What Atari Jaguar games should have come out on other consoles

[Lost Dragon]

https://www.digitiser2000.com/main-page/25-years-of-digitiser-day-three

 

 

 

https://www.digitiser2000.com/main-page/the-fall-of-atari-eyewitness-account-by-mr-biffo

 

 

They aren't exactly big Jaguar fans..

Edited April 6, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[pacman000]

Edge magazine did run a big Atari retrospective in '95, which seemed to have high-hopes for the Jaguar. (My impression.)

[Lost Dragon]

Edge used a lot of freelancers and it was the magazines policy not to name them, but you can tell the style of The Rev's particular brand of writing a mile of.

 

For all Edge's sins at the time of review,they gave both Cybermorph and I.S an 8/10 if my memory serves and Cybermorph itself scored decent enough scores in C+VG, GamesMaster etc.

 

So where Digiser get the view it was hated by so many,escapes me.

 

Edge might of only given AVP 4/10 at review,but later returned to it and Tempest 2000 to do some superb Making Of...features.

 

I just don't get the angle Digitiser/Paul seems to be going after.

 

The Tramiel era Atari's failings long before the Jaguar have been well documented and to imply the Jaguar had poor standards for it's software, ignores all the good work the likes of Jeff Minter, Revellion,Eclipse, I.D etc put in,despite everything they were facing.

 

The Jaguar didn't just deliver a version of Wolfenstien as well as an aging PC,it delivered a version with 4X the detail.

 

Jaguar Doom, despite no music and a lower resolution than the PC version,had superior lighting, so standards were not poor across the board.

Edited April 6, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[Lost Dragon]

Not just UK Press then..

 

Next Generation Magazine:

 

"Tetrisphere 1st appeared on the Jaguar to medicore reviews".

 

Ohhh really?

[Flojomojo]

Not just UK Press then..

 

Next Generation Magazine:

 

"Tetrisphere 1st appeared on the Jaguar to medicore reviews".

 

Ohhh really?

 

Everyone knows the Jaguar had NO PHEAR

 

EDGE and NEXT GEN = UK and US versions of a near-identical product

[Lost Dragon]

Ye i'm not overly familiar with Next Gen magazine, but it's been my understanding it was basically the US version of UK EDGE, but reviews done differently , so different freelancers.

 

Not sure how much content shared between the 2..but would of expected interviews to be swapped..so EDGE sent over UK developers and Next Gen sent over USA people.

 

Seems standards of research as high as each others mind

 

The Tetrisphere comment was from an N64 feature, writer couldn't even be bothered to give Jaguar version it's correct name.

[LianneJaguar64]

 

 

I could see a Zool sequel doing kinda-sorta okay. Zool plays way too fast for me, and for God's sake, never map jump to the up button, but maybe these are things that could be improved in a sequel. I know the high speed is supposed to be Zool's trademark, but it was Sonic's trademark first. There were so many mascot platformers in the early 90s that Zool didn't really need anything more than his own appearance and a land made of candy, and maybe the item-collecting percentage mechanic, to be somewhat unique.

 

And after typing all this, I realized we're supposed to be talking about existing Jag games that should have been ported to other consoles, and not sequels. Somehow I got thinking about sequels. Sorry. But I don't know if I would have wanted any Jag games ported to other consoles. The Jag gets enough trash talk as it is. Why take away its few exclusives?

 

Zool was a so-called 'European platormer', insofar as that it was developed by a European company, and Gremlin software originally released it on Amiga computers, popular here in the UK/Europe, so it made a little more sense as most people played with proper sticks instead of D-pads... Although I will admit it's bloody annoying on the CD32, mostly because the D-pad on that controller is a mess XD

Edited April 10, 2018 by LianneJaguar64

[Lost Dragon]

@Lianne:

 

I didn't want to necrobump an old thread, but you were asking for any details on Jaguar AVP II?

 

As well as Beyond Games being invited by Atari to put forward proposals for a sequel, Alexandria Games, who were in the process of converting Return Fire from 3DO to Jaguar CD were also asked to for their proposed ideas for a sequel.

[PeterG]

@Lianne:

 

I didn't want to necrobump an old thread, but you were asking for any details on Jaguar AVP II?

 

As well as Beyond Games being invited by Atari to put forward proposals for a sequel, Alexandria Games, who were in the process of converting Return Fire from 3DO to Jaguar CD were also asked to for their proposed ideas for a sequel.

Never played Return Fire but spent quite some time on Firepower on Amiga, I was looking forward to that port when I saw it on some list.

[Lost Dragon]

Scott Rogers was the one converting the game, i was fortunate enough to be able to ask him about it as part of the interview he did for the Unseen64 book.

 

 

 

 

 

Basically? whilst game almost done, Scott wasn't a fan of the Jaguar hardware,personally and said the Jaguar version wasn't looking as good as the 3DO version,visually, which was a shame to hear.

 

 

 

 

 

Scott was also working on a conversion of Frankenstien:through The Eyes Of A Monster for Jaguar, this was also canned.

[PeterG]

It does not need to look as good but shame nothing from it surfaced. Thanks for the info though.

[VladR]

whilst game almost done, Scott wasn't a fan of the Jaguar hardware,personally and said the Jaguar version wasn't looking as good as the 3DO version,visually, which was a shame to hear.

Well, can't really blame him, as from programmer's perspective, the 3DO is easily order-of-magnitude easier to achieve great looking 3D games, especially compared to jaguar, as:

- 3DO's HW cell engine does clipping and texturing for you

- you can whip up a basic 3D engine in few days (as the two most demanding features are handled in HW for you)

- do not have to worry about performance (well, not too much - as there's still a fillrate limit of the cel) and just focus on content creation

 

If you compare the above with jaguar's way:

- break down each and every single triangle into list of scanlines it occupies on screen

- have a tight loop that locks GPU and processes pixel, by pixel (for texturing)

 

Now, hypothetically, on a paper, for flatshading, jaguar's Blitter allows screen clipping, so one could, indeed let the HW worry about that particular stage of pipeline.

 

 

But, let's just say there's a very good reason why I'm not using it in my engine and rather offload clipping to GPU/68k

 

 

It's a shame that even 3DO didn't really take off fully. Now, I understand why Jag didn't stand a chance with the competition. But what exactly was the problem of 3DO ? From coding perspective - the SDK, the environment, the HW - it was -comparatively- very accessible and cheap to produce great looking games on 3DO. $700 price sticker, I'm guessing ?

[UHATEIT]

It's a shame that even 3DO didn't really take off fully. Now, I understand why Jag didn't stand a chance with the competition. But what exactly was the problem of 3DO ? From coding perspective - the SDK, the environment, the HW - it was -comparatively- very accessible and cheap to produce great looking games on 3DO. $700 price sticker, I'm guessing ?

I don't know anything about coding for games but supposedly it was a lot easier on the 3DO. A bunch of random ass 3rd party companies released some really ridiculous games on that console. Hell Vivid Interactive released a bunch of porno games for it, which weren't even games really, just showcasing the fact you could put video on a disc I guess. I love the 3DO and wish it had a better library of "good" games that's for sure!

 

Return Fire for the 3DO is pretty awesome actually! The game goes on for days on end, I don;t know if you can actually ever beat the game, it just keeps adding more levels to it. it gets crazy hard as you get further into it. I think I am at the 10-12th level or so and it's hard to survive once you get that far!

[Lost Dragon]

How gutted would you be to learn that if it hadn't been for politics, Fire Power would of made it to the Atari Lynx?

R.W: “I had been building products for Epyx . . . They were working on this thing [the Atari Lynx] and we got really close to bringing Firepower over to it. The first iteration of the second version.

 

I ended up not doing games for the Atari Lynx because of the politics that I was aware of that no one else was aware of, which was how bad the situation was between Epyx.

 

There was other stuff I was working on that was making better money, and more interesting to the team – that we just skipped it. And of course 3DO was the next step.”

 

 

https://retrogamingblog.co.uk/2015/05/14/reichart-von-wolfsheild-3do-return-fire-and-the-industry/

Edited April 11, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[Lost Dragon]

It does not need to look as good but shame nothing from it surfaced. Thanks for the info though.

Your welcome.

 

Sadly as is often the case with what happened to Jaguar games,it's not the best of news.

 

But it's credible and does give a degree of closure.

[skip]

Alexandria Games, who were in the process of converting Return Fire from 3DO to Jaguar CD were also asked to for their proposed ideas for a sequel.

Do you know how far they got, if anywhere, with Return Fire on the Jag? I don't think I've ever seen an official screenshot, just vague hints in magazines or online back in the day with shots of the 3DO version.

[Lost Dragon]

Do you know how far they got, if anywhere, with Return Fire on the Jag? I don't think I've ever seen an official screenshot, just vague hints in magazines or online back in the day with shots of the 3DO version.

 

 

Scott just said almost done...i never saw any screenshots anywhere myself either.

[VladR]

Scott Rogers was the one converting the game, i was fortunate enough to be able to ask him about it as part of the interview he did for the Unseen64 book.

 

 

Basically? whilst game almost done, Scott wasn't a fan of the Jaguar hardware,personally and said the Jaguar version wasn't looking as good as the 3DO version,visually, which was a shame to hear

Ouch,I looked up the YT did only now. The frame rate there falls often below 10 fps! On 3DO!!!

 

Did he ever mention why was this rushed? Clearly this production build didn't get a chance to be optimized in any way. Was it a 10week project or something?

 

Honestly, the jaguar could pull a higher frame rate of that textured scene...

 

 

That throws a completely different light on his quote of lesser visuals on jag.Game looks 16-color - 4 shades of few base colors, but we could round it up to 256 colors on jag. I am having a really hard time understanding what element could look worse on jag. Did they plan to use just the 4-color mode like on Atari 800 or something?

[Lost Dragon]

The interview was Luca's, not my own, i only got to ask him a few questions as part of it and it was intended to cover every title he had worked on.

 

It was for the Unseen64 book and the Jaguar was always only going to get token coverage being such a niche format and the fact no one really wanted to write articles about Jaguar software,so sadly there wasn't the option to go into depth,questions wise,as we could of deen for an Atari specific interview.

 

It really was a straightforward case of find out if the conversion was actually started,how far along it got and anything else would be a bonus.

 

I had hoped to fire over some extra questions afterwards,but seeing as Scott really didn't like the Jaguar hardware and having seen the reaction to comments Dave Taylor from I.D had made when i interviewed him,coupled with the reaction to Mike Diskett explaining in his view the Jaguar couldn't pull off a decent conversion of Magic Carpet...

 

It really didn't seem worth the time and effort hoping Scott would talk more at length about his Jaguar development, only to see his personal views raged on.

 

We don't need another commercial coder accused of being lazy,not upto the job etc,by people out there with little respect for the commercial Jaguar environment at that time and porting a game to an add-on to a system which itself is already failing at retail.

 

It's been bad enough Mike Diskett had to join here and explain his views and be troubled again to explain why Syndicate and Theme Park suffer slowdown.

 

You have the decency to offer possible technical reasons and explain alternative methods,not everyone does that and when coders etc read talk that they were lazy or poor at what they did,shouldn't of attempted the work in the 1st place..

 

They are often reluctant to talk at all.

[VladR]

I guess it's sort-of good (good, as in screeching teeth) to see that the 3DO was plagued by the same "biz" environment as Jaguar. Note that I don't blame the coders for the performance. But somebody above their paygrade must have made the decision "good enough - you can play it - ship it".

 

 

I watched some more YT vids of the game (it does look quite fun - I always loved that arcade style of games on PC) and was examining the framerate and behavior some more:

- the framerate obviously depends on how high camera goes (more terrain + objects results in lower framerate) - which is kinda expected

- but the exact same sections, at the end of the level, exhibit much higher framerate

 

So, it's not really the rendering component (which didn't make sense to me, initially - as a 3D scene like this is nothing for 3DO's cel HW). The most likely scenario is the next most taxing component - pathfinding:

- game is grid-based

- most common pathfinding algorithm for grid-based games is A*

- A* is very computationally intensive, and on 12.5 MHz it can easily consume all cycles. I have personally implemented it on PC and it's a bitch to reliably distribute its computations over the course of multiple frames (otherwise the framerate just tanks).

 

 

Thus, once no active units are processed, the CPU doesn't have to handle neither the FSM algorithm for the AI (not a huge CPU cost, compared to A*, but adds up), nor A* for pathfinding - hence framerate goes up. Very simple.

 

 

 

I'm gonna look up this title for my 3DO. Assuming it doesn't have collector prices, of course...

[Lost Dragon]

I had the Playstation version, loved it.

The 3DO version is said to have crisper visuals and better sound.

 

Have you not seen the product evaluation documents from within Atari?.They knew Blue Lightning was bloody awful,but needed CD product...

They described Hoverstrike as an average game, with average graphics which was going to going to be panned by reviewers, but if Atari didn't mind it getting slagged..ship it.

 

They wanted the plug pulled on Skyhammer and Legions Of The Undead.Considered HVS and Eclipse as the only teams capable of pushing the Jaguar Hardware. .I.D not mentioned..and it's a discredit to Rebellion as Skyhammer is one of the systems most impressive games.Teque with WTR and the improved game engine, weren't even recognised for the work they had achieved.

 

I'm actually very surprised certain figures within the community haven't gone running after Scott to interview him themselves and get a few more crumbs and pop up with talk of my/unseen64's version of events not being the full story..or not actually what happened.

 

That was the case with Mike Diskett and Magic Carpet along with the story of how far along Gunship 2000 actually got.Scott must be feeling left out.

 

But, to be serious just for a moment.I myself would of liked to of asked Scott a few more in depth Q's, so we had more to go on, but i was only a quest on the interview and grateful to Luca for letting me take part.

[Lost Dragon]

I can however, thanks to an email just in from one of the team behind it, tell you that Gremlin's Litil Divil:

 

 

 

Is nothing but a Vapourware title on the Atari Jaguar.

 

Whilst a lot of work had been done on the ST version, it spanned too many disks and ST market was in rapid decline.

 

A Jaguar version was considered, but team decided not to proceed with it, instead focusing on the CD32 and PC versions, with a later CDi version.

 

So it shouldn't feature on any credible lost Jaguar games archive.let alone be classed as Finished

Edited April 17, 2018 by Lost Dragon

[VladR]

I don't know the "story" on Magic Carpet vs jag, but that's a game that is far beyond the reach of Jaguar in its full form (and not because of textured terrain). I'm a huge fan of Magic Carpet, played it on PC to death (proud to say I finished it without cheating), so I'm intimately aware of its performance and complexity characteristics during gameplay, and this game taxed Pentium in later levels (35-50) and for justifiable complexity reasons (not rendering-related).

 

And it wasn't because of poor optimization (it was written in ASM). I consider Magic Carpet more next-gen than Quake in terms of technological achievement. The AI+Pathfinding would destroy both GPU+DSP. There are levels that have over hundred entities roaming around the map, all at the same time (as you can see for yourself while being on map).

 

Just take a look what few units did to the framerate on that 3DO game 2 posts above. Now multiply it by 50. There's also 8 active AI players constantly fighting, attacking all other enemies, building their castle, triggering AI every single frame. You were always awarded with a framerate bump after killing each player, as it removed the AI/pathfinding cost from the equation.

 

 

That level, that starts you in the middle of the labyrinth and has several bee swarms, and has a best framerate of about 5 fps - that thing couldn't run on jag in 0.5 fps.

 

 

This is why I always laugh, when people keep saying that jag couldn't run Quake in playable framerate (incorrect, btw), yet think Magic Carpet is remotely possible. Quake has only a rendering component that is expensive (and a collision detection a bit). Magic Carpet adds 100 enemies that are processed each frame. Now, the first 10-15 easy/empty levels, that's something that could run at, say, 10 fps. Anything after Idirya (the infamous water level 31, impassable to 90% of people who even got this far), and CPU cost goes up exponentially, far below 1 fps range.

 

in Quake, you have, maybe, 3 enemies doing collision detection. In Magic Carpet, during combat, easily 15-20. Plus destructible terrain that changes pathfinding completely in the middle of the frame.

 

 

[Lost Dragon]

If you take all the fume-drama out of Jaguar Magic Carpet,it really boils down to the following (and this comes from Bullfrog staff Alex Trowers and Mike Diskett) :

 

Atari wanted a conversion of Magic Carpet.

 

Bullfrog themselves were of the opinion that from a commercial point of the view,the Jaguar didn't have a big enough user base to warrant a conversion and it was clear it was never going to have such a thing,as sales well below expectations.

 

Bullfrog themselves at this period were moving heavily into PC development, only Mike Diskett had any real interest in the Jaguar.

 

Mike,in his spare time,does some initial coding to see how well the hardware could handle thr game,finds it couldn't handle the required texture mapping and if he ditched that and used gouraud shaded polygons instead, the game just didnt look anything like what made Magic Carpet so special.

 

We then had a certain individual run after Mike,asking same question and got same answer and presented it as actually that's not the full story,when in fact it realky was that simple.

 

And more recently i wasted more of Mike's valuable time putting some of the online critiscm to him,over Jaguar Syndicate and Theme Park suffering slowdown,( Mike explained why and that other versions suffered the same) and that based on his 2D work on Jaguar, he wasn't the person to of attempted Magic Carpet and he should of asked for help with it.

 

As Mike explained..there was no one else,no one else wanted to do it.

 

And that wraps up Magic Carpet :-)

[Lost Dragon]

As for Quake?

 

Well,not being a coder i leave the tech stuff to others.

 

As someone who read the 30% complete claims in Ultimate Future Games magazine along with online references to this Mythical John Carmack interview that has been referenced by some over the years,but cannot say who Carmack spoke to..or when or where it might be found..

 

I was looking into claims of Playstation Quake by Lobotomy on behalf of Unseen64,got a result,full interview with coder,game finished,ran better than Saturn version, yet no publisher wanted it.

 

So i did a similar approach with Jaguar Quake claims..scoured countless existing interviews with I.D and Carmack as an individual.. Nothing found (still looking now).

 

Contacted Romero and Taylor,both openly laugh at idea of Jaguar Quake.

 

Contacted Carmack only to be told by his agent he wouldn't be answering any questions.

 

 

Carmack may well indeed of done some test coding to satisfy his own curiosity, but given that I.D themselves admit both Doom and Wolfenstien sold way below expectations on Jaguar by time of Quake it was clear the Jaguar had failed at retail.

 

From a commercial point of view,your back to Magic Carpet answer..it simply didn't warrant a conversion.

 

So unless this Carmack said...interview appears, i am of the mindset it was a case of an individual believing what U.F.G magazine had said and getting Carmacks comments about doing Doom from scratch on Jaguar could see it run faster,in higher resolution and better lighting.

 

But who knows.I can only give my views and point out feelings of other I.D staff and that this 1 off interview really is a needle in a haystack as it's not even stated if it's a YT interview,magazine interview,E3 interview..only it exists..

:-))