JAGUAR THREAD FROM LYNX FORUM

[someguy]

>Why would they want to deceive readers like

>that I dont understand why they would, as a >form of media, who should be unbiased,

>unfairly attempt to give sony the thumbs

>up?

 

HINT: Who did the mags realize they would get more advertising money from, Sony or Atari?

 

-----------------------------------

>I was mostly going from what I saw of

>screenshots. Games like Shockwave looked

>amazing, and far better than the closest

>that the Jaguar had (Hover Strike).

 

But Hover Strike is not the closest the Jaguar had. HS is generally known as a mediocre game for the Jag. If you want to see better, take a look at CyberMorph, BattleMorph, SkyHammer, IWar, Missile Command 3D, etc.

 

I read a quote somewhere from the folks who programmed BattleSphere saying that even that game reaches only maybe '60%' of the Jaguar's full potential. Imagine what kind of games we might have seen for the Jaguar if Atari had "played its cards" better and made the Jaguar a success with developers.

[Gunstar]

Like I said, it only makes a difference that is noticable on large screens, where you can visibly see the scan lines at a 320x240 resolution. I have a 36" screen and the difference is VERY noticable, every thing seems smoother and those [somewhat] annoying (it doesn't annoy you unless you've been playing on a small screen where you can't see them and then go to a large screen-although the size of the image makes up for this-IMHO) scan lines disappear. No biggy, but if you put a similiar 3DO game next to a Jaguar game on two big screens, the 3do does look smoother and more pleasing to the eye.

 

when I say "corrected" with the jagcd, is it not an improvement to have real cd quality music and fmv? I think so, but I would take a jag and carts anyday over the 3do and it's cd's if I had to sell one for money or something.

 

I'm one of the 2% that this matters too, but, no, it isn't a serious advantage in most cases, but it is an advantage, however small you might think it to be, so I threw it in (it's a huge advantage with Battlesphere, this game rocks in networked mode!) as a matter of fact, I LOVE networked DOOM on the Jag too, and I hate most split screen first person shooters, I get clausterphobic in a sense...so, yeah it IS a real big deal to me. If you haven't tried it, you wouldn't understand, so you might think it's pointless. But go to jaguar interactive 2 and ask the fans there if it is important and 90% will say definately YES!!!

[Ze_ro]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gunstar:

when I say "corrected" with the jagcd, is it not an improvement to have real cd quality music and fmv?

---

 

Neither of these are a huge deal to me... FMV almost never adds fun to the game (Any story telling can just as easily be done without it on a cartridge). As for CD quality music, I really don't notice it all that much... I mean, Defender 2000 and Tempest 2000 have *amazing* music, and that's even without a CD (Well, I admit that I noticed the music in Battlemorph... the music there was really well done too). Of course, the awesome VLM should definitely get a mention in this thread, as it's a great addition to the JagCD.

 

--Zero

[Gunstar]

I failed to mention the biggest advantage of cd over cart; 790megabytes(jagcd)vs. 6megabytes(max cart memory). Sure it's possible to cram more into a cart with compression, but the most I've seen sighted is about 100megabytes into 4megabyte cart-AvP (just think how much better they could have made the already great AvP if they had done it on a jagcd). But compression also reduces the quality of what ever is compressed. the more it's compressed, the lower the quality. With a cd, you don't have to compress anything and can get the highest quality of audio/visuals. Have you ever heard that awsome T2K music on it's cd soundtrack? It blows away the already good cart music-by a mile. Not that the cart's can't produce cd quality music, they can, but then there isn't much room left for a game. Tempest's cart music is commpressed and it not only loses clarity, but many of the sound channels or "instruments" where removed so the songs could fit. Give the soundtrack a listen if you can, you'll be impressed.

 

 

[ 09-05-2001: Message edited by: Gunstar ]

[The Helper]

I really liked my 3D0 though - I was playing Road Rash and rocking out to the CD Quality music while everyone was playing Cybermorph.

 

Theme Park on 3D0 was much better than the Jaguar Version - the developer just spent more time on it and stuffed all the fancy full motion video and sound effects on the CD.

 

The 3D0 Street Fighter is better than any of the Jag Fighters (though the 3D0 controller did not handle street fighter well, you needed a special controller).

 

Nothing on Jaguar compares to Starfighter.

 

If you are comparing shooters, you should probably use Killing Time as a benchmark for the 3D0 - Doom and Wolfenstein for the 3D0 were not that good.

 

The Jaguar did not have games like

 

Panzer General II

 

The Horde

 

Star Control II

 

Don't get me wrong, I like the Jaguar better than the 3D0 - but the 3D0 was nice to have, and I never regretted buying it.

 

I just wish Atari had done more with the CD unit. We never really saw what the Jaguar could have done, or been.

[Gunstar]

Definately true! the Jaguar doesn't have anything like the awsome Starfighter, on of my fav's! But, it seems to me that it only uses pre-designed textures, that may have already been in the 3DO texture library. I LOVE the special effects like the engine flames and colorful explosions, but I hate the lame poly pieces that are in the explosions-the ones that don't even come close to looking like chunks from whatever you blew up. Although when destroying the BIG ships, they did it right and used real ship chunks like Battlesphere! I do think, that with the right programmers, that the Jaguar could have done a game comparible to Starfighter...In fact, I think it might have looked cooler with garaud shading and light-sourcing thrown into the landscapes and explosions. Imagine a combination of Starfighter and Battlemorph landscape...hmmm.

Hands down, Starfighter is the best Space sim on the 3DO!! I just didn't mention it because the Jag really doesn't have anything to compare, and I wanted to show comparible power with games that are the same or similiar-I did compare Killingtime to AvP, I think they are both good, but I think AvP is better in alot of ways...The fact remains that both systems have advantages and disadvantages, and even though I think the Jaguar is more powerful(barely), but not fully utilized, it always comes down to the games. Both have great and bad games, but I'll always choose my Jaguar over my 3DO if I have too...

[Gunstar]

I just wanted to clarify some things about the Jaguar vs. 3DO. Both of these machines are actually very close in comparible power. They both have some advantages and disadvantages from one another. For example, the 3DO hsd built in texture-mapping, the Jaguar does not. But, the Jaguar has built in garuad shading, light-sourcing and z-buffering (I think that's the right term; I'm refering to polygon depth error correction). If you study the polygon games on both of these systems you will notice the 3DO has a lot of the "see-through-the-polygon" depth errors, on the Jaguar, I have yet to see a game that has these problems except for two early games: Cybermorph and Club drive. If you look at screen shots, many times the 3DO looks better, but if you see the Jaguar in action with the garuad and light-sourced shading, it makes everything look a lot better and like it has real 3D depth to it. The Jaguar is hands down better with 2D graphics. The 3DO has an advantage that none of the 32-bit and 64-bit systems have; it uses a system (forget what it is called) that takes 320x240 resolution screen and increases it to 640x480, the pixels themselves aren't any smaller, but it interlaces everything so that there are no visible scan lines (really noticable on a large screen, but if your using a 13-19" screen, you can't really see that much of a difference). Another adbvantage the 3DO has is it's cd medium and all that that entails. Atari corrected this with it's Jagcd, but unfortunately there are only 13 games out for it so far, and half of those are mediocre. If you really want to comapare games on both systems, you have to compare games that are the same or very similiar. some examples:

Compare Jaguar DOOM to 3DO DOOM. the Jag version blows it out of the water.

Cannon Fodder on both systems are so close that they can be considered identical.

Wolfenstein 3D on the Jaguar has a full screen window, 3DO does not, but it does have cd quality music that is better than the Jag's cart music. But, the Jaguar has much better stereo perception in it's sound effects. Both are just as fast.

Wing Commander 3 vs. Battlesphere: WingCommander 3 has texture mapping and all the advantages of the cd medium. Battlesphere blows it away in the frame-rate department (by a mile!). WC3 does not have the cool light-sourcing or garuad shading of Battlesphere. WC3 does not network. In fact, the 3DO doesn't network at all.

KillingTime vs. AlienvsPredator. Alien vs, predator wins at every turn.

Need for Speed vs. ? the Jag doesn't have a car racing game that can compare to this. 3DO wins.

Gex vs. Rayman. Gex falls far short. although it is a very good game.

I could go on and on, both systems are awsome in my book, but I own about 50 games for both systems and overall I think the Jaguar's games are superior and show the slight superiority of the Jag. If it only had built in t-mapping, the 3DO wouldn't even come close. Raw Polygon power on both machines is roughly equal, possibly the Jaguar has the advantage (I'm talking raw, solid colored polys with not texture mapping or garuad shading or light-sourcing. Both systems are said to be able to push around 50 million 16-bit pixels a second. The Jaguar can throw around 850 million 1 bit pixels, the 3DO never claimed anything in this area. From what I've seen on both systems, neither met it's full potential, although the 3DO came closer in some games (to reaching it's potential-probably 90%). As has been stated before, because of a lack of good third party developers, the Jaguar only ever saw about 60% of it's potential realized. I'm confident that if 90% of it's potential had been reached, the 3DO would look sad in comparison. I am not biased, I own and LOVE both machines. But I have hands on experience with BOTH and I NEVER go by what magazine reviewers say or the screen shot's they show-those can be manipulated very easily-I've seen Jag screen shots that look horrid, but when I saw the game first hand, it looked 100% better. Like taking snapshots of games with nothing on screen, so it looks bland, and when playing the game, seeing a ton of stuff on screen and it looks much better. Cybermorph screen shots come to mind as one example. Just an example of biased magazines trying to make the Jaguar look as bad as possible.

 

[ 09-05-2001: Message edited by: Gunstar ]

 

[ 09-05-2001: Message edited by: Gunstar ]

[Ze_ro]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gunstar:

The 3DO has an advantage that none of the 32-bit and 64-bit systems have; it uses a system (forget what it is called) that takes 320x240 resolution screen and increases it to 640x480, the pixels themselves aren't any smaller, but it interlaces everything so that there are no visible scan lines (really noticable on a large screen, but if your using a 13-19" screen, you can't really see that much of a difference).

---

 

I'm not sure I understand how this is an advantage... does it impove the clarity of the graphics or something?

 

 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gunstar:

Atari corrected this with it's Jagcd, but unfortunately there are only 13 games out for it so far, and half of those are mediocre.

---

 

I actually thought that the JagCD was a bad idea. The Jaguar was never really popular enough to warrant a CD add-on... hell, it hardly even worked on the Genesis. I still bought one anyway though...

 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Gunstar:

WC3 does not network. In fact, the 3DO doesn't network at all.

---

 

Is this really an issue? I mean, there's only a handful of Jaguar games that support this anyways, and I've never had the opportunity to do any networking (nor do I expect to have the opportunity any time soon). I've always thought that networking consoles was a bit of wasted engineering, since only 2% of the customers will ever really have the chance to use it. The only systems where networking is important is portable systems (Atari did this right with the Lynx)

 

--Zero

[Ze_ro]

I know CD's hold a ton more than a cartridge, but I often don't see that much of a difference in the game quality. I know that games like Primal Rage take advantage of it (Primal Rage has *amazing* animation, and I doubt all those frames could have fit on a cartridge), but there's too many games that waste the space on FMV and junk. Of course, the JagCD games weren't as reliant on this as SegaCD games and such, but you can't tell me that Blue Lightning and Baldies couldn't easily be done on cartridge. The cut scenes in both games don't really add to the game much. I admit though, I also hold some bias against CD's... I'm not sure why, but I've always seen cartridges as being more "magical" than CD's somehow. My main point here though was that lots of space doesn't necessarily make for a great game. There's a bunch of PSX games that use 2-4 cd's, but they're not all necessarily good games.

 

Yes, it's sad that the Jaguar never really got games to fill some of it's voids. I really don't think we got to see any incredible fighting games (Ultra Vortex was good, but it still leaves me wanting more), we didn't get many sports games (I was really hoping Brett Hull Hockey would come out... I'm a big hockey fan), and in general there's just a lot of games that the Jaguar just didn't have an answer to It also doesn't help that a lot of times, the only game in a genre isn't terribly good (Checkered Flag for example... though at least we have World Tour Racing now)

 

--Zero

[Gunstar]

Even WTR isn't the best the Jaguar could do with a racer (I do enjoy playing it though), I've thought about this before and I think if you could combine the best things about both CF and WTR, we would have had a GOOD formula racer for the Jaguar. It's too bad that The Need For Speed never made it to the Jaguar. It was planned when EA finally cut a deal with Atari, but whether it was Atari's fault for pulling the plug too soon, or EA never really intended to do anything (this happened with a LOT of developers and publishers-Atari tried to, or did sue Williams for renigging on the MK3 deal), it didn't come out. Racing games are one of my favorite genres, and while I'm happy with my 3DO's NFS title and WTR on the Jag, neither one of these systems ever fully satisfied my want of a good car racer (I love SBURNOUT and RoadRash-but those are motorcycle games). So I was forced to buy a Dreamcast to finally get some good racers (I'm biased toward Nintendo and Sony, so I could never bring myself to buy one of those systems to fill this desire-Sega is my alternative to Atari, and now it's gone too).

 

[ 09-06-2001: Message edited by: Gunstar ]

[someguy]

Moved here from the LYNX forum.

-----------------------------------

Jess Ragan writes....

 

"Total eclipse is a lame "on rails" shooter and it is very easy to get good texture-mapped poly world when it is so narrow and small. Cybermorph was a go-where-you-want, full-fledged WORLDS. Plus it generally had a LOT more polygons on the screen at a time than total eclipse."

Slooooow, flat-shaded polygons.

 

"How you can even compare the two since they are completely different types of games is beyond me."

 

They're both good demonstrations of their respective systems' abilities. Or in the Jaguar's case, the lack thereof.

 

"Way of the Warrior? Don't make me laugh!!! That game totally sucks compared to Ultra Vortek, it even sucks compared to Kasumi Ninja!"

 

Now that's just ridiculous. I wouldn't be surprised if Ultra Vortek was better than Way of the Warrior, but Kasumi Ninja? Personally, I wasn't that fond of Way of the Warrior either but as far as graphic output is concerned, it obliterates similar Jaguar games. Heck, the resolution and color output in Way is superior to many fighting games available for the Saturn and Playstation.

 

"Do you even own a Jaguar?"

 

No, but I have spent time with it when the system was released, and I never really cared for it. I always had a hard time understanding why the system had such rabid fans, because from what I played of the Jaguar it didn't seem to deserve them. Cybermorph was OK (not pretty or intense but the laid back pace does make it kind of relaxing), and Tempest 2000 is quite nice (which is why I'm glad I own the smoother Saturn version) but most of the other titles on the system were, well, pretty pathetic.

 

"Or are you just going by screen shots and lame, biased, reviews?"

 

My own lame bias actually. By the way, I'd tend to agree with the game magazines... the Jaguar was pretty underwhelming. Atari could have done better. Unfortunately, I don't think many Atari fans are willing to acknowledge this. I've noticed this with 7800 fans as well... they'll completely ignore the system's lesser qualities and delude themselves about the system's games, which in all honesty were only occasionally as good as their NES counterparts. I remember having a conversation about the 7800 and NES versions of Galaga and one Atari fan just could not bring himself to see that the 7800 was clearly, CLEARLY the less accurate translation of the two (I'll be happy to give you examples if you want them).

 

Don't get me wrong. I've had a lot of fun with the earlier Atari consoles, but I can't slap on the rose colored glasses and pretend that *everything* the company did was great. And on the flip side of the coin, I think peoples' view of the 3DO was unfairly negative. Yes, it was overpriced. Yes, it sold pretty poorly. Yes, it had controllers that were even worse than the Jaguar's. But the 3DO was incredibly powerful at the time it was released. I kept seeing games on the system that seemed like a true step above titles for the Genesis and Super NES, and Jaguar games just never seemed to reach that plateau of audiovisual quality.

 

JR

 

 

Midnight Magic... oooh yeah.

[someguy]

Jess Ragan writes....

Cybermorph = Slooooow, flat-shaded polygons.

 

I own both a Jaguar with 30+ carts and a 3DO with about a dozen CDs. I have played both Cybermorph and Total Eclipse quite a bit.

Though it's a tough call, I would say that TE has the edge in graphics over CM. I don't think either has 'sloooow' polygons; they're both generally high refresh rate. TE has somewhat better-looking terrain because it has texture-mapping as opposed to Gouraud-shading like CM - but then TE uses large sprites for the players ship while CM uses loygons.

However, as far as gameplay, CM is heads above TE. CM has real 'worlds' to explore, while TE is stuck on rails. CM requires a lot more thought. If CM had been done on the 3DO and used texture-mappings instead of Gouraud-shading, it'd look AND play better - but it isn't on the 3DO so the point is moot. Perhaps there is a more CM-like game on the 3DO that I haven't seen?

 

>most of the other titles on the (Jaguar)system were, well, pretty pathetic.<

 

Out of my 30 carts for the Jaguar, I'd say there's a dozen that I really enjoy playing. On the 3DO, I enjoy playing about 4 out of my dozen CDs. In fact, from what I've seen, most systems have a similar 1:3 ratio of good games to bad.

 

>Yes, it had controllers that were even worse than the Jaguar's.<

 

Wierd. I think the Jaguar;s controllers were awesome - they're actually sized for adult-size hands instead of kiddies like so many other game systems.

I think the 3DO gamepad isn't too bad - very similar to the Sega Genesis pads - but there's no way I find them as comfortable as the Jaguar's.

[The Helper]

The game that you could most compare Cybermorph to on the 3DO would be Star Fighter. The fact of the matter is that Studio 3DO had better programmers than Atari did. 3DO was able to push there system a lot farther than Atari was ever able to do. Star Fighter is much better than Cybermorph but they are both good games. Its really not fair to compare them as Star Fighter was released much later. A better comparison would be Star Fighter to Battlemorph. In this case, I would have to say that Star Fighter came out on top but that was against one of the few games that came out for the Jag CD. Sure Battlemorph was second generation being Cybermorphs sequel, but it was still a first generation game for the Jag CD.

 

You guys are comparing Apples to Oranges. The Jaguar's true power was never even showcased by any game. The only game that even came close was Battlesphere.

[Albert]

quote:

---

Originally posted by The Helper:

You guys are comparing Apples to Oranges. The Jaguar's true power was never even showcased by any game. The only game that even came close was Battlesphere.

---

 

This is just speculation, since I've never developed games for either the Jaguar or 3DO. What often happens with systems that seem to have roughly equal power is that one of them will be easier to develop for, so better looking/playing games will arrive first for that system. I've heard of developers having problems getting decent information out of Atari regarding the Jaguar, which if true might explain the fact that titles trickled out so slowly after the system's release.

 

If developers don't have well-written APIs and documentation, then it's a slow and painful process trying to wring every ounce of performance out of a system. Or taking full advantage of whatever features it may offer. Even though a game like Battlesphere may only tap 60% of the Jaguar's potential, if the potential is so difficult to program for then you'll never see it used. Well-written APIs can allow a developer to hit the ground running on a new system, as opposed to spendings gobs of precious development time documenting the system themselves.

 

Certainly with newer consoles (X-Box, Playstation 2 and Gamecube) developers are showered with an immense amount of information. At least once you pay the price of admission. A new Playstation 2 development system (TOOL) is $20,000 (you can get refurbished units a bit cheaper, but still over $10K). As a PS2 developer I have a number of excellent resources available to me, including excellent documentation, PS2 Developer Website to forums where I can post questions to other developers. These days I think developers would (smartly) shy away from a system which was poorly documented.

 

..Al

[The Helper]

I firmly agree with Albert. Its been noted by more than a few Jaguar developers that the system hardware had critical bugs that made it a pain to work with. I have also heard that it certainly was not the easiest system in the world to program for. The fact that it had a 68000 chip in it made a lot of developers just port Genesis games and not really utilize its power. The companies such as Llamasoft and Scatologic programmed the Jaguar how it was meant to be done - that is why those games are so much more advanced then lets say

 

Zool 2

Syndicate

Cannon Fodder

Theme Park

and many many others.

[someguy]

It wasn't just the Genesis that games were converted over from. For example, I recently tried playing Tommy Moe's Skiing & Snowboarding (sometimes called Val d'Isere Championship) on the SUPER NINTENDO, and was surprised to find that it is obviously the basis for the Jaguar game Val d'Isere. The graphics, the gameplay, and even the menu screens are almsot identical on both platforms. Check out the pics below; the yellow version is the SNES version, and the blue pic is the Jaguar version.

[Gunstar]

Yeah, those look like they were done by the same design team/developers. What those pictures can't show is the smooth scaling and 60fps speed of the Jaguar version, which the SNES could not come close too. I would imagine that both look better on a real tv too, instead of what they look like in these shots; I know tha t Val D'Isere Sking&Snowboarding does...still, the Jaguar could have done better, this was most likely a game that uses mostly the 68000 and the Blitter for the large, smooth&fast sprites( or maybe the object processor?), the point is that it isn't using the Jag's full potential either. The games on the Jag that are good, use the 68000 as little as possible and syncronize the other 4 proccessors which are much more powerful. I've heard that one of the biggest problems with the Jaguars were their small memory caches for direct, high speed, access by the processors. Instead they had to come up with small routines to constantly swap memory out of main ram in like 4 or 8k chunks(?). This limiting the system unless the very clever programming could be implemented to get around such a bottleneck. Can anyone verify any of this?

[mos6507]

If the Jag hardware had no bugs then the games probably would have been better and would have come out faster, even despite a bad SDK.

 

I think a lot of developers were caught by surprise by these hardware bugs after they had already made too much of a commitment to walk away. Some Jaguar titles had incredibly long development cycles... Established developers like iD wound up seriously compromising their games. Didn't Doom only feature 160 pixels horizontal resolution? That's pretty embarassing.

 

As for Battlesphere only using 60% of the power of the Jag, I know 4-Play were Jaguar evangelists, but realistically speaking I'd say it's 100%. That game has a half-decade of part time man-hours put into it. It's got to be the most optimized Jag game there is. I don't see how anyone else is going to spend any more time on their Jag games than they did... Now sure, if another game like it didn't need the network code, maybe the graphics could have more textures, but then you're just looking at tradeoff after tradeoff from game to game.

 

The Jag was an extremely powerful 2D machine (like the Saturn) but despite the 64-bit chips and the multiprocessing, it really has terrible trouble reaching the magic 30FPS mark with any kind of textured polygons.

 

The smooth shaded untextured polys on Battlesphere are about as good as it gets on the Jag without having to drop down to 15fps or worse (which in this day and age is a pretty choppy and unpleasant game experience).

 

As for the CD, Atari's problem was that they took too long to release the CD. Any add-on product has a problem reaching critical mass in the marketplace.

 

They chose to get the Jag out the door at a lower pricepoint on the unit in exchange for pretty much killing their ability to release a CD unit later on.

 

Beyond the technical advantages of the CD, disc-based units make back a lot more money in software than they lose in the hardware because of the dirt-cheap cost of media. Because Jag games never enjoyed a huge economy of scale, I'm sure they were never able to make a big profit on cartridge sales. But even then discs were inherently cheap even in relatively low production runs.

 

History has shown that disc-based systems are THE way to go, period.