Earthworm Jim on Jaguar:question was asked, answer was given :-)

[+madman]

let us see the SAGE CD does have some nice one like, Fatal Fury Special and Samurai Shodown.

I don't know anything about the Sega/Mega CD version of FFS, but I will agree the Samurai Shodown on Sega CD is improved over the Genesis version.

[sd32]

I don't know anything about the Sega/Mega CD version of FFS, but I will agree the Samurai Shodown on Sega CD is improved over the Genesis version.

 

Fatal Fury Special on Sega CD has bigger characters and more detailed backgrounds than the Genesis Fatal Fury 2. So it looks better in screenshots, but the CD game has less animation on both characters and backgrounds, backgrounds dont change between rounds, and is missing more sound samples. Music is straight from the arcade, another plus, although the Genesis rendition of the tracks is pretty nice. The Genesis version has better controls, and is easier to pull off special moves, easier than in the arcade itself. Both ports gameplay is broken if you want arcade perfect gameplay. Some say Genesis plays better than the arcade, it certanly plays better than the Sega CD. In this case, i will go with the Genesis version. And of course, we are comparing Fatal Fury 2 on Genesis, againts Fatal Fury "Special" on Sega CD. Although the Genesis game lets you play with the bosses too, like in Special, but is missing Ryo Sakazki.

 

As for Samurai Shodown, again, Sega CD version has a little bigger characters. These time, character animation is more comparable, small edge for Sega CD. But on Sega CD backgrounds arent interactive, and the judge Kuroko sprite is missing, so a nice part of SS gameplay is gone. Sega CD version runs better, though, with less slowdown.Voices are better on Genesis, but music is of course better on Sega CD, although Genesis music is pretty good. This comparison is pretty close overall...

 

So the CD format in both cases allowed for closer assets to the arcade, but RAM issues seemed to be the problem with Funcoms Sega CD ports. On Genesis you got tthe faster ROM format, but lacked the massive storage of the CD to keep the assets closer to the arcade. Personally i give the edge to FF2 on cart, and... a tie for Samurai Spirits.

 

Just my 2 cents, keep in mind i havent played the Sega CD ports in a while, since one of my consoles CD mechanism gears broke down .

[NeoGeoNinja]

This is the Jaguar.

 

Where people who do are disbelieved.

 

Where people who claim they can, don't.

 

Where people who can't are experts.

 

The Official Jaguar Mantra of the modern era.

 

*** Sig'd ***

[Lynxpro]

RG won awards and everyfing, Edge is like as it says The Industry Bible, again award winner, these publications use only the finest Freelancers, next you'll be implying they have people write historical articles based on hardware they never owned at the time in the UK, use youtube as a research tool, airbrush screenshots, get people to write flame-bait articles on a popular at the time UK Football game and wait for it all to 'kick-off'....

 

 

These tin foil hats of mine don't make themselves, don't you know.

 

There've been 'Official' and everyfing magazine articles, written by like, proper jurnolists in the Retro community based on claims of people they spoke to, no, honestly they did and if you dare Tweet them to confirm that? you iz a very nasty man...

 

 

Dear BBC, i wish to complain about your lack of Atari Jaguar coverage...EVER...

 

 

Nurse, the screens!!!!!

 

:-)

 

But then again as a 'great' man once said, i'm not right in the head, everything i write is utter nonsense....

 

I'm still laughing over Jeff Minter via Twitter crushing that "Ultra Star Raiders for the Lynx" myth peddled by everyones' favo(u)rite Liar'ed. Tee hee hee.

Edited November 10, 2015 by Lynxpro

[Lynxpro]

Bill pretty much nails it, Quake running as it is on the Falcon is a bloody impressive tech demo and i'm in awe at what the coder has pulled off, but it's really up there with Dactyl Joust running on video on Jaguar, it's (as i understand it) missing the essential real game building blocks, such as A.I, solid frame rate etc.These hopefully will come, but if it requires 14 Meg on the Falcon, WTF is Quake going to require on Jaguar which is what, a 2Mb machine if memory serves?

 

It was the lack of Ram that people like Peter Moly.seemed to point to regarding possible PC conversions, period, let alone things like Quake or Magic Carpet....

 

 

Dreamcast Half Life looked great in still shots, but it was constantly seeing the game 'flow' being hit as it pulled more data off the disc,i played through it (and Blue Shift) once, but never again...sure it needed further optimising, but your still facing the memory issues of PC Vs Console.

 

It also helps that the Falcon has a Motorola 56K DSP inside of it which is doing all of the heavy lifting for running those WIP ports to the Falcon [not to mention a 68030 instead of a 68000]. The coder isn't even using an optional Motorola FPU [68882, for example] which if I recall would've been crucial to running those games on the Macs of that era. Actually, I seem to remember Macs of that era using 68040s to run those ports [and the 68040 had a 68882 built in]. The coder said using the 68882 wouldn't be as fast as using the 56K.

 

So, yeah, the Falcon has a better CPU - not counting the Jaguar's specialized chips - in addition to far more RAM and a better DSP. Unfortunately, it doesn't have better video graphics capabilities than the Jaguar.

 

I sense I'm about to score a KLAX myself.

[Lynxpro]

 

I 'spoke' to Romero and Taylor, we know their thoughts on Jaguar just handling Doom let alone Quake, Mike Fulton threw in his personal viewpoint etc etc.

 

So even if Carmack had attempted a very scaled down conversion, i'm of the thinking it's not something i'd of wanted to buy, nor would it of done the platform any favours, just showcased just how quickly technology had moved on by time Quake hit.

 

Mike Fulton. He is very active on Atari Museum on Facebook. I'll never forget what he said to me prior to the Jaguar's release when him and other Atari employees were demoing Road Riot 4WD and Steel Talons on an Atari Falcon at our local Atari show. Many of us had never seen the ST Game Pad controllers on this side of the Atlantic but EGM had described the upcoming Jaguar controllers as resembling a Cylon Raider so I filled out the obvious dots on my own. I go up to play the games and I say "so this is going to be the Jaguar controller, right?" I look at the 3 fire buttons and say "it really needs 6 fire buttons". He looks at me and says after a look of disbelief "the controller already has more than enough buttons!" Mind you, this was during the Street Fighter 2 craze.

 

I do like the standard Jaguar controllers but the majority of its fans and owners in hindsight would agree with my 16 year old self's opinion as a gamer that what became the Jaguar's Pro Controller should've been the standard controller from the start. Of course, blowing the licensing agreement with Atari Games/Tengen that had worked so well for the Lynx's game library was a colossal mistake.

 

 

I don't know about you guys but I would've much preferred Duke Nukem 3D on the Jaguar back then instead of wasting potential resources on Quake. The recent news of that Brazilian Duke 3D release for the Genesis/Mega Drive has me again wishing for a Jaguar port. Aside from Trent Reznor's work on Quake, I much prefer Quake 2 to it by leaps and bounds.

[Lynxpro]

Great. I look forward to seeing your port of Fatal Fury on the Jaguar. After all, it's no problem, right?

 

The fact that you think the Jag CD would make a difference shows me you have no clue what you're talking about. The Neo Geo CD had 7MB of RAM and still had painful loading times and animation frames cut. But according to you the Jag CD with its slightly less than 2MB of RAM would be no problem. JAG POWAH!!!

 

I'm not disagreeing but Samurai Shodown did turn out well on the [curses!] 3DO.

[sd32]

 

I'm not disagreeing but Samurai Shodown did turn out well on the [curses!] 3DO.

Yeah, quiet better than the 16 bit ports, but it runs very choppy. Maybe if they had ditched the full screen zooming effect, it would have run smoother on 3DO?

[+madman]

Yeah, quiet better than the 16 bit ports, but it runs very choppy. Maybe if they had ditched the full screen zooming effect, it would have run smoother on 3DO?

I'm not sure that would've mattered as the 3DO had support for hardware scaling, but who knows if there were some other limitations in play? The Neo Geo wasn't necessarily the most powerful console in the world, but it was well designed for its intended purpose which made ports on even more "powerful" systems difficult. Of course limited RAM on optical systems didn't help the case either.

[sd32]

I'm not sure that would've mattered as the 3DO had support for hardware scaling, but who knows if there were some other limitations in play? The Neo Geo wasn't necessarily the most powerful console in the world, but it was well designed for its intended purpose which made ports on even more "powerful" systems difficult. Of course limited RAM on optical systems didn't help the case either.

If i remember correctly, the FM Towns version of Samurai Shodown, allowed to turn the scaling off, and the game ran smoother. But of course, the Towns didnt have hardware support for scaling, and as you mention, the 3DO did have it...so you might be right.

 

On the other hand, every fighting game on 3DO that features scaling run at a low framerate. Samurai Shodown, Way of the Warrior, Shadow, Salior Moon, the only other SNK MVS game released on 3DO, The Eye of the Typhoon, etc. While game that dont scale, like Super Street Fighter 2X and Primal Rage, run pretty smoothly. Primal Rage even features parallax on the backgrounds, something not very common on 3DO.