How did people in the late 90s find out about Telegames/Songbird releases?

[NinSEGA]

Were they advertised in game mags like GamePro or EGM or were the games sold at specialty stores like Funcoland and Electronics Boutique? This always bothered me. How did games like Skyhammer and Towers II get sold back then? Were they exclusively online-only orders? Sorry if this has been answered before, but it's hard for me to find results with vague search terms. Also, it's a slow news day.

[jaybird3rd]

I think I first learned of Hyper Force, Soccer Kid, and Skyhammer from an interview that Carl Forhan gave to the Back In Time podcast (although they weren't called "podcasts" in those days). That was in early 2000, I believe. (It was actually 3/31/1999.)

[NinSEGA]

I think I first learned of Hyper Force, Soccer Kid, and Skyhammer from an interview that Carl Forhan gave to the Back In Time podcast (although they weren't called "podcasts" in those days). That was in early 2000, I believe.

What kind of audience did they reach? I mean, your example doesn't fit the norm. I doubt they were influential in the grand scheme of things.

[Gunstar]

Telegames advertized in the popular gaming mags of the day. Songbird, I don't recall for sure, but if you were a jag fan following the boards, you found out, also, I don't think Songbird started until at least '99, maybe 2000, and I think he did manage to get some coverage in a few gaming mags. Telegames also got shelf space in stores like Tower Records and Electronics Boutique that were still selling Jaguars in '96/'97. Telegames were officially sanctioned and licensed games from Atari, they were Atari/JTS Corp's surrogate publishing outlet to stay "valid" during reverse-merger legal proceedings.

Edited March 17, 2014 by Gunstar

[bojay1997]

Were they advertised in game mags like GamePro or EGM or were the games sold at specialty stores like Funcoland and Electronics Boutique? This always bothered me. How did games like Skyhammer and Towers II get sold back then? Were they exclusively online-only orders? Sorry if this has been answered before, but it's hard for me to find results with vague search terms. Also, it's a slow news day.

Telegames and Song Bird both had websites where you could buy their games. Song Bird games were never sold at retail stores as far as I know, but Telegames did manage to get some of their late Jag releases into Gamestop and EB, at least at certain stores. I recall both Telegames and Song Bird both exhibiting at early CGE shows, so you could buy their releases there as well. There were also plenty of forums like Digital Press and some Jaguar specific ones where postings about these games were made. Newsgroups were also popular at the time and I recall discussions about these releases appearing there as well.

[jaybird3rd]

What kind of audience did they reach? I mean, your example doesn't fit the norm. I doubt they were influential in the grand scheme of things.

Well, what can I say ... I've never been one to "fit the norm."

 

I just dug out my copy of the Back In Time interview with Carl Forhan. It was actually dated 3/31/1999, and in fact, it was Carl's very first public announcement of those three Songbird titles.

[Willard]

gamefan ran features and made a big deal out of the early songbird games and battlesphere.

 

telegames actually had their games reviewed in mainstream magazines like Gamepro too, probably because they ran paid advertisments in those magazines.

 

generally I don't think "people were informed" of the songbird releases though, they more "had to look for information on the releases," and the sales numbers weren't as high as what you think when you think of a commercial release.

 

if you to put it into perspective, Aircars original print was 200 copies and that actually hit retail stores.

Edited March 17, 2014 by Willard

[JagChris]

You know what, I can't remember how I found out about Telegames. Actually Go Atari sold Telegames releases so thats how I got Towers and World Tour Racing etc was through them.

[JagChris]

LOL haha kids are funny. Wut was life like b4 the internet?

[jaybird3rd]

LOL haha kids are funny. Wut was life like b4 the internet?

Yeah, I suspect that most of us were on the Web by the late 90s (or BBSes and newsgroups long before that), keeping up with Jaguar developments in more or less the same way we do today. The late 90s weren't all that long ago, after all.

[+save2600]

Usenet.

[Hyper_Eye]

Jaguar Catalogs. I may still have some. I was subscribed to more than one and they would come quarterly. Towers II often had a prominent spot. I also spent a lot of time online at the time.

[NinSEGA]

So the Songbird games were super obscure.and advertisements for them didn't hit any kind of 'mainstream' media outlets? Only the hardcore internet venues?

[+davidcalgary29]

The first few threads in the Jag forum (from 2001!) are actually pretty informative. I particularly like Tempest's post about the Telegames sale special: 10 pounds each for Worms and Towers II!

[+remowilliams]

Town crier, or carrier pigeon if you were really swank.

[82-T/A]

Well, for me... I bought a lot of the stuff through mail order. Back in 1996-1997 when I did most of my main Jaguar buying (when stuff was practically being given away), I got in touch with GO ATARI. I think they were the official retailer for phone orders for Atari... I got their information some how... it's basically a dude who ran a warehouse filled with Atari Jaguar stuff, and sold it off until maybe a few years ago (5 or so...). If you go to GO ATARI now... it's just a broken Apache Tomcat server. He had a rudimentary website (text files I believe) that listed everything he sold. I can't remember... but I think I bought Towers II from there, or I ordered it from TELEGAMES over the phone with a credit card.

 

The internet was still uncommon for most people in ~1996... but they both had functional websites. Carl Forhan, I didn't start buying his stuff until around 2003 or so...

[NinSEGA]

I recall reading that Songbird games were sold to Telegames UK and were distributed to GAME stores throughout Europe up until 2006 or so. Is that true?

[jaybird3rd]

If you're after very specific information about Songbird, why not just e-mail Carl Forhan and ask him?

[JaguarGod]

Ads in some of the mags at the time. I think I have the ads somewhere in my collection. I cut out all the ads, reviews and articles from the beginning of the Jag and later after the Jag died off and put them into binders. Where they are now may be a bit of a mystery though

Edited March 18, 2014 by JaguarGod

[Hyper_Eye]

Here are two catalogs I found which are typical of the Jaguar catalogs I often received at the time.

 

Font covers:

 

 

Back covers:

 

 

Accessories:

 

Edited March 18, 2014 by Hyper_Eye

[Hyper_Eye]

Consoles:

 

 

 

[ECWfan]

I used to get catalogs in the mail from Telegames when they were headquartered in Texas. I remember buying World Tour Racing at Electronics Boutique. I preordered Iron Soldier 2 CD from Telegames directly. I also bought Worms from Radio Shack because they were $10 cheaper. It had to be ordered through a catalog in store and was shipped to me.

 

The Songbird games I heard about from Usenet. The Jaguar Newsgroup was pretty lively back in the day. I had to send Carl a check and there was a bonus (a free Lynx game) for buying three or four of his games.

[K3V]

We had the Internet back then, believe it or not

[doctorclu]

When I got into the Jaguar in 1999-2000 the internet was there.

 

I followed the Jaguar Interactive 2 message base, which looked something like this:

http://www.atarihq.com/interactive/

 

Or actually more like:

http://web.archive.org/web/19991006112005/http://atarihq.com/interactive/

 

I actually met Scott, Thunderbird, Carl, and others after I had Battlesphere. Learned of the Nuon, which was also a blast at the time. So prior to the Jaguar Interactive 2, I was part of a Atari user group in Dallas from 1998-2000 so found out a lot about what was going on, like the development of Battlesphere and the Songbird games, from the meetings and our online club chat room.

 

Telegames is in Dallas, so that was kinda fun. I was excited when I found that out, called them up asked where they were and said I was coming by to check out their store. That kinda freaked them out. But they used to have their address on their website so thought they had a business or store. Oh well.

 

Interesting sidenote, the Telegame warehouse was hit by a tornado and a lot of the damaged merchandise found its way into local places like Electric Discount Sales where you can still find copies of Qix for the Lynx and Double Dragon till a few years ago. I bought a Felix and Rapier Jaguar development units in 2001 from the Game Exchange, a game store in Dallas at the time.

 

All I can say about the Jaguar in the late nineties was there was a lot of mystery about the Jaguar. Will we ever find the encryption key? Will Battlesphere ever be released? Songbird releasing four previously unreleased games. Oh hey, Hasbro just released the Jaguar to the public domain (that was cool.) And back then, Thunderbird was a cool guy, can you believe that?

 

Good times.

Edited March 19, 2014 by doctorclu

[twoquickcapri]

My family has had the internet starting way back in 1994 so I got my news from AtariHQ, Jagu-Dome, Go Atari, and Ataritimes. I remember when Atari Jaguar fans sent letters to EGM to get them to cover the last few games that have released for the Jag and EGM response to it which I think I reading about it on Jagu-Dome.