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Atari 16/32-bit Panther articles - EGM - Game Players - GamePro


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In order to compete, Atari would have to have eye-popping, well known games such as Stun Runner, Hydra and Race Drivin' from their coin-op stables. YEP! sigh

 

Well, to be fair, those games did all make it to the Lynx...

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  • 1 year later...

I have two memories from this time period that I can not find any support to confirm.

 

  1. Magazine article, perhaps "Quarterman" saying that the upcoming Jaguar had a lobotomy. Some threat or action to reduced the amount of RAM.
  2. Upcoming Atari console may make use of VHS tapes for storage.

 

Does anyone remember this?

Edited by scrummy
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I always thought it was a mistake for Atari not to have a quicker successor to the 7800. They definitely did themselves no favors by waiting until the Jaguar was ready. With that said, the Panther probably would have been too late as well, but with a quicker time-to-market, they may have fared better (and been able to release the Jaguar a bit later).

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I think if Atari given themselves at least another 2 years or a year and a half or so to work out the bugs on the Jaguar, they could've beat the PlayStation 1 by a year with a better Jaguar system... All wishful thinking at the end of the day; could go on and on about something like that. Despite the hardware flaws, I think the system was very impressive for its time considering the hardware it had. It was like a mini graphic workstation of a very different type to what was already out there with it's own unique 3D capabilities. The PC and gaming world was just moving at a pace Atari couldn't keep up between 93 to 95.

 

Also I like the way the 7800 graphic chip works... It could've given the NES a run or its money; at least they made provisions to allow for a Pokey to be added to the game cartridge versus being stuck with 2600 sound chip. Still waiting on that XM module to be released, but that's for another topic.

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Yes, none at all was pretty unique :)

 

Club Drive begs to differ!

 

What about Zero 5, Doom, Fallen Angle, Battlesphere, Checkered Flag (Modular style 3D despite choppy framerate), Battlemorph, Tube SE, Skyhammer with texture mapping...? Sometimes it's best to look past the fault and see the glass half full instead of half empty.

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What about Zero 5, Doom, Fallen Angle, Battlesphere, Checkered Flag (Modular style 3D despite choppy framerate), Battlemorph, Tube SE, Skyhammer with texture mapping...? Sometimes it's best to look past the fault and see the glass half full instead of half empty.

I don't think any of them was announced for the Panther ....

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What about Zero 5, Doom, Fallen Angle, Battlesphere, Checkered Flag (Modular style 3D despite choppy framerate), Battlemorph, Tube SE, Skyhammer with texture mapping...? Sometimes it's best to look past the fault and see the glass half full instead of half empty.

 

All software rendered. Sometimes it's better to have facts on your side and not talk nonsense.

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All software rendered. Sometimes it's better to have facts on your side and not talk nonsense.

 

What's so nonsensical about my quote...? We all know the history; the Panther wind up becoming the Jaguar, but I guess I did take it a little off topic here bringing the Jaguar up. Next time I'll do better keep things in to context.

 

I don't think any of them was announced for the Panther ....

 

Glass half empty...

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It was like a mini graphic workstation of a very different type to what was already out there with it's own unique 3D capabilities.

 

 

What's so nonsensical about my quote...?

 

I do admit that the technical manuals probably have less of a narrative (but, lets be honest here, they do contain pure fiction in places!) as some of your walls of text, but they do actually contain some useful information you might like to digest before making up facts :D

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I do admit that the technical manuals probably have less of a narrative (but, lets be honest here, they do contain pure fiction in places!) as some of your walls of text, but they do actually contain some useful information you might like to digest before making up facts :D

 

It's not really made up... The N64 and PS1 is based on MIPS technology that was already a well established 3D tech being used in multiple industries SGI computer graphic workstations; all Sony and Nintendo had to do was use what was already established as far as what was graphically possible and it cost in the thousands outside of the average consumer... I know it's a little off topic but bare with me... Although Atari had Star Wars, I-Robot, and other vector based games, it wasn't on the level of what the workstations were doing. They almost had a good 3D arcade system with "The Last Starfighter and Air Race" using the early TMS Processor but the machines were too expensive to release, but would later lead up to games like "StunRunner and Hard Drivin" that made good use of gouraud shading when the DSPs became affordable to buy, but still not on the level of a graphics workstation at least not in the way they used it. The 3DO had great 3D graphics probably using hard floats to pull it off, but cost an arm and a leg thus was abandoned... The Jaguar, on the other hand, offered or had the potential to offer an alternative, something more tangible for 3D graphic in gaming that was very unique for its time even though the system, with all of its potential, was a bit of a lemon when they rushed it into market in beta form basically releasing an unfinished system to the masses and not the classes (get it). Not so much the Jaguar versus the SGI, but the way in which it was made internal and released in the market well before a decent 3D card was released in the PC market in 94. Technically for an ST owner, using the ST as a terminal for the Jaguar would've made available extra graphical extensions/capabilities that would've cost the average PC owner a whole lot more than what the Jaguar cost. That's what I mean by unique; of course I don't expect mind readers to know that so there you have it; that's me seeing the glass half full and like I said earlier, I can go on and on about that.

 

Was that enough "wall of text" for you...?

 

 

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It's not really made up... The N64 and PS1 is based on MIPS technology that was already a well established 3D tech being used in multiple industries SGI computer graphic workstations;

 

It is really made up.. Those are CPUs. They don't magically give 3D hardware acceleration. You are confusing a really nice software render with actual hardware acceleration. All the technobable and WoTs in the world won't make you suddenly less wrong.

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It is really made up.. Those are CPUs. They don't magically give 3D hardware acceleration. You are confusing a really nice software render with actual hardware acceleration. All the technobable and WoTs in the world won't make you suddenly less wrong.

 

I made distinctions between the two when I quoted that the hardware was already in the graphic workstation industry... Not made up and not all technobable. I stand by what I posted. It's not hard to have a basic understanding things of that nature without all of the technicalities so no technobable what-so-ever.

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As CJ said, MIPS is a processor architecture, NOT a 3D architecture. Yeah SGI used MIPS CPUs and also made graphics workstations.. Just like Apple made computers that did 3D based on 68K series, or PowerPC, and desktop PCs that do 3D use x86 architecture.. a CPU can do 3D, it is just maths after-all, it doesn't make it 3D hardware.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIPS_architecture

 

If you look a bit further than "SGI did 3D Graphics using MIPS" you can see they used other technology to improve the process : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Graphics at the top of that article it mentions they used a "Geometry Engine" which was in fact a hardware device to process 3D geometries.. so you can accurately say that that was a 3D processor, it has nothing to do with MIPS.

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We all know the history; the Panther wind up becoming the Jaguar

Nope. The Panther and the Jaguar were two separate projects run in parallel, and pretty different from each other. And the Panther was cancelled when the Jaguar development was progressing faster than expected.

 

Yes, none at all was pretty unique :)

You're being harsh. The Jaguar has a pretty unique 3D hardware. It's the only one I know that can do Gouraud shading and Z-buffering, but can't draw a simple triangle. Edited by Zerosquare
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Nope. The Panther and the Jaguar were two separate projects run in parallel, and pretty different from each other. And the Panther was cancelled when the Jaguar development was progressing faster than expected.

 

You're being harsh. The Jaguar has a pretty unique 3D hardware. It's the only one I know that can do Gouraud shading and Z-buffering, but can't draw a simple triangle.

 

There are different versions Jag and Panther story floating around. But from technical point of view, Panther's Object Processor is very similar to Jaguar's one

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