What Atari Jaguar games should have come out on other consoles

[+LS650]

A resume lists the work one did in a job role, not necessarily the particular projects that were successful.

[doctorclu]

Well, Jag Bubsy and AVP are indeed an exclusives. I would have loved a faster and smoother AVP on Playstation or Saturn. Bubsy in the other hand, is a lost cause, the Jag can keep it .

 

Would love to see Jag Bubsy ported to the Genesis or Steam.

[sd32]

 

Would love to see Jag Bubsy ported to the Genesis or Steam.

A 64-bit game ported to the 16-bit Sega Genesis?... you sure thats posible? I mean... there is a reason why bit-classes exist man.

Edited March 6, 2018 by sd32

[Lost Dragon]

Not sure if people are aware..but Rebellion moved Jaguar Legions Of The Undead away from being a Jaguar only title, Jason Kingsley describing it as "cheating" and said he thought people would appreciate a good game on any format.

 

Quote from Jason:

 

"It's (Legions) been totally rewritten, and as well as the Jaguar version, we'll be writing the game for Playstation and PC".

 

ALL 3 versions were planned for release around same time.

 

I've forwarded the press scan, which has the quote and yet more monster models from the game, onto Unseen64 and Atarimania.

 

But it looks like the Jaguar had lost yer another exclusive.

[VladR]

So how exactly were they planning on coding 3 platforms ? How many engineers did they employ back then ? Given the vast architectural differences between PC/PS1/Jag, you really need 3 different teams or just create assets for the slowest one and reuse on faster platforms...

[Lost Dragon]

The article opens by saying Rebellion had just won a potentially lucrative contract to develop on the Sega Saturn and talks of possible Hollywood deals..

 

So i would assume Rebellion were in the process of expanding at this point?

 

 

By the time of PC AVP..they were putting out titles on MAC, PC, PS1, GBC and GBA .

 

And when they talked of cancelled Saturn version of AVP, it was stated game was initally designed with lowest end hardware in mind..so Saturn, then PS1, Then PC.

 

:-) Don't ask me about how..all i know is they told the press it had been rewritten and was no longer a Jaguar exclusive.

Edited March 22, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[VladR]

5 platforms ? That's mighty impressive! Granted, GBA&similar probably had only 1 coder and 1 artist (depending on scope, of course), but somebody had to still manage all those pesky coders

 

I'm aware of the success following AVP on PC, but what exactly was the source of such success in the pre-AVP era ?

[Lost Dragon]

To be honest..I have often wondered just how Rebellion went from humble beginnings...

 

This being their 1st title:

 

 

Self-funded and self-published..sequel proposed...but they admit it wasn't very successful at retail.

 

To a developer big enough to buy the 2000AD comics.

 

Jason Kingsley OBE had worked on likes of Hunt For Red October (Argus), Blade Warrior (Imageworks), Murder (US Gold) etc, so wasn't an unknown.

 

But pre-PC AVP saw Rebellion producing a demo for Atari UK..Some Dragon 3D demo.

 

That got them the Jaguar gig, but i doubt Chequered Flag did them any favours, Skyhammer never saw a commercial release..legions never finished on any format and as great as AVP was, Jaguar user base far too small to generate huge revenue.

 

 

Some UK Press..cough..C+VG...found Skyhammer to be a visual step back for Rebellion, saying Jaguar AVP looked much better and describing Skyhammer's visuals of those befitting a weak Sega 32X title.

 

So, i honestly couldn't tell you how much their 3D work impressed potential clients.

[Lost Dragon]

@ValdR:I forgot to add..Rebellion had made clear when AVP was in early stages of development on Jaguar, they would be doing PC development at some point, rather than staying Jaguar exclusive.

 

And it's taken me until now to discover just what changes Atari made to Jaguar Hardware after ATD bug tested it and asked for changes to be made in some areas.

 

An aspect ATD often referenced, but never explained exactly what was done.

 

It appears ATD asked for implementing detail shading on objects (as you moved closer to them and further away from them), easier on the hardware and Atari made it happen.

 

Apparently AVP uses this hardware feature to good effect?

[VladR]

To be honest..I have often wondered just how Rebellion went from humble beginnings...

 

This being their 1st title:

 

 

Self-funded and self-published..sequel proposed...but they admit it wasn't very successful at retail.

The balls on these guys This does command a lot of respect, for sure!

 

 

That got them the Jaguar gig, but i doubt Chequered Flag did them any favours, Skyhammer never saw a commercial release..legions never finished on any format and as great as AVP was, Jaguar user base far too small to generate huge revenue.

I'm pretty sure that by the time they were done with Checkered Flag, it was at that time obvious, that jag was a commercial fiasco, so there was no reason for them to invest heavily in optimization and just burn through the money - and for what exactly ?

Besides, they clearly proved they're top tier material with the PC's AVP, when they're not hampered by grossly inadequate HW technology.

 

 

And it's taken me until now to discover just what changes Atari made to Jaguar Hardware after ATD bug tested it and asked for changes to be made in some areas.

 

An aspect ATD often referenced, but never explained exactly what was done.

 

It appears ATD asked for implementing detail shading on objects (as you moved closer to them and further away from them), easier on the hardware and Atari made it happen.

 

Apparently AVP uses this hardware feature to good effect?

Interesting! I read something about that, so Atari went back to Flare to incorporate changes ?

 

You know, given the whole clusterf*ck surrounding Atari, I wouldn't be surprised if this was the reason they removed that Blitter list feature.

 

Given what we know about how things were happening, I wouldn't be surprised if they pressed on Flare, even if they were adamant that such change takes more effort...

[Lost Dragon]

@ValdR:Yeah, it always bugged me that in the early days, when ATD were being interviewed, they talked of the work they did for Atari, debugging the Jaguar Hardware and as a result of feedback they gave, Atari made (subtle? ) changes to it....

 

But no one ever asked exactly what had been changed, why and what effect it had on the games we saw...

 

It was nice to finally stumble across an answer

 

But as always..there remain countless questions that still remain.

 

Still, 1 puzzle piece at a time.

[Lost Dragon]

Here you go ValdR:

 

Best i could find was ATD's Fred Gill saying Atari gave them 12 weeks to test,debug and start getting to grips with the Jaguar hardware.

 

Fred talked of there being a couple of unused bits here and there in the Blitter chip and ATD asked them if they could include a mode where,when Texture-Mapping,you could add a constant value to the pixels, for the depth shading you see used in AVP..that's brought up in 2 interviews they did at the time.

 

I wanted a second source as press often falsely quotes people..

 

The only other thing said Was that Atari asked ATD if they had any instructions they wanted to put into the processors and they thought of a couple.

 

 

No mention of what type,on what processors or if Atari pit them in though..sorry..

 

:'(

[swapd0]

I the AvP sources there are some ideas for the Jaguar, one of them was to use the DWIDTH field in the OP like a signed value to draw the sprites upside down... sadly never implemented.

[82-T/A]

I see a lot of " Could Atari Jaguar do this " or " would this game have run on Jaguar " and " what would have happened if this released on Jaguar "

 

But what about the reverse.

 

Its all speculation and wishful thinking and I get some people don't like it, but after the Jag bombed, what games do you think would have been good games to port to PS1, Saturn, and N64.

 

When 3DO struggled, the likes of Return fire, and need for speed made the move abd did well, and need for speed become a huge franchise.

 

do you think there were Any Atari Jag games that had the potential to do this.

 

I know Rayman was originally going to be a Jaguar exclusive and it then hit PS as well and has become a big franchise, any others?

 

 

Maybe, if I had to guess... I'd say games like HoverStrike (CD version). I don't know about you guys... but probably one of my favorite Jaguar games. The CD version plays so much better, but if you get into it... it's a pretty decent game.

[pacman000]

I'm fairly sure most Jag games would've been ported to different systems if Sam Tramiel hadn't had a heart attack & Jack Tramiel hadn't sold the company.

 

Sam Tramiel sounded like he wanted to continue, Atari had just started a division to publish games on other systems, & after 1995 there wouldn't have been much of a choice.

[Lost Dragon]

Atari UK had a software arm, ARC, which allowed them to publish games on the ST and Amiga during that period to bring in revenue.

 

Some of the titles rumoured for 7800 release, 1 had started out as a 7800 exclusive. .Chronicles Of Omega being Chronicles Of Cute on 7800.

 

So it made commercial sense to publish cross platform.

 

http://www.atarimania.com/list_games_atari-st-arc_publisher_1737_S_G.html

[Lost Dragon]

Stumbled across a PC review of Flip Out..55%.UK reviewer saying the problem with it, was not so much it was a bad game, it just was not particularly good.

 

A good puzzle game in his eyes, should become as addictive as Crack Cocaine, this was more like Krackawheat.

 

Looking at some of the suggestions on here, it does make me wonder how Jaguar exclusives might of fared on platforms with a much wider range of quality titles to choose from.

[atarian63]

While not technically an exclusive (it was also on Amiga and MS-DOS), Zool 2 could have been on other platforms. The first Zool was on SNES I think. Why not a Zool 2 on N64?

and Atari ST

[Lost Dragon]

You'd be hard pressed to find something the original Zool did not appear on:

 

Amiga,CD32,Acorn A3000,ST,Gameboy, Game Gear,Genesis,Master System and SNES.

 

Even an arcade cabinet :

 

https://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=10541

 

And planned Commodore 64 version.

[Lost Dragon]

Wow.

 

A well known UK writer/columnist,Paul Rose,aka Digitiser's Mr Biffo, who had a column in Edge and RetroGamer Magazine, reviewed Iron Soldier III for the UK Official Playstation magazine at the time.

 

Awarded it a mere 3/10...

 

Said it could only be recommended for it's cutscenes...

 

From said review:

 

"...you may be wondering what happened to the previous Iron Soldier games.They were released for the Atari Jaguar and,even by that format's pityfully low standards, they were utterly awful."

 

 

I honestly cannot think i have seen such an ignorant appraisal since the work of the Rev Stu Campbell in Edge and RetroGamer Magazine.

 

I thought i would bring it up as it's an example of perhaps just how other Jaguar titles would of been sneered at by the UK press.

Edited April 6, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[Flojomojo]

https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/iron-soldier-3-review/1900-2592786/

 

4.3 out of 10 "Poor"

 

If your dream is to beat up walls with gigantic, iron fists while spraying military vehicles with fake-looking gunfire (from a first-person perspective), then perhaps Iron Soldier 3 will be right up your alley. But given the rather shallow experience it offers, you're better off going with any of the numerous other mech games available.

 

I don't think it was "sneered at" because the prior 2 games were on Jaguar, I think it got bad reviews because it was a bad game, especially by year 2000 standards. Grade inflation for mediocre games was a lot more common on the game-hungry Jaguar than on the Playstation, which had a lot more software from which to choose.

[Lost Dragon]

PSM scored it lower 20/100

 

But IGN gave it 68/100

 

Now Gamer 70/100.

 

I have no issue with Paul judging it by that era PS1 standards,other PS1 MECH titles or indeed the NUON version.

 

But to put the boot into the 2 previous releases and the Jaguar itself is sadly typical of the UK press at that time.

 

Just review a PS1 title on PS1 standards.

 

Paul is another reviewer who moans your Mech is slow and clumsy to manoeuvre in cityscapes...

 

Yeah..that's because it's basically a walking gun platform Paul..

Edited April 6, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[Flojomojo]

I guess .., it one of the nicer things about reviews by those two guys in particular is how opinionated they could be. Reviews are subjective, and people like different things.

 

I didn't read Biffo in the 90s but I'm really enjoying Digitiser 2000 nowadays. Such fun! https://www.digitiser2000.com/

He hates a lot of stuff, he loves a lot of dumb things too.

 

Stuart seems to have stepped back from writing about games lately, but his writing about the virtues of mobile gaming a few (like years back was shrill and obnoxious, which I find relatable and readable. :-)

[Austin]

PSM scored it lower 20/100

 

But IGN gave it 68/100

 

Now Gamer 70/100.

 

I don't think it was "sneered at" because the prior 2 games were on Jaguar, I think it got bad reviews because it was a bad game, especially by year 2000 standards. Grade inflation for mediocre games was a lot more common on the game-hungry Jaguar than on the Playstation, which had a lot more software from which to choose.

 

I don't personally think it's a bad game at all. The reviews alone would suggest opinions are divisive, and that's OK. It's hardly derided across the board and it's the kind of game that will appeal a lot to some, but maybe not at all to others.

 

As far as "grade inflation" for Jaguar titles, I don't recall seeing much of that if at all. Its most touted games like AvP, Tempest 2000 and DOOM were reviewed very well as you would expect, while much of the rest of the library (sans the obvious trash, like Checkered Flag) was met with lukewarm reception at best.

[Lost Dragon]

There was a certain degree of snobbery amongst UK journalists during the PS1 and Saturn era,about what was deserving to be on these then Super Consoles.

 

Retro compilations usually took flak but as i have stated on here before, C+VG were advising Jaguar only owners should take a look at Rayman, others invest elsewhere...

 

Yet Rayman was a huge selling title on the Playstation

 

 

Mean Machines, when previewing Alien Trilogy, using screens from the renfered into sequence,said it would make Jaguar AVP look like The Wizard Of Oz.

 

 

I get the impression Paul wasn't a fan of Mech games or maybe simply misunderstood the slow moving nature of them,Armoured Core was the recommended alternative in the teviews box out,but that might of been put in by magazines editor.

 

I was just surprised the Jaguar needed to be slandered at that point in time.

 

Sure,it had failed at retail,had been host to a lot of sub standard software, but the work Eclipse put in on the hardware and games themselves on the Jaguar, deserved a greater degree of respect.

 

It just felt like lazy UK jurnolism yet again.

Edited April 6, 2018 by Lost Dragon