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Its 1993, you're in charge of the Jag, what do you do?


A_Gorilla

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To be honest the Amiga only really took over fron the ST once the PC started to become big and the cheaper A600 came out and then Commodore tried to hit back with the A1200 but ultimately failed. The ST was very big over here for many years, TBH Atari shot themselves in the foot by not getting the STE out quicker and also by not providing a way to upgrade your STFM to an STE which more than matched the Amiga tech wise.

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To be honest the Amiga only really took over fron the ST once the PC started to become big and the cheaper A600 came out and then Commodore tried to hit back with the A1200 but ultimately failed. The ST was very big over here for many years, TBH Atari shot themselves in the foot by not getting the STE out quicker and also by not providing a way to upgrade your STFM to an STE which more than matched the Amiga tech wise.

 

Both dropped the ball with getting full 32-bit machines out and matching (or going a step above) VGA standards in a timely fassion. The A3000 didn't even offer a 256 color mode, the TT030 did, but I don't think it was as flexible as VGA and still used the 4,096 color palette of the STe, plus lacked the blitter. (and was quite expensive, even by PC standards) That, and by 1990 XGA came out, so an even higher standard to meet, then SVGA carts of all sorts. (the AGA chipset and Falcon expanded these capabilities, but SVGA cards had already moved on and they generally still didn't match XGA standards even)

 

Most of which already came up here: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/143686-st-was-a-nice-computer/page__st__50

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I really think the only thing they needed was to focus on good games and leave the hardware as it was. Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo and Mortal Kombat II mainly from the arcades. Then Shin Samurai Spirits ( or 1 at least ) , Art Of Fighting , Top Hunter ( the jaguar could have managed a nice TH conversion , i think ) and some sports games like BS2 and Super Sidekicks 2. Push the system for the arcade games, you keep saying they were not all the rage anymore ... but i actually remember a LOT of guys shelling out big bucks to bring home SSF2T ( and many people to this day think that version is actually good, while its really cut back actually ) and Samurai Spirits . I remember on magazines people used to complain that consoles were getting shitty or no ports from neo and arcades in general , people were still hyped by arcades. It was the only route Jaguar could have gone with success . ( they already had a nice NBA JAM port, which by the way could have been a million times better than what it is )

 

Jaguar had the power for those games, Atari could have told you you were bringing the arcade home without shelling mad $$$$ , then add in some games like Rayman , Flashback , Cannon Fodder, Doom like they did ( out of this world too, please ) and the system would have been complete . A lot of bang for a few bucks ( if you compared it to 3DO ).

 

I bet this would have bought a lot of time and customers . The use this money to get good jrpgs and adventure games ( that the jaguar lacks SO damn much )

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020!020!020!020!020!020!020!020!020!020!020!020!020!020!020!020!020!020!020!020!020!020!020!020!020!020!020!020!

 

So Beck, I tell you....those games would have been able to have been ported in no time with an 020 in the Jaguar. As the hardware stands it can do it but the work involved would have taken a long time....it would have required all assembly on the riscs and a lot of cumbersome coding and local RAM module flipping.

Edited by Gorf
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I bet this would have bought a lot of time and customers . The use this money to get good jrpgs and adventure games ( that the jaguar lacks SO damn much )

 

In addition to what Gorf already said, jrpgs were a niche market then, so really not something worth going after in th epractical sense. Adventure games: possibly, the Jag CD had myst at least. (maybe some of the Lucas Arts scumm games would have merited porting to the Jag, though if monkwy Island on Sega CD is any indication, probably not a good route either)

 

They could have use better sports games though, those tended to be a major factor in the US market (particularly football), one of the Genesis's strong points. Not that I really care fro those most of the time, except racing games and the occasional golf game perhaps, but from a practical sense, definitely important. EA was kind of tied up with 3DO at the time though, so going there isn't really an option, maybe invest in the development for an Atari published title, or search around for other possible 3rd parties doing sports games.

 

Getting some Mortal Kombat (II especially) and Street Fighter II ports could be significant too. (Kasumi Ninja was a waste, Ultra Vortek is nce and really shows off the color capabilities, something a good MK port should do as well)

 

But this is all tied back to getting more developer interest, tied to Atari management, funding, and (especialy) the problems with the Jag hardware. (the 020 probably being th equickest/simplest change to make a major impact with this; other modifications would have been desirable too of course)

 

 

 

Also: Does anyone know why Flare chose to impliment the hard-coded 6-cycle access delay on Jerry? The write bugs are obviously from being rushed, the 16-bit data path is due to the 68000, but what's the reason for the 6-cycle delay?

Edited by kool kitty89
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I see it needed a 020 , thanks for making it clear.

 

On a side note, speaking of jrpgs

 

Actually Jrpgs were no way a niche market , they were growing like crazy a LOT of magazines hyped those games like crazy. Hell, MegaCD got a LOT more recognition thanks to GA efforts mainly. Many people tend to think FFVII started the jrpg craze , when actually the genre was obviously starting to pack a punch since the early 90's , VII only smashed the doors open with a BFG blast ( not to say it didn't have an impact, but the genre was already recognized and appreciated by mature gamers, which are basically a LOT of the jaguar target )

 

Snes actually got a lot of steam thanks to jrpgs which genesis was really lacking of ( and Sega started investing money towards the shining series ).

I think this was atari biggest fault, they couldn't see where the new market was going , no more old style arcade games , people wanted full fledged experiences . If you were in for arcade games , you had to bring out the new arcade titles , like new fighters and sidescrolling shooters like TH, MS , Sunset Riders and so on ... maybe some shooters ( which were dying in 93-4 , not jrpgs... shooters were on a freefall until the manic genre started popping up and keepin shooters afloat, and i think some manic would have been actually feasible on the Jaguar ) . Not Defender or anything like that.

Ok maybe put out some compilations or some remakes alright , they were actually kinda playable ( Tempest 2K above all ), but people wanted the games they started expecting on SNES and Genesis , except they wanted MORE , bigger badder and better . That s why i said bring on Art Of Fighting for example , which was really hyped back then , only to be forgotten on consoles because of the lame ass ports they received on 16 bits , make the people see that with Jaguar you could have the full experience , on NEW , HOT games.

 

Then , when you ve got the people in , start bringing home more expensive and story based games , like Adventure games and jrpgs. By adventure games i don't only refer to the tried and true Lucas/sierra type graphical adventure games , i refer to Alone in the Dark , Bio Hazard later , Tomb Raider ( which we all laugh about now, but the first outing was actually very very good ) .

Edited by BeckHansen
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I see it needed a 020 , thanks for making it clear.

 

On a side note, speaking of jrpgs

 

Actually Jrpgs were no way a niche market , they were growing like crazy a LOT of magazines hyped those games like crazy. Hell, MegaCD got a LOT more recognition thanks to GA efforts mainly. Many people tend to think FFVII started the jrpg craze , when actually the genre was obviously starting to pack a punch since the early 90's , VII only smashed the doors open with a BFG blast ( not to say it didn't have an impact, but the genre was already recognized and appreciated by mature gamers, which are basically a LOT of the jaguar target )

 

In the US market they were OK, not huge, but decently popular, prior to FFVII, FFIII (VI really) followed by Super Mario RPG were probably the best selling. (there were RPGs outside of Japan of course, I think Ultima may be the earliest example of any RP computer/video game, though those didn't make up a big market portion either) In Europe, it was a completely different story, from everyting I've heards, almost any RPG of any sort prior to FFVII was panned by the Euopean gaming media. (and none of the pre VII FF series or SMRPG had even been released in Europe, although a lot of Sega's RPGs did make it through, albeit to little fan fare -again, I'm not from europe, but from everyone I've talked to, it was extremely unfreindly for RPGs up to FFVII)

 

The genre would be most advantageous in Japan, which Atari had the lest chance of success in, in fact, i suggested that Atari shouldn't have even bothered releasing the jag in Japan. Europe would be the best bet, so focus on US and Europe alone.

 

Snes actually got a lot of steam thanks to jrpgs which genesis was really lacking of ( and Sega started investing money towards the shining series ).

 

Don't forget the Phantasy Star series... a much better comparison, and starting simultaneously with the FF series.

 

I think this was atari biggest fault, they couldn't see where the new market was going , no more old style arcade games , people wanted full fledged experiences . If you were in for arcade games , you had to bring out the new arcade titles , like new fighters and sidescrolling shooters like TH, MS , Sunset Riders and so on ... maybe some shooters

 

Just remakes (and/or compilations) of arcade classics, plus there were the newer Atari Games titles to consider (a separate company owned by Warner, but still a close relationship with Warner holding a good bit of Atari Corp stock and using the CoJag hardware). Primal Rage could have been ported MUCH better... (not that great of a game though) T-Mek was planned, and would have been great, but didn't make it...

 

Otherwise, yeah, don't overly focus on arcade titles, Scrolling shooters are fine IMO, 2D was drepping in general interest though, still "2.5D" (sidecrolling with polygonal models) or 3D/Pseudo3D (scaled sprites) rail shooters might be good, and did well on other consoles, in fact I'd say a Star Fok or Panzer Dragoon type game would have apealed to a larger audience than Cybermrph. (even a more polished Cybermorph or Battlemorph; and as has been mentioned, the restricted perspective of rail shooters facilitates clipping, allowing higher on-screen poly counts and/or framerate)

 

Then , when you ve got the people in , start bringing home more expensive and story based games , like Adventure games and jrpgs. By adventure games i don't only refer to the tried and true Lucas/sierra type graphical adventure games , i refer to Alone in the Dark , Bio Hazard later , Tomb Raider ( which we all laugh about now, but the first outing was actually very very good ) .

 

Ah, well yeah, I think I even brought up Alone in the Dark before (maybe in another thread). out of this world could have been cool too. (maybe updated with 3DO type graphics, although some complained about the art style change) System Shock is another though; lots of other stuff, a lot would be facilitated by hardware improvements as well. (though some, like Myst, or Wing Commander III/IV would still require the CD-ROM drive)

I like the the idea of an X-Wing and/or Tie Fighter, a bit complex though, the types of games that would really require the use of the keypad in its entirety. (probably enhance the graphics, play to the Jag's strengths and leave it untextured, but go 16-bit color over the DOS 256 colors with some really nice gouraud shading, it was pretty grainy/dithered in 256 colors)

Wing commander I and II should be easy, even with the existing Jag (all scaled 2D sprites/objects), a little old for '93/94, but good games.

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Atari should have just had Minter and Rebellion crank out a bunch of kick ass games. Forget all other 3rd parties. Just pay Llamasoft and Rebellion insane amounts of money to crank out kick ass games. There would have been even less Jag games, but atleast they probably would have been awesome. Also throw id software into the mix. Those big 3 alone, if Atari somehow could have cornered them with huge salaries... Well, who knows.

 

I think Checkered Flag sucked because I think Rebellion were fed up with Atari by that point. AvP was a roaring success but I think Rebellion somehow didn't get the credit it deserved for the game. Or not enough money from it. Probably both.

 

Ok, I am forgetting about Rayman. If only Atari had the money to have UBI soft in their pocket, and crank out Rayman 2 and 3 exclusively on the Jag CD.

 

Also if Atari somehow cornered Core and the Tomb Raider franchise. That would have helped immensely.

 

Of course, none of the above is really possible when in the position the Atari company was in. Just not enough money. I think that's why they went after Sega for patent issues. It was a last ditch desperation move to save the Jag, which it may have helped the Jag live a few more months. Atari did get millions from that deal after all. Atari should have just kept suing different companies and using their settlement $ on Jag stuff for us crazy Jag fans. :lol: We could've even gone and robbed some banks for them! :cool: :thumbsup:

Edited by kevincal
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I think Checkered Flag sucked because I think Rebellion were fed up with Atari by that point. AvP was a roaring success but I think Rebellion somehow didn't get the credit it deserved for the game. Or not enough money from it. Probably both.

 

Did AvP come out before Checkered Flag? And they still went on to create Skyhammer?

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I think Checkered Flag sucked because I think Rebellion were fed up with Atari by that point. AvP was a roaring success but I think Rebellion somehow didn't get the credit it deserved for the game. Or not enough money from it. Probably both.

 

Did AvP come out before Checkered Flag? And they still went on to create Skyhammer?

 

Checkered Flag was actually the first game Rebeliion developed for the Jag (first as Checkered Flag 2 and then Redline Racing) but was put on hold to get AVP finished quicker.

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No one has mentioned the need for sports games! They had the licenses from Accolade, why didnt they use them? Brett Hull Hockey would have been the first 3D hockey game ever for a home console (I know the players were sprites, but the rink was in full 3D, and was impressive for 1994-95). The baseball game they were promising should have come out in time for the World Series or at least in time for the start of baseball season, March of 1995.

 

Also, Troy Aikman NFL Football just wasn't going to cut it as the only true football game because there was absolutely no improvement over the Genesis version. It could have had a 3D field (like Brett Hull) or at least a better looking one, the sprites could have looked so much better too, in higher resolution and better color. Also, the game play just seemed jumbled and it was hard to see what was going on. The whole menu interface should have been redesigned altogether.

 

Then it needed a true Basketball game. NBA Jam was nice, but was too late and also not a true representation of NBA basketball like the games on the 16-bit systems. Even an NCAA game would have been better than nothing. The promised golf and tennis games never came around and the soccer games were all let downs too.

 

Atari had the right idea with buying the Accolade sports games, but then did nothing to insure that they were released. If the deal with Sega would have been used, they could have ported all kinds of established games from Sega Sports like the excellent World Series Baseball, NFL Football, NBA Basketball etc.

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Atari should have just had Minter and Rebellion crank out a bunch of kick ass games. Forget all other 3rd parties. Just pay Llamasoft and Rebellion insane amounts of money to crank out kick ass games. There would have been even less Jag games, but atleast they probably would have been awesome. Also throw id software into the mix. Those big 3 alone, if Atari somehow could have cornered them with huge salaries... Well, who knows.

 

I think Checkered Flag sucked because I think Rebellion were fed up with Atari by that point. AvP was a roaring success but I think Rebellion somehow didn't get the credit it deserved for the game. Or not enough money from it. Probably both.

 

Ok, I am forgetting about Rayman. If only Atari had the money to have UBI soft in their pocket, and crank out Rayman 2 and 3 exclusively on the Jag CD.

 

Also if Atari somehow cornered Core and the Tomb Raider franchise. That would have helped immensely.

 

Getting exclusivity deals would have been costly... the advantage they did have was a powerful console out much earlier, only the 3DO and PC platforms of the time are comperable. (and only in some ways, PC games still limited to VGA software rendering -usually 320x200 256 colors)

 

Still, geting interest from such 3rd parties would be great, even if most ended up as multimplatform games, they could have been Jag exclusives for a time (with the earlier release and such), and in any case, expand the library with multiplatform killer apps. (Doom, Quake, Tomb Raider, Ray Man, maybe some of 3DOs titles might get ports as well)

Core already did have some interest in the Jag aparently, they were porting SoulStar from Sega CD, and again, a company like CORE could be great for the Jag given how they pushed the Sega CD's less used features. (another thing pushing more in europe might have helped)

 

id software would obviously be another significant developer in the lineup, with plans to bring a Quake conversion to the system as well. I beleive they'd even written their own compiler for the platform (including one that worked with the RISCs iirc, or at least had shich being developed for use with Quake) Jag Doom looks more impresive than AvP, AVP seems to use a simple, uniform height, rectangular grid layout like Wolfenstein 3D, obviously with textured floor/ceiling, higher res and color sprites/textures (more than Doom as well, which I think uses the PC's 25 color graphics), but the raycasting Doom uses had much more varied environments (walls other than right angles and varying height) plus a higher framerate.

 

 

Of course, having the 020 in there would make thinga a lot more attractive for developers, even with the other quirks and bugs still present. (which could still be minimized by dedicated developers)

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No one has mentioned the need for sports games! They had the licenses from Accolade, why didnt they use them? Brett Hull Hockey would have been the first 3D hockey game ever for a home console (I know the players were sprites, but the rink was in full 3D, and was impressive for 1994-95). The baseball game they were promising should have come out in time for the World Series or at least in time for the start of baseball season, March of 1995.

;)

Umm:

They could have use better sports games though, those tended to be a major factor in the US market (particularly football), one of the Genesis's strong points.

 

Good point about Accolade though. Hmm, maybe Accolade would have been a good developer to get interest from in General, Zero Tolerance is kind of interesting considering the limitations of the Genesis, maybe they (or Technopop rather as they developed it) could have pushed the Jag hardware as well. (actually a very enhanced port of Zero Tolerance, maybe including split-screen multiplayer, might have been a good inclusion for the Jag library)

 

Domark is another developer that comes to mind, and another European one at that.

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A note on Domark, I was thinking more in terms of another interesting developer in general, not in the Sports context, though they did do a number of cool racing games. (including Formula 1 and Kawasaki Super Bike Challenge with a mix of 2D and minimalistic polygon graphics on Amiga/ST/Genesis and Genesis +poorly on SNES in the latter case)

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Also: Does anyone know why Flare chose to impliment the hard-coded 6-cycle access delay on Jerry? The write bugs are obviously from being rushed, the 16-bit data path is due to the 68000, but what's the reason for the 6-cycle delay?

 

The 68k is why. The 020 would have improved this to a 3 cycle delay if I am not mistaken.

 

As far as games needed.....at launch they should have had the classic updates ready.

 

 

Asteroids 3D

Major Havoc 3D

Missile command 3D

Battlezone 3D( not bloody Hoverstrike(which could have been a great sequel))

Combat Multiplayer 3D(with a fixed uart)

Centipede 3D(not that awful mess Atari released after the Jag...to much and it took away the simple charm)

 

A multi cart with the following:

Circus Atari 3D.

Breakout 3D(not 2000 which I was kinda of disappointed by.)

Pong 3D

Air sea Battle 3D

 

And a few licenses like

PacMan 3D

Sinistar 3D

Robotron 3D

Berzerk 3D

Joust 3D

 

All very simple games.

This would have attracted a lot more people who remembered Atari for their old classic games that made them famous. So much for legacy. RPG, JRPG or what have you could have come later.

Edited by Gorf
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Also: Does anyone know why Flare chose to impliment the hard-coded 6-cycle access delay on Jerry? The write bugs are obviously from being rushed, the 16-bit data path is due to the 68000, but what's the reason for the 6-cycle delay?

 

The 68k is why. The 020 would have improved this to a 3 cycle delay if I am not mistaken.

 

As far as games needed.....at launch they should have had the classic updates ready.

 

 

Asteroids 3D

Major Havoc 3D

Missile command 3D

Battlezone 3D( not bloody Hoverstrike(which could have been a great sequel))

Combat Multiplayer 3D(with a fixed uart)

Centipede 3D(not that awful mess Atari released after the Jag...to much and it took away the simple charm)

 

A multi cart with the following:

Circus Atari 3D.

Breakout 3D(not 2000 which I was kinda of disappointed by.)

Pong 3D

Air sea Battle 3D

 

And a few licenses like

PacMan 3D

Sinistar 3D

Robotron 3D

Berzerk 3D

Joust 3D

 

All very simple games.

This would have attracted a lot more people who remembered Atari for their old classic games that made them famous. So much for legacy. RPG, JRPG or what have you could have come later.

 

Gorf - I agree 100% - however, it seemed to take Atari forever to get anything out! I remember waiting forever for Club Drive and Checkered Flag only to get the 90% completed ports they offered. After T2k it seemed to take a long time for D2K to see the lite of day. If they had 3 more Minter's on the team I could see a fwe more solid titles at launch but Atari didnt have those :(

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Gorf - I agree 100% - however, it seemed to take Atari forever to get anything out! I remember waiting forever for Club Drive and Checkered Flag only to get the 90% completed ports they offered. After T2k it seemed to take a long time for D2K to see the lite of day. If they had 3 more Minter's on the team I could see a fwe more solid titles at launch but Atari didnt have those :(

IIRC Minter had written about some of the delays with D2K when he was coding it. It started out being designed for the CD, then cart, then they(Atari) couldn't decide. He also didn't have control over the artwork. He specifically asked for clean, simple, small graphics which didn't overwhelm the screen for the 2000 mode, and we see what got delivered. It's a shame he didn't get to work on Major Havoc 2000. Would have been interesting to see how he would have updated it.

 

Stephen Anderson

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Also: Does anyone know why Flare chose to impliment the hard-coded 6-cycle access delay on Jerry? The write bugs are obviously from being rushed, the 16-bit data path is due to the 68000, but what's the reason for the 6-cycle delay?

 

The 68k is why. The 020 would have improved this to a 3 cycle delay if I am not mistaken.

 

As far as games needed.....at launch they should have had the classic updates ready.

 

Hmm, that's not what it sounds like here:

There's three big bus performance problems in Jerry, but only one is caused by the 68K. Jerry has a 32-bit bus, but with a 68K installed, Jerry must run in 16-bit mode. (This is because Tom sees all bus masters as the same -- so both the 68K and Jerry must use the same bus width.)

 

The next problem is that Jerry's memory pipeline is hard-coded to delay 6 cycles. So with a 68K, Jerry takes 24 cycles to read a 64-bit word. With a 68020, Jerry would use 12 cycles to read a 64-bit word, but that is still much worse than Tom which can read a 64-bit word in 2 cycles.

 

The final problem is that Jerry's memory pipeline has buggy writes, so writing a 16-bit word takes not 6 cycles, but 12.

 

They may have intended Jerry to work primarily as an audio synthesizer (i.e., all computation, little memory access). It's pretty hard to use it for much else due to its slow memory interface.

 

So in other words it is the memory interface between the core and the external system that is hard coded for delay which is pretty

awful actually. Since we are fantasizng, make the Jerry just like Tom except now Jerry would be simply a Tom with sound and I/O

hardware instead of gfx/vid hardware. A 64 bit 2 cycle external capable Jerry would allow for reading in 4 channels of 16 bit audio

in 2 cycles. Also you can do 8 channels 8 bit audio as well. In fact I say have the I/O bus a completely seperate 8 bit bus altogether.

A sound system and I/O block is probably a lot less silicon than a Blitter OPL and video system, so you can probably still maintain the

8k local.

 

Now you have an undisputable 64 bit system really operating at full bore 64 bits most of the time. I still maintain the 020 would have

been the best overall choice even with the chips as they are. Just the fact that the 020 would actually be able to do work and stay off

the bus most of the time would be a big plus. When it did hit the bus it would be at twice the data width and clock, with a great deal of

already in place tool support, unlike it's J-RISC counter parts.

 

 

 

Asteroids 3D

Major Havoc 3D

Missile command 3D

Battlezone 3D( not bloody Hoverstrike(which could have been a great sequel))

Combat Multiplayer 3D(with a fixed uart)

Centipede 3D(not that awful mess Atari released after the Jag...to much and it took away the simple charm)

 

A multi cart with the following:

Circus Atari 3D.

Breakout 3D(not 2000 which I was kinda of disappointed by.)

Pong 3D

Air sea Battle 3D

 

And a few licenses like

PacMan 3D

Sinistar 3D

Robotron 3D

Berzerk 3D

Joust 3D

 

All very simple games.

This would have attracted a lot more people who remembered Atari for their old classic games that made them famous. So much for legacy. RPG, JRPG or what have you could have come later.

 

I wouldn't say having all those at launch would be necessary, a good mix of classic remakes/sequels and ports/unique games as well, and still have more classics coming after launch as well. (like Wolf3D, Doom, AvP, impreoved Checkered Flag, more polished cybermorph -though that could have been shifted to a 3D classic remake instead)

Space Invaders 3D could have been OK too. (which did happen on N64/PSX/PC)

 

Robotron 3D would have been awsome if it was anything like Robotron 64. (NOT that PSX crap...)

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The 68k is why. The 020 would have improved this to a 3 cycle delay if I am not mistaken.

 

Hmm, that's not what it sounds like here:

 

 

You must not being doing the math......

 

hmmm... if a jerry needs 24 cycles with a 68k, and only 12 with an 020, I think It sound exactly like what I said.

 

Since the Jerry is a 16 bit processor to the bus is needs 6 cycles per word. With an 020 that means it's a 32 bit to the bus which means 3 cycles....so what is the problem?

Edited by Gorf
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I wouldn't say having all those at launch would be necessary

 

No it wouldhave been at very least helpful.

 

a good mix of classic remakes/sequels and ports/unique games as well, and still have more classics coming after launch as well.

 

 

Ports? Did they not cause enough jag bashing?

 

(like Wolf3D, Doom, AvP, impreoved Checkered Flag, more polished cybermorph -though that could have been shifted to a 3D

 

These would have been the later titles. Not launch titles. The list I gave you would have been simple and easy to allow at launch, even with the Jaguar in its current state.

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100% agree

 

These would have been allowable even with the current system and tools...

 

however, it seemed to take Atari forever to get anything out!

 

Not with the current tools....

 

I remember waiting forever for Club Drive and Checkered Flag only to get the 90% completed ports they offered.

 

 

again tools....

 

After T2k it seemed to take a long time for D2K to see the lite of day. If they had 3 more Minter's on the team I could see a fwe more solid titles at launch but Atari didnt have those :(

 

One last time...tools.

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I wouldn't say having all those at launch would be necessary

 

No it wouldhave been at very least helpful.

 

Yeah, in fact, after mulling it over a bit more, I don't see much wrong with Atari (for Atari published 1st party titles) focusing on those types of games in general, plenty for 3rd parties to go after. But a more vaiired lineup would be preferable, 3d updated arcade classics are awsome, but I think at least a couple alternate genres should be present, like one or 2 good sports games (again, I'm don't care for most -unless you include racing games, but it's a significant selling point) and maybe some kind puzzel game. (not dino dudes... and if it was a port, definitle do a color upgrade at very least)

 

A rail shooter would have been nice; hmm maybe a 3D update to Galaga/Galaxian would fit there.

 

a good mix of classic remakes/sequels and ports/unique games as well, and still have more classics coming after launch as well.

 

 

Ports? Did they not cause enough jag bashing?

 

I meant recent ports like Wolf 3D, sure Doom and AVP could come later, but I think Wolf3D would be a reasonable launch title, it was more than a year old when the Jag pre-launched. Even older (late 80s early 90s) arcade ports could have worked if they were the more attractive ones (like Sega's supercaler boards, games like Thunder Blade, Galaxy Force, or to a lesser extent, AfterBurner), 2D fighters would be OK (again, so long as they looked and sounded better than contemporaries), at least some kind of Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat (especially II) ports should be there at some point. (again, more of this could be left for 3rd parties)

 

And other games like Raiden would have been OK to have too, preferably with color upgrade or a close to arcade quality as possible. (even Playstation had a nice chunk of such games, including Raiden, not huge sellers though, but probably a bit more significant in the ~1994 timeframe than '95/96 when 3D really exploded)

Edited by kool kitty89
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You must not being doing the math......

 

hmmm... if a jerry needs 24 cycles with a 68k, and only 12 with an 020, I think It sound exactly like what I said.

 

Since the Jerry is a 16 bit processor to the bus is needs 6 cycles per word. With an 020 that means it's a 32 bit to the bus which means 3 cycles....so what is the problem?

 

I understood that it cut the delay down (or increases the bus-width rather -doubling data read per cycle), it's the 6=>3 cycle per word comment that confused me.

 

Looking at Kskunk's comment again:

The next problem is that Jerry's memory pipeline is hard-coded to delay 6 cycles. So with a 68K, Jerry takes 24 cycles to read a 64-bit word. With a 68020, Jerry would use 12 cycles to read a 64-bit word, but that is still much worse than Tom which can read a 64-bit word in 2 cycles.

 

So with the 020, 12-cycles to read 64-bits opposed to 24 cycles with the 68k, which would be 6-cycles per 32-bit read. (the width of the bus with the 020 installed)

But that's still 6x as many cycles as Tom (GPU) takes to read that (2 cycles to read 64-bits, and I'd assume 1 cycle for a 32-bit read), so what the delay difference with the DSP compared to GPU?

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You must not being doing the math......

 

hmmm... if a jerry needs 24 cycles with a 68k, and only 12 with an 020, I think It sound exactly like what I said.

 

Since the Jerry is a 16 bit processor to the bus is needs 6 cycles per word. With an 020 that means it's a 32 bit to the bus which means 3 cycles....so what is the problem?

 

I understood that it cut the delay down (or increases the bus-width rather -doubling data read per cycle), it's the 6=>3 cycle per word comment that confused me.

 

Looking at Kskunk's comment again:

The next problem is that Jerry's memory pipeline is hard-coded to delay 6 cycles. So with a 68K, Jerry takes 24 cycles to read a 64-bit word. With a 68020, Jerry would use 12 cycles to read a 64-bit word, but that is still much worse than Tom which can read a 64-bit word in 2 cycles.

 

So with the 020, 12-cycles to read 64-bits opposed to 24 cycles with the 68k, which would be 6-cycles per 32-bit read. (the width of the bus with the 020 installed)

But that's still 6x as many cycles as Tom (GPU) takes to read that (2 cycles to read 64-bits, and I'd assume 1 cycle for a 32-bit read), so what the delay difference with the DSP compared to GPU?

 

And your point is? The fact remains the 020 would have allowed the Jerry to read it in half the time. Also

they would have not hard coded the DSP to accomodate a 68k but instead an 020...in fact if this is what

was the case the delay might have been shorter....providing they hard coded it for an 020.

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