Neo Geo v.s Atari jaguar

[KrunchyTC]

2 minutes ago, alucardX said:

We should get programming then.

We should.

[+cubanismo]

2 hours ago, KrunchyTC said:

my curiosity about that hardware's true capabilities never rests 😆

Yeah, I'm not gonna lie, it was those YouTubers opining that we've yet to see the console's true potential that reeled me in. Practically speaking though, it's not fair to compare things like OpenLaura to contemporary games. Games ship on a budget and with a deadline. Unless it's a developer's third round on a console refining their engine for one last sequel before the next gen thing comes out, they're never going to be pushing anything to its limits. Jaguar didn't have the longevity to get to that. With that in mind though, I think Battlemorph, Iron Soldier 2, and maybe Hiverstrike: Unconquered Lands are pretty good examples of the Jaguar pushed to its 3D limits via contemporary development. No doubt someone could do a passion project with carefully defined constraints that blows those away, but that's a whole different thing. It's hard to compare hardware abilities just by eyeballing game visuals. That's a combination of developer cleverness, artistic talent, and hardware abilities.

[LordKraken]

Add Zero 5 to the list, less texturing (if anay) but blazing speed 3d engine.

[KrunchyTC]

1 hour ago, cubanismo said:

It's hard to compare hardware abilities just by eyeballing game visuals. That's a combination of developer cleverness, artistic talent, and hardware abilities.

For the record, I think those games look outstanding. If those games visuals could be improved upon in any way, like improvements in framerate in certain instances, increased draw distance, then the Jag's true 3D capabilities were perfectly adequate for the time, and very impressive. The texture mapping in those games looks far better than I thought was possible on the Jag. Just that, I see games like Turbo Arcade on the 2600, and my uneducated brain thinks "Holy crap! imagine if the 7800 was pushed that hard! you could get SNES level graphics!!!!" 😆 my imagination runs wild!

Edited April 27 by KrunchyTC

[+Sauron]

Anyone who places the Amiga CD32 ahead of the Jaguar should just tattoo the word "IDIOT" on their forehead. It's an easier way of letting everyone know how few functioning brain cells you have.

[+cubanismo]

36 minutes ago, LordKraken said:

Add Zero 5 to the list, less texturing (if anay) but blazing speed 3d engine.

See, that's an example of why things get tricky. According to an interview with the developers (Jaguar Explorer Online, 1997 Volume 1 Issue 1, Internet Archive link here), Zero 5 is fast because it renders at 8-bit/256 colors and doesn't use lighting (It *looks* like it has lighting, but apparently it's all just pre-baked polygon colors that sort of look like shading), and they used something like the painters algorithm instead of depth testing. Given the Jaguar's limitation is always memory bandwidth (Even with that bitchin' 64-bit bus), this is huge savings. Removing the 16-bit depth buffer halves the bandwidth compared to what Atari was recommending and implemented in their sample 3D renderer, and cutting it down from 16-bit CRY to 8-bit cuts the bandwidth in half again (Note all this is in theory. You still have to make sure you're using the bus right to get the savings), so you've cut your memory bandwidth down to 25% of most games. Then you take out lighting, because it was ~for free with CRY but would be tricky in an 8-bit palette (Though Quake/Quake 2 show it can be pulled off if you're clever with your palette), but still probably saves you a few instructions. You have to add the complexity (more instructions, bigger code, more clocks to run it) of depth sorting your polygons to account for the lack of depth buffer, but that's not *that* bad for a small number of polygons compared to the cost of per-pixel depth test memory bandwidth.

 

That's why Zero 5 is fast (Usually running at a solid 30FPS), and yes, it shows the 3D capabilities of the hardware off very well by... avoiding some of the specifically-for-3D hardware because it hogs the bus.

[agradeneu]

8 hours ago, KrunchyTC said:

For the record, I think those games look outstanding. If those games visuals could be improved upon in any way, like improvements in framerate in certain instances, increased draw distance, then the Jag's true 3D capabilities were perfectly adequate for the time, and very impressive. The texture mapping in those games looks far better than I thought was possible on the Jag. Just that, I see games like Turbo Arcade on the 2600, and my uneducated brain thinks "Holy crap! imagine if the 7800 was pushed that hard! you could get SNES level graphics!!!!" 😆 my imagination runs wild!

Turbo Arcade uses an ARM chip on cart, the stock 2600 would not be capable to run such gfx. (Please correct me if Im wrong!)

 

As far as the "true" Jaguar capabilities go, its all about framerate. We have seen you that could do a lot of interesting stuff, but only a few games managed a decent performance.

 

Rendering anything higher than at 320x240 res though, even for animated 2D,  is a wet dream. (Despite the programmer of Another World stated he could make the game run at 20FPS high res mode)

 

3D is not a big focus of the homebrew community, however the improved Doom engine for Slayer is really awesome! (well, don't start the 2.5D argument)

 

Looking at Tomb Raider running on GBA, well, then the Jaguar could handle that probably too. However the programmer of openlara shifted focus on mainstream hardware.

 

Lets say there will be  plenty of stuff to play with on this machine!  

 

 

 

 

Edited April 27 by agradeneu

[KrunchyTC]

2 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Turbo Arcade uses an ARM chip on cart, the stock 2600 would not be capable to run such gfx. (Please correct me if Im wrong!)

 

As far as the "true" Jaguar capabilities go, its all about framerate. We have seen you that could do a lot of interesting stuff, but only a few games managed a decent performance.

 

Rendering anything higher than at 320x240 res though, even for animated 2D,  is a wet dream. (Despite the programmer of Another World stated he could make the game run at 20FPS high res mode)

 

3D is not a big focus of the homebrew community, however the improved Doom engine for Slayer is really awesome! (well, don't start the 2.5D argument)

 

Looking at Tomb Raider running on GBA, well, then the Jaguar could handle that probably too. However the programmer of openlara shifted focus on mainstream hardware.

 

Lets say there will be  plenty of stuff to play with on this machine!  

 

 

 

 

Oh, its one of those "ARM assisted" 2600 games? didn't know that.

 

I think the same was true for the PS1, most, if not all PS1 games ran at 240, some 480i. Hell, if the Jaguar is able to replicate a game like Virtua Fighter Remix at 240p/30 I'd be impressed

 

The new Doom engine is looking awesome indeed!  

 

Totally! 

Edited April 27 by KrunchyTC

[agradeneu]

39 minutes ago, KrunchyTC said:

Oh, its one of those "ARM assisted" 2600 games? didn't know that.

 

I think the same was true for the PS1, most, if not all PS1 games ran at 240, some 480i. Hell, if the Jaguar is able to replicate a game like Virtua Fighter Remix at 240p/30 I'd be impressed

 

The new Doom engine is looking awesome indeed!  

 

Totally! 

Actually, FFL is similar to VF Remix, when looking at gfx detail and performance.

 

Technically, its an impressive showcase in my book, but the gameplay just does not work. 

Edited April 27 by agradeneu

[agradeneu]

For 2D games, our platformer JAS renders 3 full screen layers of backgrounds in 16 bit CRY mode/60FPS. I wonder if any other platformer pushed the Jag to do that?

Most commercial games, even the great Rayman, managed 2 layers. 

Edited April 27 by agradeneu

[+CyranoJ]

7 hours ago, KrunchyTC said:

Oh, its one of those "ARM assisted" 2600 games? didn't know that.

 

It's a 70Mhz ARM running the entire game internally using the 2600 as a screen buffer.  Think of it as a GBA with a low resolution screen.  Probably more CPU power in there than the Jaguar has combined.  Not really fair to call them 2600 games at all, let alone have them compete with other 2600 games.

[alucardX]

18 hours ago, LordKraken said:

Add Zero 5 to the list, less texturing (if anay) but blazing speed 3d engine.

I forgot to mention it but have recently really taken to that game. So much fun!

[alucardX]

7 hours ago, agradeneu said:

For 2D games, our platformer JAS renders 3 full screen layers of backgrounds in 16 bit CRY mode/60FPS. I wonder if any other platformer pushed the Jag to do that?

Most commercial games, even the great Rayman, managed 2 layers. 

JAS looks amazing.

[KrunchyTC]

4 hours ago, CyranoJ said:

 

It's a 70Mhz ARM running the entire game internally using the 2600 as a screen buffer.  Think of it as a GBA with a low resolution screen.  Probably more CPU power in there than the Jaguar has combined.  Not really fair to call them 2600 games at all, let alone have them compete with other 2600 games.

Ah, thats pretty lame.

[KrunchyTC]

4 hours ago, alucardX said:

JAS looks amazing.

Took me a while to realize what JAS was, it's Jumping at Shadows, and agreed, it looks phenomenal! and I can't wait to play it

 

[jerseystyle]

On 4/26/2024 at 9:48 AM, dougal22 said:

I never bashed the actual specs or power of the Jaguar. To be honest thinking about it the worst console of all time is probably the Philips CDI. Anyway, the specs of a console don't mean much if there aren't many good games for the system. Sure the Jaguar had a few great games as you and others have mentioned but nowhere near enough to persuade many people to choose it over a Nintendo, Sega or Sony console. Yeah it had Wolfenstein and a damn nice version of it at that but by that time many people had a PC and could play it on that. Sure it had Flashback but again that game was on the Megadrive, PC, Amiga and other platforms. I won't comment on NBA Jam because I don't like sports games nor will I comment much on games like Tempest 2K and Defender 2K though it does go back to what I said about rehashing old Atari arcade games and by that time almost all arcade genre games except for fighting games and racing games were no longer popular. Around the time the Jaguar was new and supported by Atari I had an Amiga 500 plus, a 486DX2/66, a SNES and not long after a Saturn (which I sold to buy a Playstation not long after) and had no interest at all in the Jaguar. Probably around 2005 I had bought a second hand boxed Jaguar with two games, Wolfenstein 3D and Cybermorph. Wolf 3d was great but Cybermorph was a joke. The console was a UK PAL-I but I live in a PAL-B/G region and so the sound didn't work and I only had an RF cable for it. Anyway, its not the only console I think was not good as I also feel the same about the 3DO and CDI and despite being an Amiga fanboy even the Amiga CD32 was in my opinion a stupid console and yes I do have one but never use it. 

I’m sorry man, you can’t bash the Jag when you’ve only ever played 2 games. That’s silly. To call T2K an “arcade rehash” considering how influential it is on the entire industry (how many hundreds of “retro” games followed the path it laid out?) is just arguing for the sake of arguing. AvP, IS 1 and 2, Hover Strike:UL, Battlemorph, T2K, are all unique games that show the Jag could do some neat things. There are also some very nice ports and weird oddities (Atari Karts, AOTMP, Battlesphere,etc) on the system.  So… maybe play more than 2 games. Or don’t, it’s okay, but in the real world it’s better to base one’s experiences on more than Google. Like, I’ve never played an Amiga CD32 so I don’t have an opinion on it.

[roots.genoa]

Calling any system the worst ever would require to have played them all (and thoroughly) anyway. Now, it's true that if you compare the Jaguar to more successful systems like the NeoGeo or the PlayStation, even the Saturn, it might 'lose' according to the majority. And Dougal has a few good points, like the lack of third party games that nobody will deny I think. But it's called AtariAge here, read the room. 😅