Specs Question: Was the Jaguar ACTUALLY stronger than the 3DO?

[Leeroy ST]

This isn't a versus thread, and I've done some digging in the forum and I always come up just as confused about why many people here and on other boards say this.

 

On here, and on various other boards across the net there is just a generally consensus I'm seeing that basically "the Jaguar was stronger than the 3DO but Atari screwed up so you don't see it" and the issue I'm having is how are all these people coming to this conclusion. 

 

I know the 3DO was easier to program for, I know that Jaguar has easier time hitting 60fps because of the 3DO's slow processor, but outside of those I have never seen an explanation on how or why people just throw out the Jaguar was stronger and it was Ataris bad design that prevented it. In Jaguar specific discussions people act as if it's chips could run the Wizard of oz, but never an explanation as to how this would work in a real world environment.

 

Now, I am not the biggest hardware nerd in the world but I know a little something here and there, and I have looked at the specs of each system and I am having issues seeing how the Jaguar could do things like:

 

1. Have moderately texture polygons or early PSX/Saturn level textures to polygons.

2. Have numerous polygonal models with textures moving smoothly in a 3D environment.

3. Moving polygons with textures and graphical effects across large open levels.

4. Have large polygonal objects like towers or buildings with moderate shading techniques.

5. Have large polygonal objects like towers and buildings with textures across the entire object.

 

These are what gave the 3DO Starfighter, Need for Speed, Blade Force, and others.

 

I am not interested in whether you like the games or not, I'm just curious why people constantly say out the Jaguar is more powerful when I don't see anything on the Jaguars spec list that could replicate these features which were also necessary for the PSX and N64. Just focusing on the 3DO, if the Jaguar doesn't have these features than I am confused as to how it's more powerful. Even using RISC to the fullest you aren't going to be able to replicate these features and when you include the limited access to memory it adds several more complications.

 

It's pretty consistent to see the Jaguar mentioned as a more powerful but never why or how, and I've looked at the chips inside the Jaguar over and over, seen several demo's, and I'm not trying to trash the Jaguar, it has games I like to play, I'm just curious why discussion about the Jaguars power is basically "It's stronger than the 3DO and could maybe reach early PSX games but Atari botched the design" yet there isn't even a small hint as to how people come to that conclusion it's just accepted.

 

So if there are some techwizards here that can explain what combination of tools and chips used together can show that the Jaguar is actually more powerful than the 3DO graphically I'd love to learn how. But looking at the memory, the 3 main processors, and other crucial pieces of the system that can be used for game graphics I can't see why people just throw out the Jag is more powerful like some well known established fact and yet I can't find anything that explains how.

 

For example I figured that if the Jaguar attempted an open game play environment it would be restricted in how large it could be for the part you play in. Most of the buildings and other objects would be in this "play area" and outside of that you would just have a flat polygon stretching out beyond the horizon but you won't be able to go to in game. The buildings themselves wouldn't have shading techniques and would be untextured. If they were textures, it would be limited and would not be able to apply textures across the entire object or building. Every Jaguar game with tall building structures from racing games to Iron Soldier proved my suspicions correct. 

 

I'm sure someone who has better silicon knowledge or has coded homebrews for the Jaguar may have better insight on it's capabilities, but I think that while there may have been some potential hidden I can't see the Jaguar being that much better than what we ended up with. 

[+Black_Tiger]

Existing 3DO 3D software does much more than existing Jaguar software and is firmly within the 32-bit generation realm. 3D Jaguar games look and feel much more like higher end 16-bit generation.

 

I don't know how many 3DO 2D games weren't 60fps, but you still had more technically impressive games on 3DO, other than Rayman for Jaguar.

 

When you factor in how much 3DO software was bottlenecked by the CD format, it puts into perspective just how far apart the two consoles are.

[Leeroy ST]

4 minutes ago, Black_Tiger said:

I don't know how many 3DO 2D games weren't 60fps, but you still had more technically impressive games on 3DO, other than Rayman for Jaguar.

As far as I know, Street Fighter II and some Japanese only puzzle game are among the only 2D games that are 60fps on 3DO, maybe Fifa too.

 

5 minutes ago, Black_Tiger said:

When you factor in how much 3DO software was bottlenecked by the CD format, it puts into perspective just how far apart the two consoles are.

CD bottlenecked the 3DO?

[Punisher5.0]

The 3DO has 50% more RAM and and a GPU made to draw texture mapped polygons. A game like Need for Speed would not be possible on Jaguar unless it was heavily down ported.

[CatPix]

Maybe you've been hanging around too much Jaguarophiles boards.

To me, the idea that the Jaguar was more powerful than the 3DO hasn't been a mainstream topic of discussion in most gaming forums and boards for the past 15 years at least, when people really delved into 3DO development (which was slowed alot due to both the custom chips, lack of documentation (at the time) and the locking key required for game to run on the real hardware (cracked around 2016).

One place where it might be true is the 2D aspect of the 3DO, which appears to be less developped than on the Jaguar; but it make sense in the context that the 3DO was envisionned primarly as a 3D machine and sprites would be used for HUD.

Still, with clever use of polygons, media displaying, you get games like Gex on the 3DO.

For CD bottleneck, you can see an example here with the game stopping a second to load the animations of Gex. And it's not an emulation or hardware issue, I've seen the same thing happening on my own 3DO and a friend's 3DO.

[Leeroy ST]

It depends on which 3DO you use to play Gex which impacts how often those stops occur. LG being the worst.

 

Gex is a good 2D game on 3DO but it also runs at 30fps, while animation and colors are cut on the PSX/SAT versions of the game, and have a worse save system, they run at 60fps. So you may be right that the Jaguar may have been better at 3D.

 

But I do wonder if the Jaguar is really more capable in 2D or is it just the frame rate? Something to explore. But back to the claims of being more powerful than the 3DO I have seen that across a few boards including here so I was wondering how people were throwing that out in the open without explaining why, especially since it's hard to believe looking at the specs. But between your post, Punishers post they match my suspicions perfectly. 

[Austin]

I am going to wager that the 3DO was perfectly capable of handling smooth 2D. How the platform handles it is neither here nor there, as like with its 3D titles, it seemed to be dependent on the skill of the developer and how much effort they wanted to put into their games. The 3DO had a very low barrier to entry and so you have a lot of games that feel like rush jobs. This applies to both its 2D and 3D games, as you can gather just from looking at its overall library. Some of its 2D games are buttery smooth (Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Trip'd, Captain Quazar), while others range anywhere from fine, but not perfect (i.e., Gex, Bust-A-Move), to downright sluggish/choppy (Phoenix 3, Shadow: War of Succession, Mazer, Bust-A-Move in 2-player mode, etc). To add to more smooth 2D, WARP made a few compilations in Japan, like Short Warp and Flopon World, the later featuring a shooter that runs very smoothly. Put in the right hands, it seemed like the 3DO was fully capable of doing 2D right.

[Leeroy ST]

16 minutes ago, Austin said:

I am going to wager that the 3DO was perfectly capable of handling smooth 2D. How the platform handles it is neither here nor there, as like with its 3D titles, it seemed to be dependent on the skill of the developer and how much effort they wanted to put into their games. The 3DO had a very low barrier to entry and so you have a lot of games that feel like rush jobs. This applies to both its 2D and 3D games, as you can gather just from looking at its overall library. Some of its 2D games are buttery smooth (Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Trip'd, Captain Quazar), while others range anywhere from fine, but not perfect (i.e., Gex, Bust-A-Move), to downright sluggish/choppy (Phoenix 3, Shadow: War of Succession, Mazer, Bust-A-Move in 2-player mode, etc). To add to more smooth 2D, WARP made a few compilations in Japan, like Short Warp and Flopon World, the later featuring a shooter that runs very smoothly. Put in the right hands, it seemed like the 3DO was fully capable of doing 2D right.

I think most 2D arguments aren't about smooth gameplay but framerate and parallax.

 

I just did some checks.

 

SFII on 3DO runs fine with large sprites but seems to sacrifice parallax for 60fps and soccer kid is 60fps but well, it's soccer kid. Samurai Showdown had parallax but runs at 30. Sailor Moon had parallax and Zoom but runs at 30fps with drops. Johnny Bazookatone and Quazar only seems to hit 60fps in clear areas then dropping to the 20's when stuff is on the screen. Eye of Typhoon, Captain Quazar, primal range, and Syndicate all run between 20-30fps. 

 

Developers did a good job making those games play well but they weren't buttery smooth. Only a few of these had parallax as well.

 

Rayman and Super Burnout are some examples of 60fps Jaguar games, there are a few more, the rest seem to hit 30fps or go in between which is still better than the 20's the 3DO goes into.

 

This interview from Ubisoft about choosing Jaguar over 3DO for Rayman also seems to confirm suspicions:

https://www.arcadeattack.co.uk/frederic-houde-rayman/

 

It does seem that the Jaguar was indeed the better 2D gaming machine while 3DO was superior in 3D. But that doesn't mean the 2D games on the 3DO weren't an evolution and good on their own, they just ran at bad frame rates and only a few had complex parallax.

 

This seems to be consistent and I'm starting to think that developers couldn't fine a way to overcome this. Maybe the 3DO processor is just too slow for advanced 2D techniques. 

 

 

[Leeroy ST]

Looking at fighting games:

 

Kasumi Ninja at 3:30 minute mark shows the parallax:

 

3DO Shadow Warriors does not:

 

For traditional 2D fighting games with sprites and no digital actors

 

Jaguar Bruce lee had (lazy but still there) Parallax:

 

3DO SFII Turbo is missing parallax. 

 

[Leeroy ST]

Looking at platform games:

 

Rayman Jaguar parallax 60fps:

 

3DO Gex no parallax 30fps:

 

 

 

However the 1st and last bosses in Gex do have parallax which I find rather interesting.

 

So it does seem that between the Jaguar and 3DO you have a 2D powerhouse and a 3D powerhouse, but this doesn't help the Jaguar in the power argument. If anything it shows that the Jaguar tried to push beyond its means when it came to 3D gaming when in reality it was a 2d powerhouse the whole time and just wanted to try as hard as possible to rid itself of that image and failed.

 

 

[Austin]

40 minutes ago, Leeroy ST said:

However the 1st and last bosses in Gex do have parallax which I find rather interesting.

In the videos you specifically linked to, Gex has lots of parallax with multiple background areas scrolling at different rates. Rayman on the other hand has a single moving background with no separate layers of scrolling within it. That's the antithesis of "parallax". (Now, this might change later on in Rayman, but I'm specifically referring to the videos linked.)

 

Just like the Jaguar has some 2D games that run smoother than some 3DO 2D games, it's also got plenty that chop up. Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure, for instance, runs at 30fps and chops up further when things get busy. Flashback gets sluggish as things heat up and there isn't even any sort of parallax in the game (i.e., it's pretty bare-bones). Raiden runs at 30fps, as does Ultra Vortek (if that). I'd be surprised if Brutal Sports Football runs at 15, heh. I guess the point is that both systems have 2D games that run great, and many that run poorly. It's difficult to make any sort of meaningful comparison if your goal is to figure out which platform was more capable in that regard. Once again, I think it came down more to the developers in the end. Games like BSF or Flashback are games that should not have any issues performing well on the Jaguar, but they do.

 

This is interesting to think about: We'll never really know the true capability of 3DO hardware as when the platform was current, it was required that all games go through an extra software layer (i.e., the 3DO's operating system) to ensure compatibility with each model of 3DO. This meant extra resources were being wasted to prevent games from not functioning on certain models, unlike the Jaguar where many games were written directly to its hardware in Assembly. This FAQ says that the OS could not physically be worked around, but I'd be curious if a modern homebrew developer could get around that. There's also the interesting fact that the 3DO upscales its image from 240p to 480i. I don't know if this has a negative real-world effect on performance, but games that run too fast on Japanese systems with 240p switches (Out of This World and Wolfenstein 3D in particular) suggest it might. So if you really want to go down a rabbit hole of hypothetical scenarios, then consider the possibilities of dodging the 3DO OS and developing a game with 240p-capable models in mind. But ultimately I find the whole thing somewhat (maybe not entirely) pointless in this day and age.

[roots.genoa]

4 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

3DO SFII Turbo is missing parallax

Uh... I think I just saw parallax in Chun Li stage (on the ground).

[Leeroy ST]

50 minutes ago, roots.genoa said:

Uh... I think I just saw parallax in Chun Li stage (on the ground).

I mean in general, it's missing parallax that is in other versions of the game. Even on that same stage.

 

3 hours ago, Austin said:

Just like the Jaguar has some 2D games that run smoother than some 3DO 2D games, it's also got plenty that chop up. Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure, for instance, runs at 30fps and chops up further when things get busy. Flashback gets sluggish as things heat up and there isn't even any sort of parallax in the game (i.e., it's pretty bare-bones). Raiden runs at 30fps, as does Ultra Vortek (if that). I'd be surprised if Brutal Sports Football runs at 15, heh. I guess the point is that both systems have 2D games that run great, and many that run poorly

3DO consistently has 2D games hitting in the 20's while the Jaguar doesn't though, and the 3DO only has 2 2D games at 60fps as far as I am aware.

 

3 hours ago, Austin said:

In the videos you specifically linked to, Gex has lots of parallax with multiple background areas scrolling at different rates.

Where in the first level that is shown in the video the cemetery, is there parallax? I supposed technically the one layer of the background moving is parallax but Rayman has that and the foreground, if you notice the foreground plants move along in the front like at 3:25. Outside of one background layer GEX has no complex parallax. It also runs at 30fps. The 1st boss does have multiple layers however.

 

3 hours ago, Austin said:

This is interesting to think about: We'll never really know the true capability of 3DO hardware as when the platform was current, it was required that all games go through an extra software layer (i.e., the 3DO's operating system) to ensure compatibility with each model of 3DO. This meant extra resources were being wasted to prevent games from not functioning on certain models, unlike the Jaguar where many games were written directly to its hardware in Assembly. This FAQ says that the OS could not physically be worked around, but I'd be curious if a modern homebrew developer could get around that. There's also the interesting fact that the 3DO upscales its image from 240p to 480i. I don't know if this has a negative real-world effect on performance, but games that run too fast on Japanese systems with 240p switches (Out of This World and Wolfenstein 3D in particular) suggest it might. So if you really want to go down a rabbit hole of hypothetical scenarios, then consider the possibilities of dodging the 3DO OS and developing a game with 240p-capable models in mind. But ultimately I find the whole thing somewhat (maybe not entirely) pointless in this day and age.

 

Normal 3DO's can be accessed to enable 240p even though they don't have switches looking at 3DO boards and don't seem to have a speed up problem. I agree that we may not know just how capable the 3DO could be but I also believe we shouldn't discount it's slow processor.

 

Even with games that lose image quality, textures, and graphical effects with titles shared with PSX/SAT and are generally worse versions than the 3DO version they still run at 2-3x the frame rate with a few exceptions. Which would explain why FMV hybrid games like the FPS Killing time can run in the single digits. However, with the 3DO recently being cracked and starting to experience homebrew titles maybe something might come up in the future. 

 

[+Black_Tiger]

9 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

Looking at fighting games:

 

Kasumi Ninja at 3:30 minute mark shows the parallax:

 

3DO Shadow Warriors does not:

 

Way of the Warrior has all kinds of parallax, misc effects and some stages look like they mix in texture mapped 3D elements... all while scaling in and out.

 

 

 

Edited September 16, 2020 by Black_Tiger

[zetastrike]

This is why I wish Capcom released the apparently finished 3DO port of Mega Man X3, or that it resurfaces someday.  I want to know if they got it to run at 60fps with the parallax intact, or if it runs at 30fps with parallax, or if it runs at 60fps with the parallax removed.  It would be a good game to have on the 3DO regardless.

[+Black_Tiger]

27 minutes ago, zetastrike said:

This is why I wish Capcom released the apparently finished 3DO port of Mega Man X3, or that it resurfaces someday.  I want to know if they got it to run at 60fps with the parallax intact, or if it runs at 30fps with parallax, or if it runs at 60fps with the parallax removed.  It would be a good game to have on the 3DO regardless.

It would be easy to confirm if there is parallax if the screenshots released for it were legit. The fact that they don't have the kind of bordering that the Saturn version has makes it likely they were just SFC screenshots.

 

It also makes it less likely that it ever made it to gold status.

[zetastrike]

1 hour ago, Black_Tiger said:

It would be easy to confirm if there is parallax if the screenshots released for it were legit. The fact that they don't have the kind of bordering that the Saturn version has makes it likely they were just SFC screenshots.

 

It also makes it less likely that it ever made it to gold status.

The 3DO can't match the SFC resolution and fill the screen like the PS1 version?

[Torr]

There's too much talk of parallax... where's Joe Redifer when you need him?

 

[Austin]

2 hours ago, zetastrike said:

This is why I wish Capcom released the apparently finished 3DO port of Mega Man X3, or that it resurfaces someday.  I want to know if they got it to run at 60fps with the parallax intact, or if it runs at 30fps with parallax, or if it runs at 60fps with the parallax removed.  It would be a good game to have on the 3DO regardless.

Mega Man X3 only has a single layer of parallax (a single background layer that scrolls separate from the foreground, like in Rayman). I don't see why this would have been an issue for the 3DO.

18 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

Normal 3DO's can be accessed to enable 240p even though they don't have switches looking at 3DO boards and don't seem to have a speed up problem.

3DO games are rendered internally at 240p, but all visual data is pumped through the 3DO's internal scaler which forces every game to output at 480i. There is no game that natively outputs at 240p because of this process, and as far as I'm aware there is no way around it without modding a console (or having a Japanese unit with the switch).

 

With the 240p mod or a unit with a switch, only a small handful of games have issues. This is specifically what I was referring to. The fact that these small handful of games run extremely fast in 240p mode suggests that the internal scaling process might have a negative effect on performance. Remove that scaling process and optimize the games accordingly, and you might have a boost in performance.

 

You wanted to know what platform is the more "powerful", so I'm throwing out ways a hypothetical developer (or homebrew author) might be able to eek out more performance on the 3DO to better suit your arguments. On the Jaguar there is no such hypothetical scenario. Its been very well documented and homebrew developers very much know its strengths and weaknesses inside and out. There's not much more to be gained from that hardware, while there's still a bit of hypothetical, untapped potential on the 3DO based on some of the points talked about in this thread.

[Leeroy ST]

14 hours ago, Black_Tiger said:

 

Way of the Warrior has all kinds of parallax, misc effects and some stages look like they mix in texture mapped 3D elements... all while scaling in and out.

 

 

 

There are three stages in this video and none have complex parallax the closest is the last one with chains in the foreground moving but not an entire plane. One could confuse stage 2 chinese bridge and parallax but that's just a sprite object that moves with the background it's not an actual plane being moved. Limited parallax at best.

 

Reminder, this is an example of complex parallax which the 3DO generally has problems doing:

 

 

 

One of the best examples of parallax is the 1st boss of Gex that isn't anywhere else in the game and the only other part in the game that has limited parallax is the last boss.

[Leeroy ST]

38 minutes ago, Austin said:

Mega Man X3 only has a single layer of parallax (a single background layer that scrolls separate from the foreground, like in Rayman). I don't see why this would have been an issue for the 3DO.

 

Rayman has more than a single background layer scrolling in many areas so that's not a good comparison. But yes I don't get why people think Mega Man X3 has complex parallax and it's also a slower style game.

 

40 minutes ago, Austin said:

With the 240p mod or a unit with a switch, only a small handful of games have issues. This is specifically what I was referring to. The fact that these small handful of games run extremely fast in 240p mode suggests that the internal scaling process might have a negative effect on performance. Remove that scaling process and optimize the games accordingly, and you might have a boost in performance.

And again I am going to repeat what you ignored and that is people have accessed 240p on "regular" 3DO's without the switch and did not always have the speed issue so that conclusion is pointless without further research. It also is important to note WHICH games on japanese 240 models were the speed up more often occurs speed up and look at their make up and complexity before considering the possibility that it's actually, potentially, a performance hindrance.

 

An interesting thing to explore. 

 

42 minutes ago, Austin said:

On the Jaguar there is no such hypothetical scenario. Its been very well documented and homebrew developers very much know its strengths and weaknesses inside and out. There's not much more to be gained from that hardware, while there's still a bit of hypothetical, untapped potential on the 3DO based on some of the points talked about in this thread.

We already know the 3DO is more powerful in 3D despite people saying the Jaguar often is but Atari bungled the job which I can't believe looking at the specs. But 2D games is a different argument as I'm not sure if the Jaguars 2D abilities have been exhausted, especially since many developers of 2D games didn't do much than slap code using the 68k and may have been able to aid 2D development with tricks.

 

Possibly.

[+Black_Tiger]

22 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

There are three stages in this video and none have complex parallax the closest is the last one with chains in the foreground moving but not an entire plane. One could confuse stage 2 chinese bridge and parallax but that's just a sprite object that moves with the background it's not an actual plane being moved. Limited parallax at best.

The stage at 7:10 has 5+ massive overlapping layers and everything scales in and out. One of those layers is designed to look like 2 or 3, or may actually be extra layers.

 

You've demostrated that you don't understand what multi-plane camera/parallax effects are. Even though many people still have console war myths stuck in their head about "real" and "fake" parallax, even by that standard this is very much the "real" kind, unlike Atari Karts.

 

 

 

 

22 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

Reminder, this is an example of complex parallax which the 3DO generally has problems doing:

This is the opposite. Even with some of the sliding strips appearing ro reveal a bit of something behind them, it's still the same impact as the same kind of parallax in cou tless 8 and 16-bit console racing games.

 

Even if you wanted to include the revealing bits, you can still do that on SMS and NES.

 

What should be most obvious is that you're talking about a high color Mode-7 game. Way of the Warrior is not possible on 32X, let alone SNES and is very much a Playstation/Saturn kind of 32-bit game on a technical level.

 

Not only could Atari Karts be done on SNES with what the average person would think is close enough coloring and resolution, here is one of the SNES Mode-7 racers that does the same kind of "very complex" parallax:

 

 

 

[+Black_Tiger]

On 9/16/2020 at 8:49 AM, zetastrike said:

The 3DO can't match the SFC resolution and fill the screen like the PS1 version?

3DO only does 320 x 240 ntsc. 3DO and Saturn can't do a low enough resolution to not more-than fill the screen.

 

Since Capcom showed us with the Saturn version that they would rather letterbox than reprogram the game, the 3DO version should have also been letterboxed... unless Capcom couldn't handle programming in a border that could be done with a couple "sprites".

[Leeroy ST]

2 hours ago, Black_Tiger said:

The stage at 7:10 has 5+ massive overlapping layers and everything scales in and out. One of those layers is designed to look like 2 or 3, or may actually be extra layers.

This is the point you aren't getting, even I said Gex's first boss had some parallax the issue is that it's not across the game or even a good portion of the game it's segments of games, if the game even has it at all.

 

This is likely due to the 3DO having issues with parallax, and the fact that Atari Karts can't be replicated on the 3DO even though Atari Karts is "fake" should be a testament to that. Also the few games that do have proportional parallax all seem to drop frames during the parallax with few exceptions.

 

2 hours ago, Black_Tiger said:

Hi-color mode 7 game. Not only could Atari Karts be done on SNES with what the average person would think is close enough coloring and resolution, here is one of the SNES Mode-7 racers that does the same kind of "very complex" parallax:

 

All you did was show you don't know what parallax is, the only thing going on in your SNES game are two background layers shifting and one shifting plane that is the "track". One of the levels is a chain of the same background stadium seats copy and pasted.

 

The video of Atari Karts I posted has 3 more detailed backgrounds shifting and a 4th way in the back (static) with the the same ground rotation plane but with higher detail, cleaner graphics, higher res, and higher color count. This is consistent with EVERY TRACK.  IN addition some stages have better illusion of elevation with the feeling and visual of going up and down slants or hills, and there are sometimes scaling options ON the tracks as well while keeping everything I said above.

 

If SNES could easily do such a game you should be able to show it.

 

Street Racer is low detailed and pixelated with some tracks being almost like your racing in a void with barely any background features (on the ground) outside of the track, and if they are there most of the time they are one or two small repeating textures. It has two shifting backgrounds that (when played on a real SNES) blur when they move and in some stages the movement jerks around and isn't even close to smooth like the circuit track, which also have floating stadium lamps not connected to anything and taking place during the dark. You think that's better than Atari Karts?

 

You might be going a bit too hard on the Jaguar, but either way the two games aren't comparable outside their fake 3D visual style for racing.

 

Quote

 Way of the Warrior is not possible on 32X, let alone SNES and is very much a Playstation/Saturn kind of 32-bit game on a technical level.

This also applies to Atari versions of the same type of game. No one said that 3DO couldn't run games the 32X could why are you adding your imagination to the argument? I am saying the 3DO has issues with parallax compared to the Jaguar. Not the 32X or the SNES, the Jaguar. 

 

Edited September 17, 2020 by Leeroy ST

[ColecoKing]

There is no debate, Atari Jaguar was a 2D console Atari fans blinded themselves with 3D, it was never intended to do more than bare minimal 3D better than other consoles at the time as was the Panther.

That's why early 3D like club drive look so basic and flat because that is the type of game it was designed for. If you wanted more advanced games on the system you had to deal with complications that would take a long time to work around and you still wouldn't be able to run a basic 3D game like Starblade on Jaguar. The Jaguar was made for powerful 2D games with limited 3D same exact thing with the Saturn by Sega before they made those last minute changes which were a reaction tot he PSX and Ironically the Jaguar.


Saturn, another consoles focused on amazing 2D graphical presentation with limited 3D, Jaguar 2D console power house with Limited 3D same goal just 2 years earlier. Both were hard to program for when making 3D games both had terrible dev kits to help. both had bugs.

Only difference is Atari reacted to the better 3D of competition with the original console, while Sega reacted by adding something to the console so while a pain to program and with many issues with its 3D titles, at least some of the games were comparable were none of the Atari games were comparable with any other major competitor in the space whether it is 3DO multiplayer, PC, Playstation, Nintendo 64, even 32x while weaker had better presentation in the early days.

But you have to consider Sega decision only has a minimal advantageous, the costs sunk into that decision destroyed Segas finances and the poor sales were the finishing blow. Maybe Sega should have used just the original hardware, clean shaded polygons were better visually than playstation problems. Powerful 2D games that would put all consoles to shame. Plus from the documentation the original Saturns 3D was still better than the Jaguars anyway so it would have been acceptable.