerns similar to our own). This decision also meant it would be impossible to produce the same game for the Sega Saturn and it was decided to not continue with the Saturn version of the game.

[Lost Dragon]

@ValdR:Extract from Shaun McClure's rather splendid book. .Video Game Development-The Rock And Roll Years...

 

 

'...We had an internal project called "Freelancer"-which was a first person shooter...A game set in a futuristic 3D world...****** **** was the designer, and the concept artists not involved with any of the other projects were supplying really good concept artwork for it.

 

We didn't have any coders that could program 3D worlds, so all the actual coding and 3D artwork, was outsourced to another company.

 

It wasn't going well, and little progress was being made, and ****** was in continual conflict with Martin about how to organise things.

 

...it was his first experience of working in the games industry. ..eventually "Freelancer" was shelved, and this obviously really upset ******.

 

I don't know the details of what happened, but ****** left...'

 

 

I'm not going to name the producer, as the purpose of this post isn't to assign blame, but rather point out it was clearly a troubled project from the start, for the reasons Shaun and others have given.

Edited February 28, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[Lost Dragon]

Another quote from Shaun VladR might like, this time concerning DarkNet..

 

An abandoned PC,Saturn and PS1 title, cancelled because publisher became frustrated at games lack of progress..

 

"..it was another Imagitec problem-we did a design,did some artwork to dell the concept,and then didn't really discuss it with the coders to see if it was actually possible.As usual we tended to fly into projects without giving them much thought-We should of consulted with the coders before taking the design to the clients. "

 

Sounds like if this was a common approach for Imagitec, Freelancer might have been annouced for Jaguar before anyone even considered if it was possible on the hardware or via the teams assigned to it.

Edited February 28, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[VladR]

@ValdR:Extract from Shaun McClure's rather splendid book. .Video Game Development-The Rock And Roll Years...

 

 

'...We had an internal project called "Freelancer"-which was a first person shooter...A game set in a futuristic 3D world...****** **** was the designer, and the concept artists not involved with any of the other projects were supplying really good concept artwork for it.

 

We didn't have any coders that could program 3D worlds, so all the actual coding and 3D artwork, was outsourced to another company.

 

It wasn't going well, and little progress was being made, and ****** was in continual conflict with Martin about how to organise things.

 

...it was his first experience of working in the games industry. ..eventually "Freelancer" was shelved, and this obviously really upset ******.

 

I don't know the details of what happened, but ****** left...'

 

 

I'm not going to name the producer, as the purpose of this post isn't to assign blame, but rather point out it was clearly a troubled project from the start, for the reasons Shaun and others have given.

This is just freaking priceless

 

I mean, I heard some stories like the above, I just never could admit, that sh*t was actually real !

 

I bet the 2D concepts were really beautiful. Probably, and that's just a wild guess here , because it doesn't take 3 GHz CPU to rasterize one (at the time when 0.05 GHz was plentiful). But imagine attempting to explain that to the infinitely ignorant manager who just took his first job in a game industry!

[VladR]

Another quote from Shaun VladR might like

Guilty as charged and many heartfelt thanks for the resulting endorphin explosion (it's like an Eddie Izzard sketch!)

 

 

"..it was another Imagitec problem-we did a design,did some artwork to dell the concept,and then didn't really discuss it with the coders to see if it was actually possible. "

Manager1: "Look at all these beautiful concepts! The lighting of the room, all the details on the table, how everything casts shadow onto everything else! Why can't our coders just do their simpleton jobs?"

 

Manager2: "It's the HR, I'm telling you ! They keep bringing this incompetent coders on the board. How are we supposed to manage a project with such glaring incompetency! And the excuses those freaks come up with! We have 50 MHz CPUs now!"

 

 

 

 

"..We should of consulted with the coders before taking the design to the clients. "

[Lost Dragon]

I'd love to see the Freelancer 2120 and Darknet art Wayne Reynolds did..

 

For those of you unfamiliar with his work:

 

 

https://www.waynereynolds.com/

 

I often gently mock Imagitec for being THE company best suited to conversions, not original titles and for having such a high number of abandoned projects..only tonight found out Ocean Software had paid them to convert the dreadful Renegade III:The Final Chapter to ST and Amiga. .50%+ finished..lacking A.I etc...

 

 

Then there's Amiga 1200 Pitfall Mayan Adventure. .1 level complete, identical to Genesis version..

 

Genesis Zoro etc..

 

 

But i cannot fault them for choosing Wayne as an artist, love his work.

 

Also, it's Shaun and his honesty in his book that needs thanking, not myself

 

All i have done is pass on a few quotation's from it.

 

He's helped provide info on DarkNet which the entry on Unseen64 was sadly lacking.

 

Near end of his book and loved it..

[VladR]

On the topic of 2D art and its ability to get converted to real-time games:

 

If you are familiar with Feng Zhu Design school, and browse their yearly output, I'm sure it's not going to be a huge surprise, that plenty of those pieces are going to have to wait over a decade till there is HW [given the "speed" of performance upgrades] that can pull those scenes off in a game environment.

 

I don't think it's gonna happen before 2030-2035. And I'm pretty sure at that time those designs will be even more crazy and detailed, as their bar is slowly but surely rising - if you compare their complexity a decade ago, and now - there's a stark contrast.

 

 

 

Hell, if you browse art books for contemporary PS4 games, plenty times the 2D art complexity is still easily a generation behind current HW's abilities (let alone quarter century ago)...

[jhd]

...it was his first experience of working in the games industry. ..eventually "Freelancer" was shelved, and this obviously really upset ******.

 

This raises a slightly-related question -- given the large number of abandoned/unfinished/canceled projects in the video game industry, is it considered a negative to have such things on ones resume? Do managers, HR, etc. generally understand that projects may be cancelled for reasons unrelated to ability or performance?

 

I once spent most of a year working on a website redesign project that was ultimately never finished (I left that employer shortly before the project was cancelled), and it was a challenge at some subsequent interviews for me to explain why they could not actually see the website that I had developed. Like the unnamed fellow above, it was my first professional position, and so leaving it off the resume entirely was not an option.

[Lost Dragon]

That's a bloody good question and one which i sadly don't have an answer for.

 

I've encountered a good few people listing unreleased games on their C.V on things like LinkedIn..

 

But you also see a lot of company MD's etc seemingly not wanting to chat about the games that didn't make it or..if they do, they skim over the details and want to move rapidly onto the next question.

 

I wonder if people involved with cancelled projects were allowed to take the work they did or simply oversaw, with them when they left..or would it of remained the intellectual property of the company they were with?.

 

I assume it would depend on the nature of the contract signed?.

[jhd]

As a general rule, anything developed on work time is owned by the employer. Of course an individual employment contract can modify those terms. Academic faculty, for example, generally own their research and teaching materials -- even though they were paid to develop that material.

 

In practical terms, the rules are undoubtedly a bit looser. I still have a CDR backup of the above-noted website that I developed.

 

If a project was cancelled because the company went out of business (or just ceased to develop for a specific platform), I cannot imagine that anyone would be actively monitoring to ensure that no work product left the building.