Jaguar's true potential

[Trip_Cannon]

From what I understand, I know the Jaguar had a bunch of different chips inside the unit that it used for the games. And from what I've read and heard, most companies chose to program on the Motorola 68000 chip because it was the most common, therefore not utilizing the Jaguar to its full potential. (is this correct?)

 

Anyway, I was wondering what games actually used the Jaguar's full set of chips? And what the Jaguar could have been capable of if the developers did use the Jag to the maximum use (3DO, Saturn, PS, etc.)...

 

I know this could be a dumb question as the answer may be all of the games used all the chips yet I'm just curious... thanks...

[Starcat]

Hi !

 

This is to some point true, but also wrong to some point.

 

The Jaguar has 5 processors:

 

GPU

DSP

Blitter

OP

MC68000

 

Every Jaguar program that displays a graphic of some sort HAS to use the OP. So this means EVERY Jaguar Game uses it.

The DSP has to be used if you want to create sound. This means EVERY Jaguar game uses that as well.

The 68000 has to be used to startup the system, so every game uses the 68000 as well.

 

This means every released Jag game uses:

OP

DSP

MC68000

 

However GPU and blitter are more or less optional.

But this does not mean that those were not used.

 

You can be sure that at least 98% (maybe even 100%) of all Jag games used every processor of the Jaguar at some point.

 

The important thing is not if they were used or not, but how effectively they were used.

 

Actually the Jaguar's potential was pushed very far.

You could even say the full potential was used, or at least as much as it is humanly possible.

 

The best examples for this are games like Iron Solider 2 and Battlemorph when it comes to 3D and games like Rayman and Native Demo when it comes to 2D.

 

Regards, Lars.

[LinkoVitch]

Not sure about the DSP for sound, I think any cpu can access the DAC's directly from what I read in the dev manual. So I suspect the DSP may be a probably rather than a deffinate (appart from the timer that is build into there obviously )

[Gunstar]

Regardless of what processors have been used and how effectively, I still take the view that the Jaguar's full potential has never been reached and probably never will now. I say this based on examples in history, pick just about any platform, console or computer, that was around for longer than 2 or 3 years, and take a look at what the software from the last viable years of the machine and compare it to the software made in the first 2 or 3 years. I'll make an example of the Atari 8-bit since it is the machine I have that I've seen fantastic things done with, most of which came out after the line was around for 5 years or more. Even today demos and full programs are still being written that far exeed what the designers and first programmers ever dreamed of. Ways have always been found to push the envelope on machines that have had years of good support by top programmers that thought "outside the box." I will agree that a few of the second generation titles on the Jaguar were using the system well, but I think we would have seen titles far better than even these great second gen titles if the system had lasted as long, with similiar support, as say the Playstation. I'm not saying that the Jaguar is equal to or more powerful than the PSX, I know it's not, but I think it could have done much more and could have had later titles that were still on a par with many PSX and Saturn games of the day.

[Creekree]

i agree that we have never seen the jag´s true potential and i am sure that if the system had lasted longer amazing things had been done with it (from a jag point of view).

think about it: if the system had been a success, more titles would have been released and the competition among developers would have been far bigger, thus pushing them to be better than the rest. this would have led to new programming techniques (dealing with hardware bugs etc) and tricks and whatever.

it saddens me that we will never truly know. homebrew games are fine and great and may offer a myriad of hours of gaming fun, but we will not see avp-like games, imho.

 

creekree