What could have saved the Jag?

[pacman000]

What could’ve saved the Atari Jaguar?

Getting into Walmart before the PlayStation.

Better developer support.

Atari not wasting a bunch of money on The Federated Group.

Atari not loosing all their mindshare sometime in the mid-80’s.

Edited February 5, 2022 by pacman000

[doctorclu]

I think the only thing that could have saved the Jaguar is if Nintendo, Sega, and Sony spontaneously jumped out of the video game  market.

 

Of course, didn't Atari still have other previous systems that were still going during the Jaguar?   So even if Atari was the only system on the market Atari would still have been in the way of itself.

[ArneCRosenfeldt]

22 hours ago, 42bs said:

???? high not meant as high ???? Boy, you are killing me.

Yeah sorry about that. High is where the Program runs towards to. They only did not think that a program would run from start to finish, nor that malloc would be possible everywhere. So when memory is not linear, "high" loses its meaning.

[42bs]

2 minutes ago, ArneCRosenfeldt said:

Yeah sorry about that. High is where the Program runs towards to. They only did not think that a program would run from start to finish, nor that malloc would be possible everywhere. So when memory is not linear, "high" loses its meaning.

You are writing such a nonsense, it kinda hurts.

[pacman000]

8 hours ago, doctorclu said:

I think the only thing that could have saved the Jaguar is if Nintendo, Sega, and Sony spontaneously jumped out of the video game  market.

 

Of course, didn't Atari still have other previous systems that were still going during the Jaguar?   So even if Atari was the only system on the market Atari would still have been in the way of itself.

Atari discontinued everything but the Lynx to focus on the Jag.

[Clint Thompson]

23 hours ago, pacman000 said:

What could’ve saved the Atari Jaguar?

Getting into Walmart before the PlayStation.

They were in a lot of other places though... and odd places even. Venture is where my parents picked up the Jaguar, though distribution could have certainly been a million times better on Atari's part for almost everything. Can't distribute what you don't have though, since it seems like they didn't have enough machines to go around for the first year and by time they got up to speed it was already a done deal at which point they were sitting on 100k machines and unable to move inventory because everyone was playing the wait for the mind blowing Saturn and PSX game.

 

The one thing that stands out in mind is that so many had Kiosks setup for their machines, Genesis, SNES, Saturn and PSX but I never saw a single Jaguar setup on display running. Probably for the best, as most would have certainly passed it up unless Tempest 2000 or Iron Soldier was on display with no access to try the majority of any other titles out.

 

Imagine having Crescent Galaxy, Checkered Flag and Club Drive on display only.... is it any wonder.

Edited February 6, 2022 by Clint Thompson

[phoenixdownita]

On 2/4/2022 at 4:47 AM, ArneCRosenfeldt said:

The Jag does it the correct way. It has internal SRAM and internet routines are there at fixed positions. So no conflict with ROM.

What is an internet routine? 

[+CyranoJ]

15 minutes ago, phoenixdownita said:

What is an internet routine? 

Check AtariAge

Check email

Check messages

Check if anything free on Epic

 

[Djmicklovin]

11 hours ago, Clint Thompson said:

They were in a lot of other places though... and odd places even. Venture is where my parents picked up the Jaguar, though distribution could have certainly been a million times better on Atari's part for almost everything. Can't distribute what you don't have though, since it seems like they didn't have enough machines to go around for the first year and by time they got up to speed it was already a done deal at which point they were sitting on 100k machines and unable to move inventory because everyone was playing the wait for the mind blowing Saturn and PSX game.

 

The one thing that stands out in mind is that so many had Kiosks setup for their machines, Genesis, SNES, Saturn and PSX but I never saw a single Jaguar setup on display running. Probably for the best, as most would have certainly passed it up unless Tempest 2000 or Iron Soldier was on display with no access to try the majority of any other titles out.

 

Imagine having Crescent Galaxy, Checkered Flag and Club Drive on display only.... is it any wonder.

I don’t remember ever seeing a Jaguar as a kid in the 90s. No kiosks were setup or anything. Walmart, Kmart, none of my local video stores had them. They must have only been available at select retailers and select areas. They could have benefited immensely from better distribution channels and awareness. Sony at the time was already selling TVs and other electronics in practically everywhere, so it was easy for them to stroll right in with their Playstation and take over the video game market because they already had access to all these distributors.

 

The Jaguar should’ve been a CD only console from the beginning, and they could’ve had a big head start and would’ve been better positioned to take on the Saturn and Playstation at the time. Having that ridiculous CD attachment sitting on top of the Jaguar was a stupid management decision. Game console add ons have historically always failed unless they are packed in with every console. Some of the Jaguar’s best games came late into the consoles life, and they were on that CD attachment. A shame because the Jaguar was already dying and on it’s way out when they released it. Their best, most graphically impressive games should have been pack ins for the console. Atari could have done a better job of pushing the Jaguar’s 3D capabilities and advertising games that showcased the system’s power. Games like Battlemorph, Iron Soldier 2, Alien v Predator, Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, Towers 2, Blue Lightning, Hover Strike, I-War, Rayman, Tempest 2000, Missile Command 3D, World Tour Racing, Primal Rage, Fight for Life should have been front and center.

Edited February 6, 2022 by Djmicklovin

[+CyranoJ]

9 minutes ago, Djmicklovin said:

Fight for Life should have been front and center.

Right, bundle the last game ever released for the system as a launch title.

 

Perfect 20/20 eyesight

[Djmicklovin]

3 minutes ago, CyranoJ said:

Right, bundle the last game ever released for the system as a launch title.

 

Perfect 20/20 eyesight

I didn’t say as a launch title, but yeah, why was a game like that not there from the beginning?

[ArneCRosenfeldt]

6 hours ago, phoenixdownita said:

What is an internet routine? 

I should concentrate more. Interrupt, I guess.

[42bs]

15 minutes ago, ArneCRosenfeldt said:

I should concentrate more. Interrupt, I guess.

Makes also no sense. 

[ArneCRosenfeldt]

23 hours ago, 42bs said:

You are writing such a nonsense, it kinda hurts.

It hurst myself. Linear address space all great, but if you look at real computers, then they don't fully utilize this linearity for large address ranges. With a memory map you are not supposed to wander around and cross any of the boundaries: ROM to RAM. RAM to VRAM ( on PC ). If I accept that a processor has an interrupt table at a fixed position, you are not supposed to add more and more vectors and wander in a different range of the memory map given by the hardware. On the 8086 intel intended that only the OS looked at the values of the segment registers. Within a segment you can go up and down. Your code would not really change if ROM was at 0000 and RAM was at 8000 ore vice versa. You request Malloc() to get a segment to RAM. Or you use a software interrupt to call a BIOS routine in ROM. So there is no need reduce the size of you code by sticking to the zero page of the 6502 or the zero 64k on a 68k. I like memory mapped IO so that you can address a palette entry using an index, or address a timer, etc. Again, you should call the OS with something like GetGeneralIOMemoryRange() .

 

So I don't know why intel thought that 16bit for the linear address are enough. With long (readonly) text documents, where you would go forward and backward to search for a string ( and all that before we cut it into pages ) 16 bit is not enough. To address every pixel even on the first PC it is not enough. To sample audio: it is not enough. At least SI and DI should have always had more than 16 bit. Still you are not supposed to overwrite you code using DI.

 

The only accidental linearity is the heap and the stack, which can crash into each other. With co-routines you've got many stacks in a shared address space. That is why the one stack is part of the heap like all other stacks ( JS Array() ).

[Zerosquare]

I'm starting to wonder if this is a real person, or one of those neural network-based generators that generate superficially plausible text which doesn't actually make any sense.

Edited February 6, 2022 by Zerosquare

[ArneCRosenfeldt]

8 minutes ago, 42bs said:

Makes also no sense. 

From the manual on Page 38:

 

The GPU can be interrupted by five sources. Interrupts force a call to an address in local RAM, given by sixteen times the interrupt number (in bytes), from the base of RAM.

[42bs]

Quote

So I don't know why intel thought that 16bit for the linear address are enough.

Because no one needs more than 640K RAM (c) Bill Gates.

[Bill Loguidice]

1 hour ago, Djmicklovin said:

I don’t remember ever seeing a Jaguar as a kid in the 90s. No kiosks were setup or anything. Walmart, Kmart, none of my local video stores had them. They must have only been available at select retailers and select areas. They could have benefited immensely from better distribution channels and awareness. Sony at the time was already selling TVs and other electronics in practically everywhere, so it was easy for them to stroll right in with their Playstation and take over the video game market because they already had access to all these distributors.

 

The Jaguar should’ve been a CD only console from the beginning, and they could’ve had a big head start and would’ve been better positioned to take on the Saturn and Playstation at the time. Having that ridiculous CD attachment sitting on top of the Jaguar was a stupid manage <snip> Their best, most graphically impressive games should have been pack ins for the console. Atari could have done a better job of pushing the Jaguar’s 3D capabilities and advertising games that showcased the system’s power. Games like Battlemorph, Iron Soldier 2, Alien v Predator, Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, Towers 2, Blue Lightning, Hover Strike, I-War, Rayman, Tempest 2000, Missile Command 3D, World Tour Racing, Primal Rage, Fight for Life should have been front and center.

When I worked at Electronics Boutique, there was a memo sent to all store managers with a survey asking them what new hardware they should carry. I forget all the names on the list, but the CD32 and Jaguar were both on there. It's telling that the Jaguar wasn't an automatic carry pre-launch. EB did carry it, of course, but it sat there on the shelf with the same couple of titles for the longest time post launch.

 

As for being a CD console from the start, perhaps, but it seems like the main console would need some technical redesigns to make better use of memory for that to be viable. On the Jaguar, there are just some things better suited to a cartridge than a CD given its architecture.

 

In terms of pushing the 3D capabilities of the Jaguar, I think it's easy to argue that that's precisely what Atari did wrong and perhaps did more damage to the Jaguar's reputation than almost anything else. The 3D stuff really wasn't an absolute requirement until Sony's correct gamble. The Jaguar really should have done more to showcase its 2D potential, which is what it was best suited for.

 

And have you actually seen Towers II and Blue Lightning? Those are some ugly games.

 

[alucardX]

6 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

In terms of pushing the 3D capabilities of the Jaguar, I think it's easy to argue that that's precisely what Atari did wrong and perhaps did more damage to the Jaguar's reputation than almost anything else. The 3D stuff really wasn't an absolute requirement until Sony's correct gamble. The Jaguar really should have done more to showcase its 2D potential, which is what it was best suited for.

Nintendo got a lot of mileage out of the SNES on just 2D.

[Bill Loguidice]

11 minutes ago, alucardX said:

Nintendo got a lot of mileage out of the SNES on just 2D.

As did Sega and NEC with systems that were even older (again, time and world class developers count for a lot). We should have seen far more Rayman-like games on the Jaguar from day one when it might have actually mattered (and not when other, newer systems could easily replicate it). As it was, for my money, we got far too much of the chunky, jagged rendered sprite work that was not exactly aesthetically pleasing. I know some people like that style, but I never thought it looked particularly good.

[+CyranoJ]

9 hours ago, Djmicklovin said:

I didn’t say as a launch title, but yeah, why was a game like that not there from the beginning?

Because it hadn't been created yet. Kind of obvious. 

[agradeneu]

7 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

When I worked at Electronics Boutique, there was a memo sent to all store managers with a survey asking them what new hardware they should carry. I forget all the names on the list, but the CD32 and Jaguar were both on there. It's telling that the Jaguar wasn't an automatic carry pre-launch. EB did carry it, of course, but it sat there on the shelf with the same couple of titles for the longest time post launch.

 

As for being a CD console from the start, perhaps, but it seems like the main console would need some technical redesigns to make better use of memory for that to be viable. On the Jaguar, there are just some things better suited to a cartridge than a CD given its architecture.

 

In terms of pushing the 3D capabilities of the Jaguar, I think it's easy to argue that that's precisely what Atari did wrong and perhaps did more damage to the Jaguar's reputation than almost anything else. The 3D stuff really wasn't an absolute requirement until Sony's correct gamble. The Jaguar really should have done more to showcase its 2D potential, which is what it was best suited for.

 

And have you actually seen Towers II and Blue Lightning? Those are some ugly games.

 

I agree and disagree. We bought the Jaguar for 3D games, and Cybermorph looked quite impressive in 1993. Atari could not compete with Nintendos or Segas 2D sprite games unfortunality, so 3D was the new groundbreaking thing they went for. 

As a pure 2d machine, the Jaguar would have made no sense. It was designed for 3D graphics (GPU+Blitter). 

 

 Its hard to beat SNES at 2D, because of their production value and the hardware is really a beast with 2D pixel graphics. 

 

However AvP, Doom, Tempest 2000 or Iron Soldier were the "killer apps" to buy a Jaguar.  

 

On the other hand, the Jaguar desperately needed more quality 2D games like Rayman.  

 

The hardware is capable enough to excel in both, 2D and 3D, surely compared to the 16 bitters, but also a match to the 32x and even the 3DO.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 6, 2022 by agradeneu

[evisu]

The only thing what sells hardware, is great software.

The Jaguar had not too much of them.

Jag only software as Tempest 2k, Super Burnout, Iron Soldier, Mutant Penguins, Defender 2k, AvP was not enough and came quite late too.

For Cannon Fodder, Zool 2, Dragon, Pitfall, Pinball Fantasy or Syndicate (and finally not even Rayman) you don't needed to buy a Jaguar.

Club Drive, Supercross 3d, Crescent Galaxy (and imo even Hover Strike) was finally a impudence.

I-War or Towers II to weird (or boring).

 

Not even the better 3DO with such great titles as WC3, Super Wing Commander, Road Rash, Need for Speed, FIFA Soccer could had been rescued ... and they had EA Support!

 

Don't get me wrong. I like the Jaguar since I got my first one in 1994. But I was a weird kid too.

But in all fairness ... nothing could have saved this console.

 

But the most of us know that anyway.

[Matt_B]

3 hours ago, alucardX said:

Nintendo got a lot of mileage out of the SNES on just 2D.

 

Although even they were hedging their bets somewhat by bankrolling the development of the SuperFX chip and games like StarFox.

 

[phuzaxeman]

There was nothing innovative with the Jaguar. There was no large 3rd party support.  It really was destined to fail.

Edited February 7, 2022 by phuzaxeman