Was not releasing with CD at launch the biggest mistake Atari made with the Jaguar?

[Shaggy the Atarian]

9 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

? I will never forget John Romero telling me via email Jaguar could barely handle Doom when i enquired about UK Press claims Quake was 30% complete on Jaguar.  

IIRC, John Carmack said something to the effect that had he done Doom with the knowledge he gained after creating it, the code would've been much more efficient. I have to imagine that would have been applied to Doom 2. I've never believed all this stuff about Quake on the Jaguar though. 

 

Quote

My console experience with Quake didn't really come into effect until the Dreamcast, never picked Quake up on the Saturn myself, had Quake II on both N64 and Playstation. 

 

I only ever played Quake on PC, so for me, never had an issue there. When FPS games went full 3D, they are just better with a keyboard/mouse.

 

Quote

Sure there were more, older PC titles that might have fared well on Jaguar, but going after titles that needed a Pentium PC to get the best performance from, wasn't a great idea. 

Wolf 3D & AvP shows us that it could've done fairly well with more games in that style - Blake Stone & Catacombs Abyss are two that I think would have been able to show noticeable improvements over the PC versions, which is something that Atari really needed to reduce the stigma of it only being slightly better than 16-bit consoles. Catacombs really would have shined running in 65k color & full screen 60fps, compared to the 16 EGA colors of the PC version.

 

Quote

Bill Rehbock chasing Descent for the Jaguar... 

 

Bad idea Bill...

In retrospect sure, but at the time, Descent was a hot ticket item that had a lot of hype around it. Of course if it ran like Skyhammer does, then it's certainly better that it didn't happen, but I understand the reasoning behind it (of course, that would have made more sense to bring to the Jaguar 2, had that happened).

 

I don't think that they were off in looking at PC games of the era to boost the Jag's library. The contrast you could should between early 90s PC to the Jaguar was more obvious than from 16-bit/68k ports. They just should have focused on titles that were better fitting for what the system could do, like the aforementioned FPS games, or something like Commander Keen (given that the Tramiels wanted a mascot to compete with Mario & Sonic, they should have just funded iD to upgrade CK for the system)

 

 

[Keatah]

I was rock solidly impressed at how well the Sega Saturn and Dreamcast handled Quake. Had I been big-time into consoles back then I would have certainly snatched up those titles.

[JagChris]

30 minutes ago, Keatah said:

I was rock solidly impressed at how well the Sega Saturn and Dreamcast handled Quake. Had I been big-time into consoles back then I would have certainly snatched up those titles.

You should see the Saturn Ztreme engine. 

[Spider-Dan]

17 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

Sorry but I disagree with that statement. The Wii U was released before the Xbox One and the PS4, and the Switch was released before the Xbox Series and the PS5. Being less powerful doesn't make them from a different generation. Wii, Xbox 360, and PS3 were of the same generation, at least according to the most frequent acceptation for instance.

While you can make a fair argument for WiiU being of the same generation as PS4/XB1, I never saw anyone saying that the Switch was a generation beyond those two.  (Wikipedia has WiiU/PS4/XB1/Switch all as eighth-generation consoles.)

 

As I said, Nintendo's consoles straddle generations; you could say they are released extremely late in a generation, or you could say they are released very early and and a full generation behind in processing power.

Edited August 1, 2021 by Spider-Dan

[Keatah]

5 hours ago, Spider-Dan said:

While you can make a fair argument for WiiU being of the same generation as PS4/XB1, I never saw anyone saying that the Switch was a generation beyond those two.  (Wikipedia has WiiU/PS4/XB1/Switch all as eighth-generation consoles.)

 

As I said, Nintendo's consoles straddle generations; you could say they are released extremely late in a generation, or you could say they are released very early and and a full generation behind in processing power.

 

So. who or what sets the generation number?

[roots.genoa]

6 hours ago, Spider-Dan said:

While you can make a fair argument for WiiU being of the same generation as PS4/XB1, I never saw anyone saying that the Switch was a generation beyond those two.  (Wikipedia has WiiU/PS4/XB1/Switch all as eighth-generation consoles.)

 

As I said, Nintendo's consoles straddle generations; you could say they are released extremely late in a generation, or you could say they are released very early and and a full generation behind in processing power.

I understand that logic but I find mine more intuitive. Puting the Switch in the generation of the Wii U seems all the more illogical as Nintendo stopped making games for the Wii U when the Switch was launched (yes, Breath of the Wild was on both systems, like Twilight Princess was both on Wii and its predecessor). I think everyone would agree the Switch is more the successor to the Wii U than to the 3DS actually. And by the way, basing generations on hardware power is also problematic with handheld systems. So I think it's better to reason with time period rather than power.

 

But you do you; let's agree to disagree and move on.

[Leeroy ST]

On 7/31/2021 at 2:17 AM, agradeneu said:

 

Oh really? Platform Totals - VGChartz

 

How has the PS3 "damaged" the company in the long run if they steamrolled everyone with the PS4? 

BTW Do you understand the concept of investments?

 

If PS3 was a commercial failure, what would you call WiiU, Vita, Dreamcast and Atari Jaguar?

 

Anyway, end of off topic discussion

 

 

 

 

So we will ignore events, news press, Sonys own words now and use Vgchartz, an unreliable source many sites ban usage of. Hmmmmm.

 

Your wrong definition of commercial failure aside, yes those other consoles you listed are also commercial failures. 

 

On 7/31/2021 at 2:38 AM, Spider-Dan said:

This is a really weird way to define "failure," though.  Was the PS3 more of a failure than the WiiU?  How about the Virtual Boy?  Was the 360 also a "failure?"

 

When you have a console like Jaguar, 3DO, or Dreamcast that drag the manufacturer to the bottom of the ocean, it's hard to argue that those were less of a "failure" than, say, the OG Xbox, on which MS lost money hand over fist, but which provided a necessary stepping stone to entering the console business, as well as introducing Xbox Live.

 

edit: I think the important question to ask about "failure" is: in hindsight, would that company have been better off not releasing that console at all?

 

Atari would have been better off never releasing the Jaguar and transitioning to a software house in 1993.

Sega would have been better off never releasing the Dreamcast and transitioning to software and arcades in 1998.

Nintendo would have been better off never releasing the Virtual Boy and skipping the WiiU entirely, riding the 3DS until the Switch.
 

Sony most definitely would NOT have been better off never releasing the PS3.

 

This logic doesn't work, Commercial failure means commercial failure. There is no comparison involved. No one is saying PS3 failed more or less than Wii U. 

 

Your beef is only that you dont want the term applied to the PS3 despite it being widely known to be one. 

 

Anyway on topic.

[Leeroy ST]

23 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

IIRC, John Carmack said something to the effect that had he done Doom with the knowledge he gained after creating it, the code would've been much more efficient. I have to imagine that would have been applied to Doom 2. I've never believed all this stuff about Quake on the Jaguar though. 

 

 

I only ever played Quake on PC, so for me, never had an issue there. When FPS games went full 3D, they are just better with a keyboard/mouse.

 

Wolf 3D & AvP shows us that it could've done fairly well with more games in that style - Blake Stone & Catacombs Abyss are two that I think would have been able to show noticeable improvements over the PC versions, which is something that Atari really needed to reduce the stigma of it only being slightly better than 16-bit consoles. Catacombs really would have shined running in 65k color & full screen 60fps, compared to the 16 EGA colors of the PC version.

 

In retrospect sure, but at the time, Descent was a hot ticket item that had a lot of hype around it. Of course if it ran like Skyhammer does, then it's certainly better that it didn't happen, but I understand the reasoning behind it (of course, that would have made more sense to bring to the Jaguar 2, had that happened).

 

I don't think that they were off in looking at PC games of the era to boost the Jag's library. The contrast you could should between early 90s PC to the Jaguar was more obvious than from 16-bit/68k ports. They just should have focused on titles that were better fitting for what the system could do, like the aforementioned FPS games, or something like Commander Keen (given that the Tramiels wanted a mascot to compete with Mario & Sonic, they should have just funded iD to upgrade CK for the system)

 

 

I think the problem was they also courted Amiga devs at a time the platform was on it's last legs and was falling rapidly behind PC. If they put more early effort on PC devs it may have improved the quality ratio.

 

11 hours ago, Keatah said:

 

So. who or what sets the generation number?

Fanboys on Wikipedia in admin positions. Literally, me and many others used to fight with them for years, but gave up long ago. 

 

When Switch came out there was this drive to act like the Wii U didn't happen. Then those talk pages got deleted. 

 

Years ago 2nd gen wasn't real video games, 4-bit graphics, video games never sold 1 million copies until jesusendo. 

 

Some of those guys are still there. 

 

[Lostdragon]

23 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

IIRC, John Carmack said something to the effect that had he done Doom with the knowledge he gained after creating it, the code would've been much more efficient. I have to imagine that would have been applied to Doom 2. I've never believed all this stuff about Quake on the Jaguar though. 

 

 

I only ever played Quake on PC, so for me, never had an issue there. When FPS games went full 3D, they are just better with a keyboard/mouse.

 

Wolf 3D & AvP shows us that it could've done fairly well with more games in that style - Blake Stone & Catacombs Abyss are two that I think would have been able to show noticeable improvements over the PC versions, which is something that Atari really needed to reduce the stigma of it only being slightly better than 16-bit consoles. Catacombs really would have shined running in 65k color & full screen 60fps, compared to the 16 EGA colors of the PC version.

 

In retrospect sure, but at the time, Descent was a hot ticket item that had a lot of hype around it. Of course if it ran like Skyhammer does, then it's certainly better that it didn't happen, but I understand the reasoning behind it (of course, that would have made more sense to bring to the Jaguar 2, had that happened).

 

I don't think that they were off in looking at PC games of the era to boost the Jag's library. The contrast you could should between early 90s PC to the Jaguar was more obvious than from 16-bit/68k ports. They just should have focused on titles that were better fitting for what the system could do, like the aforementioned FPS games, or something like Commander Keen (given that the Tramiels wanted a mascot to compete with Mario & Sonic, they should have just funded iD to upgrade CK for the system)

 

 

This John Carmack quote by any chance? 

 

 

 

 "i would do several things differently if I was doing the

project again. I know for sure how to make the rendering code 50%
faster. This would allow you to either increase the horizontal
resolution from 160*180 to 256*180, or increase the speed to 20 fps
from 15, or run totally full screen at the same resolution with a
more complex world.

The problem is that Jag DOOM usually becomes speed limited by the
game logic, not by the rendering code. The problems of movement
clipping and line of sight calculation for all the monsters are more
difficult to run efficiently on the risc processors. The basic actor
logic is too bulky and spread out to run on one of the risc chips,
but it is really a bit too much for the 68k to handle when the
rendering is taking up most of the bus bandwidth.

We are not working on any more jag projects at the moment (Quake is
taking up all my time). We gave Atari a lot of our time and effort,
and we are now in a “wait and see” mode. If they hit their sales
projections, we will probably do something else late next year. We
are probably going to license the jag DOOM code to some other
companies though, so you might see a similar game before that."

John Carmack

 

 

As for Descent, picked it up on Playstation after seeing the good reviews, hated it ?

Edited August 1, 2021 by Lostdragon

[agradeneu]

1 hour ago, Leeroy ST said:

So we will ignore events, news press, Sonys own words now and use Vgchartz, an unreliable source many sites ban usage of. Hmmmmm.

 

Your wrong definition of commercial failure aside, yes those other consoles you listed are also commercial failures. 

 

 

This logic doesn't work, Commercial failure means commercial failure. There is no comparison involved. No one is saying PS3 failed more or less than Wii U. 

 

Your beef is only that you dont want the term applied to the PS3 despite it being widely known to be one. 

 

Anyway on topic.

Any source for your caims? Ah wait, nevermind!

 

 You need to learn a LOT my friend.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 1, 2021 by agradeneu

[Shaggy the Atarian]

16 minutes ago, Lostdragon said:

This John Carmack quote by any chance? 

 

 

 

 "i would do several things differently if I was doing the

project again. I know for sure how to make the rendering code 50%
faster. This would allow you to either increase the horizontal
resolution from 160*180 to 256*180, or increase the speed to 20 fps
from 15, or run totally full screen at the same resolution with a
more complex world.

The problem is that Jag DOOM usually becomes speed limited by the
game logic, not by the rendering code. The problems of movement
clipping and line of sight calculation for all the monsters are more
difficult to run efficiently on the risc processors. The basic actor
logic is too bulky and spread out to run on one of the risc chips,
but it is really a bit too much for the 68k to handle when the
rendering is taking up most of the bus bandwidth.

We are not working on any more jag projects at the moment (Quake is
taking up all my time). We gave Atari a lot of our time and effort,
and we are now in a “wait and see” mode. If they hit their sales
projections, we will probably do something else late next year. We
are probably going to license the jag DOOM code to some other
companies though, so you might see a similar game before that."

John Carmack

 

 

As for Descent, picked it up on Playstation after seeing the good reviews, hated it ?

Yep, that's the one. Sounds to me like had the Jag sold better, then they'd have done Doom II with improved code.  Really doubt they would have tried Quake, so that circles back to why it would have been good for the Jag to have launched with some extra power. The more storage space/cheaper production costs of a CD wouldn't overcome that kind of hurdle. 

 

No, not everyone liked Descent after playing it, but that still doesn't change that it was a hyped up game with plenty of good reviews, so makes sense why someone like Bill was trying to get it. It also explains the existence of Skyhammer as a Descent alternative. There's another game I'd be curious to see running on CoJag hardware - that'd be a good fit to use on an arcade machine with a yoke controller too.

[agradeneu]

3 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Yep, that's the one. Sounds to me like had the Jag sold better, then they'd have done Doom II with improved code.  Really doubt they would have tried Quake, so that circles back to why it would have been good for the Jag to have launched with some extra power. The more storage space/cheaper production costs of a CD wouldn't overcome that kind of hurdle. 

 

No, not everyone liked Descent after playing it, but that still doesn't change that it was a hyped up game with plenty of good reviews, so makes sense why someone like Bill was trying to get it. It also explains the existence of Skyhammer as a Descent alternative. There's another game I'd be curious to see running on CoJag hardware - that'd be a good fit to use on an arcade machine with a yoke controller too.

Doom 2 and Hexen/Heretic would have been killer apps for the Jag!

 

[Clint Thompson]

14 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

Doom 2 and Hexen/Heretic would have been killer apps for the Jag!

 

Mortal Kombat 3 would have been a killer app for Jag and it was actually planned, but... what happened? Atari happened.

[Lostdragon]

25 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Yep, that's the one. Sounds to me like had the Jag sold better, then they'd have done Doom II with improved code.  Really doubt they would have tried Quake, so that circles back to why it would have been good for the Jag to have launched with some extra power. The more storage space/cheaper production costs of a CD wouldn't overcome that kind of hurdle. 

 

No, not everyone liked Descent after playing it, but that still doesn't change that it was a hyped up game with plenty of good reviews, so makes sense why someone like Bill was trying to get it. It also explains the existence of Skyhammer as a Descent alternative. There's another game I'd be curious to see running on CoJag hardware - that'd be a good fit to use on an arcade machine with a yoke controller too.

Doom 2 built from lessons learnt with the Doom conversion, would of been interesting to see on Jaguar, Quake shouldn't of even been considered for anything but the Jaguar II hardware. 

 

 

I've always viewed Skyhammer as the Jaguar G-Police alternative, loved that on Playstation, same sort of dystopian future setting and atmosphere. 

[Shaggy the Atarian]

7 minutes ago, Clint Thompson said:

 

Mortal Kombat 3 would have been a killer app for Jag and it was actually planned, but... what happened? Atari happened.

Atari Museum is down at the moment, but they did have a document showing all the payments that Atari made on a bunch of titles. MK3 was one of them that they paid a pretty penny for(IIRC, it was the most they dumped money into), but apparently all that got them was a single screen demo that was found a few years ago.

 

1 minute ago, Lostdragon said:

Doom 2 built from lessons learnt with the Doom conversion, would of been interesting to see on Jaguar, Quake shouldn't of even been considered for anything but the Jaguar II hardware. 

 

Yeah, it's all too bad it didn't happen. IMO, extra horsepower would have made the 3D stuff stand out better and perhaps that could have been enough to secure some more ports of games that people wanted, thus driving sales.

 

Since it was mainly built for 2D games though, that's where Atari's focus should have been, building up the momentum there with the likes of Mortal Kombat and other games that could have enjoyed some more notable differences on the hardware, then get the Jag 2 out to handle all the 3D stuff. Granted, they did try that to some degree - if it wasn't for their efforts in that regard we wouldn't have got Rayman or a really good port of NBA Jam, so that was something.

[Lostdragon]

6 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Atari Museum is down at the moment, but they did have a document showing all the payments that Atari made on a bunch of titles. MK3 was one of them that they paid a pretty penny for(IIRC, it was the most they dumped money into), but apparently all that got them was a single screen demo that was found a few years ago.

 

Yeah, it's all too bad it didn't happen. IMO, extra horsepower would have made the 3D stuff stand out better and perhaps that could have been enough to secure some more ports of games that people wanted, thus driving sales.

 

Since it was mainly built for 2D games though, that's where Atari's focus should have been, building up the momentum there with the likes of Mortal Kombat and other games that could have enjoyed some more notable differences on the hardware, then get the Jag 2 out to handle all the 3D stuff. Granted, they did try that to some degree - if it wasn't for their efforts in that regard we wouldn't have got Rayman or a really good port of NBA Jam, so that was something.

In amongst the Zip files Scott Stilphen kindly passed on where Atari Corp contracts and later documentation from Probe Software detailing how Jaguar M. K. III was to be converted from the Playstation version by the coder who had converted Mortal Kombat to the PC, along with the payment documents Atari Museum have. 

 

It's been suggested the single screen demo was done just to ensure Probe got some money from Atari ?

 

 

Conan would of been the early 2D Killer App for myself, but that didn't even get the first level finished ?

[Pete5125]

28 minutes ago, Clint Thompson said:

 

Mortal Kombat 3 would have been a killer app for Jag and it was actually planned, but... what happened? Atari happened.

Atari slowed it down because it costed money to liscence,  money they already spent, but not finishing let it be a tax write off.

 

Atari official reason was it would cut into ultra vortex, and kasaumi sales so they slowed development, where it would be released 96.

[JagChris]

Quote

The problem is that Jag DOOM usually becomes speed limited by the game logic, not by the rendering code. The problems of movement clipping and line of sight calculation for all the monsters are more difficult to run efficiently on the risc processors. The basic actor logic is too bulky and spread out to run on one of the risc chips, but it is really a bit too much for the 68k to handle when the rendering is taking up most of the bus bandwidth.

I believe the inefficiencies he may be referring to are because of the way the Jag usually had to brute force flip overlays in and out of the gpu/dsp. The problem probably could have been solved by gpu in main techniques or an LRU caching system like HVS developed for the Jag. But I may be wrong.

[JagChris]

1 hour ago, Lostdragon said:

This John Carmack quote by any chance? 

As for Descent, picked it up on Playstation after seeing the good reviews, hated it ?

 Back in the mid 90s my friends mother got a 60 mhz? pentium with Win95. It came with Dark Forces and Descent. My friend passed away a few years later and those two games make me so nostalgic. 

 

Sorry that's OT

[Arcadia]

1 hour ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

There's another game I'd be curious to see running on CoJag hardware - that'd be a good fit to use on an arcade machine with a yoke controller too.

Or how about Doom II on the CoJag..? 

 

[ataritiger]

Not alot of great 3rd party games like SSF2Turbo with Akuma, or just games with 100% music like Temptest 2000 would have helped. Most Jaguar games have little to no music or finished game play and were rushed like Checkered Flag which is on par with VR 32x but plays horrible. Also Sega in a lawsuit had to make Jaguar games but never did. AvP sold near 100,000 but Jaguar sold only 150,000 so a sequel would have helped

[Shaggy the Atarian]

21 minutes ago, ataritiger said:

Not alot of great 3rd party games like SSF2Turbo with Akuma, or just games with 100% music like Temptest 2000 would have helped. Most Jaguar games have little to no music or finished game play and were rushed like Checkered Flag which is on par with VR 32x but plays horrible. Also Sega in a lawsuit had to make Jaguar games but never did. AvP sold near 100,000 but Jaguar sold only 150,000 so a sequel would have helped

That's why I initially said that it was more about the games, particularly the first generation, since that set the expectations for the system. Although I've seen many over the years say something like SSF2 or MK wouldn't have made much of a difference - maybe not a huge difference since those games were on just about everything, but it certainly would have helped. Every bit of 3rd party support, particularly of the AAA kind of that era would have given the system a boost. Certainly a bigger boost than ports of no-name stuff like Brutal Sports Football. 

 

There was a proposed AvP2 for the Jaguar CD, but pretty sure it never made it very far past the paper stage.

1 hour ago, Lostdragon said:

Conan would of been the early 2D Killer App for myself, but that didn't even get the first level finished

Yeah, that easily could have been the Jag's Golden Axe: Revenge of Death Adder (assuming that had it been finished they didn't botch it somehow). That, Deathwatch, Phear...all would have been great additions. Don't know that they would have saved the system, but I'd have taken those over Double Dragon 5 or White Men Can't Jump.  

[Leeroy ST]

2 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Any source for your caims? Ah wait, nevermind!

 

 

Dude everyone knows Sony lost money, and I posted sources you ignored earlier. 

 

There's no defense for using Vgchartz sorry. 

[Leeroy ST]

10 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Although I've seen many over the years say something like SSF2 or MK wouldn't have made much of a difference - 

Actually it would have been huge imo. SSF2T sold like 200k on 3DO I remember reading, I dont know how many months that was after launch, but that's already more than what the Jaguar sold and close to what was produced.

 

MK3 sold over a million copies on other systems, and MKT which was the final version of 3, sold like 3 million across PS1 and N64.

 

Having any sort of exclusive, or timed exclusive would have worked out for Atari. Imo it's a shame they didn't get MK3 out regardless. 

[ataritiger]

Well jaguar mini coming with avp2 and SSF2 not ssf2t

https://ideas.fandom.com/wiki/Atari_Jaguar_Mini

Not alot of great 3rd party games like SSF2Turbo with Akuma, or just games with 100% music like Temptest 2000 would have helped. Most Jaguar games have little to no music or finished game play and were rushed like Checkered Flag which is on par with VR 32x but plays horrible. Also Sega in a lawsuit had to make Jaguar games but never did. AvP sold near 100,000 but Jaguar sold only 150,000 so a sequel would have helped

Edited August 1, 2021 by ataritiger