philipj

I think Nintendo tried to fool everyone with that game... Then, I actually believe that the up comming N64 was going to dish out the kind of graphics KI was flaunting. It wouldn't be until later I learned better, but it certainly had me thinking a lot about it... But if there was no Jag there probably wouldn't have been no N64; it was like Nintendo picked up where Atari left off and they just ran with it. Neo Geo tried the 64bit thing with the but by that time the PS2 and the Dreamcast was on the horizon so that was a no-go. Those guys were the 2D kings... It wouldn't surprise if they used different pallets at different points of sprite display. Having worked with 16 colors on an 386 PC myself I know for a fact that there's always a way to beat the color processing system or at least make the best of it with a work-around... I got to respect what they were able to do with the Neo Geo. I remember renting that game back in the day (Steller Fire)... It sort of reminded me of Silpheed but it was more free roming, but not as detailed as Silpheed. I think Cybermorph and PhaseZero really shows off the Jag and I also thing the Sega CD could've seen a little bit more 3D action, but I understand that back in those days 3D probably wasn't consider to have been feasable or profitable for the Sega CD at that time... "Racing Aces" for the Sega CD showed a lot of promise though. Well the word is that Sony was thinking future wise with the system not being as easy to program as the 360. I forget where I found that webpage, but they saying that PS3 developers have more leverage over the system then they did in the past so now the PS3 is future proof now that all of that raw power is available. I think as long as people keep buying the systems and the games, the programmers will keep pushing the PS3 to it's limits. If only the Jag had that sort of opportunity... Well there's always us homebrewers.

Well the Neo Geo, if I recall, used sprites that were broken up into 16x16 or 32x32 sizes to be streamed from a cartridge to my presumption some one can correct me if I'm wrong. Most of the Neo Geo fighting games didn't use tile mapping in the traditional sense the way the Geny or the SNES used it were the sprite-tile-images were stored in RAM, but rather it was reliant on streaming sprites from cart to RAM then immediate on-screen display very similar to how streaming video works. If the Jag be more powerful then the Neo Geo then Jag is more then capable to do similar task it's just a matter of images being handle one bit-block at a time, which makes for very potent image processing. That was what I've admired about the Neo Geo and how it was used. Consider Soul Star for the Sega CD... Most of the sprites were straight foward and not very animated, however presentation really made this game stand out as not only fun, but addictivly playable. Another game comes to mind and that's "Silpheed for the Sega CD," which I believe used FMV for it's 3D background or it used streamed 3D data for from the CD as it was being rendered I never found out exactly how it was done. The Jag was a programmers nightmare. But then so is the PS3 so I heard, but I think the difference between the PS3 and the Jag is that programmers are now realizing the PS3 potential where as the Jag really just didn't have that kind of opportunity for that... until recently. I think it was just a matter of keeping images small and learning lessons from Neo Geo by making sure that all five processor remains potent in it's image processing versus trying to store large chunks of images in RAM this way the system is never really tied up. I believe that is what set Neo Geo apart from the rest of consoles so how much more can the Jag do?

You must not have heard of "Soulstar" for the Sega CD... Well there's also a Jag version that was never officially released. And then there's "Supercross 3D" that's somewhat impressive that neither the Sega arcade system or the Sega CD can do. Here's a couple of links... Soulstar: Supercross 3D:

This is the first I heard of the harmony cart... My email has been sent. I hope you make a 7800 version of the cartrige in the future where as that's the only system I don't have device of that nature for.

I very interested in seeing how far this voxel polygon engine goes. I looks promising.

Well I have a Skunkboard and a Krococart, but I don't have a CC2 or a supercharger for the 7800... I'd personally like to get my hands on one of CC2 myself. When I missed the first order for the Cuttle carts I made sure I didn't miss any more runs for cartridges like that. It's been a wait and see thing before I finally got my hands on something, but just keep asking around, something should surface.

The CD had got a bad rep for looking like a commode... Atari was working on another Jaguar with a CD unit added to the device as damage control. Man if only the had released that Jag 2; that would've been awsome.

I think he's just implying that more developers = more prods = more reason to own a jaguar for the regular jaguar fan = more people talking about jaguar & wanting to be active = more devs = more prods... leading to high demand of skunk boards. That's the way I read it at least, I can't speak for philipj. To me it's a kind of win-win cycle that kskunk & tursi have initiated with their excellent piece of hardware. I'm very optimistic about the Skunks and what it could mean for the Jag community... It's more or less an optimistic point of view then anything else. I think the Skunks, or any other development for that matter, has helped to keep the community thriving despite the obsticles. It would be cool to see more developments for the Jag... No one has be obligated, but I think it should be encouraged to keep a good thing going especially in the Jag community, but you're probably right about the free downloads. If anything the Skunks has certainly given me something to look foward for Jag development and it's done a lot of good the Jag community so I encourage developers to keep Jag deving.

I think the extra USBs were put there for future developments via Jag developers... The Skunks are Windows friendly, but you have download and install the driver manually; the Skunk drivers work in WinVista. You can also download the Skunk drivers source code and use it however you like. I'm not familiar with the ST/Falcon's but I do remember the Jag servers website from back in the day. Really it's up to the Jag developers to get more people interested in Jags in order to help get another Skunkboard run.

Money was probably the issue... The cheaper the better.

Is it me or does it seem like Checkered Flag for the Atari Lynx has a choppy frame rate as well? LOL

The Spectrum Demo community really just pushes the Sinclair to the limits... I'll be glad when the new USB flash carts are released for the Lynx to see what kind of demo will come from that. and really pushed the Lynx it'll be cool to see more graphical demos.

Yea it does seem strange when you wait a few seconds at the starting line after all the racers take off and you some how magically able to catch up with them. Even Ridge Racer left you in the dust if you waited too long.

@Video Well... That's a more realistic point of view. Nintendo just had the muscles to pull it off because of the restrictions they placed on the developers. I think Nintendo made most of not all of their developers require exclusive rights to certain games that couldn't be duplicated the same way on any other system, which is why most NES games never played the same as their arcade counterparts. The Genesis was really the company to help break the trend in market more so then Atari for whatever reason... I remember the Game Gear costing as much as the Genesis back in 92 or 93; I took mine back and traded it for a Geny because the GG used batteries quickly. The Gameboy did seem like it should've had some kind of light to it similar to how the old whirst watches were made at that time. Of course watches back then didn't have the type of back light it have today but they did have a small light where you could press a button and it lights a yellowish night light. The Gameboy looked like that kind of portable system until you paid for it and played. Well I do have to admit that over the years past my youth I did become some what of a techy. Although from a technical standpoint the Lynx was/is supperior, that just wasn't enough to pull developers from the comfort zone of the Nintendo franchise. True enough... It seem like Tim Follin could make a crap tune chip sound like a full fledge keyboard workstation. That was a bad dude.

Didn't have the money or the transportation to attend, but I did participate in the "Protector SE" music contest you had following that event. Since then I've made music for "Jagworm (before the HD crash), Jagmind Bomb Squad (which did get released) and Metro Blaster (by T2KFREAKER)... All Jag projects. I hope someday to finally release a game for the Jag now that I have a Skunkboard; Alpine's back then were few, far between and very expensive. Of course when I did Protector SE music for the contest I didn't know how to use a mode tracker, but it certainly didn't hurt to give a go. I used all of the sounds that were available online at that time in the song; some playing in infinite loops and some playing C64 style sequences. It was all in good fun--I remember thinking back then it'd be cool to make a CG movie to this tune. PROTECTOR_SE_Enhanced.mp3

Really ? Wow! I stand corrected. Obviously I've never seen FACTS before. That's a really good demonstration of what the OP can do. It's a shame 2D games are not taken so seriously anymore. You could do great things with the Jaguar. - KS From a homebrewers perspective, 2D should be the next level for the Jag preferably 2.5D. The Object and Blitter processor combined with the GPU makes for great 2D testing grounds beyond mediocrity. I just think that it's a shame that the M68K hinders the Jag so badly; it would other wise make for a great AI processor.

Especially when considering the release of Battlemorph for the Jag CD platform. I think Rebellion may have called it quits by 95 or 96 reason why they didn't do another CF sequal or the game may have flopped enough to convince them not to do another one. What shame; the game have so much potential. Well you can thank the Motorola for that... AI for games using the M68K was the norm back in those days, but not the smartest way of programming the Jag.

The 68000 chip was probably a cheaper option for Atari.

My prays are with you dude.

To me, the backlight was one of the best features, not having backlight is why the Gameboy was awful. Still don't understand why people bought it. Lynx and Game gear were superior for playing. You could see the Da** game! Yea I agree... The backlight was very much an asset to the Lynx. I think they made Lynx tools for the Atari ST latter on during the systems life span. I do know for a fact that the Lynx sound system used a "Sound Programming Language or SPL." According to some documents I found some time ago it was a tool "by musicians for musicians" which was created to somehow take advantage of the Lynx unique sound system, which was very similar to the 2600 sound chip if I'm not mistaken, but a little better then the 2600. I've physically opened a Lynx 2 system and found that the CPU is a nice size chip; I wonder sometimes could a 68000 be put in there, but then that's just my own personal curiocities. The Lynx graphics chip "Suzy" allows for roughly 75 frames-per-second with a resolution of "160 x 102 standard resolution (16,320 addressable pixels)" according to Wikipedia. If you double that resolution it equals 320 x 204, which could mean that the frame rate would be reduced in half to roughly 38 frames-per-sec? The Neo Geo standard screen resolution size is "320 x 224," which is just a little more then the Lynx if "Suzy" was to do Neo Geo style resolution. The Lynx is a little power house, which is why it used up so many batteries so quickly, but I think the backlit had something to do with that. As far as the 16 simultaneous colors goes... I have no answer for that one other then to do what many did on the Genesis which is to allow for colors to be changed randomly per scanline. The Lynx will only display 12bits of color.

Another thing was the fact that Atari programmers had to use the Amiga to program an Atari Lynx... I often wonder if the Lynx was turned into a home console with a 68000 CPU instead of a portable device, could it have gone head to head with SNES or Neo Geo for that matter. It had a 16bit data bus with a graphics chip and a 16bit coprocessor for multiply and divide stuff, but only used an 8bit CMOS as a CPU. The only thing I see that could hinder the system is the sound chip... That little system had serious potential it just needed the games and third party support for longevity. I look foward to getting one those new USB flash carts.

Huhh ???

Although the Jag does good 3D, the Jag is a 2D monster and I always felt--that area needed to be exploited as much as possible beyond mediocrity.

Holycrap... 1935 nickle??? I don't collect coins I collect comic books; but I know a collectors item when I see it... That's wild. I remember back in 93 when I got my first summer job I remember hearing about the Neo Geo in magazines but no toy stores had any where in the south. It would've taken a whole two weeks pay check to get a Neo Geo back then... I was like the "The heck with that." The following summer I cut grass and put a Genesis on lay-a-way and paid for it using lawnmower money. The following year the Jag comes to town and I don't have any money to buy a Jag. It sucked. Comparing the Neo Geo with the Jaguar is like comparing apples and oranges technical wise; but what kept the Neo Geo going were the games. I think SNK used the same formula that Atari use during their early days of arcades; make the games easy to play, hard to beat and when you lose, you lose in complete utter humiliation kind of like Defender Arcade. I guess the goal is the keep the quarters comming.