The Jag , 3DO and history

[The Jag , 3DO and history]

Doom is almost as good on the Jag as the PS and Saturn. RayMan is just as good on the Jag as the PS and Saturn.

 

I forgot to mention this is post #26, while the PS port of Doom was good (the biggest point being the large collecion of episodes, plus the later re-release including Master Levels and Final Doom, the change in music is hit or miss depending on prefrence -the intro muisc rocks though), but the Saturn version is just terribly poor. It's an un-optimized lazy port of the PSX version and worse in some ways than the old 32x port. (framerate in particular is borderline playable)

 

http://www.sega-16.com/feature_page.php?id...20vs.%20Saturn)

[Sample (wavetable) Synthesis on the ST through the YM2149]

Read the credits near the end of the demo, streaming video is here.

 

I don't think the YM chip is used at all.

 

I know the digitized sound is all through the STe audio DMA, but I was commenting on the sound coming off the YM chip.

[What if...]

As far as i recall the sega computer systems (the SG series) were modified from the MSX as sega was one of the last japanese companies to jump on the MSX bandwagon and the last to sign up

 

And since the sms series were producred from the SG computer models, i guess the SMS was sort of electronically msx compatible (ala 5200 to A8, less the cart. port)

 

I guess that means the coleco vision is electronically MSX compatible (but not software compatible)

 

The SG-1000 was a pure game system (branded with "computer video game" on the front), the later SG-3000 was a simple (biginner) home computer that was compatible with SG-1000 games. There was also the updated SG-1000 Mk.II, and later Mk.III which was basicly the Master System. (western release of the SMS featured basicly the same hardware but with a different cart slot and less expandibility in some respects) The later JP SMS was basicly a Mk.III (same cart slot) in SMS shell with built in YM2413. (an accessory for the Mk.III)

 

More than anything else the SG-1000 resembled the ColecoVision (granted they both used common, off the shelf components), technically, the only difference internally is double the RAM (2 kB up from the CV's 1), it was even software compatible with the Coleco vision, and a combination clone was made and released in the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegames_Personal_Arcade

 

So I kind of doubt the SG-1000 design was much influenced with the MSX standard. (the sound chip also doesn't match the Sound+I/O chip of the MSX)

 

Atari sued Sega in October of 1990 over the violation of 70 patents in which Atari held. by the early 90's, Sega settled with Atari out of court. So I am informed, whether correct or not, is that some of those violations were in conjunction to the 16 bit Sega Genesis' architecture.

 

This is certainly plausible, but woudn't have a thing to do with the ST.

 

Based on what wgungfu mentioned, it was older Atari Inc. patents that were the issue, and that scrolling mechanism mentioned, may have been one of the very issues with the Genesis. (though with such a large number, there are plenty of other possibilities) It would seem that features of the VDP (various graphics effects) ware a major issue in this, somthing that would certainly have nothing to do with the ST's bitmapped display.

 

However, such issues would hardly be limited to a single console, if they were present for the Genesis, the same ( if not more) should be there for the System 16, and probably others on the Master System (or Mk.III) and other arcade boards as well. (the SG-1000 or Mk.II shouldn't be an issue given the aformentioned off the shelf nature)

[Sample (wavetable) Synthesis on the ST through the YM2149]

Also, here's a proof that even with a "crap" soundchip like the YM2149 you can perform amazing things

 

Yo do realize that's on an STe, right? (a good deal of the music is done with its additional sound hardware)

That said, the sound coming from the YM2149 is awsome!

[had the 7800 launched in 1984....]

Then how does the ribbon cable come into play?

There is no ribbon cable inside or outside the 7800.

 

I was referring to the ribbon cable on the 2600. (connecting the cartridge connector to the main board) I'm not sure if it was present from the 4-swithers onward, but is definitely featured on the 6-switcher. (and different, incompatible, ones were used in the Sunnyvale produced ones and Hong Kong ones -male vs female ends iirc -just a flat cable on the Sunnyvale one, incidental, but the hong kong cable also had seperate wires bonded together rather than a single flat plastic strip)

[ST was a nice computer!]

The main issue was if it was JUST the ST line versus Macs and PCs, it would have done better, but there was little system line called the Amiga that stole a lot of its thunder. Ultimately, though, as history has shown, it really didn't matter what your system was or did, the PC DOS/Windows line would have still ended up on top.

 

Makes you wonder how Commodore would have contended had Tramiel stayed at the top there, plenty of speculation for that though, but it's possible they could have been selling the Amiga without the split market there was with the ST+Amiga. Then there would have been a better chance for commodore to maintain a place in a niche market like Apple when PCs became the norm. Alternately, maybe they could have stayed ahead of PCs in the European market...

 

Commodore had been a giant in the home computer market throughout the US and Europe with the C64, but really failed to repeat this in the US. (and their later success in Europe was still limited compared to the C64) Perhaps the'd have done better had they remained under Tramiel's leadership. But who knows?

 

 

Plenty of other speculation on the topic though, like what might have happened if Jack had been aware of Atari's previously shelved (but fully prototyped) 68000 computer projects when he took over. (namely the Gaza and Sierra 68000 projects)

[The Jag , 3DO and history]

PS - A lot of us already know about these specs... Thanks for laying it all out anyway.

 

Part of it was this was an explanation of my understanding (at least at some parts), and I'd certanly like to learn if I'm mistaken on any points.

 

I do agree that a fairly large portion of 5th gen games could have been done on the 3DO and Jag in some form (some maybe not w/out Jag CD), but ther were of course other problems as well, the Jag's side has been discussed elsewhere plenty (the 1993 thread in particular), but the 3DO's would obviously seem to be the diecisions made in terms of licencing and hardware pricing (the two being intertwined). Even without the hardware limitations, it still wasn't going to penetrate the market at those prices resulting from the philosophy they were using.

 

Had they charged more for licencing (enough to support them/make profits from this alone) it still would have been attractive for Developers because pretty much all game console hardware companies used this set-up, and things would still be far cheaper with higher profit margin (for both 3DO company and licenced dvelopers/publisher) due to the cheap CD medium compared to the norm of cartridges. (at the time of the systems release at least) Setting up developers for games that would be licenced by the 3DO company/Panasonic directly (first party) and sell those games themselves (as most game companies do in addition to licencing) that should give them broader and more stable options as well. (I'm not talking about EA here, but rather Panasonic/3DO publishing titles directly) These 1st party games would be the exclusives that defined the system and differenciated it from its contemporaries.

[had the 7800 launched in 1984....]

Then how does the ribbon cable come into play?

[Sample (wavetable) Synthesis on the ST through the YM2149]

is this what you were envisioning?

 

http://www.preromanbritain.com/maxymiser/

 

The sound quality will be quite horrible, yeah sure as a kid it was a nice gimmick to hear, but as a grown up the quality of these AY/YM sample playback routines really make my teeth grate like nails on a blackboard ewww.

Kinda like c64 sid.. ewww

 

Samples on the SID funnily enough sound fine considering it's a 1981 8bit chipset Still better than that door stop silicon wafer called Pokey in the A8 chipset...ewww that thing sounds like 1khz square wave modulated farting noises yuck what an unversatile samey sounding music producing chip that is.

 

The SID was superior to the AY/YM type chips.....only a complete idiot (or someone who is tone deaf) would try to assert otherwise. And the difference is the C64 SID was revolutionary for 1981....the YM chip in the ST in 1985 was nothing short of a mistake in a £400 68000 based machine.

 

 

Many people have a love/hate for these chips, but I kind of like each with their own characteristics. The pokey does sound like a TIA with some sounds, but that's hardly a bad thing, and it can do much more as well. THe SID has a distinctive "analog" sound that almost sounds like FM synthesis at times, interesting psudo brassy and kazoo-like electric gitaur type sounds as well. (the latter the Amiga would also frequently mimic, the Dizzy Games for example, or Out Run) Sample playback on the SID was acheived by exploiting a hardware flaw, which caused samples to be very quiet on later machines with a revised chip design. POKEY was quite good at sample playback too. (correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't it be configured to have direct access to the DAC's? Like the Atari Lynx)

 

I like FM synth chips too, and the characteristic early wavetable synthesis systems, like on the SNES, Amiga, and the beautiful Roland MT-32. (still each format has it's charm, even something simple like the AY/YM chip in the ST, or similar one of the Master System or ColecoVision, or the VIC-20's, not to mention the NES's; OK but maybe not a PC speaker beeper or the Channel F...)

 

Also note that POKEY was a fairly versitile chip, it could even do some of that whiny brassy (FM synth like) sounds similar to the SID, here's a good example: http://www.battleofthebits.org/player/Entry/2331/

 

Some great stuff here: http://www.battleofthebits.org/arena/Vomitorium/336/

 

where the hell is the original author of this thread? sheesh

 

Yeah, I forgot to check on it recently... Anyway, the example in the second post isn't really what I had in mind, that stuff in the ZX Spectrum examples seems much more complex, maybe what's shown in those links are just basic examples, but I was really wondering if anything comperable to those Speccy examples had been done.

And on a seperate note, wether this would have been something useful for programmers to use back in the day, particularly in games. (granted the more CPU you dedicated the less you could put toward the game, but at least for some games -less CPU intensive- it may have been possible)

[Sealed Atari 2600....do I open it?]

Think about it...it was manufactured sealed sometime in late 1979/early 1980...it's like a time capsule!

 

 

Please don't open it.

 

Actually, the 4-switch models weren't introduced until 1980, and then the woody 4-switcher was replaced by the "Vader" 4-switch 2600 (the first to actually feature the "2600" label/name) in 1982.

[The Jag , 3DO and history]

I think the Jag and 3DO were perfectly capable of holding their own with the PlayStation and Saturn. Tempest 2000 is just as good on the Jag as the PS and Saturn. Doom is almost as good on the Jag as the PS and Saturn. RayMan is just as good on the Jag as the PS and Saturn. The Virtual Light Machine in the Jag CD was much better than the visualizers for the PS or Saturn. BattleSphere is just as good as stuff on the PS or Saturn. AvP is just as good as Alien Trilogy. Ultra Vortek is just as good as MK3 on the PS or Saturn. MYST is just as good as PS or Saturn versions.

 

3DO Road Rash, just as good as PS / SAT. Need For Speed, just as good. Gex, and a lot more examples etc.

 

The Jag and 3DO were in the same league as the PS and Saturn. The PS and Saturn were more powerful, but not a LOT more so... It would be extremely interesting to see how a Jag game developd by a huge dev studio such as Capcom, Rare or EA would have turned out in the mid 90's. Or even Sega, as that was possible with the Atari / Sega settlement.

 

In terms of 2D the Jag is awesome, even with current limitations and using the 68000 as the CPU it rocks. (and that Was supposed to be one of the Saturn's Strongest points -it was actually good at 3D and lacking some of the flaws -particularly with textures, that the PS1 has, but it used quatrilaterals as its geometric primitives which made it difficult to port/develop multiplatform games to gaiven most others used triangles)

 

I was comparing the Saturn's programming difficulties to the Jag for a while, but I got chewed out by Gorf for that a while back. The Saturn's launch SDK is still miles better than the Jag ever had, and more importantly the Saturn used a commercial CPU (SH-2 -Super H architecture) while the Jag was all custom (except for the 68k) with its own JRISC architecture. So even with a super crappy Dev Kit, the Saturn would still at least already have tools available for programming on the CPUs. More than anything elst, Sega's problems in the mid/late '90s came from internal problems (especially some dicisions/policies/mistakes made by Sega of Japan around late 1003, and becoming more severe from 1994 onward -which eventually caused Tom Kalinske to leave) Anyway, this is out of the scope of the topic at hand.

 

In terms of 3D there are some issues with the 3DO and Jag, but at least in the Jag's case this is heavily impacted by the tools available and not just the hardware.

In terms of pure no frills polygon pushing power, the PSX wins (even over the N64, with the possible exception of a "low accuracy polygon" microcode that either wasn't released widely for developers, or very late in the N64's life, plus the custom Microdode developed by Lucas/Factor 5) The PSX has the Geometry Transformation Coprocessor for handling 3D calculations (I beleive it's basicly a DSP dedicated for graphics calculations, the thing supposedly runs at 66 MIPS as well). The Saturn usually has one of the 2 CPUs handel such calculations (though it supposedly has a DSP meant for such as well, but it seems to be slower and I haven't heard about anything that actualy used it, this may also be something that wasn't properly addressed in the dev kits). While the N64 has its reality coprocessor (MIPS R4000 derivative) to handel graphcs and sound. The Standard microcode for the N64 limits the polygon count severly however, by forcing additional features (that cannot be turned off, at least for this code) with bilinear filtering, z-buffering, gouraud shading, light soursing, texture mapping perspective correction, and others: see this http://www.futuretech.blinkenlights.nl/polygons.html

 

These features (at least with the standard Microcode made available to developers) also greatly limited the 2D capabilities of the N64. (particularly in the sense that for most of these 3D oriented systems, 2D is generated by using tiles -effectively polygon strips -or single polygons in the Saturns case with quadrilaterals, flat textured polygon tiles with no 3D orientation, where those added effects are unnecessary, often even detrimental, and the number of 2D tiles is limited by the number of polygons the system can put out) At least this is my understanding of the situation for the N64. The saturn had additional advantages (over the PSX too) by having a second (2D) VDP dedicated to backround rendering, pluss it lacked the texture cache limitations of the PSX and N64. (along with the use of quadrilaterals being ideal for handeling 2D objets or "sprites" is the main reason for their selection)

 

On the colors comment (rayman) I think the other 3 were limited to a 15-bit on-screen palette (32,768 colors), though I think the Saturn might have been a bit different with its 2 seperate VDP's. Anyway, all 5 of these consoles had 24-bit master palettes (16.7 million colors) and I think many jag games (at least other than simple ports from older systems) used 16-bit color on-screen. (65,536 colors), double the others, I'm not sure about the 3DO though. (same master palette of course)

[had the 7800 launched in 1984....]

If Maria is on a separate bus, then it needs access to graphics without interrupting the 6502. There's 2 solutions for that:

 

What were the timing limitations for simple multiplexer-based logic in those days? Would it have been practical to interleave CPU accesses and display accesses on the cartridge bus without needing double-speed memory, if the code and display data were fetched from different memory arrays? For example, assume the CPU is running at 2MHz and there is a 12MHz clock.

 

At step 0, drive phi0 to the CPU and start driving the CPU address to the chip. The data bus will hold the last byte of CPU data.

At step 1, have the chip latch the address, and start outputting the LSB of the last requested byte of display data.

At step 2, drive a new display address to the chip. At the end of this step, latch the data bus into the display controller.

At step 3, hold the address. Have the chip start outputting the MSB of the last requested byte of display data.

At step 4, hold the address. At the end of this step, latch the data bus into the display controller.

At step 5, hold the address. Have the chip start outputting the requested CPU byte.

 

The CPU memory will have a valid address by the end of step 1, and will have until the end of step 4 to supply data, so it would have at least a full half cycle (it would likely have the address sooner, and could likely supply the data later). The display memories (MSB/LSB) would have even longer to supply their data. If one were using off-the-shelf parts in the cartridge, one would have to use three separate ROM chips plus some glue logic. Integrating the three ROMs into one chip, however, shouldn't be a problem.

 

OTOH, using a separate bus wouldn't be evil either. A "chevron-shaped" cartridge slot would have allowed 7800 cartridges to have many more pins while still having 2600 carts fit nicely.

 

I responded to part of this post previously, mentioning the impracticality of a cheveron shaped cart slot (while still maintaining full physical compatibility with 2600 cartridges). However, I don't own a 7800 and hadn't seen the cart socket or circuit board edge connector at the time, so I'd been assuming the address pins had been expanded by using some of the other 12 pins on the 2600 cart connector that were unconnected in that system.

 

However, the 7800 adds extra pins outboard of the 2600 connections (rather like the expansion pins on the SNES slot), bringing the total up to 32, with 16 per side. With all connections still using only a single side. Had they utilized the second side (connecting all 32 pins) you could have a seperate 16-bit address bus dedicated to video. No change to the current cartridge/slot design necessary. (inless some the other 16-pins are already being used for something, but from photos of 7800 cartridge boards this doesn't seem to be the case)

[What if...]

I was over at http://www.atari7800.com/turbo/history_16.htm and was reading thier history on the TG-16. Interestingly the author hit on how the Genesis design was nearly a blatant rip off of the Atari ST 16bit computer line.

 

"...while the Genesis was based around the Atari ST computer architecture utilizing a single 16-Bit microprocessor. That being said, critics of the Turbo raised questions about the legitimacy of their system being a “true” 16-Bit console. Interestingly enough, no one seemed to question Sega’s blatant rip-off of Atari’s European market technology to build the Genesis / MegaDrive. (Atari sued Sega in U.S. Court and won an unconditional victory, proving Sega couldn’t come up with anything successful on their own.)"

 

This would really help give a bit more credence my "What if..." scenario if Atari would have jumped into the 16bit era, and Sega dropping out to being a software developer again.

 

I really doubt that's what the mid '90s Sega-Atari suit was about. ANd that statement by itsself is quite dubious.

 

Those statements seem rather rediculous to me, the Atari ST has very little to do with the Genesis, hell the Amiga is much more like the ST than the Genesis is. The only real similarity is the CPU, other than that they're completely different. (though they both sported 512 color palettes)

 

The Genesis is derived from Sega's System 16 arcade board (which was introduced the same year as the ST), which in turn can draw its lineage back to Sega's earlier Sega System 1 (which shares strong similarities to the SG-1000 home console, and later Master System). The SG-1000 was almost identical to the Colecovision, except for having 2 kB of main RAM instead of 1 kB. (there was even a combo console released that could play both systems games) Seeing as the ColecoVision was basicly built with off the shell components and that the SG-1000 came out around the time of the US crash (and never released in the US, plus not very popular in Japan either) that probably explains whay there weren't issues there.

 

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sega_...e_system_boards for Sega's Arcade system boards

 

In any case the System 1 had 2 Z80s running at the full 4 MHz (rather than 3.58 MHz colorburst frequency), one being dedicated for sound, with dual SN76496 sound chips. (I'm not sure if the same TMS VDP was used as on the CV or SG-1000, or if they used a modified, more advanced version instead -like the Master System's) It was released in 1983.

 

In any case the System 16 was their next new Arcade board, released in 1985. It had a new custom Sega developed VDP derived from their older designs (leading back to the CV's TMS9928A, but by now had evelved into something far more advanced, though still with some functionality of the older chips. (taken advantage of to provide backwards compatibility with the SMS on the Genesis) I'm almost positive the Genesis shares an identical VDP, albeit with some pins left disconnected (later removed from the chip package itsself), and with the arcade's 4,096 color palette cut to 512. (later revisions to the Genesis consolidated more and more into a single ASIC with the VDP, first the YM2612, then the Z80, and finally the 68000)

The System 16 used a 10 MHz Motorola 68000 CPU, a didicated 4MHz Z80 for audio, a YM2151 FM synthesis chip, and optional PCM (digital sample) sound chip. (the System 16B also included hardware for scaling and rotation) The Genesis lacked the YM2151, instead featuring a YM2612 (which had 6 channels instead of the other's 8, but also had the 6th channel available directly as an 8-bit DAC for digital playback) as well as the SMS's old 4-channel PSG, with a 3.58 MHz Z80 for sound processing, also used to provide backwards compatibility with the SMS.

The geneis used a cheaper 8 MHz rated 68000, clocked at 7.67 MHz (NTSC), which is as close as you can get from the 53.69 MHz master clock. (same as SMS)

 

Like many contemporary Game consoles, the Genesis used a tilemap+sprite graphics architecture, with multiple scrolling background layers plus the sprite layer. (using hard coded sprites, with a limited maximum on-screen, plus a maximim per scanline -circumvented by using flicker)

It's my understanding the Atari ST used a bitmapped display, with the CPU having to do all graphical effect in software (moving characters/enemies, scrolling backgrounds, ect), while the Amiga did this as well, but had a seperate blitter coprocessor to handel this. (plus hardware sprites as well) The STe later added a blitter as well.

 

Additionally the Genesis has 64 kB dedicated VRAM for the VDP, along with 64 kB of main RAM and 8 kB of audio RAM. (used for sample data, and as the main RAM in SMS compatibility mode, with the Z80 as the CPU) The graphics differences are the most important, as added sound hardware can be configured differently without changing the overall system. (the ST probably should have added some -relatively inexpensive- FM Synthesis chip onboard, that YM2149 chip alone is really weak, especially compared to the Amiga, like comparing a -non Jananese- SMS's sound to an SNES's, while an FM chip would be more like the Genesis vs SNES sound -the merits of which are much more debatable)

[7800 Sound?]

2600 sound was "fine" in it's day because about all there was to compare it to was the bleeps and boops that came out of those generic Pong TV units, or the clicks and beeps of the Apple II.

 

I suppose you could also say it's fine compared to the Vic 20, but that's about as far as it goes.

 

I think the VIC-20's chip was fairly similar to the PSGs used in the ColecoVision, Master System (and SG-1000), plus several others using the common TI SN76489 (3 square wave plus 1 white noise channel), and others using the somewhat similar AY-3-8910 (or copy, like the YM2149), like the Intelivision, Vectrex, Atari ST, MSX, etc.

 

They all certainly had more channels than TIA though. (It's my understanding that TIA, as well as POKEY were capable of more varied waveforms than the simple Square/Rectangle wave of many Simple PSGs -the NES's sound hardware and C64's SID not fitting this category of course)

 

 

7800 games seem to have significantly better sounding music generated by TIA than with the 2600, it this due to better programming, more CPU resources availble, lack of having to sync the CPU to the display ("riding the beam"), what? (It's my understanding the 6502C CPU in the 7800 had to drop down to 1.19 MHz when accessing the 2600 hardware -TIA or RIOT, so that would at least be the same for both)

[Sealed Atari 2600....do I open it?]

Here's what'll probably happen if you don't open it:

 

Someday, you'll get put into a nursing home and your grandkids will find it and open it up so they can get the power adapter out because they want to check out an old Radio Shack cassette recorder they picked up at a garage sale.

 

I'd open it while you still can.

 

Huh, I didn't know Radio Shack Tape decks used a 1/8" phono style power adaptor, interesting. The one I've almost exclusively used growing up was one originally meant for use with a TRS-80 (though it's a general purpose recorder/player as well with built in speaker) This one takes standard 120V A/C power through a figure 8 ish adaptor. I think we lost our original, for as long as I can remember we've used a cable from my mom's old -now discarded- hair curlers.

[My brother thinks atari is lame]

To each their own.

 

However, many of the best 2600 games are not arcade ports. Pitfall, Kaboom, Adventure, Tunnel Runner (had to get that in ), Fathom, HERO, Yar's Revenge, Combat, etc.etc. etc....

 

You mention Pitfall, but omit the awsomeness that is Pitfall 2? (multicolor sprites -as the first, animated backgrounds, and a full soundtrack -a dynamic on at that!)

 

all it's games are boring arcade ports that only stay fun for about 5 minutes."

Thats why I like atari, you can pick up a game and play for 2 or 3 minutes at a time, or play for hours!

Its all why atari 2600 is better than Wii.

 

You do know about Nolan Bushnell's oppinions of the Wii, right?

 

 

 

My 15 year old brother loves almost everything retro, so that's not a problem.

[The Jag , 3DO and history]

The Jag and 3DO really are tied at the hip in many ways. A lot of similarities and they were the main competition for each other. The 32X as well. The big 3 of the initial 32 / 64-bit wave. It would have been really cool to see how well the Jag and the 3DO could have handled some of the great games that were released on the PlayStation and Saturn in 1996 and beyond.

 

From what I understand both the Jaguar and 3DO (not to mention 32x) had some hardware flaws/limitations that would have prevented some of the games being done on later contemporaries. In the Jag's case, a part of that is the tools as well, though very dedicated progammers could have been able to still get compeditive performance from the machine, programming in assembly language with the JRISC (and avoiding the 68k at all costs, put it to sleep, maybe have it handel interrupts), but there's the general lack of initiative to develop for the system in the first place, so programmers weren't going to go out of their way to tackel a particularly difficult task on a risky platform when they had perfectly viable alternatives. (better tools would have allowed better workarounds for the flaws and make things more bearable, likewise hardware improvements -some simple changes in particular, could have made a huge difference, it was a componded problem)

 

As I understand i, the technical limitations on the 3DO mainly came from the shared memory bus (also present on the jag), with a bus hungry GPU and CPU with no cache to ellivate the issue. (using a CPU with cache probably would have been the simplest and most practical solution, though it may have ended up being more expensive if they stuck to the ARM architecture, still probably a lot cheaper than adding a dedicated video bus; ironically this probably would have been the most important change on the Jag as well, a replacement for the 68k, hell, the 68EC020 may have been a good choice for the 3DO too) From what I understand the 3DO was designed to be very easy to program for with very good development tools, the thing being designed to be programmed in C compiler.

 

Both had seperate problems as well, internal problems with the company and poor buisness decisions. Some (if not all) of the design flaws in the Jag came from rushing it to market, and insisting the inclusion of the 68000. Additionally markeiting was rather poorly handeled as I understand it. (odd hours lined up for TV adds among other things, and while some adds were questionalbe, it won't matter one way oer the other if noone sees them...)

 

The 3DO had the unfortunate decision to make licencing super cheap to attract developers, and make money through hardware sales instead (the exact opposite philosophy of the norm for most consoles), So instead of making money from licencing and some first party releases (of which there were relatively few in any case), they had to jack up the price of the console rediculously high, more or less forcing it into a niche market. It was also designed as a multimedia system, in addition to audio CD's it had an MPEG expansion module for playing video CD's (rather like the CD-i), though it should be noted that the Sega Saturn featured such an add-on as well. (and as far as the US market is concerned VCDs didn't go anywhere, rather like laserdiscs, but without the quailty offers by the latter) A possible useful option would have been to have games take advantage of MPEG encoding for improved video (opposed to Cinepak), which was dome with some Saturn titles.

 

In any case, the "cheep as free" licencing policy is probably one of the biggest, if not the biggest issue with the 3DO (moreso than the hardware issues), on top of that they had licenced production for the hardware with several other companies, which would normally be good for a console given the parent company makes most (if not all) profits through software licences/sales, but in their case, with profit mainly limited to hardware, that just worsened things and meant they (Panasonic) were competing with licenced versions of their product.

Had they done what contemporaries had and sold the machine at a razor thin profit, borken even, or even taken a loss, and make all the profits through software, they probably could have cut the launch price by close to 1/2, and made it much more attractive to consumers.

[4-switcher vs. 6-switcher]

it apears the 2700 had membrane buttons

 

I thought it had capacitive touch-switches buttons like the iPod. Is that not the case?

 

I've read the "touch sensitive" comment too, but from all the pictures I've seen they don't apear that way at all. They all look very much like membrane buttons (including those on the controller itsself), and all have a slight indent to them as well. (the prototype models seem to use push button type switches and butons, but that's not related to the final product)

 

Maybe I'm just seeing them wrong, and looking at some closer pitctures, perhaps it was just the lighting on the ones I was thinking of:

 

Then again, I cant seem to find definitive info either way, wikipedia mentions it along with some other sites, but not anything particularly reputable, and atarimuseum's page doesn't mention it: http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/cons...2700/a2700.html

 

http://www.atariage.com/2600/faq/index.html

Atariage's 2600 FAQ mentions it, but in the same section that theres a typo about the "3600" (should be 3200, the 3600 was a working title for the 7800) and the site that's refrenced atari-history.com no longer exists. (ill check for archives) though I'm almost positive that the previously mentioned atarimuseum is the direct successor to that site.

 

There are people who use the difficulty switches so much that this actually makes even the slightest bit of difference???

 

Some games used the switches for alternate purposes, iirc Ghostbusters used the left switch as the actuan button to leave the shop.

 

Also, it's nice to see what position the difficulty switches are in w/out having to look at the back.

[The Jag , 3DO and history]

Before I got into Retro gaming (or learned about more consoles in general), the only one of the above (Jag, 3DO, CD32, or CDi) I;d heard of was the Jaguar. Mainly my dad mentioning it a few times, mentioning how it was pretty impressive at the time and a shame things ended up the way they did.

 

I was pretty young when these came out to really remember any marketing or such (born in summer of '89) and they died rather quickly, so I didn't see much of them when I was a bit older either. We teneded to get consoles used, and while the Jag was pretty cheap (especially used, and after it was discontinued) it really wasn't attractive by the time it died, though had a neighbor been selling it with a good chunck of games we might have ended up with that. (that's how we got out SNES in ~1995/96 -I can't rember exactly -though given w had an NES it was kind of a natural choice as well)

[Its 1993, you're in charge of the Jag, what do you do?]

Wasn't this called 'Mirai'?

 

I would wet my pants if I could get a hold of this.

 

Doesn't that pre-date the Falcon by a good while? And I've read lot's of speculation, but nothing definitive on what that mock-up was really for.

 

The cartridge slot (if that's what it is) is absolutely massive, leading to speculation that it might have been an Atari branded Neo Geo AES. Except... even for that it's too big. O_O

 

http://www.atarihq.com/museum/miscatari/mirai.html

[Atari Lynx was superior over GameBoy.]

As far as I'm aware, there's only one thing that uses both the FM chip and the master system's native sound ability together: the 'insert a cartridge' screen on the Japanese SMS. If there's another, I'd love to hear it.

 

 

I think it was wonder boy III. (I'll go check)

 

Yep, definitely that one. (I think most/all music and sfx are retained from the PSG only mode, but the YM2413 adds some percussion insruments and probably more, I only tested the first level)

It's one of those games that only seems to work with the 2413 when in a JP SMS. (at least that's what Fusion is doing)

[atari on the big screen]

2. wall-e

 

I don't remember a 2600, but a home PONG console was prominently featured.

[Proof that SuperCross 3D isn't that bad...]

Nice use of FM synthesis there, not too many Jag games used that. (I beleive the dev kit included tools for doing it on the the DSP)

[Raiden]

It's got some great Amiga-esque (or C64ish) warbly music if you like that style. (nothing like the FM Towns Version though)

 

I'd say in terms of looks it's certaily got differences from the SNES, Genesis, and TG-16 versions, but I think there are advantages to each of the ports. (inless of course you really don't like SNES wavetable synth music in a game meant for FM) There are rumors that it was carried over from a Panther version in the works, though I'm not sure of this, I'd think it's more likely a port of the Amiga version. (particularly given the music)

 

In any case the Jag could have done better, while it's a great game and a good port, it could have been arcade perfect at least (like the FM Towns version), or possibly enhanced over the arcade. (more detailed 16-bit/65,536 color graphics)

[Atari Lynx was superior over GameBoy.]

I imagine they wanted to keep some sort of compatibility with the Master System. Some of the same games appeared on both systems.

 

Umm, it would be included in addition to the simple PSG, as mentioned the Japanese SMS had the YM2413 built in, and the earlier Sega SG-1000 Mk.III had it available as an add-on. There are several SMS games that utilize it, most of which support PSG and switch to FM only when the 2413 is present, but at least one title use both together. (as many genesis games use the SMS's PSG in addition to it's YM2612)