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

[Lost Dragon]

Panther i was avidly following at the time, hence kept all the UK Press clippings i've shared on here for benifit of readers in USA who might have missed the coverage.

 

The thinking seems to be it'd of needed a lot more Ram on-board to live upto it's potential and i'd of sooo loved to have seen Minter do THAT Elite-style Space Epic he had planned (The Tech Demo's he did being test routines for sections of said planned game), rather than better than ST versions of things like SOTB+Pitfighter.

 

I'd love someone to ask or tweet Minter to find out just why he never decided to just move said space epic onto Jaguar, maybe chance to do Tempest remake was far more closer to his heart?.

 

If nothing else Panther MIGHT have given Atari time to sure up it's inner workings and let the market settle down and then decide if it was worth releasing the Jaguar, or simply developing a real Playstation beater to go up again'st the N64 and rumoured 3DO M2.

 

But again, this is pure Alt.history stuff. :-)

[high voltage]

Poor Daryl Still he was a Atari hero to the bitter end, I even read a readers letter from him in Sega Power.

[+save2600]

Reading through the last several posts, reminds me if only Sony and Nintendo would have played nicer during the SNES CD negotiations. History could have been very, very different for the Jaguar, Atari and console gaming in general.

 

Perhaps the greatest "foresight" Atari ever had with anything (especially toward the end), was knowing they'd finally been beat and exited stage left.

[Bill Loguidice]

Panther i was avidly following at the time, hence kept all the UK Press clippings i've shared on here for benifit of readers in USA who might have missed the coverage.

 

The thinking seems to be it'd of needed a lot more Ram on-board to live upto it's potential and i'd of sooo loved to have seen Minter do THAT Elite-style Space Epic he had planned (The Tech Demo's he did being test routines for sections of said planned game), rather than better than ST versions of things like SOTB+Pitfighter.

 

I'd love someone to ask or tweet Minter to find out just why he never decided to just move said space epic onto Jaguar, maybe chance to do Tempest remake was far more closer to his heart?.

 

If nothing else Panther MIGHT have given Atari time to sure up it's inner workings and let the market settle down and then decide if it was worth releasing the Jaguar, or simply developing a real Playstation beater to go up again'st the N64 and rumoured 3DO M2.

 

But again, this is pure Alt.history stuff. :-)

 

In regards to the Minter thing, I have to wonder aloud if even under the most ideal conditions he would have created such a game. I'm an admirer of Minters, but I don't think he's ever attempted what we would consider an epic game. His specialty throughout his career, and continuing to this day, has been creating quick to play diversions, often accompanied by trippy effects. In other words, I see Minter designing more of a Star Raiders 2K than an Elite 2K.

 

I remember the tech demos and some of the pre-release hype for the M2. While that technology made its way into kiosks and arcade machines, among other things, I always wanted to see what a 3DO 2 would have looked like in the home market. It's a shame it wasn't released despite being ready to go, although I guess it would have ultimately been caught between generations again.

[Chilly Willy]

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.

Uh, no I wasn't. The ram carts for the Saturn are most definitely NOT like the ram expansion for the N64. They're fairly slow, even compared to the low ram bank of ram in the Saturn, 16 bit, and Sega EXPLICITLY states not to put any code into the ram cart - it's DATA ONLY. In which case, other than being able to load the ram with data from the CD, it's exactly like the Jaguar cart in that you can't run code from the Jaguar cart either. Actually, the Jaguar cart is faster as they used a 32 bit bus rather than the 16 bit bus for the Saturn ram cart.

 

Granted, being able to load the ram cart from CD gives it a major advantage in terms of cost - making a rom cart for the Jag big enough to hold all the data you could load from CD would cost a LOT... like those old NeoGeo carts. The point was, if a company was willing to spend the money on a big enough cart, the Jaguar could be at least as good for those big 2D fighters as the PS1 or Saturn, and better in some ways (especially compared to the PS1 were there was no ram cart available). This isn't about CPU speed or GPU power - the games in question ran on lower power processors, and the Jaguar had more than enough graphically speed to handle these 2D games in question.

 

There's no doubt the Jaguar wasn't close to the PS1 or Saturn on 3D. I think even the 3DO was faster for 3D. The argument for 3D is that some games could have been done on the Jaguar and still been playable. Many wouldn't. We just never saw any on the Jaguar because it was dead by the time those games were being worked on.

 

And yes, the Jaguar CD added little beyond a larger storage device, and CD quality audio. It doesn't add any memory, but it doesn't take all that much ram from the Jaguar. At worst, you lose maybe a dozen or two KB for the JagCD BIOS and code needed to read a Jaguar CD.

[Lost Dragon]

Just out of interest where did the claims of Magic Carpet on Jaguar CD come from? (which magazines?).

 

I've never personally seen anyone from Bullfrog make the claims, Peter Molneux was asked by Gamesmaster Mag.for his opinion of the Jaguar (power, but limited Ram would cause headaches for developers), he+team talk a lot about Magic Carpet in Edge Jan'94 (Funtime at Bullfrog) lot of talk on planned 3DO version and how it'd use the (planned) High-Quality, LCD 3D Glasses (another lost peripheral) this at a time when game was using a 3rd person viewpoint, same screens cropped up in Amiga Press with talk of plain polygon A1200 version, texture-mapped CD32 version.

 

 

Game was said to be 60% complete on PC at this stage.

 

 

But i just wonder if it was ever 'officially' annouced or did it just pop up on another of Atari's 'planned release' schedules?.

 

:-) And yes, i have done some research of my own, before anyone asks....

[Lost Dragon]

@Bill.I'm with you on the 3DO M2.D2 alone looked fantastic.I know they considered an N64 port after the plug was pulled on M2 but N64 market was considered too small and thus game totally re-written for the DC, but i just loved the whole look of the setting etc.

 

 

As for Minter? it's a tough one for myself, AMC, Llamatron, Tempest 200 etc and you'd have to drag me away kicking and screaming, but his Defender updates..oh boy....Unity however i'd of loved to have seen finished on G.C.

 

Maybe the 'best' solution would of been having Minter partner up with another team to do said space epic? maybe Minter really did have it in him to do at least one epic game, for better or for worse i'd have liked to have seen Jeff's ideas go further than just tech demo's on a doomed platform.Plus sadly doubt it'd been a system seller any more than his vision of a Jaguar version of Virus, all Gourauding shading and texture maps, would of been.

 

But in this industry? i'll always admire developers with vision.

[Major Havoc 2049]

 

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.

 

 

Being an Atari fan myself and owning an ST and Lynx at the time, I was under no illusion that Atari was onto something big with the Jaguar and was returning to the glory days of the late 70's and early 80's. I knew Atari had an uphill battle with the development community, consumers and retailers, but being an Atari fan, I was hoping for the best and figured I would enjoy what I could with the Jaguar. The Lynx wasn't #1 at retail, but it still had some amazing games. I owned a Jaguar and Saturn that console gen and they both brought me many hours of gaming joy and I don't regret buying the consoles.

 

Lynx Checkered Flag and Blue Lightning were amazing games and the Jaguar sequels were indeed a let down. Checkered Flag is complete garbage because of the horrible control, but Blue Lightning wasn't that bad on the Jag. Blue Lightning is leagues better than the ST port of Afterburner. Blue Lighting was serviceable for the time and fun for what it was. I remember some gaming magazines like Game Player's and Diehard Gamefan giving Blue Lightning some average scores back in the day.

 

 

Edit:

@ Bill and Lost Dragon - I don't see Minter doing a full on epic space opera space combat sim either. I could see something like Star Raiders 2000, but not much beyond that. It just isn't his style.

 

@ Lost Dragon - I think Magic Carpet came out in one of those fanciful Atari "planned releases and signed developers" list that Atari put out during the lifetime of the Jag. I remember seeing it on Christian Svensson's great Atari Jaguar web site back in the day and the last place I saw it in print was in the Jaguar's Edge magazine.

Edited January 26, 2015 by Major Havoc 2049

[Lost Dragon]

Looking back as a 'consumer', my harware path was odd at times.Started out with a Sinclair ZX81, but had no interest in the ZX Spectrum Range, prefering the 800XL and C64 instead.Loved vmy Mega Drive and Game Gear, but after being 'burnt' by MCD avoided 32X until i got in Retro Gaming years later,same applied with the Saturn but still bought a Dreamcast on day 1.

 

With the Jaguar, even with Atari's 'standing' at the time, it simply had THE Aliens game i'd always wanted, so how could i not purchase it? :-)

 

Thing is though as i saw the likes of C.Flag II, Kasumi Ninja etc simply being pushed out, just to get titles on the shelf, i knew it'd take a mountain of quality releases to get me to buy the CD Add-ON, espically when i was busy reading up on Playstation at the time.Had the VR system seen the light of day though? i honestly think i would of bought that, even if all it had was Missile Command, as there'd of been nothing else like it on the market.

[Lost Dragon]

Blue Lightning on Jag CD though, a most curious one..i was 'in contact' with chap who did the FMV sequences with it, along with misc other coding duties on other Jag games, back in Mid'2014, but he, like a good few others simply said he'd be happy to answer any questions, so sent a few, never heard a peep out of after,Chased up a few times, still nothing so just gave up.

 

ATD themselves never seemed to want to chat about it.The Lost Games part of me would love to know the 'reality' of those ECTS shots though :-)

 

The Saturn was the 1 console i so wish i'd not been so blinkered by the press of the day.Having bought a used machine an horde of games when i got into Retro, i was amazed at the reality of what the machine could do, compared to what i'd been lead to believe.

 

A welcome wake up call and start of me buying less and less gaming magazines.

[Bill Loguidice]

In regards to the

 

The Saturn was the 1 console i so wish i'd not been so blinkered by the press of the day.Having bought a used machine an horde of games when i got into Retro, i was amazed at the reality of what the machine could do, compared to what i'd been lead to believe.

 

 

The Saturn was and is a great machine, but it simply wasn't as good at 3D as the PlayStation was. For better or worse, being good at 3D was the key to success in the market once the PlayStation launched. It's just unfortunate that the manufacturers of consoles like the Jaguar decided to try and fight on the 3D front when there was no way their machine was going to succeed in doing so.

[Lost Dragon]

@Major Havoc 2049:Ahhh that'd make sense.If the Magic Carpet claim came from the same Edge/Atari promo.supplement that had the 'they are fake and Edge (and others) knew it Tomb Raider and Swagman screens and claims, then mystery solved.

As i said in actual main feature with Bullfrog themselves in Edge, the only 'real' Lost version talked about was the 3DO version and that even went into how it'd use LCD glasses the machine never had, so if there were ever any real grounds to a possible Jaguar version, i'm sure it'd been mentioned :-)

Re The Saturn/my exp.I was so blinkered by press into beliving it was SO poor compared to PS1 in key areas, that when i tried Sega Rally, VF2 (even though both not my type of games), Panzer Dragoon 1+2, Gun Griffon, Mass Destruction, Amok, The Horde etc, it was a far more 'capable' machine than i was expecting, if that makes sense?.

[NeoGeoNinja]

Re The Saturn/my exp.I was so blinkered by press into beliving it was SO poor compared to PS1 in key areas, that when i tried Sega Rally, VF2 (even though both not my type of games), Panzer Dragoon 1+2, Gun Griffon, Mass Destruction, Amok, The Horde etc, it was a far more 'capable' machine than i was expecting, if that makes sense?.

 

Sans 'The Horde', those are some of the best titles om the Saturn. So yeah... it makes sense

 

The Saturn fell down on 3D ports usually. If you play any of the Psygnosis titles (for example) they're not as good as their PSX lead plat brethren...

[sh3-rg]

And yes, the Jaguar CD added little beyond a larger storage device, and CD quality audio. It doesn't add any memory, but it doesn't take all that much ram from the Jaguar. At worst, you lose maybe a dozen or two KB for the JagCD BIOS and code needed to read a Jaguar CD.

 

I think his point there was you lost the 1/2/4/whatever Mb of ROM space from the cart once you go CD, rather than losing any RAM, making it less versatile. Yes, you're freed of wasting resources on sequenced samples for music when you have all that CD storage to stream from, but then your sfx are going to be burning RAM rather than ROM space, so you might just end up making different compromises instead of being freed of them as might have been hoped for with an expensive add-on.

[+CyranoJ]

If they'd put 4mb of RAM in the CD unit to make up for the lost storage on the cart....

 

If.. if.. if.. if..

 

They didn't.

Edited January 27, 2015 by CyranoJ

[+save2600]

If they'd put 4mb of RAM in the CD unit to make up for the lost storage on the cart....

 

Are the proper address lines not available through the cartridge port to design/build something like the Saturn or PC Engine Arcade cards?

[Major Havoc 2049]

 

@Major Havoc 2049:Ahhh that'd make sense.If the Magic Carpet claim came from the same Edge/Atari promo.supplement that had the 'they are fake and Edge (and others) knew it Tomb Raider and Swagman screens and claims, then mystery solved.

 

 

Not the UK Edge video game web site/magazine. In the US, after Atari won the Sega lawsuit and it looked like Atari was really going to make a push with the Jaguar and even got the Jaguar into retail giant Wal-Mart and they had a strong showing at E3, there was a dedicated Atari Jaguar magazine announced. The name of the magazine was The Jaguar's Edge and it was going to be a bi-monthly magazine. Shortly after the 1995 E3, they released a preview issue. Rayman was the main cover story. In the magazine they preview all the games Atari showed at the 1995 E3, along with the Jaguar VR and list all the other games that Atari announced for the Jaguar and Jaguar CD. It was all legit and not a fanboy wish list. Magic Carpet had already been released in 1994 on the PC and Bullfrog's Syndicate and Theme Park had already appeared on the Jag, so it seemed legit and in the realm of possibility that it could show up on the Jag CD.

 

Did Core ever show anything for the Jaguar?

Edited January 27, 2015 by Major Havoc 2049

[Chilly Willy]

I think his point there was you lost the 1/2/4/whatever Mb of ROM space from the cart once you go CD, rather than losing any RAM, making it less versatile. Yes, you're freed of wasting resources on sequenced samples for music when you have all that CD storage to stream from, but then your sfx are going to be burning RAM rather than ROM space, so you might just end up making different compromises instead of being freed of them as might have been hoped for with an expensive add-on.

Ah, yes. I see that. And that's very true. It's even more true on the CD32X - the CD gives you 600+ MB of storage, but the 32X is reduced to just the basic 256KB of SDRAM since the cart is gone. At least the Jag had 2MB.

 

 

 

Are the proper address lines not available through the cartridge port to design/build something like the Saturn or PC Engine Arcade cards?

Yes, they COULD have put more ram in with the CD, but I guess they thought 1) it would be too expensive, and 2) the 2MB in the Jaguar was plenty for the time (not thinking ahead).

[JagChris]

 

Not the UK Edge video game web site/magazine. In the US, after Atari won the Sega lawsuit and it looked like Atari was really going to make a push with the Jaguar and even got the Jaguar into retail giant Wal-Mart and they had a strong showing at E3, there was a dedicated Atari Jaguar magazine announced. The name of the magazine was The Jaguar's Edge and it was going to be a bi-monthly magazine. Shortly after the 1995 E3, they released a preview issue. Rayman was the main cover story. In the magazine they preview all the games Atari showed at the 1995 E3, along with the Jaguar VR and list all the other games that Atari announced for the Jaguar and Jaguar CD. It was all legit and not a fanboy wish list. Magic Carpet had already been released in 1994 on the PC and Bullfrog's Syndicate and Theme Park had already appeared on the Jag, so it seemed legit and in the realm of possibility that it could show up on the Jag CD.

 

Did Core ever show anything for the Jaguar?

 

SoulStar

[Zerosquare]

it's exactly like the Jaguar cart in that you can't run code from the Jaguar cart either.

You sure can.

[Lost Dragon]

@NeoGeoNinja.There was an interview with Tantalus Entertainment years back, where they talked of handling the PS1 conversions.Said conversions done on their Graphics development system called 'The Duck'.The early PS1 conversions like Wipeout were done on 'Duck 1', but the system was improved over time as were the conversions and things like Wipeout 2097 and Manx TT were done on 'Duck 3'.

Wipeout 2097 was in their words a straight port, they got around the issue the Saturn had of handling the transparencies of the PS1 version by creating a very fine 'mesh' graphical effect and shrinking it down, so you kept the look of the effect as it were, but it did'nt look stupid.

[Lost Dragon]

@Major Havoc 2049:Ahhh, never heard of The Jaguar's Edge, but then being UK based... :-)

 

I'd be interested to know more about it though, as here in UK, EDGE was/still is seen as 'The Industry Bible' in it's eyes a 'Respected' publication etc etc, i guess this was why Atari approached them and funded the Jaguar Supplement.Thing with it though was that even though it was done via a 'respected' magazine, they still used shots they knew were 'fake' to annouce games never intended for the Jaguar. (Edge later airbrushed up Xbox D.O.A 3 screens in a preview, but that's a different matter).

 

Ocean published the Jaguar conversions of Syndicate and Theme Park did they not? and given how 'Apeshit' and Lobo were canned, Waterworld just seems to have been discussed, it's doubtful they'd of done the Magic Carpet conversion.

 

Did the USA mag say who was planning to convert Magic Carpet to Jaguar?.

[Lost Dragon]

@Chilly Willy:Mentioned it earlier, but even before Jaguar had really hit, some KEY UK coders like Peter Molyneux (Bullfrog) were raising concerns over the Jaguars 2MB Ram, in terms of causing headaches for people wishing to convert PC games to it.But as you say had they put any more in, it'd of increased price of hardware even more.

 

Seem to recal Mark Cerny saying it was adding more Ram to 3DO that really hiked the price up, in an interview back along.

[Lost Dragon]

Bit of a WOAH day..just made contact (and yes interview questions sent) to a KEY coder behind a LOST JAGUAR game i sooo badly wanted.

 

Far too early to say what will come of it or how good his memory is and i've been 'here' before, contact made, questions sent, nothing ever heard again, but pray for me brothers here :-)...

 

 

This might just be another truth behind Tomb Raider Screens/Proof PS1 Quake was done type research moment.....

[Lost Dragon]

Anywho, back to Core:

 

From C+VG's 'More From Core' Tekno Special, Core Design's PR Manager Susie Hamilton: 'We've taken the MCD as far as we can, but we can use the experience gained from working extensively on the MCD and put it into practice on the 32X and similarly with the Saturn. (she then goes on about the 1st 3 32X releases:Soulstar, Thunderhawk and BC Racers and how they'd take critiscms raised over MCD Thunderhawk-people loved the look, but missions a bit samey) and they were taking this into account with the 32X version.

 

So again here, i'm wondering where claims of Thunderhawk on Jaguar sprang from?.