Supercross 3D

[agradeneu]

12 hours ago, Mikebloke said:

I'm curious what age / systems people started playing racing games. I started on amstrad and spectrum, progressed to NES and master system. Compared to that, there isn't a bad racing game on the Jag, nothing I'd be super thrilled with at the time but looking back now, the controls, collision and frame rate are not really any different to anything else I saw before that. The only one I meh at is club drive. 

If you compare Jaguar to 8 bit Master System or NES maybe, but there were PC, SNES and Mega Drive with great racing games.

[Bill Loguidice]

4 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

If you compare Jaguar to 8 bit Master System or NES maybe, but there were PC, SNES and Mega Drive with great racing games.

For racing games, the Jaguar has:

 

Atari Karts (average at best)

Checkered Flag (below average)

Club Drive (terrible)

Power Drive Rally (good)

Super Burnout (very good)

Supercross 3D (terrible)

World Tour Racing (CD game, but let's include it - below average)

 

So that's roughly 3 good to very good racing games on the Jaguar depending upon who's counting. Maybe 3 is good percentage-wise with a 50 + 16 (CD) game collection, but just about any system I can think of with a reasonably large library is going to fair better than the Jaguar in that regard, 8-bit or not.

[+jgkspsx]

Power Drive Rally and Super Burnout are two of my favorite racing games for ANY console, though. It’s hard to think of a console before the PlayStation that had two racing games I liked more.

[Machine]

13 minutes ago, jgkspsx said:

Power Drive Rally and Super Burnout are two of my favorite racing games for ANY console, though. It’s hard to think of a console before the PlayStation that had two racing games I liked more.

 Power Drive Rally was the second Jaguar game I bought when I go the Jaguar. Love that game.

SNES has Rock'n'Roll Racing, Micro Machines, and Mario Kart.  Pretty decent also.

 

[+jgkspsx]

I like Micro Machines everywhere, but not nearly as much as Power Drive Rally. Hard to go wrong with Rock n Roll Racing, though.

I have never cared much for Mode 7 racers. I have spent a fair amount of time with many and… they just don’t do it for me. Atari Karts is mechanically worse than many but it’s just such a gloomy, haunted game that it cracks me up more than they do.

[King_Salamon]

Supercross is a game that should have never been released.  That frame rate is unreal.  Not even worth having on a multicart for free.  How desperate was Atari to release a title to allow something this bad to hit the market.  Yes, I do not like this game and it is THAT bad.

[JagChris]

I played this last night trying to articulate how I felt.

For one for me it actually gives me the feel of riding a dirt bike considering it's a video game. It has the nose up over jumps/bumps strategy. You can kinda kick your bike around in mid-air. The way it slides around corners etc. And the tracks are tight which I'm surprised I like.

The control and frame rate are bad. But for me they're right at the point where oh look at that, you almost had it. Almost....

Kinda like Protector SE for me. It's a Defender clone and they all kick my ass. Its not from bad programming but game style. But there is fun to be had for me I just have to dig a little. Similar outcome for different reasons.

Imagine Atari Owl's engine dropped in this game. It would piss fire. 

Where has our forelorn Eeyore been at lately anyway?

[+cubanismo]

18 hours ago, JagChris said:

My hats off to guys like Cubanismo who got a handle on the controls so quick.

I don't know why/how I picked this one up so quickly. I've played hours of Checkered Flag and still can't go around two turns in a row without flipping my car in that one. The whole "Try tapping to stear" thing isn't helping me there at all. I'd pay good money for a Checkered Flag with the controls of Virtua Racing, even at Checkered Flag frame rates

 

Fairly sure the frame rate doesn't change on the GD. I've played on both a Skunk and GD, and it's the same ~3-5fps on both, but since I can still control it somehow, doesn't really bother me.

[JagChris]

I think the underlying design of the game is pretty good. The execution of the design is pretty bad.

 

This is in normal Atari fashion to have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

[Wilco]

13 hours ago, jgkspsx said:

Atari Karts is mechanically worse than many but it’s just such a gloomy, haunted game that it cracks me up more than they do.

I have been wondering about this for a while, why does Atari Karts have such a weird atmosphere? The graphics look very bland and colorless for a kart racer, and some music wouldn’t be out of place during a funeral. It’s almost like the game designers where depressed or something. 

[youxia]

Lol. Now you made me want to try Atari Karts. Wish these FPGA cores were here already...

[agradeneu]

14 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

For racing games, the Jaguar has:

 

Atari Karts (average at best)

Checkered Flag (below average)

Club Drive (terrible)

Power Drive Rally (good)

Super Burnout (very good)

Supercross 3D (terrible)

World Tour Racing (CD game, but let's include it - below average)

 

So that's roughly 3 good to very good racing games on the Jaguar depending upon who's counting. Maybe 3 is good percentage-wise with a 50 + 16 (CD) game collection, but just about any system I can think of with a reasonably large library is going to fair better than the Jaguar in that regard, 8-bit or not.

No 8 bit console was really good with racing games. The comparison makes no sense. 

Atari Karts is only average compared to something like Mario Kart. Checkered Flag is bad compared to something like Virtua Racing.

[Bill Loguidice]

1 hour ago, agradeneu said:

No 8 bit console was really good with racing games. The comparison makes no sense. 

Atari Karts is only average compared to something like Mario Kart. Checkered Flag is bad compared to something like Virtua Racing.

Your concept makes no sense. A poor or bad game is what it is all on its own. No one plays a game and - taking the concept to its logical conclusion - says "this is not that bad because racing snails is worse."

 

There were plenty of fun racing games on all kinds of systems, 8-bit or otherwise. That has zero bearing on the quality of the Jaguar's racing games.

[Silver Back]

2 hours ago, agradeneu said:

No 8 bit console was really good with racing games. The comparison makes no sense. 

Atari Karts is only average compared to something like Mario Kart. Checkered Flag is bad compared to something like Virtua Racing.

I don't think you have to compare checkered flag to anything to know it's bad. I love my Jaguar and the games I have for it, but I'm not in denial about some of the quality of the titles.  

 

I have been wanting to try supercross for a while and just haven't found a copy in my price range. I've heard people say it's awful but I also heard others say it's not so bad.

 

And since Ive had fun with cybermorph and club drive after hearing all the negative comments, I'd like to give supercross a go.  I'm not saying those two games are masterpieces either, I just found enjoyment in them is all. 

[PeterG]

4 hours ago, Wilco said:

I have been wondering about this for a while, why does Atari Karts have such a weird atmosphere? The graphics look very bland and colorless for a kart racer, and some music wouldn’t be out of place during a funeral. It’s almost like the game designers where depressed or something. 

I'm too lazy right now to dig up the thread but I think I remember reading that something went wrong in the process of how the music ended up on the Cart and that the original songs are a bit more upbeat. It was something technical though, not a conscious descision...

 

I always liked the music and didn't mind the more sombre approach of Atari Karts but your observation isn't wrong.  

P.S.: I stopped being lazy and found the link.

 

 

Edited February 21, 2022 by PeterG
Added Link

[Bill Loguidice]

39 minutes ago, Silver Back said:

I don't think you have to compare checkered flag to anything to know it's bad. I love my Jaguar and the games I have for it, but I'm not in denial about some of the quality of the titles.  

 

I have been wanting to try supercross for a while and just haven't found a copy in my price range. I've heard people say it's awful but I also heard others say it's not so bad.

 

And since Ive had fun with cybermorph and club drive after hearing all the negative comments, I'd like to give supercross a go.  I'm not saying those two games are masterpieces either, I just found enjoyment in them is all. 

You can see the biggest issue with Supercross 3D just from the YouTube videos. It's not remotely smooth at any time, which is perhaps the biggest sin for any racing game. You really need a reasonably consistent frame rate. It's both low and slow. The other big issue are all of the hidden barriers. The courses are already incredibly small and they're made smaller by these weird invisible barriers. 

Personally, if both of those issues were improved, I think I would enjoy the game that's there regardless of the scarcity of features as I like the genre, but it just doesn't move right. It's a tease more than anything.

[agradeneu]

1 hour ago, Bill Loguidice said:

Your concept makes no sense. A poor or bad game is what it is all on its own. No one plays a game and - taking the concept to its logical conclusion - says "this is not that bad because racing snails is worse."

 

There were plenty of fun racing games on all kinds of systems, 8-bit or otherwise. That has zero bearing on the quality of the Jaguar's racing games.

It makes a lot of sense! There were 3d racing games on 8 bit home computers and ST/Amiga as well, like Stunt Racer or Test drive. Look Hard Drivin on Lynx or Genesis. 

 

Super Cross or Checkered Flag are flying compared to those examples. The thing is, low framerates were a common thing with early 3d graphics, on homecomputers or consoles, but gamers adapted to it as there was not better technology.

The Jaguar disappoints as it should have better racing games for its technology, better than competing 16 bit consoles, e.g. F Zero. 

 

If you telling people that low framerate was the "biggest sin for a racing game", you probably never played any racing game prior Playstation era. Lol, I played Grand Prix on Amiga and PC with merely 10 FPS or lower! Hard Drivin or Steel Talons were running below 10 FPS on the Lynx and that was playable! You could ven play Stunt Racer on ZX Spectrum in glorious 5 FPS! 

 

(note: I am quite surprised about retro journos completely missing the point of any historical context!)

 

Atari Karts is a good game on its own, but it's an average Mario Kart clone compared to other offerings and came 2 years too late.

So my point is that Ataris offerings were too little, too late compared the technology of the competition. Checkered Flag would have been a good racer if it relased 2 years earlier and if there was no Virtua Racing.  (We had decent fun with it, even with the controls). 

Super Burn Out was slammed by the critics as it felt like a retro super scaler and reviewers were expecting Daytona or Ridge Racer technology. Now its getting some credits as people are looking for old school racing games with sprite scaling.

 

BTW I was answering to the guy talking about old 8 bit racing games and thus being not too disappointed with the racing games on Jaguar. I can understand that fully, however, if you played F Zero or Virtua Racing on the Genesis, the Jaguar offerings looked kinda poor. And that is my point. Someone who has never played VR or any other state of the art polygon racer would had thought Checkered Flag was technically impressive 1994.

AvP was impressive for 1994, but faded when the PS and Saturn offered better 3D action.

 

New games are always compared to the state of the art standard, and a lot of Ataris Jaguar offerings felt somewhat behind the curve. If Super Burnoput released 1994, before Daytona or Ridge Racer, it would have fared much better with reviewers and sales.

 

 

Edited February 21, 2022 by agradeneu

[youxia]

2 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Super Cross or Checkered Flag are flying compared to those examples.

Checkered Flag is okay, but Super Cross is a perfect storm of bad design choices & weak frame rates. I could have fun with CF, but SC has just made me want to rage-smash my controller. You can see there is a decent game hiding there somewhere but, well, it wasn't to be.

 

Overall, I agree that context is important but it works in many ways. Eg, sure, people who have switched to Jag from 8-bit in 1993/4/5 would be probably impressed, but then these cases aren't really common denominators, since they kinda skipped a gen. And even on Amiga there were way better games than CF or SC - I'd much rather play Lotus or Vroom, 3D be damned. That assuming somebody was still as broke ass as my own self and stuck with A500 during these years. Other folks already had A1200 with accelerators, which made the likes of Hard Drivin fly too (or better yet, PCs, but that's another story).

[phoenixdownita]

On 2/20/2022 at 2:29 AM, Wilco said:

....but there is certainly fun to be had if you stick with it. 

I don't want to have to "stick with it", it needs to be at least moderately fun from the get go in order to have me wanting to play more.

No game should force anyone to endure it just so "if you try hard enough" then maybe, on a Tuesday, under a full moon, you could possibly enjoy bits an pieces .... that's a thanks but no thanks, there are way way way better games in general and even on the Jag I'd rather "stick with" in case.

I understand that beggars can't be choosers, but we are talking about a game and if it ain't fun quite soon it has no place to be.

 

 

[Shaggy the Atarian]

20 hours ago, Wilco said:

I have been wondering about this for a while, why does Atari Karts have such a weird atmosphere? The graphics look very bland and colorless for a kart racer, and some music wouldn’t be out of place during a funeral. It’s almost like the game designers where depressed or something. 

Not speaking about the gameplay but graphically AK seems to make pretty good use of the higher color palette to me. Yeah, some of the levels are fairly derivative of what Nintendo did, but with the shading, parallax, animations like the waves, and sprites on the tracks, I think they did a great job making AK look nice. 

 

 

I do agree that the overall atmosphere of the game is strange as the art direction (not the quality) was out of place. This was supposed to be Atari Karts and yet the only thing Atari about it is that one of the characters is Bentley Bear. If they instead featured all characters from past Atari IP and levels based upon those, then it would have helped a good deal, i.e. driving through the Crystal Castles, a vector game landscape, or through the Magical Forest of Centipede would have made a lot more sense than Route 66, Generic Fantasy Castleland or some obvious ripoffs of SMK like the beach. Some of the Atari pinball machines also could have provided for some interesting track landscape themes.

 

Interesting to hear that the music wasn't supposed to be like that though. Thanks for sharing that Peter.

 

As for SC3D, it's too bad we got a game like that and not Phear or Conan. ? 

[JagChris]

49 minutes ago, phoenixdownita said:

I don't want to have to "stick with it", 

 

I hear ya there. Can't fault you for that. Can't fault anyone for feeling that way. 

 

But if there is someone wants to give this a spin who hasn't, you might be one of the weird ones like myself and a few others who after ten games start thinking wtf am I doing? Why am I still here?

[JagChris]

27 minutes ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

As for SC3D, it's too bad we got a game like that and not Phear or Conan. ? 

 

Yeah. But if they would have put more work into this game and smoothed it out with some tweaking for me it would have tea bagged SuperBurnout. I enjoy this type of tight, jostling for position racing far more than SB.

 

Only one programmer on this, he probably just used Atari's crappy demo renderer and plugged this game into it.

 

A bit more work and this game probably would have made many people's best of list instead of worst of. 

 

What a frigging ball drop

Edited February 22, 2022 by JagChris

[Wilco]

1 hour ago, phoenixdownita said:

I don't want to have to "stick with it", it needs to be at least moderately fun from the get go in order to have me wanting to play more.

I think that’s fair, I don’t play games on many systems other than the jaguar, so the fumes may have altered my way of looking at games a bit.
 

I am still glad I did stick with it, as I has a great time playing it in the HSC, but it’s all down to personal preference anyway. 

[Wilco]

1 hour ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Not speaking about the gameplay but graphically AK seems to make pretty good use of the higher color palette to me. Yeah, some of the levels are fairly derivative of what Nintendo did, but with the shading, parallax, animations like the waves, and sprites on the tracks, I think they did a great job making AK look nice. 

I also don’t think Atari Karts looks bad, just a bit odd. There are certainly a lot of colors on screen, but they don’t seem that vibrant to me, more washed out and “realistic” than what I would expect form a kart racer. Take for example the original Mario Kart, when you boot that game up you’ll see loads of colors, lots of karts driving by all with their own animations and some cheery music, in Atari karts you get this with no animation and a not so cheery sounding music track. 

 

As for the music, I do understand that it’s a bit messed up, but I can’t imagine the results theme sounded much happier originally, that’s a track I expect to hear when Bentley Bear crashes into a wall and dies, instead of when I win a race. 
 

Don’t get me wrong I still really like this game, and the weird elements it has just helps set it apart from a generally very monotonous genre. And the fact that it plays in fullscreen unlike Mario karts is great as well. 

[Editorb]

Pardon my ignorance (although my ignorance abides and flourishes, pardoned or no), but I've frequently seen laments that Atari did not leverage its valuable old-timey IP. The Tramiels did not want the arcade division, which Warner spun off as Atari Games. Surely AG retained all arcade IP. Yet Atari produced T2K based on arcade Tempest, and Defender 2000, which was based on Williams' Defender. Did Atari license those names? Or since the Tramiels bought the consumer division, and the consumer division had produced home versions of those games, maybe the licenses remained in effect?

Edited February 22, 2022 by Editorb
(Editorb's note: I edit what I want!)