Tyrant

Having just gone out and bought Kasumi Ninja and Checkered Flag, and been somewhat unimpressed by their quality (but I did get the headband, and it only cost me 11 pounds for both hehe), I was wondering, just how many games use the Jaguar to full potential? Obviously Tempest2k makes great use of it, but I cant think of any other game that I have that really makes good use of the hardware. What games would you guys say really make the best use of the machine, and show off with the quality of graphics / speed? Obviously gameplay is very important too, but I suspect a big part of the Jag's downfall was that most of the games look only slightly better than on 16bit machines. Kasumi Ninja could easily be mistaken for Mortal Kombat, and Checkered Flag looks only mildly better than No Second Prize on the ST (well ok, quite a bit better, but not as good as it could have been im sure).

You missed out a lot of truely classic games from your list, things like Megalomania, Magic Pockets, etc. Of the ones you did list tho, Mindfield's descriptions sound right to me, with one adition, StarGoose is a 3d "vertical" scrosing shooter, great fun on the pc, never played it on st tho. Oh, and isnt GOUST N GHOST a typo of Ghouls n Ghosts? If it is its one of the all time best platformers.

After spending about 20 minutes searching yahoo for you, I couldnt find anything, well I found 4 or 5 sites claiming to have it for download, but alas none of the links worked. I did find a scan of the front cover, but thats not exactly a lot of use to you Im sure. I picked it up from a book on normal basic on the st, very much a kids book but really good, I still have it sitting on my bookshelf (but only because Im too lazy to tidy up hehe). If you know basic (not vb), stos shouldnt be too tricky, some of the advanced sprite commands and stuff will take a bit of getting used to (I dont think I ever understood them much), but you can definatly write simple things straight away. I think STF ran a series of tutorials when they gave it away free. I do still have all my copies, tho in no order at all. I'll probably sort them out soon, and I'll scan in any tutorials I find for you. Talking of which, is there anything the AtariAge staff would like scanned? I have all the issues from 16 to about 68, mostly in fairly good condition. Hell if someone buys me a nice present I'll even scan in the whole lot for you, give you a complete archive hehe.

I've never seen a pizza place or sports bar that serves coctails either tho

Well, one day soon I'll go down there and see if he has any of them still, I'll let you know. Oh, and the idea of a coctail defender still makes me laugh, then again, how many arcades served coctails anyway? I cant quite picture that myself.

quote: Originally posted by Atari-Jess: you scare me. Awww, thats the nicest thing anyones said to me all week.

What would this company of yours produce? Designing and producing consoles is an incredibly dificult buisness, especially when you have to compete with the power of modern machines. Would you simply write games for the new consoles? What would be the link to Atari? You could I suppose try to improve the jaguar design, add more memory, speed up the chips, and start making new games for that. I believe I've seen files documenting the inside of the custom chips btw. It would be a great idea to re-create Atari, especially if you could get some of the old employees, and of course YaK, get him onboard and any project will be a huge hit. Incase you cant guess, I've spent too much time having the same dream lol, I think everyone here has thought about it, havnt you? p.s. How about the idea of making very small versions of the truely classic Atari games? Ones that the general public will go "oooh" when they see, put them on handheld games, or even built into t-shirts or hats (this may sound crazy but wouldnt it be cool to have PacMan in attract mode on your shirt? and the technology allready exists, its just a case of using it.) [ 10-31-2001: Message edited by: Tyrant ]

Well Im not sure how much he'll want for it, or how much its worth, so I really have no idea at the moment. I think my first step is to find out how much its worth, then go see him and work out if he has it and how much he would want for it. Like I said tho, Im not at all sure I'll get it, so I'll let you know when I find out more info. If you do have any links that could help me work out what its worth it would be useful.

Well I'd be happy to sell it (assuming I can get it), the gameplay isnt enough to make me want to keep it in my very small room, so Im planing on shifting it on quickly. Then again dont get your hopes up, knowing my luck he'll have sold them allready.

Thats the one, thanks. Now does anyone have any idea how much its worth?

A loong time ago (well a few years), I saw, and played on, a game, in a stand up cabinet, who's name I've totally forgoten. Im thinking of trying to buy it, (assuming he still has it, and assuming I get a job). I would however like your opinions on a) what its called, and b) what its worth. This machine was a driving game, with a black and white (no greyscale) raster screen, quite a large one I believe. It had a really cool chromed metal 3 spoke steering wheel with an atari fuji heavily embosed on the center. The game itself consisted of driving your car (1st person so you couldnt see your car, just the view from inside), arround a series of tracks, which you could only see by little white square blocks marking the edges of the road. I hope thats enough detail for people to remember it. I think the game also had 1/2 pedals and a 4 position gear stick, but Im not sure about that. If anyone does know its name, or remembers anything about it, I'd love to know, since I believe the owner of this machine (assuming he still has it) dosnt know what its worth, he lets kids (like I was when I last saw it) play on it as a way to make a bit of money for himself lol. So with any luck I can buy it from him for almost nothing, he also had other old machines like bomber jack, and a coctail table defender (I think, might have been pac man).

quote: Originally posted by Gunstar: Although, I also fail to see the humor anyway. Everything in that ad was perfectly true at the time. I own it and although it only has a little more than a dozen games, most rock, and the VLM definately rocks, it's a very cool add on. Oh I couldnt agree more, I would love to get hold of a JagCD, they do rock, I was laughing about the fact that the CD (disk) in the picture was blank. One would think that if they went to the effort to produce a number of CD's printed with Jaguar logo's on the top, they would have at least put on a logo or small demo on the disk. It wouldnt have taken more than 10 minutes for someone to write the code to just display the Jag logo onscreen, maybe play a video of some TV Adverts, or some video clips from some games, etc. Did they ever make any adverts btw?

ROFLMAO is very standard netspeek, it stands for Rolling On the Floor Laughing My Arse Off. Oh, and btw, why do I now have a star under my name? not that Im complaining hehe, but I've never quite understood some of the ubb's more intricate workings. Oh, and can one of the admin/moderators make me up a dig dug picture with the arcade colours please? I'll send an image if needed. [ 10-29-2001: Message edited by: Tyrant ]

ROFLMAO Thats classic. Just out of interest, how much were ppl selling them for? Not that I have a JagCD even at the moment (the retro shop I goto sells them for more than twice the price of a Jag, and they havnt had one in for 6 months or more )

I followed the link, quite interesting, but it didnt seem to answer the question, of what is on the cd featured here, there are several photos of this disk, but does anyone know what it is? sorry for linking such a large image, but it was the first copy of it I found

On a related note, quite often, in pictures of Jag CD units, you quite often see the lid open, with a plain black cd inside with two eyes and the jaguar logo... whats on that disk?

Whilst tidying my room (a rare event indeed) I unearthed my old STOS Compiler manual. Almost totally useless, since it only covers how to use the compiler, is about 15 pages big, and anyone who knows enough stos to want to compile it can figure out the compiler on their own... BUT, if anyone wants it, I can scan it in for you. I did have the disk, many moons ago, but Im not sure I'll be able to find it now.

quote: Originally posted by Jet Boot Jack: At Microprose UK we ported one of our Genesis games, "Tin Head" a platformer, to the 68K in the Jag The problem is that while it is relatively easy to code for a 68000, the results are generally unimpressive, since the 68000 is slow and only 8bit (or is it 16?). The power of the jaguar lies in its custom chips, which are aparently a real b*tch to code for (multithreaded code is allways hard, multithreaded assembily between different chips using different languages... I dont even want to think about how hard that is). p.s. does anyone have the official documentation that was part of the development kit? That would probably be the best way to learn how to do it. I doubt the non-disclosure clauses still apply since hasbro have made it an open system.

I do I think its really comfortible, all of the controls are in the right places, far superior to the n64's controler (which is the only control I've seen to have almost as many buttons). How many three handed people did nintendo imagine would buy their machine? I really cant understand that design. The only thing that I think might have helped the jaguar pad might have been shoulder buttons, but its not important. Btw where can I get a pro controler, I'd really love a pair but I cant find them anywhere, just the original ones.

quote: Originally posted by Gunstar: 1) taking apart an old driving controller will not "ruin" the controller in any way. You can just as easily put the rotary pot back into the original driving controller and it will work just as good as before, if need be... True, but putting it back in the 2600 controler would make the Jaguar controler in-operible until its returned. I'd prefer not to have to canibalise parts of any other controlers if possible (btw I have found the toshiba encoder chip used for jag pads). quote: Originally posted by Gunstar: 2) Your assuming way to much since you don't have a rotary controller to use on the Jag. ... two of the A, B and c buttons work for up and down in both the bonus levels and the high score table. Thats good, so the entire game can be run from the spinner, and abc? quote: Originally posted by Gunstar: 3) there is a guy who sells very well designed rotary controllers for T2K. I bought mine from him. I'll try and find his website, no luck so far but if I cant find it I'll email him. I'll almost definatly make my own tho, but all the help / advice I can get is important. Thanks.

Yeah I'll definatly keep you updated, even write a huge big write up for you on how to do it. Having done yet more searching, I've found a lot of people who have built rotery controls for pc's (usually as part of arcade emu box's) using essentially the same tech. The only difference is they have an easier time of it since they can use the insides of a mouse and have all the electronics allready made for them. I'm now seriously thinking about making my own pcb's for this project lol. It all depends if I can find a friend who's really good with a soldering iron. quote: He responded and said he wrote that page back in 97 or 98 and that he doesn't believe the parts described on that page are still available from Happ Controls. I've checked, and while I cant find all of the components individually (the site is very badly maintained), I did find the pcb (with components attached I believe) availible on its own, as well as the complete assembily being part of a rotating joystick, and an incredibly expensive Arkanoid rotery control it has a lot of gearing down in that, which does alarm me. I was curious initially about how fast the sequences needed to be sent to the Jag, I assume if most people use the 2600, then YaK did as well and it was designed for it. All of the pc spnner guides I've read use mouse components, then have to reduce the pulse frequency by at least half to achieve rates the mouse hardware can detect (the large ball / small roler is a natural step down gear). Since a 2600 controler is probably a *lot* slower than a modern mouse, I dread to think how much I'll have to slow down my one, or how much sensitivity will be lost that way. If anyone can help me here, I would *really* aprechiate it. I did email Stephen Anderson about it just now, so hopefully he can explain how sensitive/fast it is in practise. Well, this is turning from a post into a rant, so I'll goto sleep now (at almost 9am, having been up all night looking for plans). Wish me luck (something tells me I'll need it)

I knew I forgot something(s)... totaly forgot about the sound, didnt know about the ease of expansion, thanks for the info.

Im curious, although the Jagulator isnt finished yet, and the other emu's hav either just started or been long abandoned, there must be a way allready in existance to create rom images. I've seen the system developed for the SNES, with a large box sitting between the cartridge and the machine, with a floppy drive on the side, and Im sure nothing so complicated has been made for the Jag, so Im curious as to how its done. I assume it uses a Jaguar-Server chip of some kind, and thus would be very hard to install, but Im curious. Btw, how rare are modified Jags in the UK, how easy is it to install the chips (I assume its close to impossible), and how much should I expect to pay for one? Or for an original Atari development machine.

Since I posted that, I've been doing a little more digging arround, and I did find one person who didnt cut up either a Jag or 2600 controler! He used an optical sensor, and made his own pcb with the encoder chip on it. His site can be found here but the lack of technical info really is a shame. Still, its a start, and I'll try emailing him tomorow. I doubt he'll reply, since the site was last updated 4 years ago I think, but its worth a shot. Anyone else have any more info on the techniques he used? does anyone know if the sensing mechanism is a common design, do other types give the same output? Oh, and a question about the use of the wheel with Tempest. Since this controler will only be designed for tempest, and i'll be using normal controlers for other games, which keys should I include? obviously A, B, C, Option, (maybe Pause), and the knob, I believe I also need a seperate up/down for entering names in the highscore table, right? What about a traditional left/right, does tempest ever require them? I would like to do away with them entirely, I would like to do away with up/down, but I cant if the highscore needs them (why did the almighty YaK forget to add wheel support there? ) I dont need the numpad at all do I? There is mute on 0, and reset, but neither of them are really important.

I have plans to make a pair of rotery controlers for Tempest. However, I dont want to destroy the 2600 driving wheel's needed to make them acording to the Jaguar FAQ. I dont know how rare 2600 wheels are, but since they're so old, I would feel bad about destroying two of them. Does anyone know the specifications of the component(s) needed for the project, or even better, something thats still in production I could use as an alternative? Thanx