Jump to content
IGNORED

Atari Jaguar is FAR from the best console..


Tommywilley84

Recommended Posts

5 hours ago, Lost Dragon said:

Tempest 4000 being a prime example 

 

We have had 2000,3000, Txk and Tempest X3 

 

With 4000 Jeff has used newer hardware to increase the visual clutter to the detriment of the gameplay. 

 

Something he was pulled up on with Tempest 3000 on Nuon and Space Giraffe on 360.

 

I've bought Tempest updates on Jaguar, PlayStation and PlayStation 4.

 

I won't be touching it again.

I think that's where Jeff messed up with the other VLMs. He has them throwing so much crap at the screen all the time that it has no room left to work with when the music plays, changes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

Huh?

I'm just getting less and less out of commercial games on likes of PS4 these days.

 

Things like Sekiro, Tempest 4000 etc abandoned in hours.

 

Freeware titles years back when i dabbled with PC Gaming had me hooked for weeks.

 

Putting more money into gaming, getting less out.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Lost Dragon said:

I'm just getting less and less out of commercial games on likes of PS4 these days.

 

Things like Sekiro, Tempest 4000 etc abandoned in hours.

 

Freeware titles years back when i dabbled with PC Gaming had me hooked for weeks.

 

Putting more money into gaming, getting less out.

You get older, simple as that.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, JagChris said:

I think that's where Jeff messed up with the other VLMs. He has them throwing so much crap at the screen all the time that it has no room left to work with when the music plays, changes.

Having grown up with Jeff's games since the 8-bit days, i can totally appreciate he loves to experiment with new hardware, makes games he wants to play and can react badly to press reviews Mama Llama and Space Giraffe)... 

 

But sometimes listening to what fans of your work,just didn't like in cases of Tempest 3000 and Space Giraffe, might of been a wise move.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 minutes ago, Lost Dragon said:

Having grown up with Jeff's games since the 8-bit days, i can totally appreciate he loves to experiment with new hardware, makes games he wants to play and can react badly to press reviews Mama Llama and Space Giraffe)... 

 

But sometimes listening to what fans of your work,just didn't like in cases of Tempest 3000 and Space Giraffe, might of been a wise move.

Maybe you should reflect on your game choices and try out new things? It's quite easy to get caught into confirmation bias.

 

Edit: Regarding Jeff Minter, he is always overdoing the effect thing to mess with the player, to the point where the game gets unplayable. Of all Tempest 2000 vesions, I really like TxK the most, its quite subdued for his standards. Polybius is crazy INSANE in VR mode. I did not try out his last reamke of Gridrunner yet, but it sure looks very classic Jeff Minter. The irony about Tempest 4000 is that he was sued/in legal dispute with Atari for "ripping off" Tempest 2000 with TxK. Maybe that is the reason Tempest 4000 seems to be a little bit lackluster. BTW TxK, self publsihed by Llamasoft, was sold digitally for the PS Vita for like 7 Euros. I think he said in an interview that it sold well enough to barely break even, after it got some heavy promotion by PSN Plus. Tells you a lot about today financial risks of indie game development. You cant really make a living out of it, but it needs you to spend a lot of your lifetime to even get a chance of mild success.

Edited by agradeneu
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/1/2020 at 2:21 AM, marcio_napoli said:

Agradeneu, to quote your own line, what you wrote above that's only one perspective.

 

Look all over You Tube, people are fascinated left and right how certain things were achieved, how people used creativity to overcome mountains.  That's part of human nature. 

 

People wanna know why Bruce Lee could punch a man feets away with a 1 inch punch.  People wanna know how they created photo realistic dinosaurs with 93's hardware in Jurassic Park.

 

They wanna know how movie SFX are made, and I'm 100% sure people are more interested in how they were made in the 80s and 90s in the harder days.

 

Etc. 

 

Could make a long list here. You got the point.

 

Back to games, are you sure hardware has nothing to do with it? Really, really sure?

 

Then why such a nerdy content has 290K views and on-going series?

 

 

Why does Game Sack have a long on going series of games that push HARDWARE limit?

 

 

And a content that explores the opposite side, when games DIDN'T push the hardware?

 

 

Why does Low Score Boy have a full analisys on Saturn's transparency then?

 

 

 

Actually, people are obssessed to know why the Saturn couldn't do transparency most of the time.  It's all over YT.

 

Then you have DF Retro, and so many other channels on similar subjects.

 

Why the N64 had blurry textures, why the PS1 had warping textures, is the Jaguar really 64 bit, if not why Atari felt they could market it as such (64 bit bus architecture), etc.

 

Why is the retro market so in demand today?

 

Why is it possible that a modded N64 can cost $1300 ??

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/ultra-hdmi-n64-nintendo-64-hdmi/264726915464?hash=item3da2f42988:g:e1cAAOSwG3teuFJ~

 

Answer:

Because people care.

 

If you really think only a handful of weirdos pay attention to hardware, I believe your view is in need of a revision.

 

Games by itself are awesome, but people left and right wanna know a bit more about how things operate on the backstages (this applies to everything, not only video games). 

Not that again.;-)  I think that trivial point was addressed a thousand times: yes technically  the Jaguar is 64 bit, but the games were lacking. If you try to measure the power of a hardware by a single abstract number, out of context, it is truly meaningless. And the context is, of course, if and how you can create (better) games on that hardware, because that is the reason for any new console generation to exist.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by agradeneu
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Warmsignal said:

Didn't many consoles following the N64 revert back to 32-bit processors, and yet they were more advanced? Bits aren't the only thing that matters, but Atari latched onto it as a marketing buzz word and it sure grabbed the attention of many.

yup, DC, XBOX OG, GC are all 32bits machines wrt the CPU proper (but some/all of them have SIMD/vector capabilities), the PS2 though sports an R5900 MIPS III which supports 64bits integer math (and extensions/SIMD 128bits).

 

Wrt to the N64 R4300i CPU it is 64bits but has a 32bits bus to contain cost, but rumors has it 

there was relative few software using the 64bits extensions due to both compactness and perf of the 32bits counterparts.

 

It doesn't really matter per se because the N64 had the most powerful CPU of its gen (vs PS1 and Saturn) and the most advanced GPU if big N just didn't cripple it with that small texture RAM and the gimped access of the CPU to the RAM .... but hey it is what it is, and it gave us some very nice games (I just adore SuperMario 64 to this day) but blur/fog at the low res did ruin the general experience imho (I didn't wait until late to see hi-res titles or exp RAM games).

 

I was fortunate enough that in that period I ended up owning all 3: PS1 first, Saturn (out of curiosity and loved the Sega Arcade ports, however framerate/draw-distance challenged they may have been) and then the N64 .... it ended up being the first I sold followed by the Saturn, I held onto the PS1 a while longer (sold and then bought it back a couple of times lol).

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

16bits, 32bits, 64 bits... that's pure bullshit. Today, you could build a 16bits console that can wipe out Saturn, PSX or N64. 

 

It's more important the bandwidth with the memory, the slow bus (13Mhz) and the lack of cache kills the Jaguar performance. I can't believe that no body at Atari realized that.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

29 minutes ago, swapd0 said:

16bits, 32bits, 64 bits... that's pure bullshit. Today, you could build a 16bits console that can wipe out Saturn, PSX or N64. 

 

It's more important the bandwidth with the memory, the slow bus (13Mhz) and the lack of cache kills the Jaguar performance. I can't believe that no body at Atari realized that.

 

 

I wonder how much IBM meddled with the design.  Have any of the original design team hinted at this?

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

37 minutes ago, swapd0 said:

16bits, 32bits, 64 bits... that's pure bullshit. Today, you could build a 16bits console that can wipe out Saturn, PSX or N64. 

 

It's more important the bandwidth with the memory, the slow bus (13Mhz) and the lack of cache kills the Jaguar performance. I can't believe that no body at Atari realized that.

 

 

Here is how to get started on the N64:

 

 

then you don't have to worry anymore about the Jaguar and all its bad things.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Gummy Bear said:

Maybe you should accept that different people like different things and have different opinions. 

Quite ironic you tell me that lol. Im very fine with different opinions, but in this case it felt like it was presented as "fact" and mostly about reaffirming negative bias. So yeah, lets appreciate that things are different and avoid degrading things you don't like, don't understand or don't know by unfair cynism.  ;-)  

Edited by agradeneu
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Gemintronic said:

 

I wonder how much IBM meddled with the design.  Have any of the original design team hinted at this?

 

I think you might be getting some wires crossed here.

 

The Jaguar design specifications were finalised in the UK.

 

Atari then put the contract to Assemble, Q.A test,package and ship the Jaguar, out for bids.

 

IBM apparently came in with the lowest bid and had a production facility with spare capacity. 

 

Toshiba and Motorola were reported as being the only 2 companies that could fabricate the custom Tom and Jerry chips, in large numbers at that time.

 

Low chip yields of these chips meant IBM couldn't assemble enough units to meet Atari's launch requirements. 

 

IBM didn't meddle in anything per say.

 

ATD asked for some minor changes to the hardware to be made,which Atari implemented and Rob Nicholson  (HMS) said the chipsets needed a further 2 revisions, to resolve the bugs etc.

 

Atari simply rushed it into production, wanting to establish it before Next Generation hardware from Sega and Nintendo arrived.

 

 

Issues with Atari's Jaguar design specifications have been documented. 

 

Here's Andrew Seed of Imagitec Design with his views:

 

At the start of the Jaguar Atari promised a lot but were unable to deliver,
the GPU and DSP were cut back to half speed. The reason was that the chips
could not handle the heat and could overheat and stop working. ( As informed
by an ex-Atari insider ), also you only had either 2K or 2K of instructions
cache in the GPU - back to the days of the ZX81. Ok originally you were able
to run programs from outside the GPU's memory ( and DSP) but production
machines could not. This meant that you had to have code inside the GPU to
load memory from main 68000 memory. This was a pain. Also the GPU and DSP
could read 64bits from main memory but internally it was 32bits - this meant
that 32bits of the lovely 64bit read went into a memory address.

 

 

Edited by Lost Dragon
  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, swapd0 said:

16bits, 32bits, 64 bits... that's pure bullshit. Today, you could build a 16bits console that can wipe out Saturn, PSX or N64. 

 

It's more important the bandwidth with the memory, the slow bus (13Mhz) and the lack of cache kills the Jaguar performance. I can't believe that no body at Atari realized that.

 

Its still powerful for 1993 hardware.;-)

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, JagChris said:

Then go code for PC. Why are coding on the Jag? Just to complain? Everyday? With every post? 

 

You'd be happier on the N64

At least he is coding...

 

 

  • Like 3
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Lost Dragon said:

ATD asked for some minor changes to the hardware to be made,which Atari implemented and Rob Nicholson  (HMS) said the chipsets needed a further 2 revisions, to resolve the bugs etc.

 

Atari simply rushed it into production, wanting to establish it before Next Generation hardware from Sega and Nintendo arrived.

 

Here is the problem.

 

39 minutes ago, JagChris said:

Yeah but he's miserable. I'd rather not see him so miserable

Really? So if I have a different opinion that makes me miserable? ...

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, JagChris said:

Yeah... you come off extremely unhappy. Just want you to be happy. Like in the N64 community! 

I think he was fine until you started offering your unsolicited input.

 

 

 

  • Like 1
  • Haha 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...