Schmudde

It's worth noting that McFur is currently leading in the polls as the worst launch title in the rather dismal Jaguar launch lineup. Even in that context it's not exactly a fan favorite. /ü

I'm down, but you really gotta support the Jaguar number pad on this one. Having quick access to the correct club is critical in a fast-paced game like golf. /ü

This is an interesting point... the main page is updated rarely and I feel like a ~50+ cartridge run of a new game on any of the Atari systems would be main-page worthy. In the last year I bought JHL, Alice's Mom's Rescue, and Another World -- all legitimate runs and really fun games. Also, I'd assume that such a release would indexed higher by search engines and thus easier for an unassuming buyer to research. But that may not be true due to the laziness and seemingly infinite disposable income of many of these bidders. /ü

Impulse X is indeed a difficult game but that Space Invader level (level 6, I believe) has a trick. Always shoot your ball up the right side. You're trying to break into the colored brick just next to the right eye. There is always a Magic powerup in that brick. Once you get that, it'll easily cut through all the blocks on the screen. The only problem I have with this level is that the color of the magic ball blends in with the background of the level itself. A little unfair and unfortunate, IMHO. /ü

Good points/list. If we're making a full list, I suppose you would need to include the dreadful Breakout game in Zool 2 as well. It's pretty sluggish. I may start a thread comparing these soon. I'm curious what others think. I agree with your points on Impulse X. I think it's a more complete game, but the learning curve is pretty heavy, and Breakout 2000 has a few fun innovations - the most important of which is the 2 player mode. They are a both must-haves, IMHO. /Schmüdde

The Jaguar's launch lineup is widely panned and the system arguably didn't have a must-have game until Tempest 2000. In that period, please rank the best titles. It's quite subjective. I have always appreciated gameplay, so I always felt that Raiden was a better title than Trever McFur, even though the latter looked more "next-gen" in still photographs. However, those looking for a next-gen experience in the early 1990s immediately felt that Dino Dudes and Raiden were pretty underwhelming. What do you think? Rank away and comment! /Schmüdde A quick note on the selection of titles: I know that Raiden and Dino Dudes weren't available the day of the Jaguar's launch, but I still think these two qualify as "launch titles" as they were available when the Jaguar went nationwide.

I have to agree with Bill. It seems that the developers lacked a nuanced understanding of what makes a good shooter. Developing a genre game is difficult. The game has a bit of a "kitchen sink" experience for me. They put everything in there that should make a good shooter (outside of music) but failed to execute any single part exceptionally. The greatest feature of the game are the level boss graphics. They look awesome on the box art. However, I don't think the animation on these bosses are exceptional and it degrades the impact they make when actually seeing them in the game. So I turn the question back around - do you think that there is any one aspect of the game that is absolutely exceptional? Head and shoulders above other shooters from the early 90s? You cited the sound effects. It's hard for me to rate this above the sound effects of TG-16 shooters or R-Type. There is little variety in enemy explosions. The power up sounds don't sound powerful, etc... I think calling it an unexceptional game is a pretty fair analysis. I can accept that you feel it's "damn good" but certainly it isn't *great* or *excellent* and qualifies as my least favorite launch title, behind Cybermorph, Raiden, and Dino Dudes. That's already a pretty weak launch lineup... and to be dead last is pretty sad. /Schmüdde

I’m an American from the Midwest but I grew up listening to a lot of British and German electronic music, so I might be able to provide some insights. 6. Constructive Demolition “Bring the Beat Back” Like Videodrome's “Television is the Retina” sample, this sample is likely a riff off of The KLF’s song Justified & Ancient (1991). Here is the link to the sample, “Bring the Beat Back,” cued up at 1m34s. It’s an amazing song that might seem like an unlikely influence but also listen to Constructive Demolition back-to-back with this KLF tune, What Time Is Love?, and spot the influence: KLF is a pioneer of trance music, something that Jeff Minter is known to like. If you want more evidence, here is Jeff Minter using the “Mu Mu” sample straight from What Time Is Love? (starts at about 0:47) in his game Space Giraffe. 7. Future Tense Robot voice, jungle music This track is very reminiscent of German techno outfit Snap!’s 1992 track The Ex-Terminator, straight down to the robot voice. Future Tense’s robot voice: https://youtu.be/c9XCsrAHlCo?t=51s The Ex-Terminator: https://youtu.be/myFu0jtXcd8?t=24s Ex-terminator will build into a lot of the elements you hear on the T2K soundtrack. This album was a pop and electronic chart-topper in the UK around the time T2K was being made. 2. Mind's Eye Videodrome This might be more trivia than a direct influence, but Front 242’s underground masterpiece Masterhit (1987) was the first song to sample Videodrome. You’ll hear it 20 seconds in, “You Know Me…” Videodrome subsequently became a very popular film to sample because of its techno-dystopian overtones. Still, if you listen to Masterhit, it isn’t a huge stretch to get to the T2K soundtrack: Enjoy the music! ~ü

Yeah Impulse X + Breakout 2000 are different enough even though they're in the same family. Sort of like Protector and Defender - you'll definitely want both. Plus the two player game in Breakout 2K is way fun. /ü

Hah. Not only do I remember Sinclip, I actually found the guy on Facebook a couple of years back and got a hold of him to see if he still had a deep, passionate hatred of Atari. I suppose I was giving the guy a slight bit of trolling but he responded cordially and seems to have moved on in his life. I didn't ask him what he does with his newfound free time but I wasn't that curious. /ü

I'd be interested in being on a pre-order list.

That's pretty cool that you got 'em both this year and beat 'em both. I've gotten some late night hours on Alice's Mom's Rescue but haven't had a moment with Another World. I really want to make the time. The only game I completed in the last two years was all 3 scenarios in Alien vs. Predator. /ü

Yeah, I'm with Club Drive as well. Tag is legit fun and the rest of the game is at least 'okay' to me, despite its horrendous reputation. I'm not delusional, Stunts is a much better game of the same ilk, but I also think that Club Drive's worst crime is being average. Many of the first generation Jaguar exclusives are infamous because that's when so much energy was pumped into hyping the console. Kasumi Ninja gets burned a lot even though it's better than Double Dragon V. Club Drive will make a 'worst of list' even though it is a better game than Supercross 3D. On the Jag CD, I'll also add Highlander as a game I enjoy. I never found the combat aspect difficult to control. I think the only disappointment for me on the game was the cartoon tie in (rather than the television show or, even better, the film). /ü

LOL. Next time my wife and I take the train to Burlington, we'll volunteer to replace two of the dollies. Then perhaps we can get some off-the-wall liberal arts student from the college to fill up the final spot. Then again, you'd have to be pretty loony to volunteer to play a port from an unorthodox 1980s computer which was a conversion from an arcade sequel on a long-forgotten 5th generation gaming console. /ü

I'm curious if you've listened to the Game By Game Jaguar Raiden episode? Doctorclu mentioned it earlier. That will provide some true insight into the how and why for Raiden. Shinto's series is incredibly detail-driven and I'm impressed with the insights he brings in every episode. He really does go above and beyond. /ü

This one, especially. Team Tap night with NBA Jam, WMCJ, and Gauntlet! I'm guessing Gauntlet would be the centerpiece. I saw you tested it with 4 controllers on another thread. Have you thrown a Gauntlet party yet? /ü

Oh my God, me too! I've only had time to play it once since I got it last week, but I was surprised that I sucked this bad. Rayman's difficult but I'm not bad at it. Progressing in Flashback is just a matter of time. However, Another World is a whole 'nother world [pun intended]. This is actually my first time playing it though, so at least I have an excuse. /ü

I love that we both qualified our comments by acknowledging that these articles aren't worth much but then discussed the merits of their ranking. Since I'm now down this rabbit hole, my only real problem with their selection is not their objective lack of knowledge, it's their pitiful lack of imagination. Have an original thought, take a provocative stance, and maybe surprise your audience. That is my expectation with articles like these and I think that's a pretty fair expectation. But, of course, ET is #2. Not even Zak Penn can dissuade the lemmings from senselessly echoing one another. /ü

Right. You always have to take click-bait lists with a mountain of salt... but we all know Club Drive isn't even the worst game on the Jaguar which makes its ranking completely illogical. /ü

Thanks for sharing this! Hadn't come across it yet. It's easy to forget how threatened the A8/Commodore64/AppleII crowd was by the ST/Amiga/Mac, even as the decade came to a close. All three companies approached this in various ways. Neil Harris of Atari Corp. makes a pretty good case for the XEGS but I find this claim to be puzzling: Maybe I was just too young when all of this happened, but the 8-bit lines seemed to be looking backwards in 1987. Developers could still make real money by developing for the Commodore 64 and Apple IIs were still very relevant in schools, but major corporate investment into the lines seemed to be a real dead end. Back to the OT, here is a case where Atari announced a product, shipped it, and got some pretty good shelf space for the machine. When I walked into a Toys 'R Us, you would see the 2600, 7800, and XEGS - almost always in that order in every promotion and every toy store. In hindsight, that was sort of odd because the A8 technology was truncated by Atari Inc. in favor of the 7800 tech. /ü

Great insight. To me, the bottom line is that Atari Corp. was profitable by 1987. The company was hemorrhaging money when Warner unloaded it. You have to be right more often than wrong to turn something around like that. I've never heard that the XEGS was a play to get retail space for the 65/130XE computers. I would love to see the worldwide sales figures for the 65/130/GS XEs. The ST line was undoubtedly Corp's focus at the time. I assumed propping up the 8-bit line was more about supporting the existing user base (a la Apple II in the Mac years) and exploiting Atari's brand in developing foreign markets to move low-cost units worldwide. I never thought the XE line was about shelf space and moving units in the USA/UK/France/West Germany. I know people were still buying Commodore 64/128s and Apple IIs in those countries, but it was crystal clear in the mid-1980s that the 16-bit GUI was the killer app that may stand a chance against the IBM compatible behemoth. I still maintain that pushing the XEGS in the 7800's marketplace incredibly confusing. At least here in the USA. /ü

In my mind, the Jaguar was the end of an era where a small development house could expertly craft a title filled with personality and succeed. I left the gaming scene after the Jaguar because I'm not really into risk-adverse AAA franchise titles. Xbox Live titles are a contemporary example of this spirit. But there was a long time between the Jaguar and Xbox Live. I stick with the Jaguar because I have limited time and the platform has a good balance between new homebrews and a library that I haven't fully conquered. My last year in gaming looks like: Beating all three modes in Alien Vs. Predator for the first time since the 1990s. Getting halfway through Rayman. Squeezing in some quick games of Impulse X and Zoop. Buying and playing three new titles: Alice's Mom's Rescue, JHL '15, and Another World. That's a pretty solid year, IMHO. Lots of great times in those titles. /ü