Lost Dragon

Nor mine. You'd often see likes of Atari define a console like the then aging 2600,as an entry level system, aimed at younger players where as the 7800 was the flagship console in their 8-bit range.. Or UK magazines when doing hardware round up articles describe the older, 8-bit systems as ideal for kids, where as older, more serious gamers should look towards the 16-bit systems. Somewhat ironic when the 8-bit consoles were getting conversions from the 16-bit systems (SOTB, Supremacy, Defender Of The Crown etc) and same arcade titles appearing on both (R-Type, Rampage etc) or only the 8-bits..Rastan canned early on with the ST version.

When the Sega Master System appeared here in the UK, i remember being impressed by it's colorful, high resolution graphics, but sprite flicker was clearly an issue, but surprised by how poor the soundchip appeared. It seemed behind both Pokey and SID, but still better than the AY chip. Plain polygon games have aged in looks (not so much frame rate) better than early texture-mapped 3D games with limited, stretched and blocky texture-maps.

Your spot on here and as we have been discussing elsewhere, Star Raiders was the Killer App for the Atari 8-bit line. The Playstation WOW factor was due to a very strong (in terms of glimpses at what the hardware can do) launch line up. People remember Ridge Racer, Toh Shin Den and the walking T-Rex demo. When i think back to the Atari ST, people seemed blown away by Starglider running at a show, music epically, then Dungeon Master was the title that really had folks talking. Glitchy graphics on Saturn V.F and the horrors of a rushed Daytona USA, did the Saturn immense harm when put next to the Playstation titles mentioned above and Sega never recovered from the image Saturn was a lesser system, despite having titles like:VF Remix, VF2, Sega Rally, Quake at a time press claiming it was impossible on Playstation, etc etc.

Yep, spent most of my Game Gear days with a screen magnifier 'bolted' onto it and it plugged into the mains (same issue with Lynx in that regard, both went through Duracell and rechargeable batteries like a dose of salts). I could point out frustrations with numerous systems i have owned from a design point of view. Buttons on A8 tape deck prone to snapping off, the mouse and joystick ports being underneath the machine on the 520STFM, thus needing to buy lead extendors, the PSP nub, the horrendous set up of a MD-MCD and 32X... Nintendo hardware would feature quite low on the list.

IBM faced manufacturing issues with the Jaguar hardware at the start, not due to problems within their own plant, as is often reported, but due to a shortage of components from external suppliers. Chip yields of the Tom and Jerry chips, which only a few fabrication plants could actually manufacture, had been poor. Atari had in the years before been burnt by Taiwanise manufacturering plants making the Falcon computers i believe, cheaper to make them in Taiwan than the USA, but the initial production runs had failed Q. A testing and delayed the launch of the Falcon and it later turned out the issues lay with the testing equipment, not the Falcon hardware. Or that's what's been reported. Atari indeed wanted to save money and were very limited, resources wise when the Jaguar launched, everything they had was put behind it, Falcon projects abandoned or put on pause. They had the in-pack game, Cybermorph cut down so it could fit on a smaller cartridge for later runs. Didn't Bob Brodie when he left Atari, issue a big farewell statement detailing things like the Walmart deal and unsold stocks of Jaguar games coming back to Atari in squashed boxes, stickers on etc making them unusable to be sold on again? I'd need to look that up,but seem to remember the deal being about guaranteed sales, Walmart not shifting stock over the essential Xmas market and returning stock to Atari. Might not of been Bob, but i do remember it coming from a high profile Atari person after his departure. He went through his time with Atari and why Jaguar had failed.

Picked it up for the unlockable extras and i had very much enjoyed the earlier Rogue Squadron game on GC, but came away bitterly dissapointed. Whilst technically very impressive, it was just horrendous to play. Developer went onto repeat the same mistakes with Lair on PS3. Fantastic visual showcase for the hardware, horrendous to actually try and play.

It's been some years since i played Metroid Prime on the GC and other than my issues already detailed, all i can remember is being impressed by the atmosphere created by the work put into the environmental design, audio etc. Some annoying sections with the Morph Ball, but up until then i had been enjoying the game. # I should point out i have never been into the 2D Metroid titles, dabbled with it on SNES, got into it on GBA for a while, but more a fan of things in the genre, such as The Sacred Armour of Antiriad on the C64, Shadow Complex on 360 and Strider on PS3. You've described my frustrations far better than I, you literally were a sitting duck for your foes and it does sound like Nintendo realised it was a critical flaw and addressed it with the Wii version.

Later stages of Metroud Prime on the Game Cube, you'd be hit by electric bolts from the space pirates weaponry, so your character instinctively puts her arm up in front of her face to shield it, fine, but when you'd been holding down buttons to lock-on and charge your own weapon and now lost both... Abandoned it at that point, i had already been struggling with it's checkpoint system on boss fights. Die on boss fight and respawn not back in heart of the battle, but outside the arena and you'd have to trek back to the area and go through the motions again. Think i gave up on Darksiders early on for a similar reason, early boss fight had a tedious lock - on system you had to use during the fight. Nearly gave up on Soul Reaver PS1 when it committed the hideous crime of spawning goes when you were busy trying to do a tedious block shifting puzzle.

I'm a big horror game fan and can excuse a lot of flaws-Fatal Frame/Project Zero could frustrate when you were confined to a narrow area by wooden rails, but the ghosts could have free movement to attack from all angles, atmosphere in game was so good, especially with a Dolby 5.1 surround sound set up 😊 Design chances-Silent Hill 3 just wasn't for me, Team Silent said they put in stronger guns as you encountered far bigger, more powerful creatures, but it just felt off to myself. A lot of folk hated Doom III torch and gun mechanics, but i loved them, same with Resident Evil 4 stand and shoot mechanics. How to accurately portray diminishing health has been a stumbling block for survival horror titles, having to call up a pause screen breaks the immersion, which is why i loved the DC VMU being used as a heart monitor, worked far better than say the light on the PS4 controller changing colour.

Far Cry II and it's flawed health system. Start the game and your immediately stricken with malaria. The disease creates a dependence on medicine, but treatment can't simply be found in the environment, ohh no, instead, medicine can only be bought from civilians. Don't treat it, you'll pass out during firefights etc.. Your weapons can jam, because of the dusty environment... You can break your hand if you get injured too badly... Add that the fires spreading out of control, foes constantly spawning from roadblock check points and then see how much freedom you have to roam an open world.

It didn't work though. Rather than create a sense of say blind panic, your hands shaking with fear (they could of used the rumble to good effect here), it just felt clunky, drawn out and poorly implemented. If my memory serves, it was addressed somewhat on the PS3 version, maybe due to feedback?. But been years since I played it. I could appreciate the clumsy combat in Silent Hill, you weren't supposed to be proficient in use of firearms and blunt weapons, unlike your STARS characters in Resident Evil, you were just an average guy caught up in a nightmare. But with Forbidden Siren, it just felt like poor game mechanics.

Had this a little while and wanted to hold off until i had completed it before commenting. A valiant effort and much better fun to play than MD SOR III, but the 2006 (?) PC SOR Remake had much more impact than this. The new visuals look over the top, too stylish? Game lacks the seedy feel SOR nailed, none of the set pieces matched the atmosphere of a seedy back alley fight with a barman in the pouring rain or taking on a biker gang on a bridge. The new music was very hit and miss. What i really missed were the deep, gutaral character voices, when they pulled off special moves and the satisfying crunch of weapons like the pipe hitting flesh and bone. Took too it more than the Toki remake, which i found a little too slow and laborious, but not a title that really stood out.

Weapon breakage has been an annoyance,but thankfully hasn't occurred in enough titles to really bug me, guess i have been lucky. The wound healing mechanic in MGS III was labourous though, great shout. I'd add Forbidden Siren on Playstation 2 as well, similarly labourous sequence just to put a key in a lock, unlock and open a door. Nightmare when you were being pursued by a foe or group of foes.

Slight side note, but in keeping with the question of just how much clout the Star Raiders name still held, by the time of the Jaguar... I remember Andrew Braybrook discussing the creation of Morpheus on the C64 and how he'd been playing a Rescue On Fractalus at the time and hadn't noticed much difference in the recovered spare parts.. Time clearly playing tricks on him (and the magazine that printed the interview hadn't spotted the error), he must of been talking about Koronis Rift, which used the fractual engine and had you playing as a Techno Scavenger. It would of taken any individual or team an incredible amount of work and ambition to deliver a game on Jaguar that had anything like the impact Star Raiders had in the A8. AVP and Tempest 2000 were seen as the systems Killer Apps, but weren't enough to shift the system in sufficient numbers. And old fossils like myself and older are struggling to remember much of the golden days of gaming with clarity 😊 Out of interest, what would people of wanted out of a true Jaguar Star Raiders 2000? And who would you of had behind it? Zybdel? Minter?

Put the wind up Sony good enough at the time,claim went they went mental with their R+D Department, saying GB was a device they should of created.

It's usually got to be something really major in a title i had previously been putting the hours in on, to kill it for me. I recently went back and finished Wasteland (after abandoning it for months) and Mass Effect Andromeda on PS4, despite having a pile of shame games to play on it and other systems. Did the same for Soma, but in that case only after a patch was released where you couldn't die. Made the game so much more enjoyable for me and would never of returned to it if no fix had been made available. https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2018/02/new_soma_ps4_update_adds_safe_mode I'd welcome such a move by developers on so many modern titles.

The original 8-bit version is sometimes referred to as the first real Killer-App title and i think the testimony from Archer Maclean sums up the impact it had, very well: " In 1981 I got hold of an Atari 800, a "Star Raiders" cartridge, and a joystick. I remember being absolutely hooked on this for weeks at a time. No one had seen anything like it before, as we had all been spoon-fed black and white "Pong" and "Tank" style games up until that point. People would drive miles to come and have a look and play with it. I think I broke two or three joysticks and a couple of chairs ridding the universe of enemy star fighters!" Sadly the later installments never came anywhere close to matching that. Star Raiders II: The Atari version looked much better than the C64 and ZX Spectrum version, but the gameplay suffered in comparison to not only the original, but also games inspired by Star Raiders, such as :Sentinel (Synapse): Sentinel had more variety, atmosphere and playability. I would advise caution on having Rob Zybdel involved with a Jaguar update as being a sure fire good thing, Rob was also responsible for the lackluster Star Raiders on the Atari ST: This was a terrible dissapointment to myself and pulled in some mixed reviews from UK Press. If i remember correctly you couldnt steer through Hyperspace, were unable to deny the Zylons your own Starbases by destroying them, it seemed to loose a lot of the subtle strategic elements, gameplay wasn't as frantic and it just got boring far too soon. The last Star Raiders inspired game from around the late Jaguar Era that seemed to want to try and replicate it outside of an Atari platform i can remember was Star Rangers PC : Things went downhill from there, the XBLA reboot was NOT Star Raiders..

I'm from the west country (but thankfully don't have an accent), anything from Bristol downwards can see it pronuced differently and i reside with a northerner 😂 But as a rule of thumb, a Clarkson pronouncement should be used.

😊 Speaking as a Brit, a lot of the pronunciation can depend on which region your from at times, but yes it should be as described above.

Super XEGS is Curt Vendel area of expertise, he has the documents relating to that one. I couldn't even begin to comment on it, as it's something i knew nothing of in real terms until he shared the documents. On our side of the pond it was always 2 years of Rumours about the ST hardware coming out as a budget console and then the Mega Drive/SNES beating 16-bit Panther, before the hype started about the Jaguar. Wish that and it's games had arrived at prices Atari were telling us to expect 😊

MGS 4,even the cut-scenes had cut-scenes, man i spent more time as a spectator than a player on that one.

I welcome your polite disagreement. Be a boring place if we all agreed with each other. I bought Driver as whilst i loathe driving in real life, i love iconic car chases in Hollywood movies, so i was looking for escapism, having to pass a test, rather than just get behind the wheel and mess about on the open road soured the initial experience for me and a mate and myself spent hours trying to crack last mission. The only bigger annoyance in a game, where realism brought me crashing back down to my real life affairs, Fork Lift driving in Shen Mue, DC. Had to drive one for work at the time, hated it, hated the job, was not pleased i had to do it in the game.

Exactly. You should of been able to act as a Recon unit for whoever/whatever you were escorting, you'd go ahead, scout out an area and destroy any hostile, before telling your person or vechile it was now safe to proceed. Would of made games so much less frustrating.

As an ST owner at the time, having owned a C64 and Atari 800XL prior, push scrolling caused a lot of frustrations in games. ☹️

Seem to remember things like Sega's Alien III:The Gun being £1 a go and never getting a home conversion 😭 A quid a go was the end of Arcades for myself.