by Tim Wilson

It's quite frustrating losing a complete report after writing it up, which has happened to me with every JagFest event I've tried reporting on. Therefore, instead of typing up a formal report, this will be a more "casual" report. I'll basically just give my impressions of how JagFest went, as well as my overall impressions of the Austin Gaming Expo and several Jaguar items I haven't seen or spent much time with before.

To put things in a nutshell, JagFest @ AGE was a blast! Things didn't quite get off to the best start, considering I found myself short one Jaguar and two displays. To top that off, Clint Thompson was unable to come, due to problems that crept up at the very last minute. I spent a good portion of Friday night running around town, picking up things that I would need for the event, including plenty of AV and RJ-11 cables. It turns out I didn't need the RJ-11 cables, as Thunderbird was kind enough to include a bag of them along with the Battlesphere: Gold cartridges and Scatboxes. The rest of the night was spent setting up most of my equipment, as well as helping with a few other things for the event. Once I got back home, I finished typing out the rules for the Tempest 2000 tournament and the sign-in sheet.

Tim Setting Up

I slept for about two hours, and woke up around 6am, ready to finish a few last minute things and then head out for the hotel. When I arrived, most of the vendors were already there, doing their own last minute setups before the doors opened. I arrived around 8:30am, and noticed that several people were already there, patiently waiting for the doors to open! Once I finished setting up the JagFest table, around 9:30, I stepped outside for a few, and much to my surprise, a long line had already formed at the door. By the time the doors opened, the line snaked around both sides of the hotel's atrium and spilled out the front door. I simply couldn't believe so many people had already shown up!

Once the doors opened, it didn't take long to see the entire ballroom fill up. We had initially set our expectations at around 500 attendees, but that was easily surpassed before noon. In fact, it might have been surpassed before the event's first hour! Much of the crowd was there for the various tournaments being held by many of the vendors, but quite a few were also there to check out the JagFest section. I set up two systems for use for the Tempest 2000 tournament, which started at 10am and ended around 3pm. Although sign-ins for the tournament started off slow, many people seemed to want to play Tempest 2000 anyway. I also set up a system dedicated to showing Robinson's Requiem, which was the one game that many Jag fans (including myself) have been wanting to see ever since it was discovered. I eventually had to take out the game and replace it with Tempest 2000, though, as people were wanting to play it so bad they were interfering with the tournament. Robinson's Requiem did make it back into the Jag several times throughout the day, but it was one of the few games other than Tempest 2000 and Battlesphere Gold that I was able to demo. I did put in Black Ice/White Noise for a few minutes near the end of the day, and also allowed someone to test out some games they had purchased from the B&C table, which was set up right next to the JagFest section. The museum items sent to us by Curt Vendel and Jason Smith were set up nearby also, giving plenty of people a chance to see what could have been.

Jaguar Gaming Goodness

With the arrival of Greg Goodwin, I was able to set up another Jaguar system to go with a TV which had been lent to me, and Greg set up yet another Jag and display to join in with the rest, giving us a grand total of five systems set up for play. That briefly went back down to four when one of the RGB monitors I brought started flaking out by losing its vertical sync, but thankfully Goodwill Computerworks had a Commodore 64 monitor for sale for cheap! I was able to quickly replace the problematic monitor thanks to them. We also were able to get a system running Battlesphere, complete with a Scatbox attached to the back of the system.

The Tempest tournament went pretty steady all day. I started things off with a game of my own, just to put a name on the sign-in sheet. My measly score of 207,207 was good enough to inspire confidence in most people that they would be able to beat it pretty easily. Just for the record, I only played for a few minutes and then stopped my game when people were starting to show interest in joining the tournament. I'm really much better than that, I swear! Several people decided to sign up and start playing pretty quickly, with my score being easily beaten in no time.

Tempest 2000

A good high score was set pretty early, with Eric Shaddix scoring 516,922. Shortly after him, Jerry Diegel came along and scored 790,585, a score which would stay at the top for most of the day. Lee Bentley was the first serious threat to his score, but ended up just short at 735,768. Several other challengers did quite well, scoring over 500,000, but Jerry's score stood at the top. As 3pm closed in, I kept watch on the last few players, who were all doing quite well. Jerry came back several times to check on his standing, and started getting nervous a few times, but none quite so much as while watching Sergio Jimenez play. Sergio was completing webs like none before him, and as time wore on, Sergio appeared to be getting better and better. As the last few players had all run out of lives, Sergio continued on, trying his hardest to beat Jerry's score. Much to Jerry's chagrin, Sergio surpassed his score with several lives left, and ended up with a high score of 825,918, and winning himself a brand new copy of Protector SE, courtesy of Songbird Productions. Jerry settled for second place and a copy of Black Ice/White Noise, donated by Ambient Distortions. Above it all, though, everyone had a good time with the tournament, and many more became quite interested in Tempest 2000 and the Jaguar in general.

Once the Tempest 2000 tournament ended, I took a quick break to walk around the show and check out all of the vendors. As the place had become quite crowded, I really wasn't able to spend much time at any particular table. although quite a few of them did catch my interest. AtariAge had a great display with TONS of systems to play, including several exclusive games that hadn't been seen before. Goodwill Computerworks had a great little area, offering up vintage computers, many of which caught my eye. I had to almost literally hold myself back from buying an Amiga 3000 for only $20! I did, however, buy an Amiga multisync monitor for $10, which is a great deal in itself. Right next to them was the video game and computer museum, showcasing plenty of systems spanning from the Odyssey all the way to the latest and greatest. Included with each system was a placard briefly describing the system and many of its attributes. Quite an interesting display, to say the least. Right across from there was a "timeline" of systems, many of which were prototype systems lent to AGE by AtariMuseum.com, including the rare Jaguar items which were also sent specifically for JagFest. Sitting next to those were Matt's prototype 2600 and 7800 game collection, which was quite interesting to see in itself. On the other end of the ballroom sat the quite large arcade, including quite a few pinball machines along with both old and modern arcade games. Unfortunately, I didn't have an opportunity to play on most of them, as many people were waiting on me to setup the Battlesphere tournament.

JagFest Tournaments

Back at the JagFest section, I quickly started setting up all of the systems with Battlesphere Gold carts and Scatboxes. At first I just set up two systems just to see how easy it would be to get a Battlesphere network going. My first try didn't result in a connection, but rebooting the Jaguars and trying again worked like a charm! After that, I set up the rest of the Jaguars except for one, which ran Tempest 2000 most of that time. I allowed everyone to freeplay for a bit with Battlesphere, just to let people become more familiar with the game. What I didn't expect was how popular it would be with everyone. It took quite a while before we could get the Battlesphere tournament started just due to the number of people wanting to step in and play a few (hundred) rounds of Free For All.

I let Greg run the Battlesphere tournament, as he was much more familiar with the game and all of its multiplayer options than I. I took the opportunity to go talk with a few people who I hadn't had a chance to talk to yet. I kept coming back over to check on things, but Greg was doing a great job administering the tournament, so I let him handle everything. When all was said and done, a winner had come out from the many people playing, winning himself a brand new Scatbox, donated by ScatoLOGIC! Unfortunately, I had run out of prizes by that point, so I didn't have anything to give to the runner-up. Also, Greg took off with the Battlesphere tournament sheet, so I don't have the winner's name with me.

Prototype Jaguar Hardware

The rest of the day I kept the four Battlesphere systems running for free play, and people were STILL waiting to get on a machine. I also put Robinson's Requiem back in the "display" system and checked it out for a bit myself. I didn't get to do that for too long, though, as one guy was wanting to check out a couple of Jaguar games (Phase Zero and Space War 2K) he purchased from the B&C booth. Both of those games are pretty sweet, and definitely make a good purchase for the Jag enthusiast. Phase Zero is still looking pretty impressive itself! Another guy was wanting Tempest 2000 put back in, as he had literally been playing the game all day! Talk about addicted...

The event ended right around 8pm, when I started to slowly pack things up. I was able to chat quite a bit with Greg, as well as talk to a few others who I didn't have the chance to talk to before. I ended up leaving a little bit before midnight, having hung around to watch a few WAY too energetic people play volleyball with a styrofoam ball. I had quite a bit of fun that day, even though running the whole JagFest area was actually a lot of work. I don't think JagFest 2002 tired me out near as bad as AGE did, and JF2K2 was a two day event! One thing is for certain, though...I will definitely do this again next year!

With the show having wrapped up for this year, below are a few impressions of mine of various Jaguar items that I saw at AGE:

JaguarVR:

A nice looking system, which unfortunately wasn't set up for use. I would have liked to have tested out Missile Command 3D, but even just seeing it in person was a nice experience. It's really too bad Atari never got around to releasing this, regardless of what it would have cost.

JagDuo:

A nice looking mock-up, it would have made a nice looking "replacement" for the Jaguar. Greg was quite enamored with it himself, taking pictures of it from every angle imaginable. It will be nice to see if he can make a mock-up case for himself, which I think is what he plans on doing.

Robinson's Requiem:

A cool looking RPG, which unfortunately was never released. Just a few moments with it tells you quite easily that it's a pretty typical Silmarils game, for those of you familiar with the "Ishar" RPGs released back in the day. The environments look pretty nice, with full 3D landscapes and bitmapped trees which can be walked through. Takes away from some of the realism, but at the same time it also takes away the annoyance of getting stuck every 5 steps without realizing that you're trying to walk through a tree! One thing I can say about the game, though, is that it's quite complex. Toss in a few bugs which kept crashing everyone's games, and I don't see anyone finishing this to completion anytime soon. Would still make an excellent release, though, so let's keep our fingers crossed!

Battlesphere Gold:

JagFest @ AGE marks only the third time that I've been able to play Battlesphere, with the previous two times being at JagFest 2000 and JagFest 2002. This time, though, I made it a point to play with it a bit more, checking out as many options as I could. Without launching into a formal review, I'd like to say that there is good reason why this game is so highly sought after, other than its rarity. This game is just pure fun! It was also quite a hit with everyone who came into contact with it, with many people asking where they can buy it, and quite a few stating how addicting the multiplayer aspects are. All I can say is that if ScatoLOGIC figure out a way to get this game mass-produced for a reasonable price, they will be rich in no time at all.

Scatbox:

I was slightly skeptical of the Scatbox's quality a bit before, seeing how it's basically enshrined within a Jaguar cartridge case. However, seeing and using one in person tells a different story entirely. It is much lighter yet much more durable than I expected, passing the "toss around the room" and "stomp on it as hard as possible" tests with flying colors (just kidding, Thunderbird!). It is quite easy to plug in, much lighter than a Catbox, and outputs a great quality picture, even from standard AV cables! This is a great piece of hardware that I can easily recommend to any Jaguar fan. Also, a few gripes I've heard about it seem to be completely unfounded. I had two Jaguars with the JagCD units attached with a Scatbox in the back, and the AV cables had no trouble protruding up beyond the back of the CD unit. Also, the legs on the bottom definitely help keep it level, and while the Scatbox fits on the back of a Jag quite easily, it also stays on pretty firmly. I would highly recommend this over the Catbox, especially for those who would like a simple and much more cost effective solution for adding AV or S-Video cables along with networking capabilities.

Black Ice/White Noise:

I was able to play Black Ice/White Noise prior to JagFest, but thought I'd give my impressions here anyway. Not a bad looking game, even though it obviously didn't make it too far into development. Being quite buggy, it is very easy to crash repeatedly, usually just by turning down the wrong road. I was able to very briefly demo Revision 23 of BI/WN (the revision released by Ambient Distortions is rev. 19), and couldn't immediately tell the two apart. Rev. 23 does seem to be slightly more polished, but from my limited time with it, it also appears to be even less stable. I literally could not move more than a few steps without the game crashing, which helps explain why it was only in the Jag for a short time.

Before I end this, I'd like to give my thanks to several people who greatly helped with the best video gaming event I have ever attended. First off all, thanks to Clint Thompson for sending a LARGE amount of hardware and software for JagFest! Even though he wasn't able to make it down himself, he was still a great help in many areas.

Thanks to Albert Yarusso and Alex Bilstein of AtariAge for lending me the use of two monitors, as well as doing small favors for me throughout the day while running not only the AtariAge booth, but the entire AGE event as well! You won't find a group of better guys in the classic gaming community!

Many thanks to ScatoLOGIC for lending us the use of four Battlesphere Gold carts as well as four Scatboxes, and also donating not one, but TWO Scatboxes to give away as prizes! The second Scatbox was given away as a door prize, so I'm not exactly sure who walked away with that, but I can assure you that the two people who received free Scatboxes will be quite happy with them!

Many thanks also to Songbird Productions for letting us give away a free copy of Protector SE. Many people had their sights set on that with the Tempest 2000 tournament.

Many thanks to Curt Vendel and Jason Smith, who both lent us quite a bit of prototype hardware and software to display. Considering how much these guys have paid for these items and how rare many of them are, this was quite generous of them!

I'd also like to thank my wife Kelly and my brother-in-law Justin for helping out by keeping an eye on things while I walked around a bit. Kelly also spent quite a bit of time checking tickets at the front door, which was a huge help with AGE overall.

Last but not least, a big thanks to Greg Goodwin for helping to run JagFest @ AGE! He turned out to be a great help, even running the entire Battlesphere tournament! Greg, I couldn't have pulled this off without you. Thanks!

To close this off, I am definitely looking forward to AGE next year. With many of the improvements that are already planned, it will definitely be an event to remember!