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New Jag CD Podcast Imminent - Questions & Feedback Needed


Adriano Arcade

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Dear all, 

 

Very soon my good buddy Dyl and I will be recording our 3rd Jag CD / Mega CD episode for Arcade Attack.

 

I was wondering if I could ask for your help? I would love to hear your answers on the following questions - which I will use in the podcast! I am recording this coming Sunday:

 

QUESTION 1 - Was there any chance the Jag CD could have been successful, and if so how could this have happened?

 

QUESTION 2 - Which 3 dream games do you feel would have been the most popular / influential if they were released on the Jag CD back in 95?

 

QUESTION 3 - Do you feel there is room for a new JagDuo Mini and if so, which must have games and accessories should be incorporated?

 

Plus feel free to throw me any random Jaguar / Jag CD facts and cool stories.

 

Thanks all! Much love! Adrian

 

P.s. the previous Jag CD / Mega CD pods can be found here:

https://www.arcadeattack.co.uk/podcast-november-1-2018/

https://www.arcadeattack.co.uk/podcast-june-4-2018/

 

Edited by Adriano Arcade
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QUESTION 1 - Was there any chance the Jag CD could have been successful, and if so how could this have happened?

 

If someone other than Atari was running Atari, perhaps.

 

QUESTION 2 - Which 3 dream games do you feel would have been the most popular / influential if they were released on the Jag CD back in 95?

 

Black Ice/White Noise, Mortal Kombat 3 and...

 

QUESTION 3 - Do you feel there is room for a new JagDuo Mini and if so, which must have games and accessories should be incorporated?

 

Asking if there is room for a tiny console seems humorous to me but most certainly, I'll take a JagDuo in any form. ;) As far as must have games and accessories: a Pro-Controller and Phear would be nice inclusions.

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9 hours ago, Adriano Arcade said:

QUESTION 1 - Was there any chance the Jag CD could have been successful, and if so how could this have happened?

It could have been successful only if the jaguar were successful, which there are myriad reasons for why the jag base system wasn't a raging success, but many can be boiled down into lack of impressive looking games early on in the system's life and Atari's lack of money and other resources for software development

 

 

9 hours ago, Adriano Arcade said:

QUESTION 2 - Which 3 dream games do you feel would have been the most popular / influential if they were released on the Jag CD back in 95?

Dream games: probably anything 3d with texture mapping released in the PS1 launch lineup.  More realistically for the hardware? Maybe Need for Speed 1, Mortal Kombat 3, Road Rash

 

 

9 hours ago, Adriano Arcade said:

QUESTION 3 - Do you feel there is room for a new JagDuo Mini and if so, which must have games and accessories should be incorporated?

I think that would be a cool idea, but probably only of interest to current jaguar owners and fans, of which there might be hundreds... that's probably not enough for a product like this to be viable, so I guess the answer is "no, there is no room for a JagDuo Mini". 

 

 

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Q1: If it had been released with the Jag and not much later as an add on

Q2: Having anything that went on the become a big series of games (i.e. Tomb Raider, Madden, Tiger Woods PGA), AvP with more/bigger levels & better graphics, not many FVM games around except VidGrid so either American Hero with both its FMV novelty & somewhat adult content or Black Ice/White Noise could have generated a lot of interest in the Jaguar/CD unit.

Q3: Given that...

  1. The CD library is so small is a CD unit virtually unnecessary and 
  2. Carl or Saint might solve CD emulation making a CD unit unnecessary

I would say not really, only as a cheaper alternative to getting an original Jaguar console. Incorporated accessories should be JagLink or equivalent for game networking and a HD HDMI output for easy connection to modern TVs/Monitors would be useful.

As for games it depend if you are talking about any game or just Jaguar games. If Jaguar Games then T2K, AvP & Iron Soldier, if any game then see my answer to question 2. Plus Lemmings and a good dogfighter, something like Heroes of the Pacific or Tie Fighter and something that requires some thinking as well as blasting like Space Hulk.  

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QUESTION   1 - Was there any chance the Jag CD could have been successful, and if so how could this have happened?

 

A) Not under the Tramiels and not as a simple, dumb storage medium, released late in the machines commercial lifespan and with titles like Blue Lightning,  Dragons Lair, Primal Rage etc.

 

For an add on to have any real chance of success it needed exclusive,  Triple A software.

 

Blue Lightning should never of been the in-game pack for a start.

 

 

The add on arrived far too late and offered far too little.

 

This was supposed to be the device which allowed developers to fully exploit the Jaguar's potential and put it on a level playing field with the Playstation and Saturn according to Atari.

 

How? It was just extra storage capacity.

 

 

Looking back, no wonder Atari constantly showed the device running FMV clips from movies at trade shows..they had sweet F.A in way of software ready for it.

 

QUESTION 2 - Which 3 dream games do you feel would have been the most popular / influential if they were released on the Jag CD back in 95?

 

I'm sticking to actual, lost titles, not nonsense stuff here (Tomb Raider,  Quake, Resident Evil etc would of looked awful on Jaguar)

 

 

Jaguar needed titles like:

 

 

Legions Of The Undead

 

Black Ice/White Noise

 

Dactyl Joust

 

 

Amiga/SNES/MD/3DO/CD32  ports were the last thing it needed, as was Atari texture mapping games just to try and compete with rival systems.

 

 

Give it enough Triple A exclusives to make it viable as a second system for gamers and pray you can keep public and publishers interested long enough to ensure Jaguar II stands a chance.

 

 

QUESTION 3 - Do you feel there is room for a new JagDuo Mini and if so, which must have games and accessories should be incorporated?

 

 

Define room....

 

 

There is a niche market of collectors who would instantly buy it the moment it was released and it would look sweet on display under a glass case ?

 

 

But if you mean could there be a commercial market for it like the Playstation and MegaDrive etc Mini's..

 

With the pityful Jaguar CD commercial games library?  Hell no.

Edited by Lost Dragon
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Q1: No, not really. Not even the behemoth Sega had much success with a CD add-on. Granted, the Jag CD was half the price, it wouldn't have mattered. The only chance a Jag CD would have been successful would be if the Jag had a CD from the beginning. 

 

Q2: Nothing Atari themselves could muster. Perhaps one of the Sega games that Atari had a contract with Sega to be released on the Jag, maybe Shining Force CD? And I always thought it sad that they never released compilations of older games on one CD (having hundreds of older games on a pack-in disc would have been a great way of showing of the storage capacity of the CD), or that they didn't upgrade regular cartridge games for the CD with added music and sound effects. Like their sports games, with added commentary. 

 

Q3: Given the price of the Jag and Jag CD nowadays, maybe. I'd rather have an "Atari mini" that included all their consoles, it'd be an easier sell I imagine. If the Atari VCS is a success, and I doubt it, maybe Jag games are a feature they'll add later on, on top of the classic games they promised will be on it. 

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2 minutes ago, Arcadia said:

Q1: No, not really. Not even the behemoth Sega had much success with a CD add-on. Granted, the Jag CD was half the price, it wouldn't have mattered. 

That's a vital point right there.

 

The Sega CD added extra hardware (second, faster CPU, PCM Soundchip etc) that let the hardware do stunning 3D sections of Batman Returns. .night and day difference between cartridge version..plus Thunderhawk,  Battlecorps, Soulstar etc.

 

It had the support of Capcom with Final Fight, Konami with Lethal Enforcers. .

 

It had Mortal Kombat, Jurassic Park (again very different to the cartridge version as was The Terminator) , Dune, Starblade,  Sonic, FIFA, etc...

 

Plenty of big name games and yet it still bombed. 

 

What on earth was Atari hoping to achieve with a dumb drive and it's very limited publisher support? 

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Yeah, I've gotta agree w/Clint (draft edit: and others) on this one. Atari was already going under when the CD came out. It also added nothing other than the ability to read off CD-ROM instead of cart. No extra processor, no extra RAM. Even the first CD-ROM add-on (PC-E/TG-16) had cards that added RAM to the system. The Sega CD added another 68k processor and additional RAM. The Jag CD? Nothing. OK, redbook audio. Even the pack-in games were pretty sad offerings. The Nintendo 64 had a measly 2 launch titles in the US, but one of them was a Mario game and people knew they could trust Nintendo to deliver the goods. Who was trusting Atari to release great titles for a CD add-on for a doomed console?

 

I think fighting games probably would've been the best use for the format, loading the new background and character sprites between rounds. The Jag could pull off beautiful 2D games, so fighters of the day (within limitations, obviously) would've made a lot of sense. But none of that matters as the Jag itself was a failure.

 

I see little to no market for the JagDuo Mini, outside the more hardcore gamers most people either don't know about or have long forgotten the Jaguar. While I could assemble a list of cart based games that'd still be popular today with casual gamers, I can't think of an original CD release that anyone would care to play in 2019 or later. The main accessory I'd hope they'd include would be a diode to prevent reverse polarity from blowing up the system.

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I think the Arcade Attack guys need to ask a bigger question before looking at the 3 for the Jaguar .

 

 

How many add-ons and all-in-one later devices were successful for their parent companies? .

 

 

A good few tried it:

 

Commodore with the CDTV and Amiga 500 CD Drive, plus the CD32 (an A 100 with CD Drive and Akiko chip intended to make PC to Amiga conversions easier)..

 

 

Sega with the Sega CD..Multi-Mega (that was a lovely looking bit of kit though), 32X and planned Neptune. 

 

Nintendo with the N64 Bulky Drive

 

Pioneer LaserActive and it's Genesis and TurboGrafx-16 expansion modules

 

Sony with the PSX (DVR)

 

 

Coleco Adam...

 

Atari tried to compete with 2 very different generations of hardware..The existing 16 bit SNES/Genesis market which was in it's twilight stages and adding expensive DSP chips to select titles did little to prolong and then the emerging 32 bit console market by finally releasing an optical drive.

 

Rumours had been rife Atari had looked at adding extra hardware to the Jaguar CD to up it's texture mapping ability,  but wanted the drive to come in at a critically low price point. .

 

But the simple fact is thy didn't have the publisher support to write killer apps for the Jaguar CD.

 

 

ATD openly admitted that Battlemorph was basically a contractual obligation and doing it put them behind other publishers in terms of having 1st generation Playstation titles ready.

 

Development teams were itching to get Saturn and Playstation development kits..not akward to use Jaguar CD development kits.

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6 hours ago, Lost Dragon said:

That's a vital point right there.

 

The Sega CD added extra hardware (second, faster CPU, PCM Soundchip etc) that let the hardware do stunning 3D sections of Batman Returns. .night and day difference between cartridge version..plus Thunderhawk,  Battlecorps, Soulstar etc.

 

It had the support of Capcom with Final Fight, Konami with Lethal Enforcers. .

 

It had Mortal Kombat, Jurassic Park (again very different to the cartridge version as was The Terminator) , Dune, Starblade,  Sonic, FIFA, etc...

 

Plenty of big name games and yet it still bombed. 

 

What on earth was Atari hoping to achieve with a dumb drive and it's very limited publisher support? 

Honestly the Jaguar did not need extra hardware. It needed more games. The benefits of CD were more capacity, FMV and CD audio capabilities and a medium cheaper to produce than carts. Its apples and oranges comparison with the Mega CD, the purpose of the Jag CD was to use the hardware BETTER, instead of adding extra chips no dev bothers to put to good use.;-)  However Atari was already going under. And it ruins the look of the console. ;-) 

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On 10/16/2019 at 5:11 PM, Adriano Arcade said:

Dear all, 

 

Very soon my good buddy Dyl and I will be recording our 3rd Jag CD / Mega CD episode for Arcade Attack.

 

I was wondering if I could ask for your help? I would love to hear your answers on the following questions - which I will use in the podcast! I am recording this coming Sunday:

 

QUESTION 1 - Was there any chance the Jag CD could have been successful, and if so how could this have happened?

 

QUESTION 2 - Which 3 dream games do you feel would have been the most popular / influential if they were released on the Jag CD back in 95?

 

QUESTION 3 - Do you feel there is room for a new JagDuo Mini and if so, which must have games and accessories should be incorporated?

 

Plus feel free to throw me any random Jaguar / Jag CD facts and cool stories.

 

Thanks all! Much love! Adrian

 

P.s. the previous Jag CD / Mega CD pods can be found here:

https://www.arcadeattack.co.uk/podcast-november-1-2018/

https://www.arcadeattack.co.uk/podcast-june-4-2018/

 

Question 1: Better software? It came too late, release late 1994 or early 1995. 

Question 2: Battlermorph, Iron Soldier 2 or Myst as pack ins. "Star Wars: Rebel Aussault" and more high profile PC CD ROM ports. 

Question 3: No.

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6 hours ago, madman said:

Yeah, I've gotta agree w/Clint (draft edit: and others) on this one. Atari was already going under when the CD came out. It also added nothing other than the ability to read off CD-ROM instead of cart. No extra processor, no extra RAM. Even the first CD-ROM add-on (PC-E/TG-16) had cards that added RAM to the system. The Sega CD added another 68k processor and additional RAM. The Jag CD? Nothing. OK, redbook audio. Even the pack-in games were pretty sad offerings. The Nintendo 64 had a measly 2 launch titles in the US, but one of them was a Mario game and people knew they could trust Nintendo to deliver the goods. Who was trusting Atari to release great titles for a CD add-on for a doomed console?

 

I think fighting games probably would've been the best use for the format, loading the new background and character sprites between rounds. The Jag could pull off beautiful 2D games, so fighters of the day (within limitations, obviously) would've made a lot of sense. But none of that matters as the Jag itself was a failure.

 

I see little to no market for the JagDuo Mini, outside the more hardcore gamers most people either don't know about or have long forgotten the Jaguar. While I could assemble a list of cart based games that'd still be popular today with casual gamers, I can't think of an original CD release that anyone would care to play in 2019 or later. The main accessory I'd hope they'd include would be a diode to prevent reverse polarity from blowing up the system.

The Sega Mega CD is only single speed drive and too slow for most tasks. The FMV looks piss poor, and I mean for 1994 standards. Overall the Jag CD is the better CD drive if you ask for a decent use of the medium, not for extra chips which basically serve as hardware crutch.

Edited by agradeneu
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54 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

Honestly the Jaguar did not need extra hardware. It needed more games. The benefits of CD were more capacity, FMV and CD audio capabilities and a medium cheaper to produce than carts. Its apples and oranges comparison with the Mega CD, the purpose of the Jag CD was to use the hardware BETTER, instead of adding extra chips no dev bothers to put to good use.;-)  However Atari was already going under. And it ruins the look of the console. ;-) 

The Jaguar itself needed better games and Atari themselves really muddied the waters with the inclusion of the CD Drive. 

 

Defender 2000 originally planned for CD switched to cartridge.

 

F1 went from a plain polygon Cartridge Racer to be reworked as W.T.R for the Jaguar CD

 

Legions Of The Undead was supposed to be coming out on Cartridge and CD

 

AVP CD Fox would not allow any enhancements on..It had to be the cartridge game, which rendered putting it on CD pointless in effect. 

 

Primal Rage could of been done on Cartridge.

 

 

If Atari were serious about using the Jaguar CD to level the playing field with the 3DO and Saturn,  let alone the Playstation,  FMV and additional storage space were not going to cut it.

 

Atari had been marketing the Jaguar itself as having CD quality audio, so it lost a selling point with the CD Drive. 

 

If rumours are to be believed,  Atari having seen Shockwave on the 3DO wanted Jaguar games to be texture mapped to compete and then there is Bill Rehbock claiming F.F.L was texture mapped as Virtua Fighter was not.

 

Atari knew texture mapping killed the frame rate of games and the only real way you could improve that situation was by adding extra hardware to the CD Drive but as that was never an option, developers had to use textures sparingly if they wanted good frame rates..ATD claim they ignores Atari's request for full texture mapping on Battlemorph. .Martin Hooley at the time claimed Atari wanted Freelancer 2120 to suddenly have loads of texture mapping and lighting effects and Jaguar wasn't capable of handling these..he's since changed his version of events to..Jaguar CD was clearly a massive failure,  we would never recoup our investment, so we killed it..and even.that isn't the real version of events ?

 

 

Hoverstrike U.L has decent textures and texture variety thanks to the CD storage space but even with coding moving to the GPU the frame rate improvement is not that substantial, improved yes, but not huge increase in numbers.

 

Cartridge games were showing how developers were getting to grips with the Jaguar hardware better on second and third generation Jaguar games.

 

Rebellion with Skyhammer compared to Checkered Flag and AVP and Legions was to use an optimised AvP engine, the CD version would just contain more levels than the cartridge version.

 

 

Jeff Minter used the GPU far more with Defender 2000 than he did for Tempest 2000 but produced a weaker title in my view.

 

 

 

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48 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

The Sega Mega CD is only single speed drive and too slow for most tasks. The FMV looks piss poor, and I mean for 1994 standards. Overall the Jag CD is the better CD drive if you ask for a decent use of the medium, not for extra chips which basically serve as hardware crutch.

Sega going with FMV on a platform with ability to put 64 colours on screen from 512...yep, that was Sega.

 

Single speed drive was a real bane as well when games like Mortal Kombat etc had pauses whilst system searched for a sample to be found and pulled off the disc.

 

 

 

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2 hours ago, Lost Dragon said:

The Jaguar itself needed better games and Atari themselves really muddied the waters with the inclusion of the CD Drive. 

 

Defender 2000 originally planned for CD switched to cartridge.

 

F1 went from a plain polygon Cartridge Racer to be reworked as W.T.R for the Jaguar CD

 

Legions Of The Undead was supposed to be coming out on Cartridge and CD

 

AVP CD Fox would not allow any enhancements on..It had to be the cartridge game, which rendered putting it on CD pointless in effect. 

 

Primal Rage could of been done on Cartridge.

 

 

If Atari were serious about using the Jaguar CD to level the playing field with the 3DO and Saturn,  let alone the Playstation,  FMV and additional storage space were not going to cut it.

 

Atari had been marketing the Jaguar itself as having CD quality audio, so it lost a selling point with the CD Drive. 

 

If rumours are to be believed,  Atari having seen Shockwave on the 3DO wanted Jaguar games to be texture mapped to compete and then there is Bill Rehbock claiming F.F.L was texture mapped as Virtua Fighter was not.

 

Atari knew texture mapping killed the frame rate of games and the only real way you could improve that situation was by adding extra hardware to the CD Drive but as that was never an option, developers had to use textures sparingly if they wanted good frame rates..ATD claim they ignores Atari's request for full texture mapping on Battlemorph. .Martin Hooley at the time claimed Atari wanted Freelancer 2120 to suddenly have loads of texture mapping and lighting effects and Jaguar wasn't capable of handling these..he's since changed his version of events to..Jaguar CD was clearly a massive failure,  we would never recoup our investment, so we killed it..and even.that isn't the real version of events ?

 

 

Hoverstrike U.L has decent textures and texture variety thanks to the CD storage space but even with coding moving to the GPU the frame rate improvement is not that substantial, improved yes, but not huge increase in numbers.

 

Cartridge games were showing how developers were getting to grips with the Jaguar hardware better on second and third generation Jaguar games.

 

Rebellion with Skyhammer compared to Checkered Flag and AVP and Legions was to use an optimised AvP engine, the CD version would just contain more levels than the cartridge version.

 

 

Jeff Minter used the GPU far more with Defender 2000 than he did for Tempest 2000 but produced a weaker title in my view.

 

 

 

Hm, I friendly disagree to most of your points:

 

1. Extra hardware would have cost too much for uncertain benefits -  still the PS1 would have been out of reach in terms of performance.  The theory of having extra hardware for texture is....just theory and it most likely would not have that big magic impact you and some others are assuming.

 

2. Cartridge production was very expensive and most carts were just 2MB - 4 MB. That puts serious limits on art assets, sounds and content compared to CD. AVP CD would have benefit for more variety of textures, animated story sequences and more just because of more storage for data. The CD add on solved these two issues for Atari  but then you just can't expect it to solve ALL problems inherent to the hardware (e.g. texture mapping performance it was not designed for).

 

3. For its short time on the market, the software quality for the CD drive improved dramatically compared to the cart releases and high quality ports were possible. There were some high profile titles like Soul Star in dev, which would have been  AAA titles for the Jaguar library. Battlemorph, Myst and Iron Soldier 2 are essential Jag games and even Highlander, although a poor game,  looked next gen at least, and not like a 16 bit port from SNES. Primal Rage was the first decent fighter for the Jag, and guess what, the poor Fight For LIfe was the very last release on cart, among the last wave of cart st*nkers like Supercross 3D. 

 

4. FMV games were considered nex gen (and you can cheat a lot by using prendered animations from CD ;-)), Atari had to release the CD drive to keep the Jaguar competitive. Otherwise even faithful fans would have bought a Playstation or some other available CD system Xmas 1995, instead of buying Jag CDs. Believe it or not, the Jag CD was eagerly awaited by most of the remaining Jag fans and long overdue, as it was considered the last chance for  Atari to fix the permanent software woes that plagued the system from the very start - and prove that the system is still a contender among the nex gen consoles. Don't blame Atari for trying ;-)

 

5. I must say both Jaguar and the CD are the most reliable console hardware I own. I lost 2x Dreamcast and 2x PS3s due hardware failures, 2x Atari Lynx were plagued by Joypad malfunctions (easy fix, but you have to open the case and clean the contacts). Maybe I'm lucky, but the CD drive is still just working fine.

Edited by agradeneu
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2 hours ago, Lost Dragon said:

The Jaguar itself needed better games and Atari themselves really muddied the waters with the inclusion of the CD Drive. 

 

Defender 2000 originally planned for CD switched to cartridge.

 

F1 went from a plain polygon Cartridge Racer to be reworked as W.T.R for the Jaguar CD

 

Legions Of The Undead was supposed to be coming out on Cartridge and CD

 

AVP CD Fox would not allow any enhancements on..It had to be the cartridge game, which rendered putting it on CD pointless in effect. 

 

Primal Rage could of been done on Cartridge.

 

 

If Atari were serious about using the Jaguar CD to level the playing field with the 3DO and Saturn,  let alone the Playstation,  FMV and additional storage space were not going to cut it.

 

Atari had been marketing the Jaguar itself as having CD quality audio, so it lost a selling point with the CD Drive. 

 

If rumours are to be believed,  Atari having seen Shockwave on the 3DO wanted Jaguar games to be texture mapped to compete and then there is Bill Rehbock claiming F.F.L was texture mapped as Virtua Fighter was not.

 

Atari knew texture mapping killed the frame rate of games and the only real way you could improve that situation was by adding extra hardware to the CD Drive but as that was never an option, developers had to use textures sparingly if they wanted good frame rates..ATD claim they ignores Atari's request for full texture mapping on Battlemorph. .Martin Hooley at the time claimed Atari wanted Freelancer 2120 to suddenly have loads of texture mapping and lighting effects and Jaguar wasn't capable of handling these..he's since changed his version of events to..Jaguar CD was clearly a massive failure,  we would never recoup our investment, so we killed it..and even.that isn't the real version of events ?

 

 

Hoverstrike U.L has decent textures and texture variety thanks to the CD storage space but even with coding moving to the GPU the frame rate improvement is not that substantial, improved yes, but not huge increase in numbers.

 

Cartridge games were showing how developers were getting to grips with the Jaguar hardware better on second and third generation Jaguar games.

 

Rebellion with Skyhammer compared to Checkered Flag and AVP and Legions was to use an optimised AvP engine, the CD version would just contain more levels than the cartridge version.

 

 

Jeff Minter used the GPU far more with Defender 2000 than he did for Tempest 2000 but produced a weaker title in my view.

 

 

 

Why you ignore Iron Soldier 2? The CD version is the version to get. Too bad only few can play it. The Jaguar should be good enough for Shockwave, Hoverstrike CD is a much more sophisticated  3 D game. I consider Freelancer as vapourware - seriously there is not even a decent PC version to speak of, plenty of hardware power, but the Jaguar is easy to blame. I'm sceptical a studio like Imagetec  was  ever capable to pull off a high profile 3D game, in the end the PC game was entirely scrapped  - that should tell you something. ;-) Overall the potential of the CDdrive was not realized due to its short lifespan, but Iron Soldier 2 and Battlemorph are good indication of it's capabilities.

Edited by agradeneu
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I love good discussion which you always give, so friendly disagreement is most welcome.

 

I don't disagree with point 1.

 

I know Jez San had huge hopes for the widespread use of the SNES SFX chip and appears quite bitter it was never widely used.

 

Fact was the price of adding it to cartridges was simply too much for most publishers to stomach and Lord only knows how much it would of cost Atari to put extra hardware into the Jaguar CD just to come close to rival hardware in terms of texture mapping but it would be nice to have the rumours they did at least investigate the possibility put to bed. 

 

2.Dan McNamee has said Fox would only allow the existing cartridge version of AVP to be put on Jaguar CD, Atari wouldn't of been allowed to offer any bells and whistles. 

 

At best it could of been sold at a lower price due to lower production costs of CD vs Cart. 

 

3.Disagree with Soul Star (but tad biased as never rated it on Sega CD) a cosmetically improved (bar chunkier floor) 16 bit game, was not exactly the flagship title Atari needed to showcase 64 bit gaming. 

 

Battlemorph and Hoverstrike U.L at least showcased how the CD medium could be used.

 

Highlander..awful game but ticked a good few boxes, 65000 colour backgrounds, motion capture etc, high production value title.

 

Primal Rage only really had that honour as likes of Kasumi Ninja turned out to be so dissapointing. 

 

4.FMV games next gen? I bought a stack as a 16 bit Sega CD owner.

 

Actually liked Ground Zero Texas and Dracula,  but even then they didn't represent next generation gaming.

 

True video had just replaced cartoon animation and they were if anything a return to the old Laser Disc arcade era.

 

The preview of Freelancer 2120 in Gamesmaster Magazine was in part what convinced me to but a Jaguar. .talk of game being a mix of Doom and Aliens. Stop motion animation etc..It seemed like games were finally coming closer to movie style production values without any loss of gameplay.

 

That and Black Ice White Noise were the kind of projects i expected from a CD system for a 64 bit system

 

5.Never had a Jaguar die on me.

 

2 800 XL systems..power surge killed a 520STFM,  lens warp a Playstation,  optical drive failures on 2 PS3's..screen died on a Game Gear..numerous Dreamcast machines had the reset blight as did 1 Game Cube, 1 DS died..

 

HDD failure on 2 PC's and mate killed a third ?

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7 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

Why you ignore Iron Soldier 2? The CD version is the version to get. Too bad only few can play it. The Jaguar should be good enough for Shockwave, Hoverstrike CD is a much more sophisticated  3 D game. I consider Freelancer as vapourware - seriously there is not even a decent PC version to speak of, plenty of hardware power, but the Jaguar is easy to blame. I'm sceptical a studio like Imagetec  was  ever capable to pull off a high profile 3D game, in the end the PC game was entirely scrapped  - that should tell you something. ;-) Overall the potential of the CDdrive was not realized due to its short lifespan, but Iron Soldier 2 and Battlemorph are good indication of it's capabilities.

Only ever had the original Iron Soldier on Jaguar..I.S III on PS1. ..

 

Never had I.S II on Cart or CD so would be unfair of me to express any real views on it.

 

Freelancer 2120 was running at an awful frame rate on a high end PC using Argonaut's Brender software and that's from an Imagitec Design source to boot ?

 

The games producer basically the death blow for it amongst other factors. .It looks like the Jaguar CD screens in Gamesmaster Magazine were from this version-more mock shots from Imagitec,  a Martin Hooley strong point sadly ?

 

Producer took it with him when he left, tried to get it rebooted..failed. 

 

Doubt Imagitec did much on the Playstation version.

 

Key artist was not even told if any of his art had been used.

 

The stop motion modelling guy does not want to talk about his role on the project.

 

We can confirm who did the intro, but yeah it's a total joke of a project. 

 

There was even an Amiga 500 version annouced at 1 point ?

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20 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

Well youtube will tell you it has more textures AND high frame rate - without any extra chip ;-)

True but i loved I.S so much, mainly for it's sense of feel.

 

Bought 32X Metal Head months later..fully texture mapped , dicey frame rate, bloody awful Mech Game.

 

Think it was Second Opinion Games who's I.S 2 review i watched and i came away rather surprised as he really seemed to put the boot into it.

 

Yep it was..opens with some rather unfair critiscm of the visuals:

 

 

Edited by Lost Dragon
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Just now, Lost Dragon said:

True but i loved I.S so much, mainly for it's sense of feel.

 

Bought 32X Metal Head months later..fully texture mapped , dicey frame rate, bloody awful Mech Game.

 

Think it was Second Opinion Games who's I.S 2 review i watched and i came away rather surprised as he really seemed to put the boot into it.

He reviewed the cart version. Yeah I think he had some issues with the difficulty of the game - it's quite harsh from the start and the mission scripts are tight. But so was TIE Fighter and other combat sims on PC. ;-)  Overall he clearly misses the point. 

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11 hours ago, Lost Dragon said:

Atari knew texture mapping killed the frame rate of games and the only real way you could improve that situation was by adding extra hardware to the CD Drive

I'm not sure about that assumption. Too bad Marc Rosocha or Michael Bittner of Eclipse are not active in the community today to give some valid insight to that - they were pushing 3D engine tech for the Jaguar really hard and probably the reason Atari demanded more texture mapping from other developers as well. But not everyone could pull it off. 

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For me q1 and q2 are related.

 

First up, as with the jaguar, it was late to market ( certainly here in the uk ). I remember ordering mine pre-release and then it turning up after i'd forgotten about it.

( In fact I reckon a lot of kickstarter campaigns take a page out of Ataris's playbook  and are run in exactly the same way - promise a date and let it slide )

 

IMHO it could have sold if the launch lineup was stronger/larger but again this was probably due to the lateness of actual hardware being delivered and atari's disengenous attitude to developers.

 

As for launch titles - well for me a Lucas arts tie in would've made a massive difference ( Tie Fighter, Dark Forces etc ) maybe doom2, hexen or rise of triad or something like Medal Of Honor.

 

It was also a real shame that AVP 2 ( enhanced by the larger storage of the CD ) was never released.

 

But as usual for atari a great idea, imperfectly executed.

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2 hours ago, agradeneu said:

I'm not sure about that assumption. Too bad Marc Rosocha or Michael Bittner of Eclipse are not active in the community today to give some valid insight to that - they were pushing 3D engine tech for the Jaguar really hard and probably the reason Atari demanded more texture mapping from other developers as well. But not everyone could pull it off. 

It's not really an assumption,  commercial coders from the time have come forward and stated they were under pressure from Atari to do heavy texture mapping and Atari knew what that would do to the frame rate.

 

ATD and Imagitec Design made reference to it..but here are a few other quotes:

 

 

1.World Tour Racing Coder:

 

"I would  like to clarify a few things. The game IS polygon based, the project was 
originally conceived as Virtua Racing on the Jag, but as the project  progressed that look became dated and we received pressure to include heavy  texture mapping.

 

 The game does contain some texture mapping, but also  includes lots of tricks involving scaled sprites and bitmaps to make the  screen look detailed and interesting, without anywhere near the same speed  hit.

 

It's not 30fps but it is a lot faster than Chequered Flag."

 

And next up Missile Command 3D coder:

 

 

JEO] The frame rate is good, but a bit on the slow side.  What happened?

 

[MB] Blame Atari... "Oh, and texture this, texture that, texture the other." 
"But textures are at least 8x slower than flat shaded" says I.  "Actually," 
says Atari, "they're at least 22x slower, but we want them anyway".  You saw 
how the motorcycle game (Supercross 3D --Ed.) game came out - really slow - 
that's because they gave in to Atari and textured everything, which the Jag 
just can't handle."

 

ATD stated Atari had seen shockwave Assault on the 3DO and wanted Jaguar games to compete.

 

Bill Rehbock used fact Atari wanted to get 1 over on Virtua Fighter. .

 

Atari just so badly wanted to have the Jaguar as a system that could match rival platforms in the texture mapped 3D arena, when it was designed to push plain polygons.

 

John Mathieson himself has said one of his biggest regrets about the hardware was it should of been able to do texture mapping but when they were designing the hardware, Gouraud Shading seemed enough and he wasn't sure what they could of done differently at the time with the limits imposed by the chips etc then avaiable,  but there would of been a different emphasis. 

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