Finally i have the proof behind those Jaguar CD screenshots.....

[+remowilliams]

Also the point of the Jag being every bit as good as PS1 and Saturn if devs had been given enough time...

 

I shouldn't have had to buy a PS4, the Jag has had enough time to get every bit as good by this point.

[sh3-rg]

 

I shouldn't have had to buy a PS4, the Jag has had enough time to get every bit as good by this point.

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[CrazyChris]

I thought this was canceled?

 

For sure!

 

BTW: How's that RPG coming along? We gonna see a release anytime soon - or at all?

 

Latest news, or am I looking in the wrong place?

 

http://atariowlproject.blogspot.com

 

I thought this was canceled?

[Lost Dragon]

@JAGUAR :The quotes from Interplay and Argonaught on the 3DO's 2D abilites are up on this forum, i put them upmyself.As for the Jaguar, i think Jez San, talking to EDGE Sept'98 said it best:

'Some companies like to hang back and wait for a machine to be successsful before they develop on it, but we (Argonaught) don't tend to go down any dead ends.We did'nt do any Jaguar games.You have to make the right bets'.

Also, elsewhere there's been all this talk of :If only...Atari had more units of hardware avaiable at launch, things would of been very different, plus claims the ST was still going strong when Jaguar launched..utter fiddlesticks...David Braben talking to EDGE Feb'94 talked of advance orders for ST Elite II being 'tens of thousands, not hundreds' and he'd see how it sold on the ST and if it was rubbish (sales wise) he'd probably not bother with ST in the future....hardly a sign of developer confidence in the ST even at start of '94.

[Lost Dragon]

As for the Jag CD not being given time to be pushed, cast your eyes over screenshots from ATD's Blue Lightning on Jag CD shown at the 1994 ECTS, nice textured polygons, reports of decent scaling etc..then compare it to game we got..or read ATD talking about developing Battlemorph and what Atari wanted from the game (ie to compete with PS1 and Saturn games after seeing 3DO Shockwave) or Imagitec talking about changes Atari wanted made to Freelancer on Jag CD and you'll hear the people who worked with the hardware saying it could'nt compete.

 

As for how Jaguar versions of certain games might have compared, i guess a comparison of sorts might be something like Elite's Powerslide:1 version running on the SNES with a SFX Chip, the other running on PC with full textured-mapped graphics.The PC version simply eclipsed SNES version to point of showing that whilst it was 'do-able' a lot was 'lost' running on less powerful hardware.

[+madman]

Those large 2D fighters would have worked fine on the Jag... if they made them as larger bank switched carts like the NeoGeo. They could have made huge bank switched carts for the Jaguar easily... and more expensive, of course. That was the primary issue with 2D fighters on the PS1 and Saturn - not enough ram for holding all the tiles. Some Saturn fighters off-loaded the extra tiles to a rom cart. Those would have done well on the Jaguar on a large cart. It's one area a cart has the edge over CDs.

You're confusing the concept of system RAM and ROM cartridges. The RAM expansion cart for the Saturn is like the Expansion Pak for the N64, it gave the system additional RAM. Making a larger cart on the Jaguar is only increasing the amount of data stored on the cart, not the amount of RAM available for the Jag. Very different concepts.

[Bill Loguidice]

 

90% of game developers in 1995 and 1996 were a bunch of money grubbing sellouts who were brown nosing the playstation and Saturn at any chance cus they were all foaming at the mouth at how much money they were going to make selling ps and Saturn games cus the hype about ps and Saturn in 1995 was crazy high (and they all knew a million each saturns and ps1s would be sold in no time)!

 

All devs gave up on Jaguar and 3do because not many systems sold, nothing to do with the performance of the machines, everything to do with the fact that 3do and Atari didn't have near enough money to market their systems like crazy like sony and sega did with ps1 and Saturn. marketing is all that matters. the fact of the matter is Jaguar 3do ps1 and Saturn are all very similar in power in both 2d and 3d... the n64 was a noticeable step up in 3d from these machines...

 

I will give a real world comparison. Im a good looking guy and also very nice, but im poor. I dated a girl who was hot and rich. she started judging me the 2nd date based on the fact I wasn't rich like her. Nothing to do with my looks or personality, but purely bullshit (how much money I have). Its the EXACT same thing with the systems... Jag and 3do were judged based on how COOL They were (not very cool, because you didn't see jag and 3do commercials, advertisements, every single day, in your face everywhere like Saturn and especially Playstation.) That's how the world works, money and bullshit runs the world. Truth and reality doesn't mean much really. our world revolves around marketing, bs, lies, etc. its because of the money thing.... So basically not enough people were brainwashed into drinking the jaguar and 3do kool aid cus Atari and 3do didn't have enough money to brainwash enough people. im telling you, the Jag with cd attachment was super capable of amazing stuff. Remember, Jag cd came out in September 95, Atari cancelled all games in January 96. that is FOUR MONTHS of life the Jag cd had, not near enough time to see what it could do. barely scratched first generation jag cd games...

 

It's revisionist history to say that anyone expected the PlayStation to perform the way it did. To focus specifically on North America, Sony executed flawlessly, both gambling correctly on the right type of hardware (3D-centric) and having a brilliant batch of launch titles. Sega on the other hand flubbed the launch of the Saturn, pricing it too high and releasing a small number of underwhelming and buggy launch titles, not to mention creating something of a mess of a hardware architecture.

 

There was simply no excuse for the likes of 3DO (in the form of its partners), Atari, and Sega to so poorly execute on the launch of their systems. It had nothing to do with lack of advertising or lack of retail presence or any similar areas. All of that was actually fine. It was everything else, from a combination of overpriced hardware, poor game selections when the existing 16-bit systems were at the height of their powers, and the inability to get a consistent stream of top quality games from the best developers/publishers. There were easily a couple of years of "free time" where a sustainable market presence could have been established, but it wasn't. Sony merely took the opening that was provided to them and delivered.

 

As for not being able to see what could be done with the Jaguar CD, as was previously discussed, that was another failed execution, i.e., an add-on that should have never seen the light of day. If the Sega CD had trouble gaining tracking on a base console with many tens of millions of owners, how could it possibly gain traction on a Jaguar console that didn't even break 100,000 units of sales. The CD add-on was the epitome of a desperate and foolish Atari who was directly responsible for why the Jaguar almost immediately tanked. There's no other way to sugar coat it and no "what if's" where the CD add-on made sense.

 

Finally, you really need to look at the entire architecture of these systems and how the pieces inter-relate to say whether something can hold its own or is superior to something else. While it's true that the Nintendo 64 was theoretically superior in some ways to what the PS1 could produce, the reality was there were very practical reasons why we rarely saw it, and why the PS1 ended up producing some of the amazing titles it did later in its life.

 

Anyway, there's no brainwashing going on. There never was. Things happened the way they did for legitimate reasons/failings and there was absolutely no reason to "game" the system to make it happen.

 

By the way, the "money grubbing developers" thing you mentioned about lack of support for the Jaguar is bandied about about why the Wii U has minimal third party support. As if developers are in the business of being fanboys of a platform rather than in the business of making money and feeding their families. If a platform is viable, they'll support it to make money, period.

Edited January 26, 2015 by Bill Loguidice

[+madman]

 

Jag CD could do NOTHING, no matter if devs had 4 months or 4 years to spend on it. It's not like the Mega-CD, which considerably beefed up the Mega Drive's performance. The Jag CD basically just allowed using CDs as medium. Doesn't change a thing beside allowing bigger games in theory, and more likely FMV and CD music.

Exactly! It seems some people are under the impression there was additional RAM or processing power that the Jag CD added that developers didn't have time to fully utilize. The Jag CD only added the ability to load data from a CD instead of a cart. That's all.

[Goochman]

Exactly! It seems some people are under the impression there was additional RAM or processing power that the Jag CD added that developers didn't have time to fully utilize. The Jag CD only added the ability to load data from a CD instead of a cart. That's all.

 

You missed one big point - the JagCD not only added the ability to load games from CDROM it also took memory away from the Jag so it actually crippled the system even more.............

[Lost Dragon]

@JAGUAR:there is enough 'evidence' to show what the CD offered Jaguar games over Cart versions, look at Hoverstrike on CD compared to cart, Battlemorph compared to Cybermorph etc and you can see results of CD storage and improvements in coding on the Jaguar, but...your not seeing this 'massive' increase in performance as some 'writers' have claimed, Hoverstrike saw a frame rate increase, yes, but only by around 3-5 FPS according to the coder, so any claims the engine could of pulled off a decent conversion of Need For Speed from 3DO or Daytona USA from even the Saturn version (claims thankfully not made on here) are cloud cuckoo stuff.

 

As a Jaguar owner, i badly wanted Freelancer on Jaguar CD, still shots looked superb, thing is, even after developers been interviewed in RG, i'm still no further forward knowing if these screens were in fact real or like Core's Tommb Raider screens, just concept/Mock up shots.I've never seen any screens since, let alone video of game running...

[Lost Dragon]

I'll re-post this for the benifit of Jaguar, save him searching:

 

A.T.D (Fred Gill): 'ATARI textured one of it's own internal games, and it ran about 5-6 fps, they were'nt bothered about gameplay, the game just had to be fully textured so that it could compete with the other emerging technologies.It was a real shame.We steered away from that battle thank god, and it worked really well for us.We were able to keep the frame rate up to 15-20 fps, which considering the amount of gameplay going on in Battlemorph, was quite impressive'.

 

Chris Gibbs talking working on Battlemorph for the Jaguar CD, it soon became totally apparent the the technology was being eclipsed, but as they were conteractually compelled to compete their work with the Jaguar CD, they missed the 1st wave of PS1 and Saturn development.

 

So there you go, just 1 developer, but insights into Atari's thinking along with those working on the hardware itself.

[saboteur]

By the way, the "money grubbing developers" thing you mentioned about lack of support for the Jaguar is bandied about about why the Wii U has minimal third party support. As if developers are in the business of being fanboys of a platform rather than in the business of making money and feeding their families. If a platform is viable, they'll support it to make money, period.

 

I agree with this up to a point, but you also need to consider how easy it is to develop for a target platform, e.g what software tools there are, what hoops do you have to jump through to get those tools and how much you have to pay to get your hands on those tools.

 

Another thing to consider is how portable code is between platforms, and will I have to employ another team of people to convert my game to another platform.

[Bill Loguidice]

@JAGUAR:there is enough 'evidence' to show what the CD offered Jaguar games over Cart versions, look at Hoverstrike on CD compared to cart, Battlemorph compared to Cybermorph etc and you can see results of CD storage and improvements in coding on the Jaguar, but...your not seeing this 'massive' increase in performance as some 'writers' have claimed, Hoverstrike saw a frame rate increase, yes, but only by around 3-5 FPS according to the coder, so any claims the engine could of pulled off a decent conversion of Need For Speed from 3DO or Daytona USA from even the Saturn version (claims thankfully not made on here) are cloud cuckoo stuff.

 

 

 

I think your statement "improvements in coding" is the key. Those were effectively 1.5 versions of the original games. The fact that no wholly original games really impressed on the Jaguar CD is disappointing and probably says everything about what could ultimately be done with it (the same as what was on cartridge, albeit with more available "ROM" space and some hit to system memory).

[Bill Loguidice]

 

I agree with this up to a point, but you also need to consider how easy it is to develop for a target platform, e.g what software tools there are, what hoops do you have to jump through to get those tools and how much you have to pay to get your hands on those tools.

 

Another thing to consider is how portable code is between platforms, and will I have to employ another team of people to convert my game to another platform.

 

Absolutely, but we also can look at platforms that have supposedly been notoriously difficult to program for, like the PlayStation 2, and see the immense volume of games created for it to know that if there is a sufficient user base, developers and publishers will absolutely find a way regardless of the challenges. I suppose we're talking about a tipping point where, regardless of difficulty, a platform will see support unless there are extenuating circumstances like exclusivity agreements that are absolutely prohibitive.

[108 Stars]

For the WiiU, the issue is: PS4 and XBO ports are just not feasible, same as with PS3 and 360 on Wii. You can not just tweak the code a little and optimize and have a WiiU version of a PS4 game; with the hardware being a generation behind it needs being built from the ground up.

 

The biggest chance for the WiiU lay in the longevity of PS3, 360 and Vita; those systems are comparable on a technical level, so ports from one system to the other make a lot of sense. But as it turned out, even with the relatively little effort needed to put other last gen games on WiiU, it still doesn't turn a profit for publishers. That's a HUGE issue, if porting games from systems with similar specs is still not worth it. But it is not really new; to a degree, the Wii and DS suffered from low sales for 3rd party games as well. On both systems you will find publishers going on record saying sales were below expectations. Nintendo has created a fanbase that buys Nintendo systems almost exclusively for Nintendo games. Which means their own games sell great, but their systems become unattractive for 3rd parties, and the licensing fees from 3rd parties is where the big money comes from. The 3DS can still manage because of the user base, even if a relatively low percentage of owners buys a 3rd party game, it is still worth it. On WiiU it is pointless.

 

 

...but how did we eben get on that topic from the question if TR was possible on Jag or not? XD

[Lost Dragon]

Using the MD/MCD comparison just for a moment, from personal exp.having paid £270 for a MCD day 1 back in the day...

 

 

One of the 1st games i bought for it was Jaguar XJ220, nice intro, CD music and it used the extra hardware for sprite scaling of roadside objects i guess, but it was'nt a 'showcase' game in the regard that it was to myself anything more than an improved MD/Amiga racer.

 

 

Things like:like Batman Returns (3D sections), Terminator:S.E (far, far superior to the cart version i'd bought on day 1 for £40), let alone Thunderhawk (worlds apart from the ST version i'd played years before) really showed what could be done with the potential of the add-on.

 

Aside from Battlemorph, i'm struggling to think of an exclusive, not enhanced over cart version, of a Jaguar game that showcased to potential buyers what advantages the Jag CD had.As a consumer, i could'nt get behind it, in terms of spending even more money on the system, in hope things like Freelancer would appear let alone live upto the potential.

[Lost Dragon]

Basically, as an existing Jaguar owner, i could'nt take the Jag CD 'seriousily'.The VLM was fantastic, but without being harsh, it was a lovely gimmick, as a gamer, i wanted the games.

 

Anywho, back on topic-reviews at the time here in UK seemed to suggest 3DO AITD ran slower than the 386 PC version, longer load times etc.Was this the case? if so..poor coding or hardware limitations?.Plus, as i've said before, it looked like it appeared too late as AITD II had arrived on PS1, thus making the 3DO seem outdated in terms of software it was providing-newer games appearing on PS1, 3DO just finally reciving the games it should have from the start.

[Major Havoc 2049]

Some of the best Jaguar games were released on CD. Let's face it, the Jaguar has like 10-15 good to great games and maybe a few others here and there that certain individuals might find enjoyable, but most other people would consider sub-par games. So with that being said, Battlemorph, Iron Soldier 2 and Hover Strike: Unconquered Lands are some of the best games on the Jaguar and in my personal Top 10 Jaguar games. Without the Jaguar CD, the already anemic Jaguar line-up would be even more pathetic. I also thought that back in 1995, with Blue Lightning, Vid Grid, Myst demo, the VLM and the possibility of future games, it was a good deal at $150 and a must buy for a serious Jaguar gamer at the time. Ya, we ended up not getting Creature Shock, Black Ice/White Noise, Commander Blood, Magic Carpet, Varuna's Forces, Thea Realm Fighters, AVP CD, etc., but we didn't know it at the time that those games weren't going to come out. Atari's showing at E3 and the release of the Jaguar CD in 1995 gave the appearance at least that Atari was going to stay in the game for another year or two.

Edited January 26, 2015 by Major Havoc 2049

[Bill Loguidice]

Some of the best Jaguar games were released on CD. Let's face it, the Jaguar has like 10-15 good to great games and maybe a few others here and there that certain individuals might find enjoyable, but most other people would consider sub-par games. So with that being said, Battlemorph, Iron Soldier 2 and Hover Strike: Unconquered Lands are some of the best games on the Jaguar and in my personal Top 10 Jaguar games. Without the Jaguar CD, the already anemic Jaguar line-up would be even more pathetic. I also thought that back in 1995, with Blue Lightning, Vid Grid, Myst demo, the VLM and the possibility of future games, it was a good deal and a must buy for a serious Jaguar gamer at the time. Ya, we ended up not getting Creature Shock, Black Ice/White Noise, Commander Blood, Magic Carpet, Varuna's Forces, Thea Realm Fighters, AVP CD, etc., but we didn't know it at the time that those games weren't going to come out. Atari's showing at E3 and the release of the Jaguar CD in 1995 gave the appearance at least that Atari was going to stay in the game for another year or two.

 

Blue Lightning was so bad, though, which I always thought a missed opportunity and contributed to the second of two bad first launch impressions for the Jaguar (the first being the console launch). In any case, knowing what we know, they should have shelved the CD unit and just released more cartridges. Even if it was half of what became the CD library released instead on cartridge, it might have proven a better situation. They could then do CD on the Jaguar 2 (not that there's any scenario they would have gotten there).

 

I think a better question is why they didn't make the Jaguar a CD console in the first place. Even prior to the Jaguar's release, it wouldn't have been a stretch to forgo cartridges and just go straight to CD. That speaks somewhat at least to the lack of vision for the product, which again is in stark contrast to the amazing vision Sony had with the PS1.

[Lost Dragon]

For myself Major Havoc, having been an Atari:2600, 600XL, 800XL, 520STFM, and Lynx Mk I and Mk II owner and being in UK and having seen what happened to the STE, then Falcon, plus watching the entire Panther and XEGS saga's unfold...

I was very wary of Atari by the time i bought my Jaguar.There'd been too many promises, false advertising/promo.shots/magazine claims of high profile games headed to Atari systems like the XEGS/Lynx/7800 etc.I'd seen UK/European developers, let alone USA based ones switch to Commodore harware alone, let alone the PC or consoles and there was no sign of Atari convincing any of them to return in force.

Creature Shock was never any great loss, ditto Demolition Man etc, but it did concern me to see Jaguar/CD 'updates' of what i viewed as 'flagship' games on Lynx (C.Flag and Blue Lightning) being so downright awful on Jaguar.

Atari seemed content just slapping the names on any old crap and that did'nt inspire confidence to put further money into the Jaguar system.

[Lost Dragon]

@Bill, i know i've posted this before, but it does highlight the concerns the industry itself had over Atari going for the cart+CD route with the Jaguar:

 

Psygnosis Ian Hetherington (M.D and devevelopment guru), talking about the Jaguar:

 

' It's either an over-priced and over-specced cartridge machine or an under-specced CD machine.If you're going to launch a CD machine, you must be committed to the format and make it CD-based from day 1.If Atari wanted to launch a cartridge machine then they should have looked at a pricepoint of £75..if they wanted to launch a CD machine then £250-£300 is fine, but it would have to offer a lot more than this. We've had the machine for about a year and we're not massively impressed, not impressed at all really.If you compare the Jaguar to virtually any of the emerging formats, then i think it would come off second best.

[Lost Dragon]

Also i think it's 'important' to bear in mind Atari's ORIGINAL plans:The Panther was originally intended as the cartridge based SNES/MD beater, as the UK mag scans i had put up on here will show, but as Atari UK themselves said, IF they'd released the Panther as planned, there'd only of been between 6-9 months before Jaguar would of been ready to launch, so they shelved the Panther, went with Jaguar, probably thinking the CD Drive would allow them to compete with the 3DO, as/when required.

 

Sony entering with the Playstation, really upset the proverbial Apple Cart.Sega panicked, went for the quicker option of adding extra hardware to existing Saturn specs, rather than going the single-chip solution, which would have meant entering the market later.

 

The 'playing field' had been radically altered from what it was assumed it would be:Jaguar, 3DO, CD-i and Sega's then platform known as The Giga Drive.The Playstation hardware simply eclipsed all those before it, due to Sony's vision of the future being 3D.

[Bill Loguidice]

@Bill, i know i've posted this before, but it does highlight the concerns the industry itself had over Atari going for the cart+CD route with the Jaguar:

 

Psygnosis Ian Hetherington (M.D and devevelopment guru), talking about the Jaguar:

 

' It's either an over-priced and over-specced cartridge machine or an under-specced CD machine.If you're going to launch a CD machine, you must be committed to the format and make it CD-based from day 1.If Atari wanted to launch a cartridge machine then they should have looked at a pricepoint of £75..if they wanted to launch a CD machine then £250-£300 is fine, but it would have to offer a lot more than this. We've had the machine for about a year and we're not massively impressed, not impressed at all really.If you compare the Jaguar to virtually any of the emerging formats, then i think it would come off second best.

 

Yep, that to me is a near perfect analysis, though I don't agree with pushing the Jaguar as a budget machine. With that said, what actually happened didn't work, so maybe that would have been a more successful strategy (ignoring the fact that it took too long for the game library to grow).

 

Honestly, at the time, not having a CD option didn't even register with me and, working in Electronics Boutique at the time, don't recall it registering with anyone else either. It was being sold side-by-side with the 3DO, which was incredibly intriguing, but was hampered by its insane launch price, but CD or not, it's not something we really thought about, even with the Sega CD having a relatively high profile. The Jaguar held so much pre-launch promise, but, as we know, the software never came and it seemed lame in comparison to, well, everything else as a result, particularly with the marketing angle of hammering home the 64-bit thing (and not backing up what would normally be a good tactic with software that clearly demonstrated that to the average person). I clearly remember the Jaguar being thought of as a joke by most customers even then, and selling very few units in our store.

 

So yeah, the more I think about the environment at the time, putting the CD add-on out was probably nothing more than a last ditch marketing attempt to make the Jaguar seem fresh, maybe sort of like a reboot from the bad taste not having much cartridge software in the first year left. I don't know. I certainly recall half-hearted "endorsements" from certain magazines saying that something along the lines of "now the Jaguar can at least compete with the CD systems on cut scenes, if nothing else, but it remains to be seen what else will be done with it" (severe paraphrasing). Even though the CD added nothing more than extra storage space (ignoring the hit on system memory), I suppose another advantage was that it could encourage smaller production runs of games since it was far less risky to press discs than do cartridges, which goes back to the earlier point about the CD add-on at least increasing the Jaguar's modest library. Still, it's obviously not something you release unless it's designed into the system from day one or you have an install base at least in the millions. It's arguable that releasing the CD add-on may have hurt sales of the console more than helped (arguably making it seem like if you didn't pay for both the console and the CD add-on, you'd be missing out, making the cost of entry higher and possibly more prohibitive for people).

[Bill Loguidice]

Also i think it's 'important' to bear in mind Atari's ORIGINAL plans:The Panther was originally intended as the cartridge based SNES/MD beater, as the UK mag scans i had put up on here will show, but as Atari UK themselves said, IF they'd released the Panther as planned, there'd only of been between 6-9 months before Jaguar would of been ready to launch, so they shelved the Panther, went with Jaguar, probably thinking the CD Drive would allow them to compete with the 3DO, as/when required.

 

While we know there really wasn't a market for more than two main systems in any market at that time (Genesis/Mega Drive and SNES in North America and Europe, and PC Engine and SNES in Japan), I've always been a proponent of Atari releasing the Panther. I think they would have been better able to support the Panther's technology with the resources that they had (certainly better than with the Jaguar's technology), and, if played right, would have been a nice bridge to something like a Jaguar 2 (CD unit with 3D capabilities). It also would have lessened the gap between Atari's last system, the 7800 (not counting the XEGS here), and the Jaguar, which, in retrospect, was too big of a gap, missing out on a whole generation of gamers (the Lynx notwithstanding). It's another "what if?" that might have at least made something of a difference in the company's fortunes. Of course, to be fair to Atari, the PlayStation's release was a harbinger that only companies with the deepest of pockets would be able to compete (as we've seen in the successive generations of consoles from Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft), so it's unclear how much more, if any time, even a modestly successful Atari could have bought for themselves.

[Lost Dragon]

:-) It'll be old ground, well tread again here, but i really did feel sorry for poor old Darryl Still here in UK, as Atari Uk's PR Manager at the time, he was putting everything into it, letters in C+VG, Ultimate Future Games, Edge etc and time and time again poor sod feel back on, ahh but we've not a CD Drive out yet, PS1 etc are CD based, just wait till Jaguar CD arrives then you'll see a level playing field and just what Jaguar is capable of.. (he was just going on info he was given).

This of course was candy to a baby for the UK press already taking huge delight in mocking games like Club Drive, Cresecent Galaxy, Raiden, Ruiner Pinball, Fever Pitch, Zool etc as not being what they expected on a '64-Bit system' let alone Edge with it's 4/10 AVP score, 3/10 Defender 2000 score etc.

It just made Atari seem ever more desperate and press had already ripped into it for looking like a loo seat, let alone fact Atari had showcased it originally without even any games for it.

Madness, just madness.