What's Your Pipe Dream Games On The Jag.

[philipj]

1 hour ago, phoenixdownita said:

Probably you mean "Air Sea Battle" because in Combat there's only Tanks, Planes and Jets.

Yea that's it... Don't really know why I get those two game confused especially since I played the daylights out of them both in my youth.

 

 

Edited March 16, 2020 by philipj

[EddieHitler]

5 hours ago, philipj said:

"In The Hunt" is an Irem masterpiece... For some reason the game sort of reminded me of the submarine game on "Combat" for the Atari 2600. Really almost all of Irem arcade game from that time period has incredible artwork. They really push for a very immersive gaming experience; it kind of make me miss the old arcade days.

Yup, you can really tell it came from the makers of Metal Slug graphically, everything kind of hand-drawn looking, the attention to detail in some of the backgrounds etc is superb as well. 
 

Hard as nails of course, but not as bad as you might thing, I certainly think the 1cc is attainable for me with a little more practice, nearly managed that on the Saturn version but lost my last life on the final boss in one run and had to continue. 

[KidGameR186496]

Since i'm a sucker for arcade-style top-down racers, i think World Rally by Zigurat Software would be a good fit for the Jaguar, especially since it was distributed in North America by Atari Games...

[KidGameR186496]

Throwing yet another pipe dream into this hat is Konami's Detana!! TwinBee...

[KidGameR186496]

Since philipj likes seeing the awesome artwork of 90s Irem titles, here's another one for him; GunForce II. Regarded by some as Metal Slug Zero and the last game Irem made for arcades...

[KidGameR186496]

One last pipe dream from me today to throw into this hat and that is Dogyuun by Toaplan...

[philipj]

22 hours ago, KidGameR186496 said:

Since i'm a sucker for arcade-style top-down racers, i think World Rally by Zigurat Software would be a good fit for the Jaguar, especially since it was distributed in North America by Atari Games...

Oh man I use to play this game at a pizza joint in the mid to late 90s... The arcade cabinet had the "Atari" logo on it so they must have distributed the arcade machine... I thought it was an Atari game for a brief short while till I looked up the company who programmed the game online. This game is definitely suitable for the Atari Jaguar. Another hidden gem arcade is a game called "Great 1000 Mile Rally" by "Kaneco"... Really good game; has a good since of speed and very fun to play... Another pipe dream to aspire to.

 

 

Edited March 18, 2020 by philipj

[Lost Dragon]

On 1/2/2020 at 7:16 AM, philipj said:

 

The topic is skewing a little bit, but I can think of a few arcade machines that came out in the 90s that used the 286 boards very decently; the article only confirmed what I always thought concerning the 68000 in so many arcade machine particularly the early systems like the "Atari System 1" where the cost factor played huge role with IBM charging an arm and a leg for their Jr. computers in the early 80s. I spotted an article in an old "Byte Magazine" from the late 70s that seems to debut the "Motorola 68000" that had a big "splash cover"of a "monolith" just like in the "2010 Movie" with the words "LISP" written on the bottom right, which was known for AI language at that time; very interesting article on the 68K. It seemingly highlighted some features that was favorable toward simulation task, which I found pretty promising or it could've just been a lot of hype to sell the product for that time. lol

 

As far the graphic goes with the Motorola, a few weeks ago I was looking a some comparison between versions of "Wolfenstien 3D" for the "Atari ST" and for the "Sega Genesis" help get a picture between how both display the pseudo 3D with the Geny using its sprite based graphics chip and the ST using the graphics Shifter. Another thing to consider was the ram in both systems can make the difference, but I understand the ST works very differently than the Sega Genesis with the ST's chip-set all glued together using ICs compared to the Geny graphics chip being very sprite based from a hardware standpoint... It's basically a System 16 arcade shrunk down for home use.

 

 

 

 

Not sure if this is of any interest to you, but John Carmack talking about the SNES version and why they would not do an APPLE II version :

 

 

I've received a fair amount of mail about this in the past couple of
weeks.  The bottom line is that we have no plans for a IIGS port.
There are two major reasons (feel free to pass this around):

1: (The technical)  The SNES implementation of wolf is the absolute
borderline of acceptable gameplay.  The GS is simmilar, but not quite
as capable as the SNES.

The most time consuming parts of the program are the clearing of the
screen, the scaling of the walls, and the copying to the video
memory.  The SNES can do all of these thing faster than the GS.

The SNES can do the clearing and copying with DMA, which is about
four times faster than the tightest possible pea/pei stack tricked
code.

The SNES rom clocks at 3.5mhz and the ram at 2.5.  I am also using
one of the SNES dma registers to fake an autoincrement addressing
mode.  This lets the scaling be about 60% faster than the best
possible on the GS.

You couldn't reasonably use more than 16 colors in a scaled GS game,
which would require ALL THE ARTWORK TO BE REDRAWN.

Bottom line: While a GS game would be possible at a lower frame rate
and resolution (or if it required an accelerator), it would not do
justice to the game.

2: (the market)  A runaway hit in the GS community might sell a few
thousand copies.  Possibly.  Our time right now is split between
jaguar ports, retail DOOM, and preliminary work on QUAKE, all big
ticket items.  We are a small company, with only six people in the
development effort.  We just don't have the time for niche products.

I feel for you (a GS was my first real computer), but we are making
our mark by looking forward, not back.

Sorry.

John Carmack

 

[Warmsignal]

Pipe dream game? Duke 3D. Lobotomy Software pulled it off rebuilding the entire game when the Saturn did not play nice with the original engine. Seeing what Id was able to do with Doom, I don't see why not.

Edited May 27, 2020 by Warmsignal

[82-T/A]

Sentinel Worlds - Future Magic 1

 

I think the game is simple enough (in terms of controls) that it could easily be played on a keyboard without any real effort, and the game-play and graphics are simple enough that, if programmed for it... the Jaguar would certainly be able to handle it.

 

 

 

Edited May 27, 2020 by 82-T/A

[KidGameR186496]

The Jaguar never had any Cabal-style shooter and with the news of Piko Interactive acquring the rights to various Gaelco titles, i believe Alligator Hunt would be a great fit for it. Its one of the best Cabal-style shooters out there that almost nobody played and it had a sick guitar-riffed sountrack!

[agradeneu]

 Jeff Minter making a comeback for a new Jag game! ?

Edited May 28, 2020 by agradeneu

[walter_J64bit]

A fullyworking 2600 emulator! 

[philipj]

On 5/27/2020 at 11:56 AM, Lost Dragon said:

Not sure if this is of any interest to you, but John Carmack talking about the SNES version and why they would not do an APPLE II version :

 

 

I've received a fair amount of mail about this in the past couple of
weeks.  The bottom line is that we have no plans for a IIGS port.
There are two major reasons (feel free to pass this around):

1: (The technical)  The SNES implementation of wolf is the absolute
borderline of acceptable gameplay.  The GS is simmilar, but not quite
as capable as the SNES.

The most time consuming parts of the program are the clearing of the
screen, the scaling of the walls, and the copying to the video
memory.  The SNES can do all of these thing faster than the GS.

The SNES can do the clearing and copying with DMA, which is about
four times faster than the tightest possible pea/pei stack tricked
code.

The SNES rom clocks at 3.5mhz and the ram at 2.5.  I am also using
one of the SNES dma registers to fake an autoincrement addressing
mode.  This lets the scaling be about 60% faster than the best
possible on the GS.

You couldn't reasonably use more than 16 colors in a scaled GS game,
which would require ALL THE ARTWORK TO BE REDRAWN.

Bottom line: While a GS game would be possible at a lower frame rate
and resolution (or if it required an accelerator), it would not do
justice to the game.

2: (the market)  A runaway hit in the GS community might sell a few
thousand copies.  Possibly.  Our time right now is split between
jaguar ports, retail DOOM, and preliminary work on QUAKE, all big
ticket items.  We are a small company, with only six people in the
development effort.  We just don't have the time for niche products.

I feel for you (a GS was my first real computer), but we are making
our mark by looking forward, not back.

Sorry.

John Carmack

 

The SNES was just a well balanced graphics and sound presentation machine with not a whole lot of CPU power like the Jag or the Neo Geo, but was well built for graphics and sound... I thought at one point it was more powerful than the Genesis, but it wasn't when came to the CPUs. I was playing "Aquajack" arcade game a "Retro-Bit" console and it reminded me of "Super Off Road: The Beja" for the SNES with the mode-7 like affect. Games like those just hit a sweet-spot for pseudo 3D like affects using scan-line base rendering techniques, which "Doom" for the Atari Jaguar pulls off nicely. I'd like to see a pseudo 3D engine that fakes unit-vector style graphics as a means of getting the kind of fast rendering of pseudo 3D objects that looks and acts like real unit-vector style 3D math. That's the "Holy Grail" goal I'd like to see on the Atari Jaguar... Fake 3D that looks like it's been rendered using real 3D math. "Road Rash" for the 3DO looks like it has a combination of both scan-line techniques mixed with real unit-vector or affine transform like 3D rolled up into one game. I still get a kick out of looking and reading about the old-school graphics; maybe one day I'll make good use out of the Jaguar's "Blitter Processor" and make a 3D engine that takes advantage of the Jags natural abilities.

 

 

 

 

 

[Lost Dragon]

The Apple II is a system that is completely alien to myself, never seen one, used one etc. 

 

So it was interesting to hear John talk about that platform. 

 

With you on the SNES, picked mine up after my MD/MCD owning days, expecting quite a bit of power difference between it and the MD. 

 

Better colour range, very impressive soundchip, but not enough to make me regret my choice in the console wars. 

[philipj]

I had them both including the Sega CD so it made very little difference to me at that time... I did have to cut a few yards to get both systems in my teen years; I was very impressed with the SNES sound capabilities. The Geny had better sound than the NES, but was still a little limited with the FM sounds; at least until "Streets of Rage 2"... It was the only game that was on par with SNES like sounds as far as musical depths and quality. Very few Genesis games really push the sound chip they SOF2 did. Even Konami, who made some of the best SNES music, didn't really do too much justice for the Genesis, but looking back today SOF2 had a lot in common with arcades that had FM chips with PCM playback capabilities embedded on the chip... They made good use of the PSG sound chip as a PCM playback mechanism.

 

7 hours ago, Lost Dragon said:

The Apple II is a system that is completely alien to myself, never seen one, used one etc. 

 

So it was interesting to hear John talk about that platform. 

 

My school had an Apple II in my early teens, I've never really used one before, but I've always been curious about them. 

[Lost Dragon]

7 hours ago, philipj said:

I had them both including the Sega CD so it made very little difference to me at that time... I did have to cut a few yards to get both systems in my teen years; I was very impressed with the SNES sound capabilities. The Geny had better sound than the NES, but was still a little limited with the FM sounds; at least until "Streets of Rage 2"... It was the only game that was on par with SNES like sounds as far as musical depths and quality. Very few Genesis games really push the sound chip they SOF2 did. Even Konami, who made some of the best SNES music, didn't really do too much justice for the Genesis, but looking back today SOF2 had a lot in common with arcades that had FM chips with PCM playback capabilities embedded on the chip... They made good use of the PSG sound chip as a PCM playback mechanism.

 

 

My school had an Apple II in my early teens, I've never really used one before, but I've always been curious about them. 

Streets Of Rage II

Gauntlet IV

Ecco The Dolphin 

 

Were the stand out Mega Drive tunes for myself, with soft spots for God's, Predator II, Alien III and a few others. 

 

Never found the Amiga soundtracks as stand out as those on the C64, either. 

 

Rob Hubbard went downhill when he moved to work with E. A,  i thought. 

 

 

Sensible Software said they had to reduce the speech samples down to Atari ST quality, for Mega Drive Megalomania. 

 

Capcom seemed to put quantity of speech over quality in Mega Drive Street Fighter II. 

 

 

[philipj]

I forgot about "Gauntlet IV" for the Mega Drive... The music for that game was a masterpiece. I wonder if they used a custom sound engine for that one because the music was not typical Genesis FM mediocrity. Great music; one of few that really took advantage of the FM chip.

[sd32]

11 hours ago, philipj said:

I forgot about "Gauntlet IV" for the Mega Drive... The music for that game was a masterpiece. I wonder if they used a custom sound engine for that one because the music was not typical Genesis FM mediocrity. Great music; one of few that really took advantage of the FM chip.

I disagree that only a "few" games take advantage of the Genesis sound capabilities. Ninja Turtles Hyperstone Heist sounds as good as its SNES counterparts. Mega Turrican sounds as good as Super Turrican. Batman and Robin sounds so cool. Thunder Force 3 and 4, Gleylancer, Dune 2, Elemental Master, Ragnacenti. Master of Monsters, Langrisser, Streets of Rage series, Sonic Series. Super Shinobi 1 and 2. Ys 3. Batman. Comix Zone. Contra Hard Corps. I could go on and on, such a fanboi.

Sure, its sound isnt sample based like the SNES, but it has its own charm. SNES isnt perfect. It usually uses short and muffled samples. Once you hear those you cant unhear them.

And its not just the Yamaha FM soundchip, it also uses the PSG and a DAC. Games that take advantage of the 3 have some of the most amazing and unique soundtracks of the generation.

The bad rep the Genny has with soumtracks, come from a lot of american developed games that used the GENS sound engine, which wasnt the best...and also suffered a lot from mediocre midi conversions.

[philipj]

Shinobi 3 had good music... TMNT Hpyerstone music seems to be a direct port from the arcade game minus some instruments. Thunder Force series definitely had good music. A few others you've mentioned, that I haven't played yet, XMEN 2 had some great music on it. I guess the few games I've played on them would better define my statement, but the Genesis certainly had the chops to do great music... I have to admit though that the music I was hearing on the SNES when I first got in 93 certainly blew my mind from games like Super Contra, Super Castlevania, Super Adventure Island that Mr. Street of Rage himself composed for, and I don't won't to forget all of the stuff "Tim Follin" did on both the NES and the SNES... He had such a ear for musical depth and range and was able to convey that on every system he composed on; it was like listen to a full band or an orchestra on NES system let alone the SNES.

1 hour ago, sd32 said:

The bad rep the Genny has with soumtracks, come from a lot of american developed games that used the GENS sound engine, which wasnt the best...and also suffered a lot from mediocre midi conversions.

Yea I heard about that on a documentary concerning the Genesis the mediocre music software Sega gave developers... It's too bad about that; Nintendo pick right on up with supplying the SNES with a better sound chip, but I enjoy them both. But you touched on something, that's mediocrity was just what I was referring to... I ran into quite a few of them at the rental stores.

[KidGameR186496]

Gonna end this music debate by saying this: Both consoles are capable of good music. It all depends on the composer's skill, their familiarity with the hardware and the sound driver they're using.

Edited May 31, 2020 by KidGameR186496
Corrected a typo

[CaptainBreakout]

On 5/25/2019 at 10:05 AM, mckafka99 said:

I, Robot always seemed like it belonged on the Jag.

This topic popped into my mind today...  I just went back through this topic to see if anyone had mentioned "I, Robot". Thank you mckafka99!  I mean... it seems so obvious!  I just had to write something.

 

What a glorious cart this would be. Just picture it!

 

If you've never tried it in MAME -treat yourself! (One of the best low-poly 3D games was also the first, IMHO)

 

I wish I was a better coder. This would be tantamount to the recent phenomenon of Baby Pac-Man on the 7800 if anyone ever pulled it off.

[Editorb]

Road Rash. I was obsessed with Genesis game in college, and followed the sequels on PlayStation. I always figured if a new version was released for a later PS, I'd have to make the plunge, but instead, PS2 remains my most recent Sony console. I was highly prejudiced against Stupor Burnout for years because it looked swell, but I didn't get to grab weapon from opponents and whomp them off. I was like, just racing? Feh. I have since learned to appreciate SB as a racing game instead of racing/combat (or perhaps combat/racing is my preference).

[captainblack]

Some pipedreams: 

 

River Raid 2000, which I imagine as a rail shooter version of Battlemorph.

Battletoads Arcade with Trevor McFur as a bonus character.

A fighting game with good controls.

A JRPG, even if it sucks.

[vrocko]

I'd like to see Wipeout or a Wipeout clone on the Jaguar. Always liked the sci-fi racers and Wipeout would be great to have. Another space combat game like Battlesphere or Space War 2000 would be nice. The original Wing Commander for example.