marigul

great pic, everyone looks so young! Brings back memories..RIP to those that passed (Lance, Skruch, Riley)

Im sure this has been covered many times on this or other posts...but we did try to get a mascot/mascot game for the jag. We had a contest and actually the game that came out of all the choices was Black Ice/ White noise..

I figured someone here must have the Mindripper stuff...I thought I had digital copies of stuff...but I was wrong

The "upside" is that Jag alumni have gone onto bigger and better stuff like foundations of the playstation launch and infrastructure, call of duty, apex legends, rebellion has become a top tier company...I am sure there is some other stuff I am forgetting...but at the end of the day it was like video game college before such a thing existed.

I'm late to the party but here are my 2 cents... Tal was an Atari Jag Superfan, I think that is why he got the job and I think he may have been maybe 21 at the time...super nice guy and a non bs'r. MK3 was on a long list of stuff atari bought the rights too...I think I was working on the bulk of these projects at 1 time or another. I think we licensed MK from acclaim and then had to renegotiate with midway for the full rights, then ultimate came out and we wanted that...we went to Probe because they had MK experience, but dragged their feet, honestly cant recall how far it got...but my guess "playable" because they wanted the milestones paid. There probably was some talk about too many "fighting games", but that conversation shifted daily Yes many of the old school game devs were grade A bs'rs...but honestly that was pretty much only way to get sh*t got done---over promise and under-deliver and hope everything works out enough to get paid.

Ironically many people who worked on/launched the Jag launched ps1 too!

Everyone should elevate Bubsy!

One of the "advantages" of working at atari at that time is that we kinda thought we could do anything. No one knew any better and for the most part the "game industry" veterans hired to manage us were not of much help or had even more ambitious and crazier ideas. Some things like AVP(although the development on that should have its own book) came out fairly cutting edge admittedly a lot of stuff was a struggle....

Not sure it would have saved the Jag as the sales and installed base was not high...but if the games that had come before it had sold hardware at least it would have made it out the door. It was fun to work on and fairly innovative for its time.

We thought of multiple hits, but that may have made things too easy, also it conflicted with the genesis code that it was being ported from. Most devs and testers on the Jag & lynx even if they were not hardcore gamers, played the games so many times that the games seemed easier than they may have been. I think we ramped the learning curves on most of the games too high. It was so people wouldn't beat the games in a day.

Always fun to see the hate level of stuff I worked Not as much hate for Bubsy in this thread as I would have thought...lol (and even a few positive comments!!!!) Will need to check out Supercross again as I suspect that may not have aged well... I don't recall white men cant jump as being as bad as all the mentions (but its no NBA JAM) Club Drive could have been great, everyone had high hopes for that one, but clearly missed the mark Always fun to see the hate level of stuff I worked

Just out of curiosity...Is there demand for original Jag homebrew games? How many units are typically sold? What is the play value expected ? what about production value of packaging? Thanks

I am Faran Thomason, but a good friend of Purple. I don't think I ever visited you guys with Sam (or Jack) for that matter...I am drawing a blank on my boss(maybe it was Jon Correll ?) at the time who I was with when I visited you guys. As I recall the "deals" for the Accolade conversions were already sorted out before the projects landed in my lap. I assume Ringler was chosen based on work of previous sports titles. That is pretty random that Ed ended up selling bed frames. At some point I need to check out Barkely and Hull just for nostalgia's sake. Glad to hear that you and your crew went on to bigger and better things!

No interesting stories off hand, it wasn't my project so I think I only met them once or twice. I think there was some tension between them and the original MK devs. Probably over money and credits. Not sure on the specifics though, and in general they found out the hard way (like many people who try) that it's really difficult to make a good fighting game!