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Schmudde

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Posts posted by Schmudde

  2. Posted

    Yes! Completed Another World twice the first day I got it, with memories to start with and some youtube help.

     

    -Alice mom's rescue (Perfect!/all gems)

    -Another world

     

    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

    • Like 1

  3. Posted

    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

  4. Posted

     

    Yes, as a Jaguar user it wasn't with actual people per say, but with my dollies lined up, one controller per dolls lap. It was epic good fun, and then we had a tea party!

     

    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

    • Like 1

  5. Posted · Edited by Schmudde

    It's also the best game called raiden, best port of a Japanese arcade, best game using a status bar to create the vertical orientation and a bunch of other things, that is an ironic thing that at the time something like cybermorph or trevor mcfur was considered more impressive but today raiden is looked upon more favorably than much of the jags library

     

    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

    • Like 2

  6. Posted

    Any updates? I'm ready to order some Jag carts!!

    -Gauntlet II

     

     

    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

    • Like 1

  7. Posted

    Me too! Long wait finally over so big relief :thumbsup:

    Was trying to play last night and I suck at this game! Just as bad as I did in days of yore on every other platform :P

    Having a great time with it though.

     

    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

    • Like 1

  8. Posted · Edited by Schmudde

     

    I agree that click-bait articles aren't often worth much debate or discussion - they're basically designed to cheese some people off and make other people with cursory knowledge of things nod in agreement - but I think Club Drive is fair game even if it's not necessarily the worst game on the platform. (I'm assuming you meant something like Supercross 3D instead as the worst.) The issue I think is something like Club Drive is probably better known and an easier target, and we might be expecting a bit much for such a simple piece to kind of really get at the heart of "worst."

     

    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

  9. Posted

    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

  10. Posted

    As always ... a must read for anyone wanting Atari's insight from back in the day on the XEGS

     

    https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/comp.sys.atari.8bit/CHaivDd-Hy4/zNYxPzguppgJ

     

    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:

     

    We expect stores to do a great business in these. We'll make available the current library of cartridge software, plus we're converting some disk programs into cartridge format for this system. As time goes by, we expect to see dramatic increases in sales for 8-bit software

     

     

    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

  11. Posted

    The XE Game System was a last-ditch effort to prop up the XE computer line. Software houses were canceling development for the XE line while blaming it all on piracy. Atari needed new users added to the installation base to convince them to continue development. They also had difficulty with retailers who didn't want to carry the 65XE but they'd carry it if it was repackaged as a game system so they could sell it to parents who wanted a game system for their kids but also offering computer abilities. If I'm not mistaken, Commodore even considered a C64 game system variant for that very same reason after the 8-bit mass market computer craze died in the face of the rebounding console video game industry at the time. It was also really easy to license the rights to already-existing Atari 8-bit video game titles and repackage them as cartridges for the XEGS. Development for Atari 8-bit was also arguably easier than for the 7800 because a lot of the industry programmers already had considerable experience coding for the platform, plus the MARIA was considered difficult to program in comparison. So that's why Atari Corp pushed out the XEGS when one would consider it to be lacking in common sense to launch such a machine while the 7800 was on the market.

     

    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

    • Like 2

  12. Posted

    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

    • Like 2

  13. Posted

    I'd like to add a few links for the record, in case any others search for this topic:

     

    Atari Documentation Archive has two large volumes on MIDI and music:

     

    Atari Music Network has a few manuals:

     

    The Internet Archive has some documentation, but no MIDI stuff as of the time of this posting:

     

    /ü

  15. Posted

     

    Prioritizing the 8-bit line for sure. In_this_country. Same mistake C= made with the 128 after the Amiga.

     

    Hilarious though that the 2600, two years later in 1979, was supposed to be replaced by their A8 architecture. Yet years after the 5200 flopped, Atari thought the A8 repackaged again as a game machine, could still be relevant by the mid to late 80's. Drunken captains of industry… sad or hilarious, take your pick! :lol:

     

    Yeah, the XEGS wasn't a good idea. The few advertisements that did run for the XEGS made it all the more confusing by touting the machine's "computing power" when the 7800 was struggling to find an identity itself.

     

    I remember reading Atarian magazine as a 7800 player and being really confused about the XEGS.

     

    /ü

    • Like 1

  16. Posted

    Almost like they used the PR to gauge interest in retail and public before spending the money to manufacture!

     

     

     

    I believe this is referenced in Commodore: A Company on the Edge. I don't remember Bagnall's source for this claim, but it was established that Jack Tramiel used this technique to gauge interest in a product. The first cited instance is the Commodore PET at the Chicago CES in 1977. But there were others. Commodore "created" a lot of vaporware under Jack T.

     

    Jack Tramiel didn't get where he was because he knew computers inside and out; he was successful in producing typewriters, adding machines, digital calculators, and computers because he acted upon his intuition and was not afraid to take risks where others were. Announcing products that one may not ever ship is A) a way to gauge the market and B) very risky.

     

    As far as the 7800, Atari Corp was just a small company with limited resources. I agree that there were many missed opportunities in 1986 and 1987. Tramiel really did buy the preeminent name in video games and 3rd parties might have been more inclined to the company's platforms had Atari Corp. been more focused on their video game offerings.

     

    Considering the success of the ST and Atari's financial situation after Jack's deal with Warner, I think it's difficult to argue that prioritizing the computer line was a mistake.

     

    /ü

    • Like 1

  18. Posted

     

    It's always worked for Apple...

     

    Of course, Apple struggled in the mid-to-late 80s with premium products - the Lisa and the Macintosh. The Macintosh didn't gain any traction until after Jobs was gone and the company released a more diverse product lineup with different price tiers.

     

    Jobs' second tenure started to gain steam with the release of the iMac. It didn't turn around market share but it did stop the bleeding. You're right, the iMac did have a premium design flair to it, but $1299 (including monitor) was in the ballpark of your typical Best Buy PC. The machine had some great features, even if you had to buy a floppy drive separately.

     

    3DO wasn't even in the ballpark. Neo Geo already demonstrated that video game luxury won't move a lot of units but I think their model was much different. If you want to build a software platform, the luxury proposition is a dicey one at best.

     

    /ü

  20. Posted

    Interesting, I've never heard that before. If it's true, that's gotta be one of the biggest mistakes in video gaming history.

     

     

    People react to pricing in weird and paradoxical ways, so Hawkins might not have been completely nuts to aim high since there's some precedent for success via inflated pricing.

     

    In particular, I remember hearing that BMW (I think it was them) massively increased their sales in the United States when they doubled their prices and repositioned themselves as a luxury brand, even though the car itself was the same.

     

    Well, I'm with Madman here - if it's true, it's an unforgivable blunder. It's particularly shocking if it's coming from Hawkins' view. He was a veteran of the industry.

     

    Bringing this back to the Jaguar and Atari Corp: I don't believe the comparison to BMW is apt. Building a platform is much different than manufacturing a car. Jack Tramiel gets a lot of heat from Atari users, but he built the brand's most successful platform outside of the 2600 - the Atari ST (with the Atari 400/800 seeing similar worldwide numbers). Before Atari, he also built a platform larger than most any in the software/hardware industry - the Commodore 64.

     

    Building a platform requires a special sweet spot that attracts major software support. Trading off low software sales numbers in an attempt to corner a non-existent luxury market would be a surprising move by someone of Trip Hawkins' stature. For all of 3DO's flaws, its software success has to be largely attributed to Trip Hawkins' force in the industry. But that can only be sustained so long. Eventually you have to move volume to continue software support. That's a truism that was established well before the 1990s.

     

    And Bill, I'm not doubting you. I've simply long-attributed 3DO's high price tag to to the necessity of their business model - not a grab at a market segment or a way to pump up profits early on.

     

    /ü

  21. Posted

    Hello all,

     

    I'm getting back into ST MIDI sequencing after a decade (or two?!?) away. The ST software is just so uniquely brilliant and in many cases, there is absolutely nothing like it on the market today.

     

    I was wondering if there is a good resource for ST manuals. I can find some on Tim's Atari MIDI World, but I'm hoping there is a larger resource.

     

    /ü

  22. Posted

     

    I don't recall. All I remember are the steady price drops after launch and then the eventual price of $99 when it was on the way out. Anyway, the point is, we know they didn't have to release at $700 to be profitable. That was just an attempt to position it as a high end media component (which we know NEVER worked for anyone who has attempted it). I'd love to know what the lowest price they could have released at while still having a reasonable profit per machine, keeping in mind that this was not quite like the traditional console model where there was a single console manufacturer that could sell their console at a loss and make it up from percentages of software sales.

     

    I have never read this about the 3DO's artificially high launch price. Was this part of Trip Hawkin's strategy or was it forced upon the platform by the manufacturers? It seems like a tremendous blunder.

     

    The model was already a risky departure from tradition. Ignoring the countless historical lessons about how content is actually created for new technology platforms seems wrought with hubris.

     

    /ü

  25. Posted

    Also, this is in no way definitive proof, but here is one source of the Electronic Arts rumor:

     

    http://www.atariage.com/Jaguar/faq/ (Last update: 8/3/2003)

     

       Announced Jaguar CD-ROM games:
       Title              Players  Publisher      Developer      Type
       Need For Speed, The   1       ?            Elec. Arts     Driving

    I feel like I have seen The Need for Speed on printed Atari Corp. Jaguar brochures, but I'm not likely to take the time to dig it out. So take it for what it's worth. Not proof or even evidence, but simply a source of the rumor.

     

    ~ü

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