What could have saved the Jag?

[Tommywilley84]

In your opinion? I feel like had Alien vs Predator and Tempest 2000 been two titles available at the time of launch along with having the promised third party support that Atari could have at least been able to put up a better fight

[sd32]

Being a Sega or Nintendo console might have saved it...maybe. Sega makes more sense since the Jag launched 5 years after the Megadrive, at that time it would have seemed ok to release a sustitute to the Megadrive. And Sega had the money to back the project better than Atari. Maybe Tom and Jerry would have been clocked at 40mhz as originally intended. Maybe most bugs would have been ironed out. CDROM as a standard. Maybe a better CPU than the Motorola. Maybe more RAM. Maybe a better controller. Maybe launching with Virtua Racing and Sonic 3. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Then again, Sega made a mess out of their own Saturn, so...there is that.

 

Under Atari... sadly i dont think it was posible to save it the way things were.

[doctorclu]

[7800JAGFAN]

Doom and AvP at launch to show its was the powerful console it claimed to be, maybe followed by some support by Capcom with arcade ports from the late 80's to early 90's in true arcade from  such as Final Fight, Street Fighter 2, Ghouls n' Ghosts, Strider,  kind of like capcoms "collection" for psx.  Some Sega super scalers like Outrun, Space Harrier, Afterburner, done arcade true like the "Sega Ages" series.  This would have given it some very good games to stand on and then some its own cancelled games seen to finish.   I could have worked.   Or at least it would have made me happy!  

[+Sauron]

[eightbit]

There was such a push for "3D" gaming back then. Everything "had to be" in 3D from around the release of the Jaguar onto the Saturn, PS1, N64, and so on. It was thought of as the next logical step at the time. But, the Jaguar was/is such a fantastic 2D powerhouse. Games like Raiden, Rayman and Zool showcase that. What they should have done was allowed as many updated 2D games from previous generation consoles (and of course NEW 2D games) to land on the machine. 2D games with updated sound, more colors, smoother gameplay. I am not saying to give up on the 3D gaming aspect, but how great would it have been to have hundreds of 2D shooters and great platformers on this? Rayman is a prime example of just how smooth and beautiful a 2D platformer can be on this machine.

 

The same happened to the Saturn in the USA. Japan got all of these great 2D shooters and we got games that were trying to be 3D. Well, not all of the games....but Japan got a whole heck of a lot more 2D gems than we did. With the Jag however, we ended up with a few 2D gems, some OK 3D games, and then some awful 3D attempts like Supercross 3D.

Edited June 16, 2020 by eightbit

[+CyranoJ]

The only thng that couldhave saved the Jaguar would have been

 

Sony/Sega/Nintendo/Microsoft going into bankruptcy.

 

Thread Lock now please

[sd32]

The problem with all this "ideas", like AVP and Doom at launch, Capcom support, more great 2d games, etc, is that if you know the history of the console and Atari, it just wasnt possible at the time.

 

Its not like Atari decided NOT to have AVP and Doom at launch. It just wasnt possible to have them ready for launch. As it was, both games were rushed to the market.

 

Capcom support was not gonna happen unless the console sold well. Not the other way around. Same with any other big software house like Konami, SNK, etc. Just doesnt make sense.

 

More great 2d games? From were? You need good developers to get good 2d games. Or you end up with the 2d equivalents of Air Cars, SuperCross 3D, etc. Like Crescent Galaxy, Bubsy, Double Dragon V, etc. Even ports of good 2d games like Raiden and Pitfall were botched attempts. Without good developers, games wont be good. Be it 2d or 3d.

 

Looking back with all the hindsight we have now, its hard not to think that Atari shouldnt even have bothered. Sadly. Por Jaggy i had so much hope for it BITD. I am glad they tried though.

[+davidcalgary29]

41 minutes ago, sd32 said:

Looking back with all the hindsight we have now, its hard not to think that Atari shouldnt even have bothered. Sadly. Por Jaggy i had so much hope for it BITD. I am glad they tried though.

That's exactly the way to look at things. The Last Days of Atari gave us the Lynx, Portfolio, and the Jaguar -- systems that were going nowhere, period, on the open market, and yes -- I know that the Portfolio had a limited UK distribution before Atari's involvement. We wouldn't have had any of those lovely things without the Tramiels' desperate grubbing for the Next Big Thing, and it's a sure bet that Atari would have collapsed by 1994 along with Commodore if they hadn't even tried to get it.

 

The Jaguar probably got as much commercial success as it deserved given the market fundamentals of the time, and has an outsized legacy today given its sales figures. Now if you want to discuss console tragedies, the Dreamcast should always be thrown into the mix.

[eightbit]

1 hour ago, sd32 said:

More great 2d games? From were? You need good developers to get good 2d games. Or you end up with the 2d equivalents of Air Cars, SuperCross 3D, etc. Like Crescent Galaxy, Bubsy, Double Dragon V, etc. Even ports of good 2d games like Raiden and Pitfall were botched attempts. Without good developers, games wont be good. Be it 2d or 3d.

 

 

There were tons of 2D developers that were not of the big boys such as Capcom, SNK, etc. There was Koei, Technosoft, Treasure, Factor 5, Visco, Sunsoft, Codemasters, Beam....the list goes on. There were so many 2D developers at the time doing things for SNES and the Genesis. And things were very different than the hold that Nintendo had regarding the contracts with these people in the 8-bit era. Sega broke that with the Genesis thankfully.

 

I know Atari had limited monetary resources at the time, but the bottom line is that I still do not think their team worked hard enough to get titles on this system. I remember lots of BS, hype, magazine articles and interviews....and I also remember thinking "why are they wasting their time with this nonsense? Just get software devs signed on!".

 

Of course I do not know the internals of how Atari was functioning at the time. I was a 19 year old guy that was just waiting for the flurry of games that I had seen with the Genesis and SNES, and NES before that. That flurry ended up being a trickle...and a slow one. And then nothing. And then the death of a console I really had high hopes for.

 

But, that was then and this is now. The Jaguar thankfully today does not need to be "saved". It already has been. There are more titles coming out for it now that almost anything else as far as I know, and new stuff coming out all of the time and more on the horizon.

 

That said, the past is fun and interesting to look back on, but regarding the Jaguar we should really be hopeful of the future now.

[Clint Thompson]

Good games...

[Gummy Bear]

I could have. 

But I was busy. 

[swapd0]

IMO even with a better hardware it would fail but at least the oficial game library could be 10 times bigger.

 

[zzip]

It would have required Atari to have a much larger marketing budget than they had.

 

Even better if they had actually fought to keep their videogame lead in the 80s.   I think the sale to Tramiel was what doomed that.   They had no interest in video game consoles at first, until they saw they could be profitable.  But by then Nintendo and Sega made too many inroads.

[McCarseat]

There wasn't a single MUST have game released for the Jaguar. Let alone when it was released. There are some good games yes, but even the best game ever on the Jaguar, wouldn't be in the top 10 of any other system from that era.

 

I own and like the system, but I love how terrible it is, and some games are of course fun. It's a very cool piece of video game history partially because of it's failure.

[fultonbot]

Better games, Atari not low-balling developers for work-for-hire games, better devkits with more examples etc, etc,. etc.

[sd32]

1 hour ago, McCarseat said:

There wasn't a single MUST have game released for the Jaguar. Let alone when it was released. There are some good games yes, but even the best game ever on the Jaguar, wouldn't be in the top 10 of any other system from that era.

 

Dont get carried away. Tempest 2000, Doom, Rayman, Iron Soldier, Wolfenstein 3D, etc would have no problem making the top 10 games on the Amiga CD32, Pippin and NEC PCFX, and would contend with the best on 3DO, 32X and FM Towns Marty... you said "ANY OTHER SYSTEM FROM THAT ERA".

[Warmsignal]

Atari not being as close to bankruptcy as they were for one thing, and the Nintendo PlayStation deal actually happening which would in turn have changed the course of console history going forward, there would be no stand alone Sony machine. The Jag's primary competitors would have been a disc based Nintendo 64, the Sega Saturn of course, and the doomed from the start $700 3DO.

The PlayStation stole the market share away from everyone by a long shot during that gen. If that didn't happen, who knows how things might have turned out? Nintendo 64 would have probably been more successful than it was globally, maybe the Saturn as well, and perhaps even the Jaguar to a lesser extent. It would have been the cheapest hardware on the block compared to a $400 Saturn and a likely $300+ Nintendo 64. Even then, I think it probably wouldn't have sold great, but still a hell of a lot better than it did, had Atari the money they actually needed to produce them and fulfill all of those missed pre-orders.

[sd32]

13 hours ago, eightbit said:

 

There were tons of 2D developers that were not of the big boys such as Capcom, SNK, etc. There was Koei, Technosoft, Treasure, Factor 5, Visco, Sunsoft, Codemasters, Beam....the list goes on. There were so many 2D developers at the time doing things for SNES and the Genesis. And things were very different than the hold that Nintendo had regarding the contracts with these people in the 8-bit era. Sega broke that with the Genesis thankfully.

 

My point was that most decent developers werent interested in the Jaguar, unless they first saw it was selling. Thats why i asked were would those great 2d games be coming from. Support from Japan wasnt going to happen. And developers like Factor 5 and Shiny werent taking the risk. So, if the good developers werent supporting it, from were was it going to get great 2d games? We ended up with a lot of mediocre ports of decent 16bit games. Which in turn ended up damaging the Jaguars reputation. Again, Atari just wasnt up to it at the time.

 

Would have loved to see enhanced version of Turrican 3 and Earthworm Jim myself... but judging from what we got BITD, they would be almost the same as in the SNES/Genesis, and probably running at a lower frame rate!

[+madman]

If Bubsy couldn't save it, nothing could.

[+Sauron]

1 hour ago, Warmsignal said:

Atari not being as close to bankruptcy as they were for one thing, and the Nintendo PlayStation deal actually happening which would in turn have changed the course of console history going forward, there would be no stand alone Sony machine. The Jag's primary competitors would have been a disc based Nintendo 64, the Sega Saturn of course, and the doomed from the start $700 3DO.

The PlayStation stole the market share away from everyone by a long shot during that gen. If that didn't happen, who knows how things might have turned out? Nintendo 64 would have probably been more successful than it was globally, maybe the Saturn as well, and perhaps even the Jaguar to a lesser extent. It would have been the cheapest hardware on the block compared to a $400 Saturn and a likely $300+ Nintendo 64. Even then, I think it probably wouldn't have sold great, but still a hell of a lot better than it did, had Atari the money they actually needed to produce them and fulfill all of those missed pre-orders.

No, none of that would've helped. And there were no missed pre-orders, despite what you might have heard elsewhere. There just wasn't any demand for the console, plain and simple. Atari's one shot was to sell systems within its first two years on the market, before the bigger ones hit, and that they simply didn't do. It was "game over" for them once the 1994 holiday shopping season ended.

 

 

[walter_J64bit]

A team of Ninja video game developers!

 

[Warmsignal]

42 minutes ago, Sauron said:

No, none of that would've helped. And there were no missed pre-orders, despite what you might have heard elsewhere. There just wasn't any demand for the console, plain and simple. Atari's one shot was to sell systems within its first two years on the market, before the bigger ones hit, and that they simply didn't do. It was "game over" for them once the 1994 holiday shopping season ended.

 

 

I've heard there were a lot of European pre-orders that were cancelled when Atari decided to focus allocation of units to North America instead. Would make more sense to have focused on Europe because I believe Atari held more brand recognition and market share in home computing over in Europe than they did here.

[+Sauron]

Yes, that came from an interview from the head of Atari UK I believe, but that has since been disputed, as what he said simply didn't line up with the reality of the situation. Chalk that up to someone's faulty memory.

 

 

[Austin]

Three things may have helped:

 

1. A better lineup of games that showed what the system offered over its competition, especially at launch.

2. Better advertising along with not overstating its capabilities when many of its titles were visually barely above Genesis/SNES quality.

3. A totally different controller. Ditch the keypad. It's one of the biggest points of contention for most non-fans to this day, and it unlikely helped garner interest in the system back in the day.

 

I don't know why I just wasted my time writing all that out. Threads like these are dumb.

Edited June 17, 2020 by Austin