Panther

[Lost Dragon]

Purely by accident and with eternal gratitude to the source who's making this happen, looks like there could be one or more potential leads yet from Imagitec Design to follow up. 

 

 

I'm told one person from that era sadly passed away some years ago (RIP), others have left industry or not been heard from in years and those who might be able to help won't be able to discuss aspects from a legal point of view... 

 

 

But if any of them can shed light on annouced Sega Genesis, Sega CD, C64 GS, Atari Falcon, Jaguar CD and of course, supposed Panther development, it's time well spent looking into. 

 

 

[Lost Dragon]

Sadly, despite the best efforts of myself and my source who gave me the latest Ex-Imagitec Design contact, nothing ever came back from repeated email requests to see if they were aware of any Panther development during their time at the company. 

 

 

Shame, but at this stage, given the sheer number of people contacted and who kindly had replied, i think the case is pretty much closed and at best, all we might of had back is some extra info on Space Junk. 

 

I've also decided to put the following back up from the interview I carried out with Jim Gregory some years ago, regarding Handmade Software and the Panther. 

 

 

Please note:

 

 

The quotes HAVE been edited from the original somewhat, I have removed any personal attacks on Atari sources Jim makes as he choose to put the blame on the shoulders of Atari and the Tramiel family, rather than admit HMS itself suffered financial difficulties which  stemmed from Jim's earlier company, Mr Micro. 

 

 

This was the reason I pulled the interview once the information came to light and other issues within HMS became apparent from testimonials from several EX-HMS staff. 

 

But here is what Jim said about the Panther. 

 

Hello Jim, thanks for confirming/talking us through the claim that Hand Made Software were at one point working on Atari's Panther hardware.  Do you recall what game(s) were being worked on and how far along they got?

Jim Gregory: Yes, we had one of the first dev versions in the world.  It was just in a tin box and was not in any way a finished beast.  To keep it cool, we had to squirt freezer spray through a little hole in the side every 15 minutes.

 

Q: How did you come to receive the Panther dev kit?

 

Jim Gregory: We had a good relationship with Atari and were working on the the Lynx for them.  They offered it to us and we agreed to give them some feedback on it.  We actually had a version of the famous Elite game (which we had done for British Telecom) working on it within a week or so.

Unfortunately we found a BIG bug in the core chip.  In those days there were no FPGA-type chips and so the main chip was a committed block of silicon.  That meant that Atari had paid a big chunk of money to make the die and were ready to ramp up production.  If I remember correctly, it would totally freeze without any way to recover except with a full power cycle.  The bug was related to divide-by-zero problems.  It was not possible to 'just avoid dividing by zero' to make it usable.  We sent them a chunk of code that would easily recreate the issue to show the problem.  When we reported the issue we were first met with disbelief and then annoyance as if WE had caused it to fail.  I believe that at least one other developer later reported the bug and then the whole Panther project was doomed.

 

Q: At what point were you made aware Panther was canned, and did Atari want you to move all your work onto the Jaguar instead?

 

Jim Gregory: Whilst I was visiting them in the U.S., I learned that they had decided to bring forward the next console project, which was eventually to be called Jaguar.  This cost them a LOT of money and credibility with their owner, Time Warner (who later shut the company down suddenly).  Most importantly, it lost them time to market, which sort of set the course to eventual failure.

 

Q: What were your thoughts on the Panther hardware and Atari's ability to support/market it?  Was it really a home version of the Lynx?  Having 32K of RAM must of been an issue.

 

Jim Gregory: No, it was not at all a version of the Lynx.  It was a complex, original design that needed a lot of new programming approaches to achieve results.  We worked with a UK company to offer them a special dev kit and we offered them a several GREAT new game designs.  The dev kit is in my garage somewhere.

 

Q: Do you have any idea if Atari wanted to swap the sound chip for cheaper version?

Jim Gregory: The sound chip was never an issue and was actually quite powerful.  I still have all the documentation.

 

 

Please just be aware it's just the personal opinion of Jim Gregory. 

 

I was reluctant to add the comments back up, but they are part of the full Panther research i carried out and should be added to the archives. 

[Lost Dragon]

From my email chat with Missile Command (ST) Graphics Artist, Gary Johnson:

"I did work with Rob Zdybel back in the day of the years 86 to 89. But not really on any old
Atari Coin-ops to convert. We worked on newer games for the Panther. At this time
I don't remember what they were, because I only did this for a short time till I moved on.

Though back in the years of 81 and 83 I did art of other coin-op games for conversion
for the Atari ST. Rob was not one the programmers during that time.

I hope this helps.

Gary"

[Lost Dragon]

1. Text from  EDGE, issue 120, p48..Inside Llamasoft feature.

   Jeff Minter  talking about the Panther:

   
   '...So when the Panther started to happen, I was well known at Atari UK, and there was at least 1 person at Atari US who also knew me,so I was approached to work on the system-and has often been my weakness-my love of getting onto new,cutting-edge hardware prevailed.'
   
   'Panther didn't last long since it was already being eclipsed by the much more powerful Jaguar that was already in development within Atari.'
   
   'I got involved fairly early on at the time the Beta hardware was 1st available for developers.
   
   Panther was quite a nice machine, definitely superior to the MegaDrive that was current at the time,and better in some respects than the SNES, too..
   
   It was a pretty nice sprite- based system-you could manipulate the sprites on the fly for some interesting effects and it had a nice Ensoniq soundchip,better than anything else out there on console at the time.

   'I was intending to do a space game, with some Star Raider-y aspects-galactic maps, space shootouts-and some scrolly shooty sections were you went down to planets.There was going to be some strategic aspect in there too, influenced by Ian M Banks Culture novels, which I was quite heavily into at the time.

2. 
   I coded up various demos on the Panther-sprite warping, scrolly planet stuff (one of them had masses of leaping antelopes in it, if I remember correctly) and such,but before anything really started to come together into a game the plug got pulled on Panther...'

[Lost Dragon]

I pulled the above 2 posts from Wayback machine, old Assember thread on the Panther. 

 

Wanted to add the misc info for historical purposes. 

 

 

Memory was jogged after listening to the  Antic interviews with Rob Zybdel, where he suddenly has NO recollection of any ST Console (Project Robin)  or Panther... 

 

Just states Jaguar was the Console.. 

 

 

Lynx was before it Rob. 

 

 

Found it strange he was quick to dismiss a claim Todd made about 2600 Pac-Man:

 

https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-184-rob-zdybel-star-trek-missile-command-bug-hunt

 

"Tod's changed a lot over the years.  Tod's now denying stories that I don't know, man... He's saying he never asked for more than 4K for Pac-Man.  I know that's not true, Tod.  I was there when you did."

 

 

Yet is changing stories himself. 

 

?

 

 

[Lost Dragon]

#Meant to add.. 

 

I realise Gary Johnson was probably out by a few years, when he talks of coin-op conversions for the ST, but i always show the exchanges as they come to me. 

 

And given the number of years passed, a margin of error is totally understandable. 

[pacman000]

On 11/28/2020 at 3:33 AM, Lost Dragon said:

I pulled the above 2 posts from Wayback machine, old Assember thread on the Panther. 

 

Wanted to add the misc info for historical purposes. 

 

 

Memory was jogged after listening to the  Antic interviews with Rob Zybdel, where he suddenly has NO recollection of any ST Console (Project Robin)  or Panther... 

 

Just states Jaguar was the Console.. 

 

 

Lynx was before it Rob. 

 

 

Found it strange he was quick to dismiss a claim Todd made about 2600 Pac-Man:

 

https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-184-rob-zdybel-star-trek-missile-command-bug-hunt

 

"Tod's changed a lot over the years.  Tod's now denying stories that I don't know, man... He's saying he never asked for more than 4K for Pac-Man.  I know that's not true, Tod.  I was there when you did."

 

 

Yet is changing stories himself. 

 

?

 

 

Probably just faulty old memories.

[Lost Dragon]

On 11/30/2020 at 12:01 AM, pacman000 said:

Probably just faulty old memories.

I expect so, it's asking a lot of folks to accurately account for events so long ago, but he should allow for that when others are asked, rather than just openly question their version of events. 

[Lost Dragon]

The February March 1989 issue of Generation 4  Magazine gave a few lines of text in amongst the news of the Konix Multisystem aka Slipstream and Sega Mega Drive, to the 16-Bit ST Console. 

 

 

[Lost Dragon]

The April 1991 Issue of Generation 4 has a 2 page exclusive on the Panther, seemingly based on a fax from Atari Entertainment. 

 

 

Just highlighting these issues of Gen 4 as part of the historical reporting on European Press coverage. 

[Fadest]

Génération 4 was published by Pressimage, the same editor than ST Magazine in France, the leading magazine on ST scene in France, and in my opinion the most interesting of all the french computer/videogames magazine of this time.

Génération 4 was focused on 16/32 bits generation, ST and Amiga (and PC afterwards), and new consoles.

You may also find some notices about the ST console and Panther in ST Magazine. It is a pity I sold my collection, but all scans are here :

Le site des anciennes revues informatiques - www.abandonware-magazines.org (abandonware-magazines.org)

I will try to see if I can find something.

[jhd]

On 11/28/2020 at 2:33 AM, Lost Dragon said:

Yet is changing stories himself. 

 

My Father had two slightly older sisters (all three of them were born within 4 years or so). They each had completely different recollections of various childhood events -- one of them clearly recalled incidents that the other two swore never happened, and so forth. 

 

It is impossible to know which story is the "truth", and, frankly, nothing much turns on it anyway. To each person, what they believe is the truth. 

Edited December 4, 2020 by jhd

[Lost Dragon]

Found a few more quotes from Bob Gleadow of Atari UK regarding the planned ST Console. 

 

In among the standard expected UK release dates of either September 1990 or early 1991 and £99 price tag, Gleadow talks of the ST Console having "An extended graphics capability '. 

 

He rules out hardware sprites, but talked of" hardware-controlled" horizontal and vertical scrolling... so i assume the console wouldn't of been a vanilla ST set up, inside the XE-style case? 

 

 

He also claimed 3 ST consoles were already in the hands of (unnamed) US Software houses and UK software houses would get theirs in late December 1988.

 

 

The other misc press also talked of Atari sources (USA) putting the ST Console on hold, whilst all efforts were focused on making the Lynx a success. 

 

The issue wasn't with the console technology, as that already existed, more a case of waiting for the right time to release it. 

[Lostdragon]

On 9/27/2020 at 6:55 PM, Leeroy ST said:

Am I the only one that saw Atari intended to release the Panther and then release the Jaguar only 18 months later (wut?) and the only reason it didn't happen is because the Jaguar development "caught up" so they put their full force in? You know the "caught up" console with the buggy tools, poorly implemented architecture, and no software ready for launch?

 

In hindsight releasing the Panther at an affordable price with its capabilities in 1992 (hopefully summer or earlier) and then releasing the Jaguar as a high-end machine in 1994 might have actually worked and allowed developers to learn and scale up. 

 

Instead we got an all in Jaguar that had missed it's earlier 1993 release date instead test launching in 1993 without consoles produced ahead of time and only shipping 20,000 consoles during the test market in 1993, which took until 1994 to start getting games and for production to pick up, which was also when the console was "fully" launched which was way too late.

 

Also, any idea how many Panthers were produced before it was canned?

No, Peter Walker of Atari UK released a statement at the time saying had the Panther been released, there would only of been a limited window, 9-12 months, before Jaguar was ready for release. 

 

Bob Gleadow in an interview made clear Atari didn't have the resources to have games in development for Lynx and Panther, so Panther slipped down the priority list. 

 

Bill Rehbock has pointed out Lynx and Panther were supposed to originally launch at the same time, but Atari lacked resources to support 2 flagship console launches. 

 

 

Tiertex sources confirmed once Lynx Strider II was finished, Atari greenit a Panther version. 

 

It's clear Atari literally had all their console eggs in one basket. 

[Lostdragon]

I just want to return to a statement made by Chuck Ernst regarding the Panther development kit resembling a souped up 7800,faster CPU and more Ram.. 

 

 

As anyone who's seen the Zero Magazine press clipping on here for Chronicles Of Cute 7800,will know £2000 got you a 7800 development kit which was a 7800 console, an Atari ST computer, an oversized RAM cartridge, connecting cables and development manuals. 

 

 

7800 development done on the ST using ST based development software. 

 

 

Chuck re-iterated the same details twice in the interview about his personal impressions of the 7800 Dev kit and confirmed  it again along with Joel S who worked on the Panther O/S and others who had Panther dev kits.

 

 Chuck simply  suggested in his opinion, that the "underlying infrastructure" of the Panther was based around the framework of the Atari 7800.

 

 

 

He is in no way suggesting the initial Panther dev kit he recieved was an Atari  7800 development kit.

 

 

 

My personal viewpoint is that for Chuck to use the terminology he has, going onto describe it as a "spruced up Atari 7800" with a faster CPU and more memory, not only undersells it a lot, it was so, so much more, and it risks creating confusion, especially when the likes of Jim Gregory, Guildo H, Leonard Tramiel and others, went into far more detail about the Panther development kits. 

 

 

Any interview is just the personal thoughts of an individual, which is why I am trying to collect as many different sources as possible, to document their experiences with the Panther for this thread. 

 

 

But just as i did with the Jim Gregory interview i myself undertook, sometimes it's important to add a degree of clarity to what an individual is saying as is the case here with Chuck Ernst, not my interview. 

Edited July 31, 2021 by Lostdragon

[Lostdragon]

Might as well get Jeff Minter, kindly talking us through the Panther tech demo, in the Panther Thread:

 

 

Yeah the antelope demo was something I put together to get a rough idea what I could get out of the OLP, I just chucked in a simple scrolling landscape then as many bouncing antelopes as I could before the OLP started to stress out (you could tell when it was reaching its limit as the ground would start to stretch out downwards when the OLP ran out of time rendering too many sprites on one scanline). IIRC as it was just a demo I actually grabbed most of the graphics for it straight out of deluxe paint (the trees and antelopes were example DPaint brushes as I recall). Llamazap was an entirely different thing (I couldn't've reused much of the code from the antelope demo anyway, as Falcon had no OLP). Pity the Panther went away before I had a chance to do much more with it. I do remember another demo that was going to be like a galactic map for the game, using the sprite scaling to draw planets in a cluster that you could rotate, but that didn't look anywhere near as nice as the antelope demo.

 

There was never any actual gameplay in the antelope demo, you couldn't shoot the antelope or anything, and I only ever called it the antelope demo, never "Antelope Attack". Maybe someone else who saw the demo called it that - but not me.

 

 

Thanks go to Jeff for his time here. 

[Lostdragon]

Leonard Tramiel joins the chorus saying Raiden was never a Panther title, in this thread:

 

 

Post #525

 

 

He also confirms Crescent Galaxy wasn't on Panther either. 

 

 

Shame the writer and RG Magazine Editor did zero due diligence fact checking with likes of Leonard Tramiel or any Imagitec Design staff, just took Martin Hooley claims at FACE value, printed the statement as fact. 

 

 

With it being in a supposed credible publication, the misinformation will sadly spread further still as people do future YT vids on the Panther for clicks and likes. 

 

 

 

 

[Leeroy ST]

7 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

Leonard Tramiel joins the chorus saying Raiden was never a Panther title, in this thread:

 

 

Post #525

 

 

He also confirms Crescent Galaxy wasn't on Panther either. 

 

 

Shame the writer and RG Magazine Editor did zero due diligence fact checking with likes of Leonard Tramiel or any Imagitec Design staff, just took Martin Hooley claims at FACE value, printed the statement as fact. 

 

 

With it being in a supposed credible publication, the misinformation will sadly spread further still as people do future YT vids on the Panther for clicks and likes. 

 

 

 

 

Just out of curiosity what games actually we're on the panther first then moved. If any?

[Lostdragon]

9 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

Just out of curiosity what games actually we're on the panther first then moved. If any?

None that i am aware of. 

 

The Crypt, Guildo H's RPG started life on the equally ill-fated Konix Multisystem and was moved to Panther but never started again on any other system. 

 

 

Panther work seemed to consist of conversions, test routines for planned original titles that never got very far and died with the system. 

 

 

[Lostdragon]

Misc Press. 

Edited August 14, 2021 by Lostdragon

[Leeroy ST]

Hmm, I wonder about an 89 ST console. The 7800 was pretty much dead after 88 and really had distribution issues even before that due to NES strong arming. Also Atari burning some retailers themselves. Federated didn't help.

 

I do wonder how a console with very early 3D games like Robocop 3 and Hunter out in 1991,  would sell next to Sonic and SMW, also out in 1991. (In USA)

 

Midwinter came out in 89 too, it would probably be a great launch title and the novelty of 3D would sell upfront, but after that honeymoon period I wonder if those early 3D computer games could sell a console for a traditional 4-5 year cycle, or if they would be TOO early for console players to have much interest after a short period. Because 3D would be the only advantage an ST console would have, it couldn't compete with TG16/Gen/SNES in 2D. Maybe with some early games or budget titles but otherwise 3D would likely be the ST consoles major selling point gamewise. 

 

Even then, early 3D at varying speeds. 

 

 

Edited August 16, 2021 by Leeroy ST

[Lostdragon]

Just for good house keeping

 

   Seedy1812 said:

At the end of the year it will be 30 years since I started at Imagitec so the memory is a bit hazy. For the Falcon we wrote using the Falcon but Atari being Atari provided they came with US power supplies so we have to run them with power convertor bricks. The fun was I went to Martin saying we need the convertors and he said dont bother - so 10 mins later one loud bang and a room full of smoke.  For a few months I worked on Dino Dudes , Freddy ( Nigel Conroy) worked on  Raiden and Trev did a Falcon dsp mod player.  We stopped for a week or so to get the Space Junk demo updated. Originally Space Junk was going to be released on CD but as nobody had them then it decided to be on floppies  The demo itself came on multiple discs so i would dread how many disc it would have been on.

Sometime later we were shown the Jaguar in a pc case running Minter demos which looked impressive and then Freddy and myself were moved onto the Jaguar. I had completed the majority of the game so another programmer whose name I forget took over the Falcon version. A  year or so later i was asked to remove the password protection which was easy so that it could be released as shareware.

 

When I started at Imagitec another programmer joined ( Martin Randall ) who was employed to create tools for us. There was already a map editor on the PC for Dino Dudes/Humans so Martin wrote a map / sprite editor for Raiden. It also created attack wave patterns. Graphics could be exported as PC (byte per pixel ), Atari ( planes ) and Jaguar .

As I had to give up the Falcon when I got a Jaguar I was given a TT with the 1024 mono screen. Throughout the development of the game I used Hisoft Devpac 3 which was better / more useable than the MadMac stuff Atari provided.

 

From what I read about https://atariage.com/forums/topic/80735-panther/?do=findComment&comment=4124156 that Martin doesn't remember Panther he might have done pitches for many games on a variety platforms which will not come to fruition. I am not surprised even Steve Noakes says he doesn't remember what the were graphics originally for. Atari might have mentioned to Martin about there future plans with the Panther and Jaguar but until Atari going to pay them no nothing will be started. When I joined Imagitec they had Gladiators on Genesis , Humans on Snes , Demonsgate on multiple platforms , Lynx Rampart, molders working on masks for Space Junk ,Falcon Raiden. This was in Nov 92 having completed PC and Amiga Humans. As you can see Martin had a lot of Irons in the fire at the same time

 

 

[Lostdragon]

Another interview with Atari UK Bob Gleadow, ST Console still penciled in. 

 

Plus, Bob confronts UK Press about claims he'd said the STE was going to be an Amiga Beater, nope not a claim he ever made.. 

[Lostdragon]

French Press ST Console and Panther  scans

Edited September 1, 2021 by Lostdragon
Added addt scan.

[Lostdragon]