Jaguar New Vs. Jaguar Now Has your opinion chaged

[Pete5125]

I bought a Jag back when it 1st came out and it had like 5 or 19 games made for it I remeber I argued w/ the manager (a friend of mine) from EB Games he said that the Jag would never survive because very few retailers were selling them and even EB Games was giving it like 2 Feet of retail space. I did like most Atari Fans (I laughed I secretly knew the system would bomb but that would be great cause I would be one of the few people that owned one so that would be cool).

 

I took it back to my place (me and 3 other video game aholics had 50-100 Genesis Games in the place) to turn on my prize. Luckily w/ my system we got Alien V. Predator (one of the greatest games I ever played), Tempest 2000 the reason the system was bought, and Cybermorph(a game I hated but one of the other guys in the place thought was the Sh*t).

 

So time goes buy and we buy another game it was Checerd Flag...(what the crap this game sucks we played it for 5 of the 7 days you had before you return a game a policy EB had that I had never used till I got a Jag) so I took it back and got Dino Dudes (thought it would be like Lemmings it was a game I just didn't get) Took it back and got Raiden (16 bit looking shooter but fun)

 

We kept buying games for the Jag for the next year or so most games looked like the same game that was cheaper on my SEGA and looked a tiny bit better than their 16 Bit counterpart. (Bubsy, Zool, TroyAikman, Double Dragon, to name a few). These games you could not buy if you were going to keep the Jags Reputation as a 64 bit system alive...

 

I think the last 2 good games I got on the Jag were Raymon and Burnout.

 

I am Prety Sure Kausami Ninja was the Jag Killer for my group of friends cause I got Kausami on Jag they got MK3 on Genesis...(their was no comparison Kausami looked great and had the blood but the controll sucked Genesis won)

 

Then one of the roomates got a Sega Saturn and as much as I tried every game that came out on Sega blew away the Jag Games.

 

 

So a couple of months ago I was in GameForce and found a JagCD w/ 8 Jag CD agmes and 7 Jag cart games I couldn't remeber if I had them or not I bought the whole lot and I was happy because I now had the Prize of the Atari colect a Jag and a JagCD.

 

JAG CD not a great buy either of the * games I got only Primal Rage, Vid Grid, and Battle Morph have been played more than once ...

 

And now I look back and I think I wish their were more fun games like a Bubsy or a Zool 2 theses games I couldn't own the first time due to scorn from my friends.

 

I wonder if people are seeing the system now after the XBOX and they look back knowing it isn't going to compete w/ todays standers if the Jag looks better to them than my group of friends playing a 16 bit system and seeing a system that was barely hitting the next level...

 

Your friend,

Pete

[Michael_]

I bought a Jag back when it 1st came out and it had like 5 or 19 games made for it

 

It had 5 or 19 games made for it???

 

 

Anyway. I liked the Genesis better in the early to mid-nineties and I like the Jaguar better now, if that´s what you´re asking.

[Michael_]

I wonder if people are seeing the system now after the XBOX and they look back knowing it isn't going to compete w/ todays standers if the Jag looks better to them than my group of friends playing a 16 bit system and seeing a system that was barely hitting the next level...

 

I have absolutely no idea of what you´re talking about here. Is this a question?

[Lost Monkey]

I wonder if people are seeing the system now after the XBOX and they look back knowing it isn't going to compete w/ todays standers if the Jag looks better to them than my group of friends playing a 16 bit system and seeing a system that was barely hitting the next level...

 

I guess it all depends on what your friends look like...

 

[LanDi]

It's pretty fair to say most of the Software on the Jaguar sucked big style. It was and is fairly dire. I like Rayman very much but it is only one game. Missile Command 3D is also one of my favourites but it is always crashing on me!

I was never too bowled over by AVP(which 84% of Jag owners purchased) Before trying AVP I purchased SpaceHulk on the 3DO( the equilevent Saturn PSX versions are tripe) and it is terrifying and gorgeous! AVP is spooky and even a little frightening in places, but is really just a corridor game, and full of flaws. But with so little to choose from, even the average games on Jaguar get elevated to heavy heights. Iron Soldier never stood up to its equilevents on the other 32bit systems - although the explosions were great. BattleMorph is a huge improvement on Cybermorph but still is eclipsed by Starfighter 3000, which is available on the other 3 main 32 bit systems, although weakest on the Saturn. The Jaguar was still until the arrival of PS2 and Dreamcast, still theoretically hugely impressive, the only system till the unreleased M2 to have hardware Z buffering although it didn't have the Ram to use it. Even 16 bit conversions and equilevents were poor, Bubsy on the Jaguar had vastly reduced animations and sounds.

Lets face it, we would never see beauty like XMen on the Sega Saturn.

The later generation Jaguar games which we never saw looked rather cool, especially in my opinion Dactyl Joust. But the Jaguar in my opinion will never reach its potential becasue of Ataris shortcomings ion the machine design. The resolution is very low, due to the CPU(300 * 200 is easily accessible to the 680000 and lack of memory resources in all the important places.

But now we are looking at some great software looming. The Jaguar would definately be my favourite console were it not for the hardware bugs in the two RISC chips. 54 MIPS with only 12kb of Nonwait Static ram.

 

Its always going to be a dreamers console. We can discuss for hours,weeks even months of what might have been.

So in conclusion the Jaguar is and always will be , a legend.

[PeterG]

It's pretty fair to say most of the Software on the Jaguar sucked big style. It was and is fairly dire. I like Rayman very much but it is only one game. Missile Command 3D is also one of my favourites but it is always crashing on me!

I was never too bowled over by AVP(which 84% of Jag owners purchased) Before trying AVP I purchased SpaceHulk on the 3DO( the equilevent Saturn PSX versions are tripe) and it is terrifying and gorgeous! AVP is spooky and even a little frightening in places, but is really just a corridor game, and full of flaws. But with so little to choose from, even the average games on Jaguar get elevated to heavy heights. Iron Soldier never stood up to its equilevents on the other 32bit systems - although the explosions were great. BattleMorph is a huge improvement on Cybermorph but still is eclipsed by Starfighter 3000, which is available on the other 3 main 32 bit systems, although weakest on the Saturn. The Jaguar was still until the arrival of PS2 and Dreamcast, still theoretically hugely impressive, the only system till the unreleased M2 to have hardware Z buffering although it didn't have the Ram to use it. Even 16 bit conversions and equilevents were poor, Bubsy on the Jaguar had vastly reduced animations and sounds.

Lets face it, we would never see beauty like XMen on the Sega Saturn.

The later generation Jaguar games which we never saw looked rather cool, especially in my opinion Dactyl Joust. But the Jaguar in my opinion will never reach its potential becasue of Ataris shortcomings ion the machine design. The resolution is very low, due to the CPU(300 * 200 is easily accessible to the 680000 and lack of memory resources in all the important places.

But now we are looking at some great software looming. The Jaguar would definately be my favourite console were it not for the hardware bugs in the two RISC chips. 54 MIPS with only 12kb of Nonwait Static ram.

 

Its always going to be a dreamers console. We can discuss for hours,weeks even months of what might have been.

So in conclusion the Jaguar is and always will be , a legend.

 

 

Well I do not have much to say other that Iron SOldier played WAY better than any other mech game I played at that time. Are you talking about graphics only? And BAttlemorph blew Starfighter 3000 away. Sorry I just bought a Saturn again and it had that game and it is so slow, looks ugly and is terrible to control. Don't know how it can eclipse Battlemorph.

Peter

[JagFan422]

Iron soldier II does play very well, just very slow. I prefer Mech Warrior II as my mech game of choice from that time. And the EB in my area to, had minimal support, but it was one of the EB's that was chosen to carry the last of the Jag games, like Towers II, which i bought, which i hate.

 

My earliest memory of the Jag was seeing it in either EGM or Gamepro and me and my buddies commenting on how soon it was going to die. Had I had the money...i honestly would've bought a 3do over Jaguar. But i enjoy my Jag, i have a few games worth playing, though most of them aren't, but it is an obscure collectors system now.

 

They should've put more support into the CD part of the Jag, that had the chance to compare. The cart system never had a chance though.

[ZylonBane]

Iron soldier II does play very well, just very slow.

The Iron Soldier games actually play very quickly-- it's just your mech that moves slowly. They programmed it that way on purpose, to create a more strategic game.

 

If you enable the Satyr mech in IS2, you can see that the engine is quite speedy.

[Pete5125]

I guess my Problem w/ the Jag was that back in the day when you could buy software new I was almost always dissapointed w/ a few exceptions... I have recently started buying some more games on Jag from E-Bay and the Flee Market(got NBA JAM for $3 at the Flee ) I ended up rebuying Checkerd Flag Knowing the game sucked but while it was bad It isn't unplayable (as I origanaly would of rated it)...So my opinion is slightly kinder.

 

That is what my question was do you hate the bad games on Jag a little less than if you were buying each game for $60+ brand new?

 

Also how do you buy games do you only buy games that are rated good or do you try to buy any game you can get your hands on?

[bedouin]

My opinion hasn't really changed.

 

When it was first released it was a curiosity. I knew all of the games weren't masterpieces, but it was such a unique system that I wanted to own it.

 

I'm drawn to it for the same reason now really. It's my nature to root for the underdog, but I'm not delusional enough to say that every Jaguar game is fantastic.

[JagFan422]

the only $60 game i bought at release was Towers II and boooy was that a huge mistake.

[The_Laird]

No is the quite simple answer to this question.

 

My Atari machines are the only ones that I never got rid of. All my other consoles/computers got sold to fund new ones although I did re-purchase a Saturn recently and got given another PS1 with loadsa games a while back. The Jaguar while not my fave Atari (Lynx comes first) is certainly a strong second. Ok so there are a few real stinkers and many average titles but also many video game gems that still play well even today. There is no doubt that had Atari not been set up to fail from day one with the Jaguar then it could have been a massive success story. It was a machine that could have stood toe to toe with the PS1 and Saturn despite its 2 year age gap and just imagine how awesome the Jag 2 would have been with all the bugs corrected, more memory and a texture mapping chip!

 

Long live the Jag, it will always have its place in gaming history, like it or not.

[JagFan422]

No is the quite simple answer to this question.

 

. It was a machine that could have stood toe to toe with the PS1 and Saturn despite its 2 year age gap

 

No way in hell. Not the cartridge system, Jag CD maybe, but no way in hell the cartridge system could compete. It could barely compete with the 3do.

Edited March 31, 2006 by JagFan422

[doctorclu]

Then vs. Now is a hard comparison for me since I arrived to the Jag in 1999.

 

I think though from what I've gather that there has never really been a hay day for the Jag first off. To matter the fact, compared to other systems it is merely a unique curiousity system to collect.

 

I would say the Jag is better as a system now than then. At least you have a bunch of unreleased games to choose from.

 

Does the Jag compare to the Xbox? No, the Jag was made in 1993, give it a break folks. Does a SuperNES compare to a X-Box? Hardly. Wish people would stop looking at the Jag for how it compares now and see it for what it is, a unique game system with some fun games.

 

Was Kasumi Ninja ever supposed to compare to Mortal Combat? Boy I hope not, but it funny to play now.

 

And Bubsy is not the same version as the SNES or Genesis Bubsy title. The one for the Jaguar has few animations and sounds, but is a great Bubsy title that all five other Bubsy fans in the world that don't have a Jag would love to play.

 

Just a fun game system.

[The_Laird]

No is the quite simple answer to this question.

 

. It was a machine that could have stood toe to toe with the PS1 and Saturn despite its 2 year age gap

 

No way in hell. Not the cartridge system, Jag CD maybe, but no way in hell the cartridge system could compete. It could barely compete with the 3do.

What did you think I ment

 

Anyone with half a brain would have realised I wasn't gonna compere a cartridge system to CD that would be just plain dumb (unless the cartridges were stupidly big I suppose)

[JagFan422]

just wondering.

[Pete5125]

Kasaumi Ninja was certainly made to compete w/ Mortal Kombat using a clon of the MK1 fighting engine to boot with more blood and gore than any other fighter in history(A definate plus at this point in time) In fact if Atari had found a way to make the control less slugish and sped up the game a little (plus made it compatible w/ the pro Contoler) this could of been the exclusive title to put Atari on the map. At this time in video game history everybody was turning out fighting games (Shaq had one, The JLA had one, even the Simpsons had one.

 

Because Kasumi has a lot going for it (digitized characters, Blood, gore, finishing moves, etc.)

 

But the fatal flaw was the control was never persise enouth to pull it through...

 

Ultra Vortex fixed this problem 2 years later but buy then the Jag was done for.

 

This was a time people played Sports Games (Atari has like 5 that came out ), Fighters (grand total of 4 only one playable UV), and Platform Cartoon Games (Jag had 3).

 

Yeah I am sure their were other categories but if you were making money then you were making a game in one of the above categories.

 

I also remeber few gamers asking for Space shooters but Jag makes up 80% of it liabrary with these games.

 

So in closing do you think a well done Kasaumi or (good port)MK3 pack in early in Jags life instead of CYBERMORPH could of saved the system life? Ithink yes and Jag would of gained at least 2 years w/ that move.

[superjudge3]

What they should have done was wait until mid-1994 and release it with Tempest 2000 as the standard pack-in game. With an extra 6 months of time the early Jag games could have been polished up more and would have been more impressive.

[vanadium]

Back when I reserved my system at launch, I was into the system as a "new dawn for Atari", who'd been the best at games in my opinion in general up to that point. I ended up with the #48 system delivered to Colorado in late 1993, purchased at Horizon Computers (an exclusively Atari dealer) in Denver.

 

Today, I see it as a system that could have been much more than it was, but I still enjoy many of the games nonetheless. It had many endearing titles to its credit, despite having its share of stinkers.

 

It's also the only system I'll never get rid of -- my mother purchased the system as a Christmas present for me when we were relatively poor, and I still have that same unit to this day. The first I'd bought (the reserved one) was stolen in mid-1994, so I had to go without for a while until my mother surprised me with the new one, which I still have to this day. There's a very personal connection for me to the Jaguar that transcends titles, specs, etc.

Edited April 1, 2006 by vanadium

[JagChris]

Back when I reserved my system at launch, I was into the system as a "new dawn for Atari", who'd been the best at games in my opinion in general up to that point. I ended up with the #48 system delivered to Colorado in late 1993, purchased at Horizon Computers (an exclusively Atari dealer) in Denver.

 

Today, I see it as a system that could have been much more than it was, but I still enjoy many of the games nonetheless. It had many endearing titles to its credit, despite having its share of stinkers.

 

It's also the only system I'll never get rid of -- my mother purchased the system as a Christmas present for me when we were relatively poor, and I still have that same unit to this day. The first I'd bought (the reserved one) was stolen in mid-1994, so I had to go without for a while until my mother susprised me with the new one, which I still have to this day. There's a very personal connection for me to the Jaguar that transcends titles, specs, etc.

 

That's a cool story Vanadium.

[vanadium]

Thanks

[Hyper_Eye]

While I will admit that the Jag has it's fair share of bad games... no console could come even close to taking 3DO's title. That thing just had a ton of crappy games. It is amazing some of the things that passed for games on that thing. Gex is cool and Wing Commander 3 make the system worth having but I definitely feel that the Jag had more going for it.

[Pete5125]

TRUE i had 2 friends that had a 3d0 at that time the 1st one boought it for $600 and he was very bad at picking games because the 3d0 graphix and sound was always top notch but game control could make even the worst controling Jag games shine...play Way of the Warior on 3do looks great has White Zombie playing in the background but the controll was like playing the 1st VF on Saturn their was actualy a 30 sec lag time.

 

But if you were picky and bought only Studio 3d0, EA games, and a few other games that rated highly then you would have a system that was as good or better than a PS1...it also had this weird Game show game called Twisted that me and a group of friends would get drunk and play like every weekend this tradition lasted like 6months and only stopped cause we all moved to diffrent schools it was great cause it was diffrent and the hast would make fun of you if you did something stupid...also girls liked to play it 2.

 

I would say I could make you a list of about 60 games and the Goldstar system so you would get a good controller and you would think man this system must of ruled the 32 bit market (I have not played the system since 1995 or 96 so I may be letting my mind play tricks on me about quality of the games) but if I remeber right the only reason the system died was they anounced a M2 chip coming out that never came out cause Trip sold it to some Computer company so everyone buying the system jumped ship waiting on newer and better system

[Trip_Cannon]

No is the quite simple answer to this question.

 

. It was a machine that could have stood toe to toe with the PS1 and Saturn despite its 2 year age gap

 

No way in hell. Not the cartridge system, Jag CD maybe, but no way in hell the cartridge system could compete. It could barely compete with the 3do.

What did you think I ment

 

Anyone with half a brain would have realised I wasn't gonna compere a cartridge system to CD that would be just plain dumb (unless the cartridges were stupidly big I suppose)

 

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I understood, the Jag CD adds no power to the unit itself. It only increases the size of the game, right? There's still no way the Jag CD could compete with a PS1 and Saturn. The only thing that could have would have been the Jag 2.

[Atariman]

My opinion of the Jaguar has changed a little bit over the years, but I still like it about as much as I did when I first got it. I, too, got a Jaguar quite late in its life - I think it was probably in 1998 - whenver it was that Kay Bee toys was liquidating their Jaguar inventory. I remember looking into the glass case in the video game section when I happened to notice a list posted inside it - one of the headings on the list said "Atari Jaguar".

 

Keep in mind that at the time, the only system I had was my 2600. Yes, you heard me right - my trusty 2600. I watched as all of my friends got the NES, SNES, Genesis, etc while I was still toying around with my 2600. My parents had done a nice job of shutting me off from the video game world (as they didn't want to have to support another video game system habit in the family. ) So up until this point, the only things I knew about Atari were what the game catalogs (especially my favorite fold-out catalog including the 5200, voice commander module, etc that had Ms. Pacman on the front) had told me. As far as I was concerned, the only thing after the 2600 was Nintendo's NES, SNES, and Sega's Genesis.

 

I had no idea that Atari had a large computer line, had produced a hand-held system, or anything that had happened past 1984. Then I saw the Atari Jaguar on this game list. They didn't seem to have any games for it, nor did they have any systems in the store at the time, so I just left the store with my curiosity piqued.

 

Awhile later (perhaps a few months) I was in a different Kay Bee store. In the middle of the store they had a pile of Jaguars marked for around $40. I was quite excited at seeing them as my suspicions were now confirmed - yes, there was an Atari system past the 5200 I had seen in the game catalog! Looking at the screenshots on the back of the box, I was blown away by the graphics - and not only that, but it had a CD add-on available for it!

 

After some pleading, I convinced my mother that perhaps my buying a Jaguar wouldn't be so bad. I mean, it wasn't like I was going to get RID of my 2600 (nor did I have any intentions of no longer purchasing games for it). So she finally said "ok" and I went to Kay Bee to pick one up.

 

Thankfully, they still had a huge pile of them. Grabbing a box that looked like it was in pretty good shape, I walked up to the counter and purchased it. Turning a deaf ear to the guy behind the counter who was chastising me for not buying an additional game for it, I walked out of the store with my new system. I knew what game I wanted with my Jaguar - one of the few that I recognized from other platforms - Bubsy! I went and purchased this at the original Kay Bee I had been in (in a different trip before this and after the first, I had seen that they had Bubsy there).

 

This was just the beginning. I was slow to purchase new games (after all, money didn't grow on trees - and even at only $15 a pop for games, I couldn't afford that many) but I slowly started building up my collection. Not only that, but I also began to be quite interested in Atari as well. What HAD Atari been up to all that time that had passed between the time they produced that game catalog and now? This is when I learned of the Lynx, 7800, and their entire computer line. I started perusing the internet for everything and anything I could find that had to do with Atari.

 

I joined the forums at Holyoak (can't remember what they were called nowadays) and then the forums that Hasbro hosted. I found the Atari Historical Society and Atari Gaming Headquarters and beefed up my knowledge on what went in with Atari. A crash course in all that was Atari, if you will. I got a Lynx, then the Jaguar's CD system (after I had finally found GoAtari and decided that $80 wasn't a bad deal), 5200, 7800, 3DO -- the process just started to snowball from there.

 

Not only that, but when I got my Jaguar most, if not all, of my friends thought the Jaguar was amazing. I told one of my friends that I had my Atari out and asked her if she wanted to play it - she said sure - the minute she laid eyes on it, she said "hey! THAT's not an Atari!". I explained that it was Atari's newest system. My friends and I, even the ones with the SNES and Genesis, loved playing the Jaguar - even the titles that aren't considered to be spectacular. (yes, believe it or not, I have probably spent HOURS playing Club Drive - stop laughing, dammit! )

 

So, although I can say that I didn't really HAVE any opinion about the Atari Jaguar when it was new (as I didn't even know it existed at the time), I CAN say that my opinion of it hasn't changed much since the day I got it - it is still my all-time favorite system (even though I haven't gotten a new game for it in years) as it was really the system that changed me from a video game hermit (so to speak) into the collector I am today. And for those wondering, no - I don't have my feet firmly planted in classic gaming - the past two systems I have bought (Xbox and Dreamcast) were bought within their 'heyday' timeframes. And with that being said, I think that I may just have to hook up my Jaguar this weekend, something that has been long overdue.