Iron Soldier Copy - hyper virgin!

[Alcopoper]

Ok, had it in my mailbox this Weekend: a regular and a BRANDNEW SEALED copy of IS.

Now, I think IS came out pretty late on the Jag? or am I wrong? I must admit - If I would not have known anything about the Jag or ATARI back in the day, and I would have seen this game at my friend's place - I certainly would have never bought a Jag! Sorry, but, hey - the GFXs are lame! I have seen graphix of similar quality on my STE (lower frame rate, so) Thinking about that ECLIPSE made this software, that is a sad result. Those guys used to be in the Demo Scene for ST/STE Computers and really coded some games and demos, that did ROCK .

The game is too easy. Finished up 3/4 of the game in one! afternoon. (In medium). so, sad sad sad - specially since the game is fun and the idea is cool!

BUT: I am still happy for my FIRST ORIGINALLY WRAPPED Jag Game

[Gunstar]

1) It's not a later Jag game, it's release came with the Jag's nation-wide rollout in '94.

 

2) You're dreaming if you EVER think you saw a polygon game of this caliber on the STE or even the FALCON! You seem to be forgetting some little(!) things besides just a slower frame rate...e.g., small window, probably 4-bit color depth polygons instead of 16-bit, short horizon clipping or "pop-up", total lack of texturing on anything, certainly no gauraud shaded trees and such...it was no groundbreaker as far as graphic "look" goes, even when it was released though, that much I admit, but it was solid graphics at the time and the animation and gameplay were/are what make it great.

 

3) Too easy?!? Now go back and play it on hard and say it's too easy

 

4) obviously you never bought a Jag "back in the day" anyway, so quite frankly, it doesn't matter if you had seen I.S. then or not, does it? You still didn't buy a Jag anyway, back then, didn't help Atari's sales then either, so you seeing I.S. back then or not seems irrelevent to me...

 

I'm not bashing, you, just your reasons for bashing this classic game.

[Hyper_Eye]

Buy Iron Soldier 2. The difficulty increased big time with IS2. The graphics also made an improvement.

[Alcopoper]

a) I would have bought a Jag if I ever would have had the money for it

b) I would have bought it because of AvP

c) I would have bought it, just because I thought the Hardware is awesome!

 

And whether my purchase of a Jag would have helped or not, is not my point. What I said is that this game did certainly not create a *woooohoow* effect for potential costumers. Unfortunately like a lot of games. (And if you read about the backgroundstory about the development history of the game, I am not surprised, that the developers did not do their best job - I know that they did *much* better before on the ST.)

 

Yes, of course you are right, no STE game ever showed such neat little trees in the park. And yes, those trees are gauraud shaded, but that does not help the entire optical appearance of the game. There are only very few objects with textures on them: the small tanks, the helis, and, I think some of the ground cannons. Ah yes, and the Fuel Tanks and the boxes you find. That's it. All buildings are -boring- vector blocks. And on very few of them, you can see something like windows, once you are close enough (pops, and suddenly they are there) And, how many Buildings are gauraud shaded? none of the skyscrappes are - only the buildings you have to "fight" are And, these polygons (even the shaded ones) are not 16 bit in depths.... They are grey, and dark grey on the other side. Maybe one side is light gray.

Did you ever play Falcon F16 (or even better: F19) on a ST? This game was released in hmmm...' 89, '90). That looks pretty PHAT for running on a 8 MHz 68k machine.... That's pretty much what I had in mind as a refrence. No shadings, no nothing.

And, I am wondering what you could have pulled of a F030 using the DSP properly. Never had a game in my hand, that used it - just some GFX development packages, and, oh boy, those things did create a *wow* effect.

 

And I did say, that I played it on MEDIUM and I thought it was EASY. And even in medium you should NOT be able, to go almost through the entire game in one afternoon....

 

Ok, to make a long strory short: I did not BASH this game - but neither do I want to overpraise it. I am just saying that I was rather dissapointed after all what I heard about it. It is a cool game, no doubt about it. But it does not LOOK cool! (IS II LOOKS cool - even though you should not cp. a CD and a Cart game, right ? )

[Alcopoper]

I will. Is the cartridge version hard to get?

[Alcopoper]

Oh - I did forget the explosions: they look really cool :)

[Hyper_Eye]

The cartridge version is harder to get then the cd version. If I am correct, the only difference between the two is that the cgi sequences are cut out of the cart version (and maybe music too.)

[Alcopoper]

Yea, music is cut out, too *sniieeeef* - but oh well. Don't have the JagCD *yet*

[SteveW]

1) It's not a later Jag game, it's release came with the Jag's nation-wide rollout in '94.

 

Are you sure about that? The first Iron Soldier came out pretty late in 1994, because I bought it along with another game the first time I saw them available, which was on December 23rd, 1994. I remember the date, because it was my birthday. I can't remember precisely what the other game was, but I think it might have been Atari Karts.

[Ayreon]

For a first game on a new system i think it is not really fair to say the game sucks. Sure they have done better on the ST, but that was after years of demo coding. Even then their earliest games (arpy, tangram, etc. ) weren't very impressive. There's a learning curve and you can't expect from anyone to push new hardware over it's limits.

 

I personally was impressed by IS. Especially about the animation of the choppers and planes wich looks pretty natural and i don't think i had seen a game before that was animated with such a detail..

[Clint Thompson]

Yea.... you weren't going to get that sort of gameplay on a SNES or Genesis no way! (and PC's were still damn expensive) so....

 

Odd though... because I had a SNES and all that jazz and I found IS to be pretty damn awesome back in 94!

 

*of course now... looking at it is no cake* but.... back then it was fresh!

 

(along side with Tempest 2000 and yes, I enjoyed Cybermorph quite a bit! there was fun to be had!

[Alcopoper]

Na, I did not say with one word, the game sucks... I like the game. all I said, that the appearance, the GFX was dissapointing....

 

They did some fun stuff with there gfx: as I mentioned yesterday, the skyscrapper are not shaded, but hangars are, for example. hmmm, and - the blocks, when a building falls apart, are shaded now, there are many blocks, and there is a lot of stuff to shade..... so, maybe they used the calculating time not where needed. :wink:

 

But you are right - it's a first time game and you can't expect too much.

 

Now, one thing I did the other night: I was able, to turn my head independend of my walking direction - and I have no clou, how I did it... any ideas?

[ZylonBane]

Have you, perchance, RTFM?

[Hyper_Eye]

Na, I did not say with one word, the game sucks... I like the game. all I said, that the appearance, the GFX was dissapointing....

 

They did some fun stuff with there gfx: as I mentioned yesterday, the skyscrapper are not shaded, but hangars are, for example. hmmm, and - the blocks, when a building falls apart, are shaded now, there are many blocks, and there is a lot of stuff to shade..... so, maybe they used the calculating time not where needed. :wink:  

 

But you are right - it's a first time game and you can't expect too much.  

 

Now, one thing I did the other night: I  was able, to turn my head independend of my walking direction - and I have no clou, how I did it... any ideas?

 

You hold down A or C while using the D-Pad. I can't remember which one but I bet it is A.

[Gunstar]

1) It's not a later Jag game, it's release came with the Jag's nation-wide rollout in '94.

 

Are you sure about that? The first Iron Soldier came out pretty late in 1994, because I bought it along with another game the first time I saw them available, which was on December 23rd, 1994. I remember the date, because it was my birthday. I can't remember precisely what the other game was, but I think it might have been Atari Karts.

 

Uhh, yeah, since the Jag's nation-wide roll-out was in the 4th quarter of '94 which would put it squarely in the time period that you bought it!

 

As many people do, you are confusing Atari's TEST MARKET release as it's official release, it wasn't. it was only released in late '93 in San Fransisco and New York, mainly because it didn't have enough good software ready for it yet. When it was OFFICIALLY released, nation-wide in the U.S. in '94, the first quality first-generation titles were out too, like Tempest 2K, AvP, Doom, Cannon Fodder and Iron Soldier.

 

Oh, and the other game couldn't possibly have been Atari Karts if it WAS '94 that you are refering too, because it wasn't released until the '95 Christmas season.

[Gunstar]

Na, I did not say with one word, the game sucks... I like the game. all I said, that the appearance, the GFX was dissapointing....

 

They did some fun stuff with there gfx: as I mentioned yesterday, the skyscrapper are not shaded, but hangars are, for example. hmmm, and - the blocks, when a building falls apart, are shaded now, there are many blocks, and there is a lot of stuff to shade..... so, maybe they used the calculating time not where needed. :wink:  

 

But you are right - it's a first time game and you can't expect too much.  

 

Now, one thing I did the other night: I  was able, to turn my head independend of my walking direction - and I have no clou, how I did it... any ideas?

 

You hold down A or C while using the D-Pad. I can't remember which one but I bet it is A.

 

Actually, holding down A and/or C will turn your mech faster, pushing #2 on the keypad puts you in "advanced" mode where you can turn your upper torso independently of your legs, allowing you to look and shoot one way and walk another, it's fantastic for strafing targets.

 

in reply to earlier comments (alcopoper); yes, I have played F-16 combat pilot on the ST, and it's ok, but I cetainly wouldn't compare it in anyway to I.S., if your going to compare good polygon graphics on the ST with the Jag, it should at least be something like, ArmourGeddon or Frontier, they are far better than f-16, or even F?A-18 Interceptor which I have on the Amiga (don't know if it's on the ST or not), which I run on my 40mhz accelerator so it's go a VERY fast frame rate. But I still won't compare them to I.S. myself, as there are far, far fewer polygons in the models and in the worlds in general on those ST/Amiga games than what the Jaguar is throwing around with Iron Soldier.

[SteveW]

As many people do, you are confusing Atari's TEST MARKET release as it's official release, it wasn't. it was only released in late '93 in San Fransisco and New York, mainly because it didn't have enough good software ready for it yet. When it was OFFICIALLY released, nation-wide in the U.S. in '94, the first quality first-generation titles were out too, like Tempest 2K, AvP, Doom, Cannon Fodder and Iron Soldier.

 

It was always a little confusing, because the Dallas area got Jaguars in late 1993, which is when I bought mine. I bought pretty much anything that came out in 1994, because I was fairly desperate for games, considering that hardly anything came out in the first half of '94.

[grokk]

it was also in the los angeles area in late'93. The store I got it from didn't know why they received it so early but I wasn't complaining.

[scrummy]

I remember being very wowed by Iron soldier.

 

I also remember thinking and being correct!, in 1986, that Pac-Man, Galaga, Joust,

Star Raiders, and Pole Position on the Atari 800 were still better than this new fangled NES everyone was crazy about.

 

Offcourse I was comparing a 48K home computer to a game machine.

[Gunstar]

I remember being very wowed by Iron soldier.  

 

I also remember thinking and being correct!, in 1986, that Pac-Man, Galaga, Joust,  

Star Raiders, and Pole Position on the Atari 800 were still better than this new fangled NES everyone was crazy about.

 

Offcourse I was comparing a 48K home computer to a game machine.

 

I always used to compare the A8 too the NES/Mastersystem/7800, etc., even Atari did this, they did bring out the XE system to compete after all.

I wouldn't compare the 5200 though, it doesn't have enough memory, although even it had a couple of NES-face-slapping games like BallBlazer and Rescue on Fractalus.

Computers always have been on the leading edge, with consoles following, even if, at times, the consoles were as powerful as current technology in computers, it always only been a matter of months for the computers to leap ahead again. I've always found it pretty safe to compare any given console to the previous generation of computers, even if the later consoles were some what improved, i.e. the Genesis improved on the Amiga and ST's, but not by much, yet it was released four years after these other machines. But I don't consider the ST/Amiga to be the previous generation to the Jaguar, the TT and Falcon and 32-bit Amiga's were.

I was never "Wowed" by the screen shots of Iron Soldier myself, I though they looked bad when compared to 3DO titles of the time like Total Eclipse or Off-World Interceptor, but when I played the Jaguar and 3DO games, I was wowed by Iron Soldier after seeing it in motion and in the gameplay and animation department, and the huge cityscapes and total freedom of movement that the texture mapped track shooters on the 3DO couldn't compare too.