The Atari Jaguar Game by Game Podcast

troff · August 12, 2015

Shinto - a Great Episode! Although I was generally familiar with the Jaguar's story, you included an incredible amount of detail, much of which I have never heard before. For example, I've often heard the story of the Panther console and how it was cancelled to accelerate the Jaguar. This is the first time I've really heard the details of what Panther was and how that decision came to be made. It was very interesting.

All of the links in the show notes and the "bonus material" here is just amazing. I think I'm going to be busy for a while pouring through it all. You obviously took your research seriously.

Thanks again for doing the show and keep up the good work!

Shinto · August 14, 2015

Thanks, Troff!

I've been putting this episode together over the past six months or so. It's a whole lot of research, but I really wanted to tell the Jaguar story more completely and accurately than anyone to date, though I expect my work to be trumped in both accuracy and detail by Curt & Marty when they get to the Jaguar years in their Atari books.

You certainly don't get much detail reading the Jaguar article on Wikipedia, that's for sure, and it's badly one-sided at that.

A lot of the research originated from personal memories, and if I didn't happen to have those, I would have missed a lot in putting the story together. A 20-second blurb on one episode of a computer-themed show on PBS? Certain little references in gaming magazines? A block diagram in an obscure image format in a special-edition online fanzine? That's a big reason why I wanted to start this podcast; I had these memories, not to mention those newspaper articles, and I didn't want them to be lost.

That block diagram, I tried opening the original .IMG file in modern programs under Linux and Windows recently, and nothing could read it. I had converted it to a .PCX file on my 386 PC back in 1993, and still have almost all the files from that 386. Fortunately, the ability to read .PCX files is still fairly common, so this is what I used. It's an excellent document, it really illustrates the Jaguar architecture well, and I'd hate to think that, too, would be lost to the ages, trapped in an obscure file format.

I'm wondering if I shouldn't keep the show notes in the episode itself minimal, and just reference this blog for the complete list. It's a lot of links, since I want to include all my references and sources, and some podcast applications seem to prefer shorter show notes (like a summary paragraph and that's it). My main concern with that, though, is that a blog engine change or something here on AtariAge could alter the URLs for each episode, so relying on the blog for all the episode-related links could be risky in the long term. I don't know, I don't have a good answer yet.

But thank you Troff, I'm glad you're enjoying the show!