Gunstar

No it's still possible, you just have more of a challenge. A PA system from something like Glastonbury, Ozzfest for example, aimed from your house to the nearest neighbour.. and play away.. What would be cool would be on a completely overcast night, get an uber powerful projector, and cast it onto the clouds.. lie back onto the vibrating ground and play... untill the police/military cart you away Been there, done that...

Well, there are two known cases of this happening for sure to the Jaguar, by both companies; Phear&Nintendo and Rayman&Sony, in Rayman's case Sony just payed to have the Jag version (which was completed LOOONG before the PSX version) be held back until the PSX version was done and on the shelf a week or two before the Jag version was released (reviewers had finished copies of Jag version months before it's final release and months before Sony's release). I'm sure this happened in many other unkown cases as well. But then, Atari made stupid moves like refusing to release WORMS, which was done on the Jag long before the PSX and other versions, because they thought it wouldn't sell well, andit was a hit on the other systems...so basically, Sony wasted their money getting Rayman held back probably, Atari probably would have done it for free! LOL!

while I no longer have a Catbox and never had the stereo proto card to preamp my setup, I do have it going into a Sony 200 watt per channel 5.1 dolby surround setup and also crank it when I can! which isn't too often (family members hold me back-but I have two weeks coming up at the end of the month with the house to myself! woohoo!), but I live in the country with the closest neighbors a 1/4 mile away, so no opportunity to "annoy the neighbors." Bluelightning, Tempest 2k, Defender 2k, I-war, Battlemorph and Battlesphere are all excellent for cranking it up! a few others as well...Iron Soldier 2!

At risk of also sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I agree and believe it whole-heartedly, although i don't know about Sega&Nintendo and others working TOGeTHER, I'm sure they wet a few palms along the way to give Atari a bad rap. BUT, Atari management did just as much to shoot themselves in the foot at every opportunity, it's amazing that the good games that DID come out for the Jag, well...did! Along with the Jag&Jagcd too! I wouldn't be suprised if Atari was in league with the other company's to help destroy themselves! It sure seems that way... M$ is not only a big fish, but bigger than the others by a mile (well, maybe not sony, but the rest), and they practice just as amoral underhanded, evil ways, so it'll be a fight to the death, that's for sure! Personally, I'd like to see them all go down and have an entirely new console company emerge!

Being an Atari fan long before the Jaguar was released, I pretty much drooled over screen shots and reviews of the system early on (the good reviews), but I had decided to pick the jaguar up on site just because it was a new Atari system, appeared to blow away the competition (which it did), and I was ready for something new. Moving from an 8-bit Atari to a 64-bit Atari was quite a leap at the time, so even the games that sucked were impressive to me. But I and my friends both drooled over AvP, Iron Soldier, CYbermorph and Tempest 2K for weeks and months. The thing that I thought was hilarious was not only seeing thes magazine talk nothing but good about the Jaguar at first, but see them do a total 180 later, which not only caused me to lose respect for them (not the Jag, I had it and knew how good it really was!), but it made it SO obvious that they were being payed off by the other companies...I knew Atari was small with a small budget and also knw the other companies were huge wallet-wise. Plus, being an Atari fan since forever, I'd seen Attacks by Sega and Nintendo (and Commodore) in the past, so I knew that's what these bad reviews really were. The funniest thing of all, was in late '95 when I would open an EGM or other magazine and see these great titles like Missle Command 3D get totally trashed, and then I'd read a review in one of the few magazines that weren't on payroll from Nintendo (etc.) and they'd give it a really high rating...forget which mag now...you'll love the Jaguar and the CD unit. I've never regretted it and have had it pretty much since day 1.

the only thing that would accomplish, at best, is nothing. At worst, it would piss off Telegames to the point of not wanting to have naything to do with the pathetic jaguar community, because they keep sending them old, useless registration cards that they never made and had nothing to do with. The ONLY thing that should be done if you want to do something like this, is to start a mature, professional letter writing campaign to Telegames to let them know there are still a relevent amount of jaguar fans that would buy their products, and , to actually BUY the products for the Jag they have that have been sitting around unsold in their wharehouses, which is why they are unwilling to produce more Jaguar games in the first place; because the ones they did release; WTR, IS2, Worms, B2k, Zero5 and Towers II did not sell to their expectations and they got stuck with stock that they are still trying to sell off!

That was nothing new even 7 or 10 ro more years ago! Terminal emulators have been around for 8 and 16-bit computers of the 70's&80's since the early to mid 80's! When I was in college 10 years ago, I had my Atari 130XE hooked up to the school's main frame with access to VAX, Lynx, WWW (what it was at that itme), and some other sytem that I forget the name of now, with a "kermit" terminal emulation program and 2400 baud modem. The program I used was written for the 48k atari 800 years before that! it was a PD progam too! Atari ST systems have a similiar terminal emulator as a desk accessory to the GEM desktop! it came with the "Start" disk automatically way back when the ST first came out. But this is (Contiki) to access the internet as we know it today! Even if it is just text based like those early terminal emulators, it can access infinately more information.

Well, I never sent in any of those cards, even when Atari was still around, but I do still have them all in my boxes, along with the inserts and plastic cartridge bags, instructions, etc.;it's the only way to have TRUELY COMPLETE IN BOX and MINT IN BOX games&collections! When I first got my Jaguar, atari did have a promotion to send in that card out of the Jaguar system box along with the UPC symbol off the box to get your choice of Raiden, Trevor Mcfur or Dino Dudes for free! (I got Raiden ) Of course about a month after I received my Raiden cartridge, Atari started the deal of your choice of Tempest 2000 or Wolfenstein 3D AND a Jag controller! ( I had to buy my extra controller and copies of T2K and W3D-at full price!) Still, no regrets... All I know is that Raiden was free and It's one of my favorites (plus I still have the box and inserts, etc. in mint condition!) :wink:

Heh... those "8-bits" (computers) are swimming in RAM. About 3 years ago I wrote a TCP/IP stack which has more features and even does packet reassembly (disabled in contiki) and runs in little 8-bit uPs like 68HC11's and PIC uPs... and those things have almost no RAM and tiny 4K ROMS. Not to take anything away from this project... I'm just pointing out that I don't think anyone thought these things were "impossible". If they thought that nobody would have tried it, and nobody would have contracted me to do one for them... Yep my Atari 130XE 8-bit is 'swimming in RAM it has already 1Mb expanded memory and that's even not enough will be 16Mb sometime.. haha 8x more then the Jaguar..... Thats VERY cool! I'm going to be upgrading my 130XE to 1 meg soon, and my 1040STf is going to get the 4meg treatment as well (not to mention several other upgrades to both!) I'm going to be getting my ST online with MINT/CAB TCP/IP stacker/browser/os setups, but as far as my XE, I thought i'd be stuck with terminal emulation. This Contiki sounds awsome though, and seems to be coming at just the right time! With it and my A.P.E setup, I can have access to my PC modem and hardrive to REALLY push this baby! I'm definately looking forward to browsing the net with my Jag and possibly Lynx too! This is all too cool! maybe it will get ported to the 2600, 5200 and 7800 too! Could you imagine...the 2600 with the supercharger and keyboard running on the net? Maybe it would need a bit of memory added into the Contiki "cart" or something, but...

Well, I never got in on that thread, but I have listed what I think to be the best in the past...that being said, I'll TRY to keep this to the dozen or so that I feel are MUST HAVES: If only cartridge then get these; AvP Doom Iron Soldier 1 and 2 (it only gets better) Skyhammer Missle Command 3D Wolfenstein 3D SuperCross 3D(doh! disregard that one, I got rollin' on the 3D's) Battlesphere Super Burnout Val di' Isere Skiing&Snowboarding Rayman I-War Raiden Zero5 Defender 2000 Tempest 2000 (not necessarily in that order) If you get Jagcd (and you SHOULD, not only good old releases, but new stuff is coming): Battlemorph Iron Soldier 2 (get this over the cart version) World Tour Racing Hover Strike: Unconquered Lands Blue Lightning Myst Now, for some very good demos/unreleased (now released)games that are cool too: Phase Zero Space War 2000 BlackIce/WhiteNoise (CD, coming out now) this is DEFINATELY not all the good ones, others are fine, EXCEPT: Club Drive DoubleDragon V Checkered Flag Space Ace White Men Can't Jump (avoid these like the plague, unless your collecting, some of them have some good points, and you MIGHT like them, but overall considered to suck.) P.S., some people think a couple of mine choices suck, Like I-war, Hoverstrike and Blue lightning, but I love them and all three are in the top ten most played on my "most played" list.

I'm not exactly sure what Zylonsbane is refering too, all I know is that Jaguar Cannon Fodder will save your game down to the specific phase(level) of any given mission, it saves the current status of you soldiers, including their rank and the ammo they have. It even saves your settings as far as music and SFX, controller setting and the resolution of the screen (can be low or high resolution, one is 320x224, the other 640x224). There is a "load" icon that looks like a microchip in the upper left corner of the main screen, and a "save" game icon that also looks like a microchip in the upper right corner of the main screen. if you push option, it takes you to the menu for adjusting controls, music and SFX levels and screen resolution. I'm not sure what he means by a ZOOM function either, or lack of, but then the Jag version is the only version I've played. I'll have to check out the ST version to see if it has this feature if the Amiga version does. Also, there is a map to look at that shows the entire playing field and marks your position with an X. Just so no one gets the wron idea about Worms on the Jaguar either, it may be no better than the PC&Amiga versions, but it's no worse than the Playstation or Saturn versions either...they are all the same. As a matter of fact, Worms Armegeddon on the DC barely looks better graphically either...

I say go fo it! We definately need a good faq for new people here! Just makes sure it is accurate, thorough, and has everything in both technical and laymans terms, just to try avoiding any further misunderstanding and have the "proof" right there for any future nay-sayers.

Glad you like it! I didn't play another game on the Jag or any other of my systems until I had finished this game, like reading a good book! Personally, I think the graphics improve as the game progresses, that is, the other levels look cooler than the first "mine" levels. The ending ROCKS too! TONS of secrets, it's got a real replayability factor because you WON"T find all the secrets the first time through, not unless your completely methodical in your approach!

Double talk?!? No such thing as 64-bit system?!? There are two (or more) sides to every story. I'm quite aware of your PERSPECTIVE on this matter. You've repeated yourself several times in this forum in the last few days. Now, your PERSPECTIVE is based on programming and instruction sets, fine. Let me tell you about MY PERSPECTIVE. I'm into electronics, the hardware. The Jaguar has a 64-bit data path (BUSS) and 64-bit memory, it moves information around in 64-bit chunks on that data path, in memory and in the Object and Blitter processors. As far as I'm concerned, as an electronics student studying for an engineering degree, THAT'S what make a system 64-bit, or 32-bit or 128-bit, it's the BUSS BANDWIDTH and memory control. As far as I'm concerned, 64 AND 128-bit systems DO exist and that is why. The HARDWARE is 64-bits, instruction sets aside...

People tend to forget that the Jaguar, while TRUELY 64-bit, was released way back in 1993! It was superior to all the consoles of the day, by a mile, and even superior to the PC's of '93. None of those systems could handle a game like AvP as well as the Jag at that time. Of course the PC version is going to be much better, it was made like 5 years (if not more) afterward! The only system that challenged the Jag's power back then was the 3DO, and it sold for as much as a PC ($750) initially! The Jaguar sold for a mere $250 in comparison. Believe me, if you had seen AvP when it first came out, you would have dropped your mouth open and wouldn't have though it moved all that slow. Everybocy I showed it to in'95 when I got, it thought it was remarkable. We've just come a long way since then, and as you should know, in the electronics world, even a year is a millenia in leaps and bounds of technology, even consumer technology. So of course newer systems will be more powerful. the number of bits doesn't necessarily mean that it's better if it has mor bits either, that's just one piece of the "power" puzzle...

Lots of people like to talk about how games like Hoover Strike and that lot are somehow pushing the Jaguar harder because they try and render a planet scene and BattleSphere takes place in space... Truth be told, games like Hover Struck clip the horizon so close to the viewer that they basically don't render all that much. When you get right up close to a starbase (or several of them) in BattleSphere, you're basically looking at more polygons onscreen than the typical planet-based scene in other games. Yet, in BattleSphere, the Warp Polygon Engine doesn't slow down so badly like it does in other games with a lot of polygons onscreen. The fact of the matter is that Atari's polygon games all used Atari's polygon engines, which were horribly inefficient and spent a lot of time doing nothing but waiting for the blitter, etc. BattleSphere takes advantage of waiting periods to actually accomplish useful tasks. The fact that even the smallest gaps are completely filled in with useful things in BattleSphere sets it quite far ahead of other Jag polygon games. I'd suggest that Iron Soldier II and BattleSphere are probably the most efficient games in terms of getting the most out of the system. Point taken. But, if those starbases are using as many polys as the surface of planets in other games, regardless of clipping, it seems to me that you should be able to get a lot closer to them and actually, skim or"fly" along the surface of those bases, but you can only get close enough that the star base covers the screen (or maybe two or three screens worth if one could see it all), and you crash into them, if you stay far enough away not to crash, your hardly "skimming the surface." I'm not being critical about what you said, just want some clarification on this point. Even in 'Shadow Squadron' on the 32x, I can skim along the surface of the big ships or bases and it has the effect of something like a Star Wars movie, flying over a Stardestroyer. That's the 32x, which IS less powerful Poly-wise than the Jag!

Yes, Battlesphere is great, and it pushes the Jaguar in a lot of ways, but I don't think it's pushing it to it's limit (ducks to avoid T-birds wrath). Here's my reasoning: Battlesphere takes place basically in empty space, there's not a whole lot besides the ships and bases and some minor debri for the Jaguar to worry about (of course BS, and any game for that matter, has all that A.I. and and other caluculations going on "behind the scenes", stuff you don't "see"). Just look at HoverStrike and SpaceWar 2K for a perfect example; HoverStrike has a TON of stuff going on and the Jaguar has to render the planet surface, as well as the objects and all that texture mapping, SpaceWar 2K uses the same graphic engine, but without the planet surface to worry about rendering, it moves lightning fast compared to HS! But that brings us to another point: what do you mean by "pushng to the limits?" If you mean making the Jaguar do the absolute maximum it can do, then HoverStrike CD probably does that, it's obviously trying to make the Jag do more than it can really handle fluidly, or the frame rate would be better, but it has fantastic texture mapping (better than the cart version), all that light-sourcing, and shading and a lot of other stuff going on at once. If you mean pushing to the maximum limit of where the Jaguar can still handle it all at a good frame-rate, then look to Battlemorph, Iron Soldier 2 and possibly Skyhammer. they all have worlds to render, plus everything else too. But this is all on the POLYGON side of the Jag, it can be "pushed to the max" in other types of graphics too, like the voxels and pre-rendered sprites of PhaseZero, or the 2D stuff like Rayman, Native, Raiden, Defender 2k, Protector/SE...etc., etc.

Ok, I did some digging, JEO is still online, a link is on JI2. The issue with an interview with Lee Briggs, then Teque programmer, who worked on WTR is, volume 1, issue 3, Oct. 15, 1997. This is NOT the interview I remember, although he discusses much of the same thing in this interview, it's VERY enlightening anyway, and he does refer to optimized graphic engine design and such and speaks of ways the current engine could have been made faster. The interview I remember is either of him or one of his Teque colleages and they refer to the fact that the engine was originally ported from a Genesis game that was never released and the fact that they did have an optimized engine for WTR that didn't get implemented for lack of time given by Atari. Sometimes these interviews get blurred together over the years, the one I'm think of may be in another issue of AEO/JEO or it may even be in an old issue of 'Central Atari Information Network' (C.A.I.N) newsletter, which is very similiar in format to JEO. the addresses are below, but I don't know if the old CAIN one is any good or not: http://www.atarihq.com/jeo/ http://ace.cs.ohiou.edu/personal/mleair/cain.html

yeah, I'm the one that mentioned it. It's in one of the AEO/JEO issues...I read it back about the time WTR came out from Telegames. I'll see if I can locate it, I know I have a printout, but a lot got cut off the edges (bad printout), so I'll have to see if I can find it online again, anyone remember the address and know if it's even still online? I'll take a look...

Thanks for the info, that's a shame. So you were never able to even find&make contact with the Midnite guys? Or they just didn't have anything/couldn't help? maybe something will still turn up with the people who bought Atari liquidations, since it was sent to Atari in the spring/summer of '95, they sent it out to mags for review, and then it was swept under the rug by Atari when those reviews were poor. Maybe, just maybe Atari had more than just an image/some flashcarts with it...

This is good news, 2 new game releases... whow I hope they will be released... An updated version of Aircars also would be cool.... the voice is boring... Don't get ahead of me here! I'm don't know if those other titles got beyond being announced by Midnight, or if any work was ever really done on them at all, and I don't know if the Aircars thing was even more than speculation by Carl, this is what I'm trying to find out...

Has/does anyone heard/know about the status of Aircars sorce code or the possiblity of having more made and the game improved? About a year or two ago Carl Forhan was talking about the possibility of releasing more copies and/or securing the source code to improve the game and release an updated version. I assume that this would be done through Midnight software, the developer and not ICD. Also, they had other games in the works Like "Dungeon Depths"(or something to that effect) and "Hosenose&Booger."

If I remember correctly,back when ICD released it, some production numbers of about 200-300 were circulating. I don't know how accurate that is though, or if it was merely rumor, or if it came directly from ICD at some point. But some can still be found un-opened on RARE occasion, since it wasn't popular AT ALL when it was first released, and has only since become more sought in recent years as the dealers' inventory has dried up and people have realized how rare it is.

But don't the Scuba units still cost/sell for a few hundred anyway? With the cost of it and the conversion kit, plus time&trouble, in the end wouldn't it be better just to buy Clint's proposed units for $350?

Well, I'm VERY impressed that they can sell those for under $100 then, (don't know what they go for, but I assume less than that) must be because of ridiculously large production runs that they are able to produce them cheaply enough with that much memory in ROM!