Time Warner Games

[The Helper]

Back in the day of Atari Time Warner and Atari had stakes in each other and Time Warner put out some games. I personally think they were both quality games - yeah only 2 I think came out - but they were Primal Rage and Power Drive Ralley.

 

As some around know I have been selling off my Jag Collection due to my poorness but I found a full Jag CD setup in a box, broke out my for sale Primal Rage and had a go. Fun, fun. The Setup I found had a Pro Controller included. I knew I had the stash

 

Did Time Warner put out any other games? I know they were involved with Vid Grid - for the artists - am I missing any?

 

Power Drive Ralley is also another hidden Gem. One of the top 10 Jag Games imho.

[Gunstar]

yeah, back then Time Warner still owned the ATARIGAMES division too, and several other titles were planned for the Jag, like Area51 and T-MEK, I'm pretty sure T-mek at least saw SOME development and a alpha or beta may yet show up. It did come out on the 32X through TimeWarner&AtariGames.

[+davidcalgary29]

I know that Time Warner was working on several more Jag CD games that ultimately went unreleased. It's too bad, as they were doing some good stuff; "Primal Rage" is my second-favourite CD game.

[Towelie]

Dont forget about Tiny Toons Adventure.

[Gunstar]

Tiny Toon adventures was being developed in-house though, by Atari, where as the rest of these titles were being handled directly by Time-Warner or contracted out by them, so TinyToons would have been an ATARI released with the "licensed by Atari" logo at the beginning where these other titles have the Time-Warner/AtariGames logos. The difference is TT is a first party title and the other are third party titles.

[Towelie]

Thanks for the info

[LinkoVitch]

Didn't all games have to be licensed by Atari, as Atari encrypted the carts?

[SteveW]

I always wondered how difficult it would be to port Area 51 to the Jaguar, considering that the arcade game ran on a slightly modified Jaguar motherboard. (It had a 68030 processor in it rather than a standard Jag's 68000)

 

I'd love to see a beta of T-Mek on the Jaguar. That was an incredible arcade game, and I really wanted a decent home version. That's the only reason I bought a Sega 32X for, just for the only console version of T-Mek. But the 32X just didn't work very well.

[LinkoVitch]

Wasn't the Arcade modified Jag using a MIPS R4K CPU? I read that this was the CPU they had in he set top boxes they were trialing (basically an SGI Indy)

[goatdan]

The main way the arcade machines were modified was through the use of a hard drive to store the information. There was the slight difference in processor (68030 vs. 68000) and I think an upgrade of RAM, but the main difference was that all of the arcade games based on the Jaguar hardware used a large harddrive to store the game info and provide it very quickly -- something the standard Jaguar couldn't do: There isn't enough space on a cartridge, and the CD drive wasn't fast enough.

[SteveW]

How many arcade games were based on Jaguar hardware?

[+davidcalgary29]

How many arcade games were based on Jaguar hardware?

 

I understand that two arcade games utilized Jag hardware, but I can't remember the name of the second at the moment. The count increases to four if you include the Carousel titles, but I'm sure that many people would prefer not to do so.

[rexreed]

Would the second game be Maximum Force? I've seen Area 51 packaged with maximum force in the same machine before.

[Stone]

There's actually 3 CoJag (short for 'coin-operated Jaguar'...original, huh? ) games - Area 51, Maximum Force and a proto called 'Freeze that Fish!' which was a quirky puzzle game. If you include the duo Area51/Max Force boardset (you can choose which game you play) then there's 4.

 

There's pics up all over the 'Net - look up the modified proto Battlezone used as a US Army training simulator and you'll find Freeze, cos the same guy owns both machines.

 

Been looking for a cheap one for a while, but they still command quite a high price...there's also no way I'd ship one from the States (instant hard-drive death would be pretty much guaranteed with the USPS) so I guess I'll have to wait

 

Stone

[atarifan49]

Tiny Toon adventures was being developed in-house though, by Atari, where as the rest of these titles were being handled directly by Time-Warner or contracted out by them, so TinyToons would have been an ATARI released with the "licensed by Atari" logo at the beginning where these other titles have the Time-Warner/AtariGames logos. The difference is TT is a first party title and the other are third party titles.

 

 

And to add on the Tiny Toons info above, it most likely came to a licensing issue for the game. Tried asking former employees like Don Thomas and the guys from Telegames. No one knows for sure why TT was cancelled but they all have said they believe it was licensing issue. And it's a shame because the game was looking good on the Jaguar.

 

Glenn

[atarifan49]

I always wondered how difficult it would be to port Area 51 to the Jaguar, considering that the arcade game ran on a slightly modified Jaguar motherboard. (It had a 68030 processor in it rather than a standard Jag's 68000)

 

I'd love to see a beta of T-Mek on the Jaguar. That was an incredible arcade game, and I really wanted a decent home version. That's the only reason I bought a Sega 32X for, just for the only console version of T-Mek. But the 32X just didn't work very well.

 

 

I think that Area 51 would've been a great port for the Jaguar. But then that also would've meant that Atari would've need to release a light gun.

 

I have yet to see an actual schematic of the Area 51 machine. I've always been curious to what exactly did Atari Games do with the Jaguar chipset and how the interfaced it.

 

Looking at the ROM code from Area 51 it appears they had the chipset operating at different memory locations. But I'm wondering how much they made use of 68020 unique instructions. Also I heard that when they switched to the Area 51 / Max Force duo machines that they converted the game code from 68020 over to RISC processor that they used for the original Maximum Force machine.

 

Atari Games really showed what the Jaguar chipset could really do.

 

That's my 2 cents...

 

Glenn

[SteveW]

there's also no way I'd ship one from the States (instant hard-drive death would be pretty much guaranteed with the USPS) so I guess I'll have to wait

 

Is there any way to back up the info on the hard drive of an Area 51 machine? I'm always hearing people complain about hard drives crashing, and I wouldn't want an arcade machine to be worthless because of a bad HD. This is all academic really, because I could never afford to buy an Area 51 arcade machine. But who knows, I might find a dirt cheap one tomorrow. When you give up on finding something, that's when it falls in your lap.

 

 

This is my 1000th post! Whoooo Hooooo!

[Rocko]

Follow the link in my sig, there is a jaguar rarity guide on it, and it has the publishers off all the games I can think. it has alot of Time-warner protos on it, it is just a list, so there is no further information.

[Retro Rogue]

There's actually 3 CoJag (short for 'coin-operated Jaguar'...original, huh? ) games - Area 51, Maximum Force and a proto called 'Freeze that Fish!' which was a quirky puzzle game. If you include the duo Area51/Max Force boardset (you can choose which game you play) then there's 4.

Stone

 

Actually, there's 7 including the duo set. Three released:

Area 51 (4 megs ram)

Maximum Force (6 megs ram)

Area 51/Maximum Force Duo

 

And 4 prototypes:

3 on 3 Basketball

Fishing Frenzy (which you called "freeze that fish", rom based)

Freeze (which is rom based, not hard drive based)

Vicious Circle

 

Also I heard that when they switched to the Area 51 / Max Force duo machines that they converted the game code from 68020 over to RISC processor that they used for the original Maximum Force machine.  

 

Area 51 = 68EC020

Maximum Force and all the prototypes = R3000

 

Both Primal Rage and T-Mek used the GT Hardware system (68020 and CAGE audio), so if Primal Rage was ported over to the Jag hardware for the home then T-Mek would have been feasible as well.

 

On a side note, Area 51: Site 4 did not use Jag hardware but instead used a literal PC board made by Cyrix.

[The Helper]

I am real glad I posted this now. Lots of great information being laid out here. Time Warner had a stake in Atari and I am very glad that they seemed to take advantage of it up to a point. Though I am really curious as to why they did not put out these protos that you guys are talking about. They had to of sucked - or they would have been put out. That is the only logical conclusion I can come up with. Unfortunately, only a small few will ever be able to play the games to come to a conclusion on it... sad.

[SteveW]

Either the games sucked, or the dwindling arcade market just wouldn't support games that didn't involve driving or fighting. Because that's all I ever see in arcades anymore.

 

It suprises me when companies spend so much money to develop games, and never release them. It's such a waste of time and money. And if you can't release them, eventually make them available to the emulation scene. At least then somebody would get to see all the effort they put into the games.

[Stone]

Well, I'm happy to be wrong I forgot about Vicious Circle but didn't know about the other two protos, interesting.

 

I think the drives can be backed up, as I've seen emulators for arcade games on similar hardware (Killer Instinct is an example) which run from a disk image - it would be ace if it was just a SCSI or IDE disk but I honestly don't know. I'm told many (most?) of the dead KI boards have dead drives, so finding a way to duplicate them would help resurrect some...tho someone may be working on this, I honestly have no idea.

 

@Glenn: From what little I've seen of the CoJag motherboards it looked on cursory inspection to be a complete redesign rather than extras 'bolted-on' to a standard Jag, for example ISTR Tom and Jerry were in different positions relative to each other. Look through the pics here - this guy has Freeze (two different versions) and Viscious Circle...lucky guy!

 

HTH

 

Stone

[justice_is_blind]

Here is a Time Warner item I bet nobody ever heard of.

[ZylonBane]

Thanks for breaking the word-wrap on the entire thread.

[atarifan49]

@Glenn: From what little I've seen of the CoJag motherboards it looked on cursory inspection to be a complete redesign rather than extras 'bolted-on' to a standard Jag, for example ISTR Tom and Jerry were in different positions relative to each other. Look through the pics here - this guy has Freeze (two different versions) and Viscious Circle...lucky guy!

 

 

Actually its not the physical placement of the chips but more of the electronic connection and interfacing that I'm more interested in learning about.

 

Thanks for the link. That guy has an incredible collection. Wish he had more info to share.

 

Glenn