Drixxel

1) Tempest 2000 2) Iron Soldier 3) Doom 4) Alien Vs. Predator 5) Power Drive Rally Power Drive Rally deserves a bit o' love. I'd say it's the best racing game on Jaguar and some of the most fun I've had with an overhead racer on any console.

It would have been a shame to lose AvP. Was there anything else in the video games mystery box worth rediscovering? I've managed to misplace a few games in my time, two of which I have no idea as to their whereabouts and one I found just recently (Crystalis for GBC). Neutopia II for TG16 and my old Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt cart have simply vanished into nothingness. ..one of those two would be at least slightly easier to replace than the other.

The wireless is good, I've never noticed any lag through the NES Satellite. Then again, I've mainly used the thing for 4-player M.U.L.E., not exactly the twitchiest of games to test with.

Ehh, maybe, but I'd say Mischief Makers is more an action platformer, not so much a run-'n'-gun. Sin & Punishment seems to fit the bill better as per the criteria here.

Big bang app, that's catchy. On the topic of the big bang app and looking at the 32X launch lineup, Doom was very likely the game Sega was banking on for success out of the gate. It was arguably the console port most hungered for out of the others available at launch (Star Wars Arcade, Afterburner Complete, Virtua Racing Deluxe). 32X software sales figures would be interesting to peruse, I'd be curious to know what the best-selling games for the thing were. My guess would be Doom at or near the top. Graphics technology was racing for 3D at the time of the 32X and the best case scenario for the add-on would have been an adequate middle ground between current gen and next gen - could that ever honestly be enough to keep early adopters happy, a console maker's promise of mediocrity? To me, chipped carts for graphical enhancements at this stage of the 16-bit era made a hell of a lot more sense as far as extending the life of a console, capitalizing on Austin's 1st definition of what constitutes "impressive", the wringing of every bit of value out of aging hardware.

Or, for another possibility, an N64 GameShark.

The Saturn may have been keeping up with the PlayStation as far as multiplatform games were concerned, but is there any doubt that a Sonic platformer on the Saturn would have provided at least some kind of a noteworthy commercial boost? Had Sonic Xtreme seen the light of day, it would have impressed people. With all of the blundering attempts Sega's made with Sonic release after Sonic release in recent years, it really is a shame that the company couldn't produce Sonic when their own hardware needed it most. As for the argument of chipped cartridges vs. hardware add-ons, Super FX-equipped carts can be played by any SNES owner whereas hardware expansion in the form of the Sega CD & 32X instantly poses consumers with an obstacle. The common criticism of SNES chipped carts was the higher retail price they demanded, but of course the Sega CD and 32X required a considerable one-time investment that was comparable to rebuying the console in order to open up the full games library. Such a thing only makes financial sense if the new hardware is to enjoy a reasonable lifespan with good software support. If we look at the technical performance of a Super FX game like Vortex we see simple, largely untextured 3D with a poor frame rate. These were graphics that characterized Super FX releases, but in the case of Vortex, the player is free to explore a moderately interesting 3D environment and that was something unique for the console. Chipped carts extending the capabilities of a console definitely instills a better feeling of "value" than having to fork over $150+ for new hardware on top of the cost of games themselves.

That's awesome, wood_jl! I'm happy that you hunted the SuperPad down. Yeah, it seems like you got a solid deal. I can easily imagine Doom 64 playing quite well with one of those.

You might want to check out the Digital Press Online Rarity Guide, http://www.digitpress.com/DP/cmf/search.cmf. That should give you a rough idea of console and game value/rarity. If you're based in North America, there are only a few HuCards that are going to be considerable undertakings to find at a good price, Magical Chase being the worst offender. Fun game, though.

Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures. That it is overlooked is understandable - I mean, it's not a game design that lends itself to universal appeal, being indirectly controlled and slowly paced, and it's a thoroughly unexpected direction to take Pac-Man in. However, I think it's unique and hugely entertaining.

Haha, assuming the speculation is true, it's funny to think back to a time when programmers were pressured to load their games with colour even if it bordered on tastelessness and poor aesthetics. That awkward approach to being on the "cutting edge" of graphics technology in an attempt to justify fancy hardware has never really changed, only now it's more as if there's a bloom lighting toggle instead of a colour switch on modern consoles. Personally, the colour in 2600 Asteroids has never bothered me. Were the background anything but black, however, I might be visually offended.

I'm 24 and picked up my Jaguar about ten years ago from an online retailer, it's been one of my favourite consoles to collect for. The Jaguar just seemed so cool back when ads started appearing in gaming mags, although GameFan was perhaps the only magazine to give Jaguar games any real attention or respect.

Man, it's no 85 hour hellride, but that's still an intense marathon of gaming. Were the 7-11 staff cheering him on, or trying their best to ignore your friend the courageous madman?

Wow, as many have said, these look great, mrbigreddog. The already unique-looking Jag carts are even more of an oddity with curvy labels, definitely standing apart on the shelf from their plastic brethren.

A solution you might consider in lieu of finding a swanky controller like the SuperPad is that the controls in Doom 64 are fully customizable. You can remap basically every function, for instance binding 'strafe left' to the z-button for analog control-related joy. Personally, I'm more fond of Jag Doom than Doom 64 but that has more to do with an overall preference for the original. Doom 64 is cool, but I find the level design to be muddled at times and unpleasantly puzzling (but I may just be a jellybrain). Jag Doom is arguably the best/most complete console port of Doom pre-PSX, but even then it's contending with a couple distinct handicaps - no in-game music and an incomplete enemy roster, two things which I think definitely disappoint with this port. You lose a lot of tension without the upper tier boss monsters lurking later in the game. About the missing soundtrack, the really frustrating thing is that music plays between stages, and it sounds pretty solid. I can only imagine it was a programming obstacle to get sound effects and music working simultaneously without error, one need only look as far as Iron Soldier to see that some Jaguar developers were having problems coordinating the two. Then again, maybe it was deliberate. After all, Doom 64 similarly opts for that atmospheric, largely tuneless soundscape and the same is true for PSX Doom.

The first game.. that would have been either Asteroids or Donkey Kong on a wide rainbow Junior. It was my family's first video game console, my parents bought it as a time waster for my brother who had come down with chicken pox in what must have been 1988. We rapidly began accumulating more games from a nearby Sears, amongst them Pheonix, Desert Falcon, Kung Fu Master, Millipede, Q*Bert, Crystal Castles.. I loved them all, awesome memories.

Just place an open bag of potato chips near your gaming set-up and your controllers are guaranteed to be greased up but good! Good advice with the silicon lubricant, this should ease my anxiety of grinding away aging analog sticks.

Distilled to 5, it would have to be: M.U.L.E. Kabuki Quantum Fighter Mega Man 2 Metroid Tengen Tetris I could pretty well play those endlessly.