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Games that should have been on Jaguar


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55 minutes ago, Nuclear Pacman said:

It was well known at the time that the PS2 was a loss leader for Sony to trojan-horse the DVD standard into every home. I remember it had an embarrassing release lineup of games. In fact I only remember one, Fantavision was it? I'm sure there were others, but off the top of my head I can't think of them. The DVD player was the most important part of that console, and DVDs sold the system while gamers waited on the good games to come out. I was not in the PS2 market at the time, it was $600 IIRC. This is how I remember it anyway. 

Launch price was $299.

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PS2 launch price was $299 (ps3 with the Blu-ray player, in 2006, was $599).

 

These games were available at launch. This wasn't hard to find. 

 

Quote
So, without further ado, here's the final list of launch games for PlayStation 2:
  • Armored Core 2 (Agetec, Action)
  • DOA2: Hardcore (Tecmo, Fighting)
  • Dynasty Warriors 2 (Koei, Action)
  • ESPN International Track and Field (Konami, Sports)
  • ESPN X-Games Snowboarding(Konami, Sports)
  • Eternal Ring (Agetec, RPG)
  • Evergrace (Agetec, RPG)
  • FantaVision (SCEI, Puzzle)
  • Gun Griffon Blaze (Working Designs, Action)
  • Kessen (EA, Adventure)
  • Madden NFL 2001 (EA, Sports)
  • Midnight Club (Rockstar, Racing)
  • Moto GP (Namco, Racing)
  • NHL 2001 (EA, Sports)
  • Orphen (Activision, RPG)
  • Q-Ball Billiards Master (Take-Two Interactive, Simulation)
  • Ready 2 Rumble Boxing: Round 2(Midway, Sports)
  • Ridge Racer V (Namco, Racing)
  • Silent Scope (Konami, Shooter)
  • Smuggler's Run (Rockstar, Racing-Adventure)
  • SSX (EA, Sports)
  • Street Fighter EX3 (Capcom, Fighting)
  • Summoner (THQ, RPG)
  • Swing Away (Paradise Golf in Japan) (EA, Sports)
  • Tekken Tag Tournament (Namco, fighting)
  • TimeSplitters (Eidos, First-Person Shooter)
  • Unreal Tournament (Infogrames, First-Person Shooter)
  • Wild Wild Racing (Interplay, Racing)
  • X-Squad (EA, Action)
 
 

 

 

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17 hours ago, Austin said:

The PS2's launch was "abysmal"? Where does that put the launch of something like the Jaguar? The seventh layer of hell?

Actually the Jaguar's launch was a huge success, over two million pre orders in Europe alone, but they could not meet those demands so they lost momentum. 

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9 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

It may not have been the case before, but publishers tend to have a wait & see approach when a new system is released.

So of course PS2 got 4000 titles, because once a system is a success, and it happens usually in the first few months, publishers will release games for it. But yes, there's some kind of paradox here; a system must be a success before having games. Of course a 'killer app' can bring success from the get-go like WiiSports of Tetris, even though in both cases the Game Boy and the Wii had a strong concept (portability and motion gaming) that clicked with the audience at the time. It didn't work for the Wii U though, and even if it got great games that went on to meet big success on Switch, it was too late. I think the 3DS is a very rare case of a reversal of fortune, but its price was cut drastically.

It probably is not the worst in History, but PS2 launch line-up was widely considered as a huge letdown. However, like Flo said, it had a DVD player, and most of all it was the successor of a very popular system. Announcing GT3 at E3 wouldn't have had the same impact if GT and GT2 hadn't been the first and third best sold games on PlayStation 1. Even though Atari was a famous brand, the Jaguar was mostly perceived as a newcomer in the console wars. And the "do the math" angle didn't work because only gamers cared about that, not their parents that actually buy consoles.

Anway, just to move on because it's exhausting for me to debate in a foreign language, the quick version:
I admit that games are important, but I find annoying when people claim it's all that matters, because a lot of systems were failures in spite of great games. Actually, what helps a system to succeed is not no much having good games, but getting the right games - at the right time. So there's a bit of luck involved, but also A LOT of marketing.

 

Why do you think Tommy Tallarico likes to remind that he's teaming with people who launched the DS and the Wii? For example he shows Nintendogs in his graphic, but Perrin Kaplan clearly didn't create that game. ;)

Third parties sometimes wait, but platform holders/first parties always must deliver. However in most cases devkits are sent to 3rd parties way before launch and they start developing in advance. The wait and see approach does not work like you suggest here, mostly its an early sign of market failure.

I really wonder why you are referring to the WiiU, Nintendos DNA is completely centered on delivering software/games, mostly very successful with first party. The WiiU "failed" because the competition was simply stronger (PS3+Xbox), with better libraries and price, nontheless you can see huge sales spikes with release of system sellers like "Splatoon"  and generally the software sales of this system were very strong. Compared to the Jaguar the WiiU still can be considered a success, lol,  Atari was not even able to sell their remaining stock for dumping prices when they had phased out the system! Actually Jaguar was a complete disaster.

While software sells hardware is true, Atari killed the reputation of the Jaguar system with the release of subpar software,  in that case I would say "bad software kills any chance of selling hardware", actually it would have been better to release even fewer games, but the right ones.

Edited by agradeneu
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6 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

However in most cases devkits are sent to 3rd parties way before launch and they start developing in advance. The wait and see approach does not work like you suggest here, mostly its an early sign of market failure.

If you consider the Switch, the first 3rd party games were not very bold though (Capcom USA's lazy remaster of SF2, Konami's Bomberman) so even though they all get devkits and prepared games for launch (usually with some input from the platform holder), it's clear they were very skeptical after the Wii U. Nintendo only had to rely on its own games, but the concept is what really sold the system in my opinion - after all, Zelda was also on the Wii U, even though it was already seen as a dead platform by then. And like I said, a success is made in a few weeks because then, every publisher wants a piece of the pie.
But yes, it's difficult to compare Jaguar with anything anyway, times were different. When you look at sales from successful systems from the 90s, they're not that great compared to what we're used to see today. I wasn't trying to do a comparison; I was just making a point about marketing and things derailed. ;)

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18 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

Probably. ;) I meant that compared to the expectations, the launch titles were really disappointing. But people tend to forget for example that Dreamcast launch lineup was also terrible in Japan.

 

Of course there are several factors, like a DVD player and great games but, at the end of the day, if consumers have no idea your system has great games or a DVD player, it doesn't matter. And guess what allows you to tell consumers about your system?

 

I remember clearly the marketing BS Sony pulled off for PS2 thanks to the Emotion Engine; people thought that you could finally feel 'real emotions' on the PS2... -_- I also remember my sister telling me she had heard there would be a Titanic game on it. Which was of course a huge deal at the time. In the press kit, George Lucas said he was shocked to see a machine capable of rendering the same visuals he had just created for The Phantom Menace. ?

And don't forget the PS2 could be used by Sadam in missile guidance systems and to the number crunching to process nuclear material.into weapons grade nuclear material for nuclear warheads ?

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2 hours ago, Arcadia said:

Actually the Jaguar's launch was a huge success, over two million pre orders in Europe alone, but they could not meet those demands so they lost momentum. 

I'm a European and recently this figure has appeared and is being taken as fact.

 

Would you or anyone else mind giving the source or sources of this claim? .

 

I'm genuinely interested to know it's roots as i cannot remember anything in the UK Press stating anything like such a demand.

 

 

Were the pre-orders for the SNES and Mega Drive even that high?

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5 hours ago, Lost Dragon said:

I'm a European and recently this figure has appeared and is being taken as fact.

 

Would you or anyone else mind giving the source or sources of this claim? .

 

I'm genuinely interested to know it's roots as i cannot remember anything in the UK Press stating anything like such a demand.

 

 

Were the pre-orders for the SNES and Mega Drive even that high?

This was written in Retro Gamer UK, and they quoted Darryl Still. 

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No numbers cited, but probably came from something like this. 

https://www.arcadeattack.co.uk/darryl-still/

 

Quote

You mentioned the Jaguar a few times there, and the limited budget to help promote and market it. Do you feel this was the main reason the Jag never really caught on?

Yes. The budget was limited but we used it very well and had a huge demand. It was the failure to supply the orders for the first Christmas that killed the machine. Parents went for their kids’ second choice console and we could never get that customer back.

It seems likely that something was changed in the re-telling of the story. 

 

For all we know, the "2 million" number might have referred to pounds or dollars, not units. $2M in Atari Jaguars would gross about 13,000 units, which seems plausible, both in terms of demand and in failing to meet it. 

 

If all those kids ended up satisfied with their "second choice console," that's an indication of a pretty soft demand. 

 

I call BS on the whole thing. 

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7 hours ago, Lost Dragon said:

And don't forget the PS2 could be used by Sadam in missile guidance systems and to the number crunching to process nuclear material.into weapons grade nuclear material for nuclear warheads ?

Lolol I forgot they made the PS2 a security issue. Imagine Saddam buying 100 PS2’s and trying to get them to do missile guidance ?

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Magazine Quotes (nice as they are) shouldn't really be used as sole sources of information. 

 

RetroGamer Magazine has had it's fair share of controversial quotes..

 

Jez San saying the Megadrive could not handle polygon 3D out of the box and the Mega CD (not SVP chip) was the  Sega answer to the Nintendo SFX chip.

 

Darryl Still going along with the suggestion the Lynx might of sold 3 Million units.

 

An artist claiming credit for work on Amiga Defender Of The Crown artist Jim Sachs was responsible for..

 

Mark Cale saying ST Myth was finished and released

 

And there are examples like this:

 

http://www.icemark.com/blog/archives/tag/mike-singleton/

 

For sales/pre-order  figures to really be credible,  you need independently verified numbers to be honest.

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2 hours ago, Flojomojo said:

No numbers cited, but probably came from something like this. 

https://www.arcadeattack.co.uk/darryl-still/

 

It seems likely that something was changed in the re-telling of the story. 

 

For all we know, the "2 million" number might have referred to pounds or dollars, not units. $2M in Atari Jaguars would gross about 13,000 units, which seems plausible, both in terms of demand and in failing to meet it. 

 

If all those kids ended up satisfied with their "second choice console," that's an indication of a pretty soft demand. 

 

I call BS on the whole thing. 

I've worded my take on it a little differently ? and suggested a few examples of where RetroGamer have slipped up before,  by  not doing the most basic of fact checking before running an article/interview.

 

But it should also be pointed out Darryl Still was not Atari Europe as it were.

 

He and his team (such as they were) worked minor miracles to promote the Jaguar here in the UK, espically given what limited resources they had, but for any 2 Million Pre-orders in Europe claim to have any chance of gaining credibility, you'd need high street store and mail order firm data from France, Spain, Germany and so on and so on.

 

Europe has a lot of member states (including us for a little while longer ?) and you'd need to break that 2 million (if it indeed is real) down into specific countries. 

 

Atari had done well with the ST here in the UK initally, The Sinclair QL was pretty much a dud in the limited ST vs QL war, the cheaper price and huge software bundles saw the ST in many homes until Commodore dropped the price of the Amiga..

 

But Sega and Nintendo had  obliterated Atari by the time the Jaguar was ready for Pre-order,  even Commodore had fared better.

 

The A1200 over the Falcon

 

The CD32 seeing off the Mega CD

 

There was no way the Atari name was strong enough to justify numbers quoted in RetroGamer.

 

Sorry Darryl,  but we can't take claims like that on faith alone.

 

There were shortages-nobody is disputing that..stores like HMS,  Virgin etc had such pathetic numbers per store at the start , a lot of customers were left empty handed and that meant angry parents and dissapointed kids, but you need to ground your claims when looking back at the situation.

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59 minutes ago, swapd0 said:

Bullshit, you don't need so much CPU power to do missile guidance, look at tomahawk missiles they are from early 80. 

Lol well sure but those aren’t locked behind proprietary hardware. You really think Saddam had a crack team of PS2 hackers to make them into a weapon?

 

ten bucks says the engineers would play games all day and say “nah Saddam not ready yet”

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I like that you say (nice as they are) -- that's a perfect way to think about magazine quotes about game developers or business executives. They have an interest in making themselves look good. Even a little understandable, unconscious pro-Atari bias can really distort a story, especially in hindsight, in a third-hand quote, wielded by someone with a point to prove. Of COURSE the Jaguar would have sold more IF ONLY they had been able to produce enough to fill the MASSIVE ORDERS we received, because we were SO GOOD at our sales and marketing job. No disrespect intended to this guy, but doesn't this at least cause you to raise an eyebrow?

Quote

We did a great job bringing amazing titles to the console, and with very limited budget made it the must have machine that Christmas, and then due to a catastrophic failure at the plant producing a key chip of the console, failed to deliver even 10% of the demand.

 

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6 hours ago, Flojomojo said:

For all we know, the "2 million" number might have referred to pounds or dollars, not units. $2M in Atari Jaguars would gross about 13,000 units, which seems plausible, both in terms of demand and in failing to meet it. 

 

3 hours ago, Flojomojo said:

No disrespect intended to this guy, but doesn't this at least cause you to raise an eyebrow?

 

Quote

We did a great job bringing amazing titles to the console, and with very limited budget made it the must have machine that Christmas, and then due to a catastrophic failure at the plant producing a key chip of the console, failed to deliver even 10% of the demand.

Sounds plausible, if they sold 10% of their preorders that would mean 20,000 units, which could mean over £2M in cash. 

Edited by Arcadia
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Seems to be some implications that DOOM came out too late when the Jag had dug its grave.

 

Wasn't it released only about ~7 or so months after the general launch (not test market)? November '94.

 

It was also after Wolf 3D, Tempest 2K, & AvP. There was solid software available even before DOOM. 

 

Add:

 

I've always wanted to see Beast Buster with light gun support! Here's a screenshot of the ST release.

[beast_busters_activision_(uk)_5.gif

Edited by Jagosaurus
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15 hours ago, Flojomojo said:

I like that you say (nice as they are) -- that's a perfect way to think about magazine quotes about game developers or business executives. They have an interest in making themselves look good. Even a little understandable, unconscious pro-Atari bias can really distort a story, especially in hindsight, in a third-hand quote, wielded by someone with a point to prove. Of COURSE the Jaguar would have sold more IF ONLY they had been able to produce enough to fill the MASSIVE ORDERS we received, because we were SO GOOD at our sales and marketing job. No disrespect intended to this guy, but doesn't this at least cause you to raise an eyebrow?

 

I'll use 3 examples from my own personal experience. .

 

1.Martin Hooley Imagitec Design:at the time Freelancer 2120 on Jaguar CD was cancelled, he was kind enough to reply to my letter in Ultimate Future Games explaining the Jaguar hardware was not up to the job and had been moved to the much more capable Playstation. .

 

By the time he's re interviewed years later by RetroGamer magazine suddenly it and Space Junk are canned because it's evident Jaguar CD is going to flop, Imagitec won't get the investment back and he makes first of 2 personal attacks in RG Magazine on Leonard Tramiel. 

 

Now aside for changing version of events..we now have the internal Atari documents that show Atari's side of the story, quotes from Andrew Seed and others from Imagitec Design and blaming Atari doesn't explain why PC and Playstation versions never made it.

 

Reasons are many, not least of all the games producer, but it suits Martin to use the interview to rewrite history in his favour

 

2.Mark Cale System 3:Having been warned Mark would be challenging to secure an interview, Mark set conditions for the interview-it had to be in a major publication like RetroGamer,  you were not allowed to ask about games System 3 had annouced,  hyped and never appeared.

Interview had to be used as a means of promoting System 3's latest title.

 

Jog on Mark.

 

3.Neil Cassini:My first ever real interview. Absolute joy to talk with, espically regarding Dead Space:Extraction and lost games he had worked on.

 

Grateful for the interview as he was not a big enough name for the likes of RG etc to show much interest in.

 

Their loss.

 

 

I was once a huge magazine subscriber and magazines are a great way to kill a few hours on a rainy day or a break at work etc.

 

But the standards of writing and fact checking, plus the fear of upsetting the celebrity they are interviewing for that issue,mean for myself they can never be classed as credible historical documents for an awful lot of the time.

 

When you have Atari articles being written because nobody else submitted any..

 

Or you have The Rev Stuart Campbell who publically hated Kick Off doing an article on that (he worked at Sensible Software) and article on Defender yet was behind the ST Format 33% ?) And Edge 3/10 reviews for Jaguar Defender 2000 and causing uproar amongst the SNK community.

 

 

References to the Mode-7 style 3D sections in Mega Drive Contra being removed because the editor couldn't remember them being in there.

 

The editor doing an article on Sprite scaling then later admitting he had no idea what Mode 7 was, nor what custom chips the Sega Mega CD and Atari Lynx actually had. .

 

 

You'll forgive me for casting doubt on Lynx life time sales and Jaguar Pre Order numbers because RetroGamer magazine said...?

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