My opinion of Cybermorph

[Tommywilley84]

Once you get a hang of the controls I really don't think it's that bad of a game. I love searching around for pods and shooting enemies. The primitive polygon graphics actually add a bit of charm, I remember seeing games back in the early 90s that looked similar and remember being blown away by them. The complete lack of background music is the only complaint I have. I think if someone with some Homebrew skills took this game and just added some interesting music or any for that part it could be amongst one of the jags best titles.

[+Sauron]

That's a rather optimistic view of Cybermorph. I had fun with the game back in the day, but it is highly flawed. Battlemorph is a vastly improved sequel to it, as it fixes almost every issue that Cybermorph had.

[PFG 9000]

Cybermorph isn't a bad game by any stretch. It hasn't aged well, but in 1994 it was pretty cool.  I was actually impressed by the sound quality more than anything else at the time, but even graphically it was impressive.  The only thing comparable I had seen at the time was Star Fox, and Cybermorph was much smoother, more colorful, more varied in gameplay, etc.

[Swansea_Mariner]

I agree, personally it one of favourite Jag games, I always seem to come back to it while a lot of the titles rarely find their way back into the cartridge slot.

 

Some music would definitely liven it up.

[alucardX]

30 minutes ago, PFG 9000 said:

Cybermorph isn't a bad game by any stretch. It hasn't aged well, but in 1994 it was pretty cool.  I was actually impressed by the sound quality more than anything else at the time, but even graphically it was impressive.  The only thing comparable I had seen at the time was Star Fox, and Cybermorph was much smoother, more colorful, more varied in gameplay, etc.

Don't forget Cybermorph is also a full 3D explorable space, unlike Starfox which is on rails. I like to imagine sometimes what Shigeru Myamoto would have done with the Jaguar in terms of game play and game design. I think something akin to Starfox 2 on the SNES would have been very interesting on the Jaguar.

 

In my opinion, Cybermorph suffers from the same game design problems as most of the Jaguar titles: They are all mission based. I don't think it is inherently bad but it felt like many new game design ideas from the time were largely ignored by Atari designers. Graphically I think things looked impressive for the time but as pointed out before Battlemorph was able to showcase the improvements time can allow.

 

[Isgoed]

I agree with Tommy, for the most part.

The lack of background music is unfortunate. 

[Tommywilley84]

8 hours ago, Sauron said:

That's a rather optimistic view of Cybermorph. I had fun with the game back in the day, but it is highly flawed. Battlemorph is a vastly improved sequel to it, as it fixes almost every issue that Cybermorph had.

I never played battlemorph. I own a Jag but not a Jag cd and paying the price of one that actually works is like signing my death warrant with my wife lmao

[Tommywilley84]

8 hours ago, Swansea_Mariner said:

I agree, personally it one of favourite Jag games, I always seem to come back to it while a lot of the titles rarely find their way back into the cartridge slot.

 

Some music would definitely liven it up.

For being a shooter it's a very laid back game. I think the pacing of the action is perfect for nice relaxed game play.

Edited May 19, 2020 by Tommywilley84

[eightbit]

I (just many of you) played this game before any other Jag title as it came included with the console when I purchased it. I have really fond memories of the game and still enjoy it as the relaxing fly around, shoot and collect stuff style game it is. I really enjoyed it when it was new and can still find enjoyment in it to this day.

[doctorclu]

6 hours ago, Isgoed said:

I agree with Tommy, for the most part.

The lack of background music is unfortunate. 

This is why I play the Rock of Ages two disc set of Def Leppard while playing Cybermorph.  I pop in Cybermorph, start the soundtrack, and I'm time warped two and half to three hours into the future and done with the game.

 

Really fun game.  Used to hate it, but now it is one of my top five Jaguar games I replay.

[Warmsignal]

The AVGN just game the game a bad rap, along with the entire console. Now everyone thinks it to be some terrible game where all you hear is "where did you learn to fly?"... and they failed to notice how he was intentionally running into the wall over and over to make it say that. James Rolfe has always been what you would call a Nintendo fanboy from the very start and because his show was entertaining and popular, many people take his brand of humor as something more than just humor. Whether he's trashing an entire system like the Jag, or an add-on like Sega CD.

 

It seems as though some people retrospectively believe a 1993 polygon shooter should have somehow looked like maybe a 1997 polygon shooter. For 1992/1993 when it was developed, Cybermorph doesn't look that all that bad, it runs okay, and it's an open world perspective. I think there's no question the game looks and plays better than Star Fox, but obviously it's not going to be on par with Star Fox 64 but I think it's pretty unfair to have expectations anywhere near that for a Jaguar launch title. People often cite the game as an example of how the console lacks, but are quick to forget - Atari was running out of time and money, and the console never reached it's potential before they pulled the plug on it. No, I'm not being an apologist, I'm being a realist.

 

Let's also not forget that 3D polygon gaming was not a sure bet to become the mainline of the entire next generation of gaming, it was more-so a novelty then. Most game devs in the early 90s were not looking to build entirely new game experiences around 3D modeled worlds as a standard, they were kind of thrust into that expectation. Sony's lead engineering team was ultimately the ones pushing the hardware to make that happen, catching everybody off guard. In hindsight games like Cybermorph don't seem like much, though as a product of it's time and on the hardware it was created on... it's not bad. I feel like more people are starting to realize and acknowledge the fact that this actually a good title on the console.

Edited May 19, 2020 by Warmsignal

[+davidcalgary29]

33 minutes ago, Warmsignal said:

 

It seems as though some people retrospectively believe a 1993 polygon shooter should have somehow looked like maybe a 1997 polygon shooter. For 1992/1993 when it was developed, Cybermorph doesn't look that all that bad, it runs okay, and it's an open world perspective. I think there's no question the game looks and plays better than Star Fox, but obviously it's not going to be on par with Star Fox 64 but I think it's pretty unfair to have expectations anywhere near that for a Jaguar launch title. People often cite the game as an example of how the console lacks, but are quick to forget - Atari was running out of time and money, and the console never reached it's potential before they pulled the plug on it. No, I'm not being an apologist, I'm being a realist.

 

I don't have any experience or playtime on any fifth generation console except the Jaguar, and had no basis for comparison with any other similar game on other contemporary systems before I finally picked up a Jag in 2001. In fact, the Jag was the first dedicated console (Lynx aside) I ever played or bought. So I certainly can't say that I was "jaded" by polygon shooters when I first picked up the game or was already comparing it to playalike games in my mind. But Cybermorph was just a "meh" game for me at the time, and it remains stuck right in Averageville for me today. It's not that it's a terrible game -- it just isn't loads of fun, and doesn't beg for repeated plays. BattleMorph, on the other hand, blew me away, and I spent tons of time on it when I got my CD attachment. That's how you do this type of game right.

[agradeneu]

1 hour ago, Warmsignal said:

The AVGN just game the game a bad rap, along with the entire console. Now everyone thinks it to be some terrible game where all you hear is "where did you learn to fly?"... and they failed to notice how he was intentionally running into the wall over and over to make it say that. James Rolfe has always been what you would call a Nintendo fanboy from the very start and because his show was entertaining and popular, many people take his brand of humor as something more than just humor. Whether he's trashing an entire system like the Jag, or an add-on like Sega CD.

 

It seems as though some people retrospectively believe a 1993 polygon shooter should have somehow looked like maybe a 1997 polygon shooter. For 1992/1993 when it was developed, Cybermorph doesn't look that all that bad, it runs okay, and it's an open world perspective. I think there's no question the game looks and plays better than Star Fox, but obviously it's not going to be on par with Star Fox 64 but I think it's pretty unfair to have expectations anywhere near that for a Jaguar launch title. People often cite the game as an example of how the console lacks, but are quick to forget - Atari was running out of time and money, and the console never reached it's potential before they pulled the plug on it. No, I'm not being an apologist, I'm being a realist.

 

Let's also not forget that 3D polygon gaming was not a sure bet to become the mainline of the entire next generation of gaming, it was more-so a novelty then. Most game devs in the early 90s were not looking to build entirely new game experiences around 3D modeled worlds as a standard, they were kind of thrust into that expectation. Sony's lead engineering team was ultimately the ones pushing the hardware to make that happen, catching everybody off guard. In hindsight games like Cybermorph don't seem like much, though as a product of it's time and on the hardware it was created on... it's not bad. I feel like more people are starting to realize and acknowledge the fact that this actually a good title on the console.

If I remember correctly, CM was the first game with that level of gourad shading, TIE Fighter for PC came some months later. The fidelity of the 3D graphics was very high for 1993 home systems, only Arcade machines had much better offerings. Youtube reviewer mostly fail to understand what this game represents in the evolution of 3D games on consoles. Before CM, I played X WIng on PC and I was blown away by the speed and fidelity of CM polygon graphics. It felt like a BIG step forward, technically, also compared to StarFox. 

Edited May 19, 2020 by agradeneu

[eightbit]

I don't think you can really count AVGN's reviews as "reviews" per-se. They are skilfully constructed for humour. That said, I have always found them quite funny. James knows he picks out the bad over the good for that effect in his videos and have said such in the past. They are comical reviews at best and shouldn't really be counted as a true review of the game(s). If you are looking for more serious reviews, Second Opinion Games did a pretty good job of reviewing just about every Jaguar game on Youtube. He does some really in depth reviews and formulates some solid opinions on those games.

[marcio_napoli]

Here's my simple take on that. I don't have Cybermorph now, but I did for a brief time in the mid 90s having a Jag AFTER having my N64. 

 

I remember being disgusted by Cybermorph, like almost having pity of it, due to its simplistic graphics (this was probably circa 1998, 99 not sure).  I can confidently say I appreciate more these graphics now, because I can understand far more the context and how meaningful those 3d graphics were for a 1993 game.

 

Yeah, I think it's a better game now in 2020 than I thought in 1998. 

 

The problem with CM is that very few changes could have made it absolutely phenomenal back in the day, emphasis on that: very few changes.

 

Imagine if CM had a 2d background (a matte painting) displayed instead of a single gradient color in the BG. 

 

Imagine if the ship actually had a bad@ss machine gun as main weapon (think of Skyhammer) instead of that pew pew single ball of fire it shoots.

 

Imagine if the code was a tiny bit more optimized and we had 10, 15% more drawing distance. Not asking too much here.

 

Imagine if the team who developed it had more art direction skills, so we didn't have those horrendous colored landscapes (I mean, yellow, pink and red in a mountain, WTF). How about better use of colored polygons (like they exactly did in Battlemorph).

 

There you go. None of that is asking too much at all, and would have made a game at least 10x better looking than it actually is.  

 

Very simple, very few changes to make a world of difference.

 

Battlemorph did most, if not all, of these. Look how much better it feels.

[+LS650]

On 5/18/2020 at 10:22 PM, eightbit said:

 They are skilfully constructed for humour. 

Well, he's trying awfully hard to be funny, I'll give you that.

[marcio_napoli]

Guys, a bit off topic regarding CM, but a few extra comments.

 

Take for example the horrendous color decisions they've made for those landscape.  That's 1 one the single biggest reasons the Jag failed: most of the Jag developers failed to realized what good art direction is. 

 

This is a key point.

 

On one hand you have Super FX games on the SNES, on the other the Jag.

 

The Jag is absolutely, undeniably more powerful than the Super FX chip. There's no question whatsover.

 

But at the same time, Super FX games had the talent pool from Nintendo, reason why much lesser spec games like Star Fox look less dated than Cybermorph.

 

One of the few developers for the Jag which actually had superb art direction was Rebellion.

 

The much praised AVP is nothing but texture mapped boxes for level geometry with flat 2d sprites for enemies.  But the art direction is sooooooooooo good, man.   

 

Textures have superb design, and sprites are awesome. It really doesn't feel a super simple game from a technical point.

 

That's how you bypass the limitations of your system and you craft a timeless masterpiece, you do that using smart choices and great art direction (besides great gameplay, etc).

 

Rebellion did probably the best looking games on the Jag because they understood those principles.

 

Skyhammer is indeed more complex from a geometry POV, but still isn't much more than boxes, but it actually does look like a great Saturn or N64 title. Again, thanks to superb use of textures and art direction.

 

It's a shame so few Jag developers understood such a simple concept like Rebellion did. 

 

[+Sauron]

^^ He's absolutely right. Having great art is much of what people find impressive in games, and unfortunately quite a few Jag games took full advantage of the Jag's extended color palette over the 16-bit consoles. That same reason is why the Native demo looks so impressive. 

[agradeneu]

On 5/21/2020 at 1:06 AM, marcio_napoli said:

Here's my simple take on that. I don't have Cybermorph now, but I did for a brief time in the mid 90s having a Jag AFTER having my N64. 

 

I remember being disgusted by Cybermorph, like almost having pity of it, due to its simplistic graphics (this was probably circa 1998, 99 not sure).  I can confidently say I appreciate more these graphics now, because I can understand far more the context and how meaningful those 3d graphics were for a 1993 game.

 

Yeah, I think it's a better game now in 2020 than I thought in 1998. 

 

The problem with CM is that very few changes could have made it absolutely phenomenal back in the day, emphasis on that: very few changes.

 

Imagine if CM had a 2d background (a matte painting) displayed instead of a single gradient color in the BG. 

 

Imagine if the ship actually had a bad@ss machine gun as main weapon (think of Skyhammer) instead of that pew pew single ball of fire it shoots.

 

Imagine if the code was a tiny bit more optimized and we had 10, 15% more drawing distance. Not asking too much here.

 

Imagine if the team who developed it had more art direction skills, so we didn't have those horrendous colored landscapes (I mean, yellow, pink and red in a mountain, WTF). How about better use of colored polygons (like they exactly did in Battlemorph).

 

There you go. None of that is asking too much at all, and would have made a game at least 10x better looking than it actually is.  

 

Very simple, very few changes to make a world of difference.

 

Battlemorph did most, if not all, of these. Look how much better it feels.

I understand what you mean and Battlemorph def. came a little bit too late. But I thought Cybermorph looked pretty impressive in early 1994. The polygon model for the ship looks really cool and has some neat source lighting. I also was impressed by the very smooth color shadings of the landscapes. A friend of mine (PC kid) was more impressed by CM than Tempest 2000 lol. 

Edited May 25, 2020 by agradeneu

[Austin]

Cybermorph is far from a bad game. It's also far from a great game, too. It's just average. Nothing wrong with that, as there are plenty of average/so-so games I enjoy quite a bit (Cybermorph is one of them).

 

My biggest issue is the game drags on for way too long. It should have been trimmed down quite a bit. The lack of music is also disappointing. One of the reasons Battlemorph excels so much more is because of the soundtrack. It adds so much to the experience.

[+thegoldenband]

I beat Cybermorph this month and had a decent time with it. Having played through and enjoyed Hover Strike, it was pretty easy to get on Cybermorph's wavelength, and I appreciated that it's more forgiving about things like fuel consumption and energy use. Decent selection of special weapons too, though they should've been accessible via the keypad, as in Hover Strike.

 

On the other hand, having to clear eight planets at a time (plus a bonus planet and boss fight) is too many, and the EEPROM could have been used in a smarter way. The selection of enemies is also pretty uninspiring, and the enemy AI rather dim (except when it's cheap, like getting instakilled by a worm you couldn't see coming because "your scanner is jammed").

 

But I did enjoy the aesthetic of Cybermorph. The simplicity of the graphics is more attractive to my eye than a lot of early texture-mapped games were, and cruising around the planet can be a pleasantly mellow experience...

 

...as long as you're not being harangued about pods in danger that you can't possibly have found yet. That is an annoyance -- the whole "you need to know the level layout in advance in order to have a good chance of clearing it" thing -- though I expected the level design to be a bit more sadistic than it generally is. Conversely, if a level goes badly the pods offer an easy way to cheese the game, i.e. by letting pods get destroyed so that you can restart the planet with no penalty.

 

Also, kudos to the programmers that the game only really chugs in one area of one planet -- the water planet in the last area, as I recall, where for some reason they decided to spawn a bunch of stationary objects that reduce the framerate to a crawl.

 

BTW did the AVGN hear "Where did you learn to fly?" so much because he was playing the cut-down 1MB version? I have the 2MB cart -- courtesy of Austin, IIRC -- and it says "Avoid the ground" more frequently, though I didn't hear either comment much after the first 15 minutes or so.

[Austin]

17 hours ago, thegoldenband said:

BTW did the AVGN hear "Where did you learn to fly?" so much because he was playing the cut-down 1MB version? I have the 2MB cart -- courtesy of Austin, IIRC -- and it says "Avoid the ground" more frequently, though I didn't hear either comment much after the first 15 minutes or so.

You probably weren't hearing it because I doubt you were slamming into walls left and right.

[Isgoed]

On 6/17/2020 at 12:27 AM, thegoldenband said:

BTW did the AVGN hear "Where did you learn to fly?" so much because he was playing the cut-down 1MB version? I have the 2MB cart -- courtesy of Austin, IIRC -- and it says "Avoid the ground" more frequently, though I didn't hear either comment much after the first 15 minutes or so.

That's my experience also, the 2MB version has more speech and it is used more randomly, and less repeating the same phrase over and over.

[doctorclu]

Well, avoid the ground and she won't repeat it.   Duh. 

[Lost Dragon]

Whilst a far better choice for the in-pack game than Crescent Galaxy and making solid enough use of the hardware for your first title, ATD were far too small a developer to deliver a truly flagship launch title for the Jaguar. 

 

Poor art design alone next to say Starfox on the SNES hurt it somewhat, models look crude, lack of in-game music another setback. 

 

 

 

 

I've always thought it paled under the shadows of things like Starfighter on 3DO, Inferno on PC CD and the morphing craft aspect lost somewhat as Vortex on the SNES was doing just that. 

 

 

It just lacked the wow factor and excitement Atari needed it to have to see the Jaguar flying off the shelves at retail.