Lost Dragon

Over the years i've seen Ultra Star Raiders 'listed' as 1 of many mythical unreleased Lynx games and later the claim that Jeff Minter was handling it, yet try as i might i cannot seem to find anything of substance behind said claims. Can anyone shed any light on where the rumour started from and if it actually got started, let alone by Jeff Minter, as i've read numerous interviews with him in Edge, PC Format, RG, etc etc over the years and whilst he shed light on plans for a Star Raiders-esq game on the Panther (which a few of the tech.demo's he did for the Panther were proof off concept routines he planned to use in his game), i never heard him talk of any plans for Lynx development. Is this another proposal only (at best) game, ie Atari looked at doing it, Jeff was 1 of a few coders approached? or just utter myth?.

Would have been a nice feature to have, but to myself as an STFM owner at the time, the STE seemed to be too little, too late as a lot of publishers had switched to Amiga 1st, ST version to follow (and were sending Amiga versions of games to UK mags 1st, as they knew they'd score higher, then mags would simply feature ST version in later issue under Updates..sections), or if software was coming from USA, PC and Amiga only. Some UK publishers said Atari made very little fuss about STE, simply brought it to them, showed what it could do over the STFM, then simply took it away again.Little-to-no fanfare. It sounded as if Atari (UK) were resigned to fact Amiga had won this round, STE little more than a vain attempt to try and close gap between Amiga and St, with coders then favouring the Amiga hardware....

Bit more regarding Strider 2...Only a rumour (and reported as such) but Lynx User (Fanzine) reported Strider 2 was actually finished, release held back until Sega Game Gear version was finished, (so both could be released at same time i assume).They also claimed US Gold were converting Indy Jones And The Last Crusade to Lynx.

Sadly it was'nt just arcade conversions that 'suffered' in terms of could have been much better on ST/Amiga (espically when the C64 versions seemed to play a damn site better, yes, thinking of YOU:Powerdrift, Operation Wolf, Ghosts N Goblins etc, despite not looking anywhere near as nice) but the 8 bit to 16 Bit conversions of original games as well. Oceans 16 Bit version of Wiz Ball looked the part, just never seemed to play anything like the C64 original, less said about 16 Bit Armalyte the better, ST Myth, (despite what RG say) only made it as far as a Zero magazine cover disk, sadly never released... Ocean's ST Robocop was'nt as good as the ZX Spectrum 128K version, they then promised it'd be vastly improved for the Amiga, Full screen etc, yet all they did was beef up the sonics...we wuz cheated time and time again....

Austin's comments on Kasumi Ninja are great.I recal a review (C+VG?) saying the 3D selection screen was'nt really needed, but made a change, but as he points out, just had a negitive effect on the game itself. The blood aspect? i've never quite got my head around, Atari were either trying to go the B-Movie route and go OTT or honestly thought more=better, but it just ended up making the game more of a laughing stock. I think after Kasumi Ninja and Ultra Vortex got slayed at review (K.Ninja 51% from C+VG) Atari should have given up on MK clones.Never seen Realm Of The Fighters running, so cannot comment. Do we think games like Club Drive 72%, C.Flag II (72%), Super Cross X (17%) (all C+VG scores) harmed the Jaguar more than say dissapointing conversions of Daytona USA and Virtua Racing to Saturn, Hexen+Duke Nukem 3D to Playstation and titles like Cosmic Carnage on 32X?

Great responses already! Re:Cybermorph:Very interesting 1st choice there.Seemed to impressive cynics like Edge magazine (8/10) enough to take the Jaguar seriousily after they'd mocked it when 1st shown the hardware, yet as a flagship game for the Jaguar, it was a very mixed bag: Gouraud Shaded landscapes, the morphing of your craft, the amount of colours on screen, free-roaming etc all big thumbs-up for the hardware, but then you had awfully basic 3D models for the craft and buildings, seemingly plonked in there and highlighting lack of creative (design) flair from ATD artists. Sound wise:Baldy Locks voice was sweet (but soon got on my tits), but the sound FX were far too harsh. And yep, so many people went to it (be it in demo pods or came round yer house etc) expecting 64 Bit Starfox basically and thus came away thinking WTF is this sh*t?.It simply was'nt a game you could just pick up n play. Atari must have loved the press reaction, but then wondered why this was'nt translating into hardware sales.

For myself, my chouices probably are'nt the best (technical) examples as they might 'suffer' say from ropy frame rates, but it's what they achived in other areas that made them standout for myself: AVP:Use of colours, realistic textures on walls etc, dead bodies on the floor all creating a superb atmosphere. Iron Solider for it's explosions and way the buildings were destroyed under your fist or firepower-really helped create illusion of piloting a mighty mech. Hoverstrike (cart), just loved the texture mapping and light-sourcing in particular, firing a missile and watching the rock walls light up as it flew past impressed me at the time. Tempest 2000:For Jeff, basically 'being' Jeff and using the hardware to go bat-shit crazy and trying to eat my face, made particle effects etc, it really stood out, sadly 'kids' not sold on mad as an otter special effects, wanted texture-mapped 3D etc, so Tempest 2000 was never really going to be a big system seller/flagship game in that regard.

I often wonder IF Atari did at least try and get likes of Vektor Graphix (Bomber, Killing Cloud etc) and D.I.D (Epic, Inferno, Robocop III) on-board to produce Jaguar games as their 3D engines on the humble ST were superb and you always saw 3D coders on the ST and Amiga saying if only we had faster chipsets we could do.... Also Michael Powell (Powerdrome) as he was doing 'big' things on the PC with Cyber Fight, using polygon 3Din 256 colours, Gouraud Shading, texture-mapping etc. These guys seem ideally suited to tap into potential of the Jaguar hardware.

ST Rolling Thunder is let down by weak sound FX, poor scrolling and dissapointing animation, more could have been done with the conversion. The Amiga version is basically a sound improved only ST-port (gunshots etc much better), but still features same poor scrolling and animation and if you were an Amiga owner at the time, you'd be paying £5 more than yer ST owning mates. Basically from what i recal, the 16 Bit versions simply were'nt of the expected standard. I'd class them under dissapointed with...rather than actual 'bad' conversions.

Nice thread. Interesting to read others thoughts on likes of:Roadblasters (which constantly gets a lot of love in RG and technically is a superb conversion, but it does get boring after a while i've always found), Steel Talons and Hard Drivin-both technically superb for the hardware, but that does'nt always equal a great game, personally never found Hard Drivin to 'work' outside of the arcades (had ST version as well) and even more is 'lost' when reduced to the Lynx screen. Dracula is indeed bloody fantastic, atmosphere and visuals wise, but...with no battery backup, personally never found it ideally suited to handheld play, myself... Not seen a review for Shadow Of The Beast up, yet another i personally class as technical feat in itself, but game simply does'nt lend itself to handheld play. As for Viking Child, cracking game, more Atari trying to get a Wonderboy affair on Lynx than Sonic though it seemed.

No wish to start a seperate thread, but this thread has gotten me thinking, basically: Which games would A.A posters feel did the Jaguars reputation the most harm? The SNES/MD ports alone are 1 thing, ports nothing new, existed way before and after the Jaguar, Xbox had PS2 ports etc, sure they did the Jaguar image no favours, but i'm thinking more along lines of the Jaguars 'tick box' type games (we need a Mortal Kombat/Mario Kart/Virtua Racing/Virtua Fighter type game to be taken seriousily...) I do recal the UK Press (likes of Edge, C+VG etc) really gunning for Jaguar Raiden (44%) C+VG, which was last thing they expected to see on Atari's 'flagship 64-bit console' (i know it was intended for earlier hardware but still...), espically with as Edge described it, the ST-style status panel running along 1 side of the screen, ditto Humans/Dino Dudes. These in the early days along with actual versions of Ch.Flag II+Club Drive not matching faked preview/advertising shots and as for Aircars..yikes

Always wondered just how Kasumi Ninja would have turned out had it stuck to the original concept of having a story mode.1st i ever saw of it was in a very early Jaguar preview feature in Gamesmaster magazine, it looked quite different with 2 smaller, but high res.looking characters (White garbed IK+ type fighter high kicking a crouching black garbed Ninja, in front of some kinda temple door, very colurful backdrop of a cloudly sky as well). Do people think it needed a lot more than just polishing up of code to improve animation, frame rate etc to make it stand out? indeed had it been taken back to the drawing board, reworked as something other than Atari's answer to Mortal Kombat (at that time) would it have been better recived?. Also in same preview, mag claimed Virgin were porting Aladdin to Jaguar.Chalk up yet another vapourware claim i wonder?

Nice to sse the Missile Command 3D love here.I've always held this up as yet another prime example of how the UK press mood 'turned' on the Jaguar (and 3DO) in the later years. Gamesmasters Les Ellis, once a big Jaguar fan, gave it a measly 59% score, moaned the 3D was hardly awe inspiring, game got dull very quickly, would only really have been worth buying with the VR headset and was a poor adaption of a (then) 16 year old game, espically for £50.

Regarding issue of frame rates on flight sims (which was mentioned earlier) think early/preview code of Amiga Gunship 2000 was between 5 and 10 FPS depending on which detail level you ran game at. As an ex-Atari 520STFM owner who picked up a Jaguar, it'd been fantastic to have seen new installments or 'updates' on games i poured hours into on the ST, so Super Cars 3, Llamatron 2000 along with new Laser Squad and Lords Of Chaos (cart), Captive 3, Midwinter 3 and Hunter 2 on Jag CD would have had me chuffed to buggery and all seemed technically very 'do-able'.

This has always seemed very much a marmite game, the (UK) press at the time went for it (24% C+VG) pointing out how you could pick up a brand new SNES for between £15-£20 more than just price on Jaguar Atari Karts and then buy Mario Kart on SNES....and reviewer, Paul Davies said he was a fan of the Jaguar, but Atari putting this out again'st Sega Rally/Wipeout on rival platforms was questionable, but does it really have GCSE standard artwork, dreadful controls, appalling music etc? or yet again were reviewers expectations set far too high and dig deep and you'll find a decent enough game in there?. As for Pauls review text comment about the Jaguar hardware '..with the 2X 32-Bit power of the slick black system...' surely that alone has added to all the horendous 'Is the Jaguar really 64 bit?' 'debates' on forums in general across the years...

Might be worth noting that when Rebellion approached Atari to do AVP they'd had limited experience in the gaming industry, Jason Kingsley had a degree in Zoology, written a few childrens books, worked as camera assistant on Killer music video, done games like Blade Warrior, Murder, Better Dead Than Alien, Hunt For Red October, etc and were at that point just a team of 6 people and a 3D demo for Atari, all working from a basement, it was'nt until the AVP deal was secured they set up the company itself. They admit they and the team were inexperienced and they'd never built a game like this before and it was they who convinced Atari to do AVP as a FPS (Atari wanted a straight forward 2D scrolling beat-em-up) and that they could do a 2.5D ray traced FPS with texture-mapping, 16 bit photographic textures etc and they had no help from the movie companies. I've respect for them for convincing Atari to go the 3D route for Jaguar AVP, rather than what could of been had Atari gone with it's thinking and gone 2D.

As a Jaguar owner at the time, it was bloody frustrating to see how the (UK) press at the time seemed to have 'turned' on the Jaguar, in terms of unrealistic expectations from 3D engines running on it, sure Atari's marketing of the '64-bit' aspect put it straight in the firing line, but reviewers seemed to over-look fact Jaguar was designed as a powerful, 2D console with 3D abilities geared up towards plain polygons, limited texture-mapping etc, Playstation by comparison seemed designed to shift high number of texture-mapped polygons, at expense of 2D abilities. Iron Solider also fell foul of C+VG who compared it to 32X Metal Head seemingly based on visuals 1st (yes Metal Head did look better, but was a weaker Mech game for myself) and who said there was'nt a single element to make you sit up and say wow, espically for a 64-bit machine. It did seem unless your hardware was producing games with then cutting edge 3D engines, 1000's of texture-mapped, light sourced polys, you were in for a rough ride.

I loved AVP, from a visual point of view and going from that to Alien Trilogy on Playstation 1 (Which Mean Machines claimed was going to make Jag AVP look like the wizzard of Oz, based on CGI rendered cutscreen shots...), with it's block face huggers, Aliens milling about like sheep etc, i often feel the need to 'defend' what Rebellion achived with AVP, espically as it seemed the fashion to 'bash' Rebellion in the press soon after. C+VG's Skyhammer review (Tom Guise) claiming it looked like a weaker 32X title, AVP looked much better (yet AVP was'nt allowing you same degrees of movement etc was it? and caption text went again'st review text as it said it had impressive textured 3D for the machine, game was entertaining, review said game was average etc). I'd of liked to have seen just how far Rebellion could of pushed the Jaguar, espically with further optimised code on their engine, plus using Jaguar CD. Would of loved to have seen how Legions Of The Undead turned out.

Talking of Edge and AVP.... When Atari annouced it's meger with JTS (?) and end of Jaguar production etc etc, Edge were saying that AVP 2 was in contract negotiation stages with Atari and Beyond games, but negotiations stopped soon as annoucement was made... Assuming this was true, would NBeyond Games have been anyones 'developer of choice' to do AVP 2 on Jaguar? if not, who (in an ideal world) would folks have had produce Jaguar AVP II and why?. Rebellion would have been my personal choice, given teams Atari had working with them at that time.

R.O.T.S Post nailed my exp to a tee.I'd basically bought my Jaguar on day 1 after seeing (rolling) video footage of AVP being shown on Gamesmaster TV show (that and the magazines preview of Jag CD Freelancer...).I'd loved the 2D Alien games on C64 (Electric Dreams), Alien 3 on both MD+SNES (both very different, but both superb), Aliens and AVP in arcade so thought of a 3D AVP just had my jaw dropping and whilst far from perfect gameplay wise, AVP on Jaguar really nailed it atmosphere wise. Edge's 4/10 review highlighted why you really should'nt go in expecting Doom but set in AVP universe (but then the Edge Doom review on PC 7/10 moaned because you could'nt talk to the creatures you encountered...), because if you go in with that mindset, you will come away very dissapointed. I would have very much liked to see a S.E version released on Jag CD with Revbellion adding the extra features and adressing the flaws of the cart.version.

Checkered Flag could have been the Virtua Racing clone Atari longed for, had Atari the resources to get a much bigger and far better suited programming team than Rebellion to produce it. Game was very much the victim of it's own hype as well.Things got off to a bad start with gorgeous, but fake screens shown in Atari's 'Coming soon to Jaguar' adverts, which were then scaled back for the next set of promo/teaser adverts in the 'Let the games begin advets', where it had undergone a name change to Red Line Racing, warning bells really should have sounded there and then, that something was amiss, instead you had likes of C+VG hyping it up further, saying game was running so fast, Rebellion were having to slow the frame rate down to make game playable (oh the irony of that statement). As we saw with Saturn Virtua Racing (given to Time Warner), unless you put a project in the right hands, going on name alone and just putting game out because you feel you need it out there, is only going to damage your image.

Regarding PS1/Saturn versions of Quake: 'word' doing the rounds in Playstation magazines at the time was that 7 different developers had tried converyting Quake to Playstation, just could'nt get decent version running.Lobotomy did say they would have attempted it, but were far too busy tied up with existing projects at the time.Regarding Saturn Quake:Preview/Beta versions of quake ran better (foes were'nt an utter mess as they were in retail version) but Lobotomy had to make big comprimises for finished version, they tried to 'make up' for this by putting custom lighting in on the Saturn version' Would of been interesting to see how Hammerhead (developers of Quake II on PS1) had handled the original Quake (think they also did Shadow Master for Psygnosis on PS1?). We also should remember PC Unreal was coming to PS1 at 1 point.Person i interviewed a while back was part of the team, gave some surprising answers on just how far along it got. I loved Unreal on PC, so atmospheric.

@ValdR: :-) My point about Magic Carpet was'nt it could have been done, more at best it MIGHT have been a proposal/something Atari wanted.As i said i've never seen anyone from Bullfrog ever claim it was coming, Peter M.just commented the Jag.hardware was nice, just needed more Ram etc. I mentioned Amiga A1200/CD32 versions as those at least 'we know' work was started, huge difficulties encountered and then scrapped and also coders of Saturn version talked of huge issues encountered porting PC code straight to Saturn, hence re-write of code for the Saturn. I personally could'nt see Jaguar handling anything like:Quake/Tomb Raider/Magic Carpet/Daytona USA/Need For Speed etc, in anything like form we know them, no matter who coded them or what engine was used and don't really feel they should be on Lost Game threads, as they are just pipe dream/wishful thinking material.. It reminds me of 16 Bit days, Mega CD had a conversion of Starblade, but had to resort to wire-frame 3D in lot of places and looked awful.

@Lynxpro:Ref:Rescue on Fractalus 2 what??? -See my Mists Of Xenon thread in the Atari 8 Bit section.I posted up the news snippet i had, in hope the good folk on here might be able to shed more light on it.I've never encountered anything else on it in UK magazines... As for Waterworld, yep whilst i've been able to track down who i think handled the SNES/MD versions and found magazine article hinting what happened to the PS1 version, chap i interviewed regarding the Jaguar version said it was talked about, but is very doubtful it ever got beyond that, plus i've never seen a studio or developer said to be 'handling' the Jaguar version. As/when i get any more info, i'll post it up. Sent out a stack of emails for potential future interviews, just waiting on replies, plus replies to questions sent to another key Atari person of old, IF he ever answers them, been 2 months now.

:-( Now i cannot even edit an earlier post to say i did'nt mean to ruffle any feathers? Ok, new post then. Ok, clearly some miss-understandings here, i'm not the Bogeyman returned, Alberts even checked my I.P details etc (1st forum that's happened), sorry if my posts upset anyone, i'm just tired.Come off night shifts, it's bllody hot, humid etc, not that's any excuse.I was'nt 'keen' on either (there was earlier post, but MODs removed) which kinda implied i might be someone else, but it's never been my intent to 'Attack' the community, just to share info i'd spent months picking up. I'm happy to put it down to a miss-understanding and keep adding to community here,.