What could have saved the Jag?

[Lostdragon]

On 6/16/2020 at 10:55 PM, Sauron said:

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.

 

 

Not the head of Atari UK (that would of been Bob Gleadow), but a suggestion put to Darryl Still, Atari UK Marketing manager. 

 

 

Is it true you could have sold 20 times the amount of Jaguars you did in the UK?

Darryl

Yeah, nightmare time. Remember we had a really limited budget, but had done an amazing job of building the hype and demand for the machine and then we just could not get supply. I heard stories about failed chip supply and all sorts, but at the sharp end all we really saw was the vitriol and anger of mothers who could not get their kids what they really wanted for Christmas, and trust me, there is no anger to compare with a protective mum! We even had the contents of someone’s dustbin dumped in our reception area in Slough!

 

 

It's never been doubted that if Atari UK had recieved more machines, stores like HMV, Virgin Mega stores etc could of fulfilled a lot more Pre-orders, your talking major stores in locations like London, Glasgow, Manchester etc getting  absurd numbers like 5-10 machines each. 

 

 

In order to fulfill existing preorders, they needed around 150+ machines per store. 

 

The reality was that simple, far too few consoles initially available to go around. 

 

But the above situation  was turned into an absolute farce years ago, with the claim there were 2.5 Million European Pre-orders waiting to be fulfilled and Darryl cited as the source of this claim. 

 

 

When you break it down, it's an absolute nonsense statement. 

 

Darryl would of needed to have been in contact with his opposite numbers and people in retail, distribution etc in places like:France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Italy etc. 

 

Europe back then must have been around 40 or so countries. 

 

You'd also have needed to get information from Darryl's colleague, Peter Walker, who was handling the initial PR for the Jaguar and Bob Gleadow. 

 

You never go off a single source. 

 

And even back then Atari UK didn't account for all of Europe ?

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 18, 2022 by Lostdragon

[Lostdragon]

3 hours ago, vrocko said:

More games!! A finished Space War 2000, without the creepy three eyed guy. Stun Runner, Battlezone 2000, Asteroids 2000, GODZILLA 2000, oh wait that's a movie isn't it?, a good racer, a good shooter, yeah I know Aliens vs Predator and DOOM but something new, something different. Yeah Tomb Raider would be nice but could Jag handle it without an issue. A 3D Pitfall would be better since Pitfall came out on the 2600, a Wipeout clone, Adventure 2000 in 3D, Berzerk 2000, a compilation of 2600, 5200 or 7800 games, Combat 2000 in 3D, anything that would update Atari games and give them a next gen look like the 2000 series. Honestly to me Jack Tramiel seemed to go out of his way to kill Atari in gaming. Only looking to computers is okay and I understand where he came from and how important he was in home computers but you owned Atari, the name synonymous with gaming in the 70's and early 80's. If they'd put more effort into marketing and getting more 3rd party developers on board the 7800 and the Jag maybe they would have done better. 

Battlezone 2000 became Hoverstrike after it strayed too far from the original in terms of gameplay. 

 

Having it on vanilla form and enhanced on CD, did nothing to save the Jaguar. 

 

 

Space War 2000 was canned, depending on which source you run with, Atari seeing Zero 5 or Atari seeing Battlesphere. 

 

A 3D Pitfall did come out, but on the PlayStation. 

 

 

Having Imagitec Design handle the 2D game, Mayan Adventure, wasn't the brightest move, when  the 64 bit architecture Jaguar version ran at 30 fps, next to  the Sega Genesis original running at 60 fps... 

 

 

That Do The Math advertising campaign by Atari looked even more ill advised. 

[zzip]

8 minutes ago, Lostdragon said:

Having Imagitec Design handle the 2D game, Mayan Adventure, wasn't the brightest move, when  the 64 bit architecture Jaguar version ran at 30 fps, next to  the Sega Genesis original running at 60 fps... 

I never even noticed the framerate difference.  What I did notice was how much better the Jaguar version looked than the Genesis version (and most other versions)

[Lostdragon]

9 minutes ago, zzip said:

I never even noticed the framerate difference.  What I did notice was how much better the Jaguar version looked than the Genesis version (and most other versions)

DF do a breakdown, Jag version comes in around 22 mins, 50 seconds mark

 

They credit it for looking beautiful, but it's the targeted 30 fps that dissapointed.

 

 

On a  machine with the 2D power of the Jaguar, this dissapointed. 

 

I've played it on Jaguar and MD and i am not a huge fan of it, loved Pitfall on the 2600.

 

Didnt go much more on PlayStation Pitfall 3D either to be fair. 

 

Edited February 18, 2022 by Lostdragon

[Lostdragon]

On 6/16/2020 at 4:11 AM, 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.

 

 

Peter Johnson of RAGE software deserves some credit for not simply porting MD/SNES Power Drive over to the Jaguar, instead making a real effort on what was his first Jaguar title, Power Drive Rally. 

 

 

He's talked of using the GPU, putting too much code onto the object processor etc, so he admits things could of been done differently, but.. 

 

 

He used the enhanced resolution and colour range of the Jaguar to do Presentation screens in 16 and 24-bit colour. 

 

The in game graphics use 256 colour courses, the dashboard overlays are in 16-bit colour. 

 

Music has been re-orchestrated and you have the running commentary speech from your Co-driver. 

 

It's a nice, hidden gem on the Jaguar, but sadly was never going to have the WOW factor of something like Road Rash on the 3DO.

 

Raiden was sneered at by the UK press for being too old hat, so no matter how good a conversion Imagitec Design might of pulled off, they'd never be able to overcome this obstacle. 

[zzip]

22 minutes ago, Lostdragon said:

They credit it for looking beautiful, but it's the targeted 30 fps that dissapointed.

I believe it, but it's not something I noticed or cared about.   Our TV's were essentially ~30fps back then..   if you were pushing more than that you would start to see ugly interlace artifacts..

 

24 minutes ago, Lostdragon said:

I've played it on Jaguar and MD and i am not a huge fan of it, loved Pitfall on the 2600.

 

Didnt go much more on PlayStation Pitfall 3D either to be fair. 

I always found the original Pitfall to be way too repetative.   I much preferred Pitfall 2 and Mayan adventure because they changed things up.

 

When I decided to sell my Jaguar, I picked up the Windows version of the game, but even that didn't look or play as well as the jag.

[vrocko]

25 minutes ago, Lostdragon said:

Battlezone 2000 became Hoverstrike after it strayed too far from the original in terms of gameplay. 

 

Having it on vanilla form and enhanced on CD, did nothing to save the Jaguar. 

 

 

Space War 2000 was canned, depending on which source you run with, Atari seeing Zero 5 or Atari seeing Battlesphere. 

 

A 3D Pitfall did come out, but on the PlayStation. 

 

 

Having Imagitec Design handle the 2D game, Mayan Adventure, wasn't the brightest move, when  the 64 bit architecture Jaguar version ran at 30 fps, next to  the Sega Genesis original running at 60 fps... 

 

 

That Do The Math advertising campaign by Atari looked even more ill advised. 

Hoverstrike was okay, not fantastic, but okay. Had they done it as Battlezone is supposed to look I think it may have done better. Add the original arcade game on the Cart/CD and you get 2 for the price of one if possible.

 

Space War 2000 is a good game, unfinished but a good game and I think would have been a good addition to the Jag library if they'd finished it. Yeah I read about that they saw where Battlesphere was in development and decided to can Space War. Didn't know about Zero 5. Have Battlesphere and love it. Only seen video's of Zero 5. 

 

Pitfall the Mayan Adventure needed work. I played it but it wasn't the original or even Pitfall II. An adventure like Tomb Raider or Indiana Jones on the Jaguar in the Pitfall vein would have done better I think. 

 

Maybe I'm biased to think updates to the original 2600 games would have done better on the Jaguar but that's what I'd be looking for on a new system from a known company. Pole Position was a great 2600 game as was Enduro. A 2000 version upgrade for both would have been great on the Jaguar, if done right. 

 

Sega did it with Sonic and I loved that game on the Genesis and Dreamcast. Nintendo does it with Mario and have been doing it for years.

 

Atari had hundreds of good games waiting for an update but it never happened. I know the "new" Atari VCS is doing that with some of the games but I don't have that system and haven't really wanted one. Now I'll just wait for the homebrewers to create more games for my old Jag. 

[Bill Loguidice]

I don't really count games like Pitfall The Mayan Adventure as a plus or minus in the Jaguar's favor. It was just a game that rounded out a library, not led it, so it was neither here nor there all things considered. It was simply an OK port of an OK game, and, like every other version except for the preferred 60 fps Genesis version, ran at 30 fps, which does make a difference for gameplay, but really doesn't materially affect the game one way or the other for the vast majority of gamers, especially back in the day.

Again, I'd argue that on a system like the Jaguar with so few released games back in the day, every title, good, bad, or average, stands out way more than on better supported systems (and the good games get talked about way more than average, even if they're simply "good" and not "amazing"). I'm sure comparatively speaking, few Genesis, SNES, PS1, GBA, etc., owners are thinking much about the average games in their libraries like Pitfall The Mayan Adventure.

[+jgkspsx]

The Jaguar version of Mayan Adventure, like the 32X version, doesn’t just have a slow framerate - it has an extremely variable framerate. It slows down and speeds up like crazy. This messes with playability. It’s not nearly as bad as the 32X version, though.

 

The Genesis and (especially) Sega CD versions are head and shoulders the best way to play the game. 

[Lostdragon]

13 hours ago, zzip said:

I believe it, but it's not something I noticed or cared about.   Our TV's were essentially ~30fps back then..   if you were pushing more than that you would start to see ugly interlace artifacts..

 

I always found the original Pitfall to be way too repetative.   I much preferred Pitfall 2 and Mayan adventure because they changed things up.

 

When I decided to sell my Jaguar, I picked up the Windows version of the game, but even that didn't look or play as well as the jag.

I think age was a factor on my part with the Pitfall games. 

 

 

Loved the original on the 2600 as a kid, but by the time i encountered the sequel, i was a good few years old and had been playing more advanced games on both the A8 and C64 and my tastes had changed greatly as you might expect. 

 

By the time of Mayan Adventure and then Pitfall 3D,nostalgia was probably the only reason i tried either, part of the adult me desperate to rekindle the magic of playing the original, but if i am honest, I don't really think I know exactly what I wanted from either. 

[Lostdragon]

13 hours ago, vrocko said:

Hoverstrike was okay, not fantastic, but okay. Had they done it as Battlezone is supposed to look I think it may have done better. Add the original arcade game on the Cart/CD and you get 2 for the price of one if possible.

 

Space War 2000 is a good game, unfinished but a good game and I think would have been a good addition to the Jag library if they'd finished it. Yeah I read about that they saw where Battlesphere was in development and decided to can Space War. Didn't know about Zero 5. Have Battlesphere and love it. Only seen video's of Zero 5. 

 

Pitfall the Mayan Adventure needed work. I played it but it wasn't the original or even Pitfall II. An adventure like Tomb Raider or Indiana Jones on the Jaguar in the Pitfall vein would have done better I think. 

 

Maybe I'm biased to think updates to the original 2600 games would have done better on the Jaguar but that's what I'd be looking for on a new system from a known company. Pole Position was a great 2600 game as was Enduro. A 2000 version upgrade for both would have been great on the Jaguar, if done right. 

 

Sega did it with Sonic and I loved that game on the Genesis and Dreamcast. Nintendo does it with Mario and have been doing it for years.

 

Atari had hundreds of good games waiting for an update but it never happened. I know the "new" Atari VCS is doing that with some of the games but I don't have that system and haven't really wanted one. Now I'll just wait for the homebrewers to create more games for my old Jag. 

It might of been due to the limited library of titles available on the Jaguar at the time,but as flawed as it was, i put a lot of time into the cartridge version of Hoverstrike and never felt it deserved the degree of critical mauling it got from some quarters of the UK press. 

 

I have only seen Matthew Gosling make the Space War canned once Atari saw Zero 5 claim, he seems to of been the only one of the team giving interviews and out on the net at the time chatting about developing on the Jaguar, would be nice to get thoughts from others involved with the title and from Atari themselves, as it's proven to be a rather controversial title at times. 

 

Updates to classic games can be very hit and miss, we were discussing ST Star Raiders in another thread not so long ago on here. 

 

Rob Zybdel fixing what he saw as being broken with the original and for many of us, making a far weaker game in the process, but it has it's fans. 

 

 

Rob Nicholson and Jim Gregory have given different explanations as to why Atari didn't want the 3D version of Battlezone on the Lynx, so HMS had to hide it as an Easter Egg. 

 

None of Jeff Minter's updates to Defender (Defender II and Defender 2000) really worked for myself, Archer Maclean hit the spot with Dropzone and Super Dropzone far better, but with all of the titles mentioned, your talking personal takes on how a classic should be updated and they are often very personal. 

 

Fallen Angels was the Rescue On Fractalus update i always wanted, sadly it arrived after i left the Jaguar behind, but looks fantastic. 

 

Never ceases to amaze me just what the Homebrew community have pulled off. 

[agradeneu]

9 hours ago, jgkspsx said:

The Jaguar version of Mayan Adventure, like the 32X version, doesn’t just have a slow framerate - it has an extremely variable framerate. It slows down and speeds up like crazy. This messes with playability. It’s not nearly as bad as the 32X version, though.

 

The Genesis and (especially) Sega CD versions are head and shoulders the best way to play the game. 

But, the Jaguar version has the nicest visual and sound package of any console version.

 

The frame frate is a bit unstable (especially on 60Hz), but it's very playable still.

[agradeneu]

 

 

Surprised how ugly the GBA version looks lol

 

Jaguar version has the best color detail and it's quite appearent they remastered the assets quite a bit. Good sound too. 

 

The 32X version is odd - it has the backgrounds and music of the Genesis version.

[+jgkspsx]

5 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Surprised how ugly the GBA version looks lol

 

Jaguar version has the best color detail and it's quite appearent they remastered the assets quite a bit. Good sound too. 

 

The 32X version is odd - it has the backgrounds and music of the Genesis version.

The GBA version was a launch title and not one done by a team that wad up to the challenge. Porting SNES games would become easier and more reliable as time went on but it started rough.

The 32X, Jaguar, and PC versions all used the remastered assets - but I agree the Jag version looks the best of the three.

 

The way the 32X works for 2D games is that the Genesis renders the background with its color palette limitations and the 32X renders the foreground with its wider color palette and composites the two images together and outputs them to the TV. Pitfall is probably the worst of the system in terms of how obvious the mismatch is - I have a feeling it was released incomplete as several 32X games were. The 32X does support higher quality audio samples than the Genesis, but as with the video the Genesis has to do a lot of the work too (music in this case) and the 32X composites it together.
 

The Sega CD version’s music and sound is way ahead of the others.

 

I own most versions of this and have played everything but the PC version, and I would rank them:

 

Sega CD > Genesis >> Jaguar > SNES >>>> 32X >>> GBA

[Matt_B]

The GBA has a significantly lower resolution than home consoles of the time; even a lot of 1980s hardware does slightly better. It's not much of a problem on the device itself, as it's only got a 3" screen so the pixel density is fairly high, but games do tend to look a bit fugly when you blow them up to monitor or TV size. Emulators offer filters that can help, but people doing comparisons tend not to turn them on.

 

This is a good part of what makes it a tricky machine to do ports to. You've either got to rescale everything or work with a much smaller viewport. Nintendo were pretty good at the latter right from the off, but a lot of third party devs took a while to get used to it.

 

While porting 2D games to the Jaguar doubtless has its issues, it sounds like a breeze in comparison.

[JagChris]

Does anybody know the real reason why Atari couldn't get more initial units out? They seem to have had the money to get at least more units produced even if not the projected numbers. Were they just being stupid. Was IBM being difficult or what?

Edited February 19, 2022 by JagChris

[Lostdragon]

1 hour ago, JagChris said:

Does anybody know the real reason why Atari couldn't get more initial units out? They seem to have had the money to get at least more units produced even if not the projected numbers. Were they just being stupid. Was IBM being difficult or what?

This was the official Atari announcement about the IBM Deal:

 

 

 

---------------------

ATARI AND IBM ANNOUNCE STRATEGIC MANUFACTURING
CONTRACT FOR MULTIMEDIA ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM

June 28, 1993 - Sunnyvale, CA -- Atari Corporation announced
today that it has contracted with the IBM Corporation's Charlotte,
North Carolina, facility to manufacture the Atari Jaguar, Atari's new
64-bit multimedia entertainment system.

IBM's multi-year contract is valued at $500 million.

The Atari Jaguar, to be made in the United States, is an
interactive multimedia entertainment system which features over 16
million colors in 24-bit true color graphics and produces shaded 3-D
polygons for manipulation in "real world" in real time. A 32-bit
expansion port will allow for future connection into cable and
telephone networks, a digital signal processing port for modem usage
and connection to digital audio peripherals. The Jaguar will also
feature a double-speed compact disc peripheral.

"This system is clearly the wave of the future," said Sam
Tramiel, president of Atari. "Because the Jaguar will feature such an
array of visual and audio special effects, we wanted to work with a
premier company that we are confident can manufacture the quality
product we have developed."

The Charlotte-based IBM plant, which for 15 years has
manufactured and developed products only for other IBM business, just
recently began working with outside companies to meet their production
needs. The Atari Jaguar project represents one of IBM's first
entries into manufacturing for the mass consumer electronics market.

"This is a wonderful opportunity to work with Atari and their new
system," said Herbert L. Watkins, director of Applications Solutions
manufacturing at IBM Charlotte. "Everyone expect IBM to manufacture
complex information technology products, and with this, we'll show
that we can competitively build a sophisticated consumer product."

In addition to assembling the Jaguar, IBM will be responsible for
the component sourcing, quality testing, packaging, and distribution.
The Jaguar, announced on June 3, is based on an Atari designed
proprietary 64-bit RISC processor that features four times the
technology currently seen in the marketplace today. The sound system
is based on Atari's proprietary, high-speed, Digital Signal Processor
dedicated to audio which can produce CD quality sound.

The Jaguar will be available on a limited basis in the fall,
focusing on the New York market. A national roll-out is expected next
year and the Jaguar will retail for approximately $200.

 

Bob Brodie went onto explain that the  contract was  for 30 months, IBM would be sourcing
the parts, doing the Q/A, building and distributing the product
from their warehouse in North Carolina.

 

They'd also warehouse and ship the units. 

 

 

Bob explained the $50 price hike as it was to cover the cost of including the "free" in-pack game, Cybermorph. 

 

 

 

 

IBM couldn't 'build' Jaguars, unless they had the parts and there were reported issues of very low yields from the chip fabrication plants, manufacturering the custom Tom and Jerry chips, think i saw figures of around 40% yields on the first manufacturering runs. 

 

 

IBM were simply at the mercy of their suppliers,but so often they take the blame. 

 

Edited February 20, 2022 by Lostdragon

[Lostdragon]

2 hours ago, JagChris said:

Does anybody know the real reason why Atari couldn't get more initial units out? They seem to have had the money to get at least more units produced even if not the projected numbers. Were they just being stupid. Was IBM being difficult or what?

UPDATE:

 

Edited old post as think i have a more cohesive answer to what went down. 

 

Someone would need to fact check this but, final bit on the issues facing mass producing the Jaguar Custom Chips.. 

 

It looks like Toshiba and Motorola were the only manufacturers capable of fabricating  these chips at the time, due their extremely small die clearances and  cutting edge design. 

 

 

Out of the 2, Toshiba could tool up faster for mass production, Atari went with them for the initial run of  50,000 (?) chips, but Motorola  had been suggested as  been the preferred producer of choice for Atari and Atari went onto place a much bigger order with them to try and ensure supply met demand. 

There was also rumours of over 10% of the initial machines IBM did manufacture, failing the strict Q+A tests. 

 

 

Sounds like a perfect storm of a chronic shortage of specialist chips and  a double digit percentage of assembled machines being found to be faulty. 

 

Money to make them can only get you so far. 

 

Sorry for multiple posts, but that's as much clarity regarding the situation as I can give. 

 

But the answer doesn't look as black and white as has often been reported, IBM simply couldn't make them fast enough due to 'issues'. 

 

Edited February 20, 2022 by Lostdragon

[harmonyFM]

If they hadn't had their heads up their butts and insisted on having a "Made in America" product they wouldn't have had the supply chain issues preventing them from fulfilling all of their initial orders. Even if they had no launch games, installing a million people as your initial user-base gives your platform a hell of a better chance of surviving than selling less than a quarter million in five years of failure.

[agradeneu]

10 hours ago, Matt_B said:

The GBA has a significantly lower resolution than home consoles of the time; even a lot of 1980s hardware does slightly better. It's not much of a problem on the device itself, as it's only got a 3" screen so the pixel density is fairly high, but games do tend to look a bit fugly when you blow them up to monitor or TV size. Emulators offer filters that can help, but people doing comparisons tend not to turn them on.

 

This is a good part of what makes it a tricky machine to do ports to. You've either got to rescale everything or work with a much smaller viewport. Nintendo were pretty good at the latter right from the off, but a lot of third party devs took a while to get used to it.

 

While porting 2D games to the Jaguar doubtless has its issues, it sounds like a breeze in comparison.

Which issues?

[ArneCRosenfeldt]

2 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Which issues?

I first thought that this might be an issue:

Quote

The comparators may be used to achieve three effects: · When painting pixels one at a time a comparator output can be used to inhibit the write of a pixel, leaving the previous value unchanged. Jaguar Technical Reference Manual - Revision 8 Page 69 © 1992,1993 ATARI Corp. SECRET CONFIDENTIAL 28 February, 2001 · When painting pixels a phrase at a time, the comparator outputs can force destination data to be written back. If this has been previously read then the data will be left unchanged, if not then a background colour can be used, stored in the destination data register

So there is an unecessary read ( it would be better to utilize the Memory write strobe pins for this. ), but this read is on the same page and we can work in phrase mode. I don't get why we can either copy solid data with some transparent pixels, or do Intensity Increment for shadows and high-lights. But we cannot have RGBA data or CRYA or CRYAD where D adds intensity, while A dims down the Read pixel value. I guess that Intensity Increment is already far better than the flicker nonsense on many arcade boards.

This is for your bullet hell where the Object List would get too long. For large Objects you just use that processor.

You can set different pixel sizes for A1 and A2. So I guess you can expand 8 bit blitter objects using a color lookup to 16 bit CRY. Or you could do smoke + fire calculations in RGBA on the GPU and let the blitter convert this to CRY. Hmm, transparency in the blitter does not work for RGBA: "It compares pixel values in either 8 or 16-bit pixel"

[+CyranoJ]

I wonder how far away from an overdose you are with whatever substance you are taking. 

 

Be safe. 

[+Gemintronic]

56 minutes ago, CyranoJ said:

I wonder how far away from an overdose you are with whatever substance you are taking. 

 

Be safe. 

 

Probably the same technique I'm on:  THC in Brain!

 

While shutting down the gut I run half my tasks on THC.  When the instruction cache reaches its end I hand control back to my gut and load a new half baked idea into Brain.  For convenience sake we also copy over the state of my fingers and orifices as well.  I jump back to that new swap of instructions and continue processing on THC.  Memory contention is minimized as I remember nothing!

 

P.S.  I have yet to get this working without falling asleep in the tub but the FPS in Virtual Jaguar are very promising.

[Pete5125]

13 hours ago, harmonyFM said:

If they hadn't had their heads up their butts and insisted on having a "Made in America" product they wouldn't have had the supply chain issues preventing them from fulfilling all of their initial orders. Even if they had no launch games, installing a million people as your initial user-base gives your platform a hell of a better chance of surviving than selling less than a quarter million in five years of failure.

The made in America crowd almost got Ross Perot president in the 92 election, so assuming the same crowd still carried about this, Walmart at the time was making a huge push, to almost everyone of their advertisements.

 

Obviously it didn't seem to be a big deal as they dropped it later in the run.

 

[Matt_B]

12 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Which issues?

You're better off directing that question at someone who's actually written something for the Jaguar if you're wanting specifics.

 

I'm just going from its reputation as being somewhat buggy and that ports between any two machines of that era are rarely going to be a gimme, because no two of them go about drawing graphics in exactly the same way.