Schmudde

Good job on the opening music! Subscribed. Looking forward to the next episode. /ü

Pole Position II - I think Asteroids is a better game, and the 7800 version is great in co-op, but PP2 was more contemporary and the 7800 library was a bit dated out of the gate in 1986. I might feel different about the limited 1984 release. ~ü

I'm assuming that by Pirate you mean Jaguar and by Ninja you mean PlayStation. Based on some discussions I had in the 1990s, I learned that the Jaguar just two 32-bit processors and 32+32 = 64-bit. The PS has five 32-bit processors, making it 160-bit. You might think that means Ninja wins... but when you add in the untapped potential of the Jaguar, I think you have to go with Pirate. Case closed. /ü

Agreed but I think it's best to remember that Atari Corp. was trying to make the 'least bad' decision by 1993. Sam's Atari had shrunk from his father's profitable multi-division, multi-platform business to an endeavor with no living product on the shelves (both the Lynx and the Falcon were essentially dead). In the spring of 1993, the two options were to miss Christmas entirely and launch with better software or to move forward 100% committed to Christmas and figure out the rest later. Considering how important Christmas is to the consumer electronics industry, I don't see how you could ever go with the first choice. If Atari Corp made a mistake, it was over-estimating their ability to deliver enough units for the 1993 holiday launch, but I think that's a risk they simply had to take. This whole decision is exasperated by the fact that Corp's ATC stock was riding a wave of positive speculation based on the Jaguar news. If they would have missed Christmas, there is no doubt that Wall St. would have lost their minds and made everything in 1994 that much worse. Finally, it's good to remember that both the Commodore 64 and the Atari ST had successful launches with limited software support. I'm, of course, being pedantic with the idea of good software from 'day one' for the sake of discussion. /ü

I thought this was going to be my least favorite episode. I really hated this game. It turned out to be my favorite. I think your design assessment rang especially true: 1) It needs to be brown, 2) it needs to have dirt you can drive on, 3) it needs to have dirt you can’t drive on. BTW - Uganda is now sponsored by Mountain Dew. It happened after the 'Battle for Migingo’ between Uganda and Kenya. You really nailed your Ugandan dirtbike history! Sucked in the 90s, but they're killin' it now! /Schmüdde

This is a good question. More than anybody else, I would be interested in talking to Ted Hoff. When he came on as president in 1995, he undertook several initiatives that seemed to improve Atari's image in its core community. I'm only working off of memory, so please forgive me, but I believe he worked on the light rebranding, retail availability, and customer communication, among other things. Mr. Hoff came in so very late in the game, he had to have some belief that the cause wasn't totally hopeless. Otherwise, why bother? So you can preside over the demise of one of the world's most beloved brands? The great Gary Kildall once opined on Jack Tramiel's approach thusly - "Jack's strategy has always been to flood the market with product and drive out the competition. He did it with the $10 calculator and he did it again with the Commodore 64." Sam was using the same playbook. Although it might seem naive in hindsight, announcing a product like VR, ginning up interest, and then delivering had worked for for 20 years. If you operate on low margins and with small teams, you might just get that product that hits at the right place at the right time. The Tramiel playbook had worked with typewriters, adding machines, digital calculators, personal computers, graphically driven personal computers... so why not VR? Why not the the next big thing in gaming, the Jaguar 2? We know the answer in hindsight, but at the time, this may have been what Ted Hoff was working with when he ran Atari for its last full year. ~ü

Liking all this Battlemorph love. I really liked that title. Skyhammer Battlemorph Alien Vs. Predator Rayman Iron Soldier I/II BattleSphere Brutal Sports Football Defender 2000 Tempest 2000 Super Burnout Quick note on Skyhammer. Yes, I love this game. I love the feeling that there is a bigger world around you. While you're busy taking out a platoon in one area of the city, a previously secure sector in another area of the might get overrun. It is the one game on my list that I feel asks you to think defensively. /ü

Perhaps the argument isn't clear: Making a game is about choices. Those choices are based on creative goals measured against technological constraints. Let's take the brilliant team at id - Do you see what makes this so good? A limited color palette and simple dark lines. Compare this to the less experienced team at Rebellion: This looks bad because there is no restraint. Look at all that detail! Camouflage? Are you kidding? Not only is it complex, but who the hell needs camouflage in space?! Look at all that shading! There is no way you could capture that detail in such a low resolution sprite. So it looks like shit. That's the sign of not understanding your limitations. That's bad design. Bad design never ages well (unless it does, see punk rock posters). How would id make a marine? Like this: This looks pretty great. They hid the face, which is a brilliant choice. Faces are really hard to show at low resolution. The uniform is one color. It looks good small. When it's big, everything is pixelated, but it isn't just a mess of blocks like the AvP marine. It was clear that GoldenEye was the beginning of a new graphical style. As such, some of the graphics aren't that refined. It was clear to me then and it's clear to me now. /ü

I understand that GoldenEye looked good to most people. Like early CGI (and even some contemporary CGI), I saw it and said "that's not going to age well." Those guards always looked bad. We used to make fun of them back in the day. That's not hindsight. That's just understanding technology and how it ages. I think GoldenEye and Mario 64 were incredible accomplishments for the time. I respect the hell out of both. But I can also say that they never looked like elegant, beautiful games. Think about it for a second, why do so many later titles look better than early titles on a platform? Imagine the original Atari 2600 programmers trying to do Solaris or the first wave SNES programmers attempting Donkey Kong Country. The later games show a mastering of the creative and technical parameters enforced by the system. Only a handful of games early games ever rise above this. GoldenEye was never one of them. Too many fuzzy textures and weird bodies. Good game, good looking, but not without significant missteps. ~ü

No doubt, the Space Marine sprite has aged particularly poorly. Especially when you compare them to Imp sprites from Doom on the same system. But the point isn't 'high resolution.' The point is never resolution because resolution will continue to improve. The point is design choices within the parameters given. That's what makes Missile Command, Zelda, and Castlevania IV beautiful games. I would probably put Doom in that list as well, now that I mention it. Probably no need to clarify that; you're basically saying the same things about early 3D games. The flat shaded polys have their strengths. I'll take the Virtua Fighter figures over some of the mangled humans in Goldeneye. Not that it's a fair comparison -- completely different games with completely different objectives. Just sayin'. ~ü

Well... then... can it be anything other than BattleSphere? What Jaguar game has had more words devoted to it within the community? What Jaguar game is more expensive? In light of other successes (AvP, T2K, IS, Rayman), what hyped Jaguar game has had nearly no impact outside of the insular community? And what Jaguar game is almost never considered the top game for the system, in spite of all the words and the incredible amount of money paid to play it? Hint: it's not Atari Karts (although that's a good suggestion ). BattleSphere, BattleSphere, BattleSphere! Just going by the raw data. Perhaps there is a more nuanced answer that I'm missing? ~u

I am seeing this sentiment more and more and it makes me quite happy. I mean, the image above, from Goldeneye, has always looked freakin' awful. From day 1. Throughout digital tech, there are certain approaches that I didn't think would age well -- N64 was a prime candidate with Mario 64 and Goldeneye being clear examples. I won't digress here, but the best writeup on this phenomenon is an amazing essay called A Pixel Artist Renounces Pixel Art. Back to the topic, Alien vs. Predator has some clear framerate problems but I think the story, the graphics, and the sound evoke a time and place that has aged well. Kind of like how Missile Command (arcade), Zelda (NES), and Castlevania IV (SNES) aged well before it. ~ü

Sorry, I thought comparing Mega Man & Rayman in my post was even more ludicrous... thus making my sarcasm quite clear. I suppose not. In all seriousness, this what I really want to know: Jaguar vs. Jaguar. Which is better, the 64-bit Atari Jaguar or a Jaguar XF auto with a V6 diesel engine? ~ü

That's ludicrous. You can't compare those two. What I really want to know though, Mega Man vs. Rayman - which one is really better? ~ü

Yeah, I remember that. I read GameFan avidly in those days. They were really pulling for Atari to get this one right. They gave Cybermorph great coverage all around with at least a two page spread on top of the usual reviews. Their support really fell apart when Checkered Flag was released. I clearly remembered one reviewer simply asking "What happened?" Essentially, how could the team behind Alien Vs. Predator mess up such a simple formula with such promising early demos. It didn't help that it was reviewed in the same issue as Club Drive. ~ü

This is an interesting take on the Jaguar that puts it in the context of the mass-market consumer entertainment industry. There has been a lot of money spent since 1993 on trying to find a new entry into the living room. The television was a revolution. The VCR was a revolution. But the DVD was just an evolution. TiVo and OnDemand are interesting candidates but the holy grail has always been a new general-purpose box. If you look at it from the Tramiel's early-90s perspective, I think they were dead serious about the "Interactive Multimedia" aspect of the Jaguar. Commodore's C64 success was based on a couple of low-cost but powerful chips and a cheap base-price that locks you into a system that you can expand. The Jaguar was similar: a CD add on + MPEG Cart, a modem, an oft-touted Time-Warner stake in Atari Corp (Sam mentioned their cable network on more than one occasion), and a chip set with a broad number of features and no particular emphasis (like 3D). But the differences were more important: With both the C64 and the ST, the first feature touted out of the gate was the amount of memory you could get for the price. A no brainer, clear as day, bang-for-the-buck. A lot of companies don't understand this. It was why Jack Tramiel was so successful. But 64K of memory for the $595 Commodore 64 and $1000/1MB 1040ST is only good for so long. The C64 lasted because VIC & SID chips. The ST lasted because of DTP, and more importantly, MIDI. In both cases, the value of the hardware and its purpose are self-evident. What does the 64-Bit Interactive Multimedia System offer to the living room? 64-bit? Why does my living room need 64-bit? "Interactive Multimedia"? What sort of killer experiences are you offering? Games? I already have a SNES and you're showing me 68000 Genesis ports? Multimedia? Great peripherals, but you still haven't sold the game system. The Jaguar was trying to be everything and became nothing. Even before it was irrelevant, it was confusing developers with both its mission and its design. This is actually a very tempting and easy mistake to make. ~ü

If I'm thinking about hype during the Jaguar's lifetime, it would have to be Fight For Life. Francois Bertrand's name was intentionally used to give weight to the game. "If this is the guy who 'made' Virtual Fighter, this is going to be an awesome game on the Jaguar!" He didn't stand a chance. In the early 90s, we were just moving from a time when small or individual developers were being totally replaced by AAA teams on consoles. The team and the company that made Virtual Fighter was totally different than the guy that made Flight For Life. I personally believe that the Jaguar was the last of that kind. In fact, I sort of left video games after the Jaguar until recently. I love what is happening on X-Box live and Steam. Weird games made by small teams are still my favorite. I guess I'm just indie at heart. ~ü

I don't disagree with any of this, nor do I necessarily disagree with your original post. All I've said: attempting to correct the record by using some strawman Jaguar fanboys and apologists is a theme around here. Even before I posted, there was already a digression on to trolling, etc.. because this strategy is both negative and tired. You may not have meant to elicit these reactions, but the broader context of your post matters. Anyway, I've clarified and I'll refrain from further digression. ~ü

... and those people who love the jag and don't indulge idiotic fanaticism are the people who thus far populate this thread. Your pre-emptive strike against some strawman troll by "putting the Jaguar in its place" seems a little out of sync in a forum that is built for people who enjoy the system. There are several users on this forum who don't seem to understand this. There is so much of this Jaguar "reality checking," it becomes just as obnoxious as the trolls you guys claim to be guarding against. Sorry to use your post as an example, AtariORdead, but it would be nice if some of this noise just dissipated. ~ü

Okay, I'll contribute to some good ole fashioned thread hijacking. I grew up downstate, but wasn't the franchise's decline a direct result of the Brown's Chicken massacre? Or is that just a simplistic reduction of their larger problems? Speaking of massacre, I really killed it on Rayman last night (see what I did there, I just tied it all together). /Schmüdde

Great review. I'm glad someone finally sees the benefits to the Jaguar number pad in context of certain games. /Schmüdde

I'd 3rd Iron Soldier II.

Nice. The article gives a hat tip to the brilliant Daniel Rehn. He's doing this TV Guide project now, as I understand it. If you're into digital archeology and aesthetics, be sure to check out his work. /Schmüdde

Acknowledging your J/K, I bought the system Summer-ish 1994 and I loved Cybermorph. But I was hungry for a 2nd title. I was so close to buying Trevor McFur because the graphics were so cool looking. However, the rave reviews of Tempest 2000 sold me on that game. Man did I dodge a bullet. I wouldn't have the money to buy another game for months. Between Cybermorph and Tempest 2000, I was pretty darn content. After that, the wait was on for Alien Vs. Predator (Wolfenstein 3D ended up being an unexpected game to tide me over). /Schmüdde

But Robotron was dated 2084. Robotron 2000 - wouldn't that be a prequel? Seems that no one has started a Robotron wiki for me to see if my logic is sound. /Schmüdde