Crazyace Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 In my opinion, there was nothing inherently wrong with the jaguar hardware. ( Like anything there are always trade offs ) - but I think the only thing that may have made any difference would have been to make it a CD machine from day one. ( The Jag CD is barely more than an audio CD anyway - so the cost wouldn't compare to PC CD-roms at the time ). Even if that resulted in a higher price at launch it would still be cheaper than 3DO and much more capable than PC engine CD or Mega CD. The real advantage would then be that CD's are far cheaper and far less risky in inventory terms - so more publishers may have joined. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NeoGeoNinja Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 In my opinion, there was nothing inherently wrong with the jaguar hardware. ( Like anything there are always trade offs )... In my opinion, there is everything inherently wrong with this statement. (Like anything there is always blissful ignorance) Also, Mr Motorola 'Sixty-Eight' Kay just 'stopped' by to say... "Hi". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sh3-rg Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 I thought he said blitter. And though I didn't specifically say on the blitter that time in that particular sentence I do believe it should have been inferred. I gave you good advice in my last post, around 10 hours ago when I went to bed. I see you've been hard at it since then. You are now due a WoT. The general idea is this: We are all allowed an opinion. These can be formed through personal experience, by taking someone else's word for it or by a bit of both - take another's opinion and put it into some context based on your own experience. The problem arises when you repeat what you've read, or think you have read, and often end up talking gibberish because you do not have the background or understanding. You say that "the concepts are simple enough", well that's probably just the skill of the individual involved who made you feel comfortable when they wrote their words. You make demands of people to prove why x is wrong or y is true, but you don't judge yourself by the same criteria - you simply believe what you think you have read and hold it as unfaltering truth. You claim I spin and twist your words like a Fox News presenter, but what I'm attempting to do is to force you to unravel the sacred "truths" you believe in religously, not scientifically. Often what you attempt to reproduce is more akin to maketing waffle than anything provable or disprovable. Or more like another man's opinion based on his experience, not yours. You say CJ and co have a problem with Scatologic and imply a history here. There is none. When CJ came back to Jaguar stuff, they were not active, there was only Douglas still beating the same drum at his increasingly pointless JSII shrine. CJ was a member there for maybe all of a week before they did what came natural and convinced him it'd be a waste of time to even try. Hardly the first or last over the years. Anyway, the overlap was minimal, however their legacy was very much present, and not in a positive or productive way. What we were faced with when wishing to get into Jaguar stuff was the same wall of hate and fearmongering others had faced before, but the powers that be were not ready to cope with the measure of restitance and fightback that we offered. It was messy, but it was necessary. And this still bothers some of them to this day or we wouldn't be met with occasional meltdowns as yours the other week. What's increasingly apparent is that you have a touch of a face-slapping hard-on for Reboot and anyone who dares disagree with the truths of your indoctrination. You gave it away a year or more ago when you revealed that you stuck around here to keep an eye on myself and others - here to keep them in check - the JagChrisAssWatch programme. You just can't one day melt down and show your true colours as you did the other week then play it off that you're just this chill guy who hasn't really got time to deal with these crazies who just won't stop pestering him, they can't even be bothered explaining to him why he might be wrong and this is just a hobby anyway so whatever... it' clear as day that this stuff often consumes you and is a large part of your life. And in all that we seem to have a motivaton factor - a desire, possibly subconcious, to discount and discredit anything by anyone who deos not meet the unwritten criteria for friends of the establishment. Well guess what, there is no establishment, it's a figment of your imagination. People can choose to believe in whomever they like. They can go on blind faith alone, beleive that we're all doing it wrong and that there are rules and regulations for what we should and should not do, how we do it and why none of us can hold a candle to these guys who used to discuss development stuff in private forums and released and shared very little, bask in the glory of ~$fuckall releases to back it up, or choose to go ignore that and see things the way they really are. You are in no position to judge the technical competence of a current hobbiest developer, a past full-timer under Atari NDA and likewise anything they have produced in anything approaching a technical context. I forgive CJ for believing that your replies to these arguments appear coached as they are as inconsistent in their use of language and grammar as they are technical verbiage. This could be due to gaps in your knowledge and google doing its best to bandage the breach, or it could be a scrambling for content from a 3rd party. Either is believable. Neither is productive. Despite your desires, it appears that you are rapidly out of your depth when it comes to discussing anything Jaguar related beyond pushing the buttons to play the games. This is why people take issue with your spreading of the gospel. It's counter-productive and misleading. 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CyranoJ Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 In my opinion, there is everything inherently wrong with this statement. (Like anything there is always blissful ignorance) Also, Mr Motorola 'Sixty-Eight' Kay just 'stopped' by to say... "Hi". If you stop the 68k, you also stop all the great games like Tempest 2000, AvP, Rayman, Doom, Wolfenstein...... Hell, even some of the others like, oh, I don't know, Battlesphere would stop too.... Maybe we should all just play Surrounded(tm©patentOMGwow!) 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NeoGeoNinja Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 If you stop the 68k, you also stop all the great games like Tempest 2000, AvP, Rayman, Doom, Wolfenstein...... Hell, even some of the others like, oh, I don't know, Battlesphere would stop too.... Maybe we should all just play Surrounded(tm©patentOMGwow!) Precisely, the irony of the 68k restricting the Jaguar and contributing to most of the best titles in it's library... 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NeoGeoNinja Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 And in all that we seem to have a motivaton factor - a desire, possibly subconcious, to discount and discredit anything by anyone who deos not meet the unwritten criteria for friends of the establishment. Well guess what, there is no establishment, it's a figment of your imagination. People can choose to believe in whomever they like. They can go on blind faith alone, beleive that we're all doing it wrong and that there are rules and regulations for what we should and should not do, how we do it and why none of us can hold a candle to these guys who used to discuss development stuff in private forums and released and shared very little, bask in the glory of ~$fuckall releases to back it up, or choose to go ignore that and see things the way they really are. You are in no position to judge the technical competence of a current hobbiest developer, a past full-timer under Atari NDA and likewise anything they have produced in anything approaching a technical context. I'm not looking to get 'involved' in all this, but as it's a 'dirty washing in public' scenario (unavoidable), and from what I've read, this isn't so much about questioning the technical competencies of those involved in the development and programming of BattleSphere (still need to play it, tbh) but more so being critical of the driving persona's and personalities of those behind the title itself? This disagreement will never lie, as far as I can see/understand. Reboot take issue with the people behind BattleSphere on a personal/professional level (personalities, motivations, ego's etc) and, on behalf of the BattleSphere guys, JagChris attempts to counter this grievance by, bringing into question - on a technical level, Reboot's old-school retro titles, measuring them against BattleSphere, which I presume, was output on a professional contractual level with Atari, full-time against 2 guys generating retro 8-bit legacy titles for the Jag? For fun? "I didn't really like the guys behind BattleSphere, even though the game itself, was decent" "You can't really dislike someone until you prove you can develop a better game than them" Seriously. What. The. Fuck. Is. This. ?. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GroovyBee Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 What would have made more sense on the blitter would be to have a FIFO. As the architecture currently stands, you give the blitter something to do and then poll for it to finish or use interrupts. Both have their pros and cons but if you could give the blitter a list of blits (a bit like the object processor) then you increase your throughput because it is doing much more work before needing attention, thus allowing you to get on with other "stuff" in the mean time. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GroovyBee Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 Skunkboard BIOS crippling due to said 'piracy bullshit' - check (name one other console with such lockouts...) LTO Flash! on the Intellivision has DRM . 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazyace Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 In my opinion, there is everything inherently wrong with this statement. (Like anything there is always blissful ignorance) Also, Mr Motorola 'Sixty-Eight' Kay just 'stopped' by to say... "Hi". Hi Mr 68K Games like Zero 5, Doom, Wolfenstein ( though not after doom ) , and AVP showed off the system pretty well. Trevor McFur showed what could be - whilst not being any fun to play at all Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JagChris Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 (edited) "I didn't really like the guys behind BattleSphere, even though the game itself, was decent" "You can't really dislike someone until you prove you can develop a better game than them" Seriously. What. The. Fuck. Is. This. ?. This. is. something. you. made. up. in. your. own. head. There is much I don't like about Scatologic and much I agree with CJ about. They created a manufactured scarcity. They did lord things over the community. I'm not sure what the 'stop the 68k' reference is in regards to CrazyAce but I guess it's a joke between you two. I don't know. Edited March 8, 2015 by JagChris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gregory DG Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 Here are the Carmac comments: http://www.ataritimes.com/index.php?ArticleIDX=286#Comments The memory, bus, blitter and video processor were 64 bits wide, but the processors (68k and two custom risc processors) were 32 bit.The little risc engines were decent processors. They had some design hazards that didn't get fixed, but the only thing truly wrong with them was that they had scratchpad memory instead of caches, and couldn't execute code from main memory. I had to chunk the DOOM renderer into nine sequentially loaded overlays to get it working (with hindsight, I would have done it differently in about three...).If the Jaguar had dumped the 68k and offered a dynamic cache on the risc processors and had a tiny bit of buffering on the blitter, it could have put up a reasonable fight against Sony. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lost Dragon Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 Playing catch up here as i've been at work all day, but i've no desire to explain anything further on my choice of wording over anything Battlespere related other than again to stress i'm not going to be interviewing him based on a game i've never played, on an add-on i've never owned and as i said before i found his quote in the article balanced enough for my tastes and no idea if it was a part quote at that. Saturn Virtua Racing info? again to cover old ground i'm not a huge fan of racers, has to be someything like Blur, Burnout Series (ie fun, utter carnage) to get me interested, this just seemed to be 'popular opinion' amongst reviewers at the time, plus read a good few dissapointed by...type comments from Saturn owners over the years on various sites.Happy to stand corrected if Time warner actually pulled off a decent conversion, last version i played was on PS2 Sega Ages, so i'm not best suited to comment on earlier versions :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lost Dragon Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 Onto next point: My comment about could better software of meant Jaguar had a better standing in history? Jaguar i feel still has a somewhat unfair rep for only having '5' games worth getting (this seems to be internet wisdom) and people perhaps unfamilar with the hardware roll out Doom, Wolf 3D, Rayman, AVP and Tempest 2000 (few titles may differ based on where you look, but comments always seem to suggest Jaguar software libary was weak as water), people seem to go from the big name titles they know of and by using that yardstick, the more well known 'failures' ( Kasumi Ninja, C.Flag, Fight For Life etc) are lumped in, with the middle-ground titles often ignored. So, if it'd had more Triple-A software in it's commercial life, i thought perhaps it might be more fondly looked on by the masses. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phoenixdownita Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 The more I read the quote the more it sounds "weird". In a way Carmack seems to imply that modest changes to the Jag would have given it a fighting chance at Doom like, I presume, games [in now way his experience could have helped him make a statement about the rest of the genres]. On the other end once you start dumping this, adding that, changing over there, tweaking over here you end up with a different thing and I doubt you can just say it is "the same". Case in point, if the hardware engineers of the N64 didn't cripple it by having the CPU route all RDRAM accesses to the RCP one can only imagine what could have been. Or if they didn't have just 4K for textures etc...etc.... In the end those are 2 small tweaks or are they? "if my grandmother ......" I bought my Jag for T2K and AVP, I picked up a few more along the way, including the JagCD and I play it from time to time, I just can't see it being such a commercial success (with the console the way it is). 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atlantis Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 this thread is techno magic showdown big time! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CyranoJ Posted March 9, 2015 Share Posted March 9, 2015 LTO Flash! on the Intellivision has DRM . 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lost Dragon Posted March 13, 2015 Share Posted March 13, 2015 Wrapping up this thread: Ian Hetherington (Pysgnosis) talked back in 2006, about how the Playstation was originally meant to be and if they'd stuck to the original plan, things could of been very different indeed: It was'nt planned to be released in the West... The (limited) amount of memory it had would have seen it as a load-and-go machine, so no streaming of data from the CD... (As Ian put it, If you could of made a 3 megabyte CD, that would of been fine for them in Japan). Also when Sony bought Psygnosis, Ian describes EVERYTHING at Sony regarding the PSY (as it was then known) to be in a mess, inc the development systems and in (his) view at that point, Playstation was not a viable platform. So if people are going to look at What If's.... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lost Dragon Posted April 25, 2015 Share Posted April 25, 2015 Thread bump, but i'd like to 'return' to the notion that's been thrown around elsewhere over the years, that both the Jaguar could of been a much bigger sucsess if only more units were avaiable at launch and Panther should of been released as the Atari ST was still strong in the market place. It's just absurd, your looking at a scenario where Microprose initally had'nt planned an ST conversion of Civilization...where Jon Hare is reporting that as of Autumn'92 Sensible Soccer had so far sold 41,000 copies, 36,000 on the Amiga, 5,000 on the ST and that as far as he knew, Gods on the Amiga (Bitmap Bros) had outsold the ST version by 2-1. Meanwhile when Falcon launched, likes of Codemasters, US Gold, Bullfrog etc were going to wait and see how it was priced, which market it was targeted at, how well it was marketed etc before they invested time+money into developing software for it, let alone Atari's consoles.... 3rd Party support for the ST was dissapearing like snow before the sun... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
82-T/A Posted April 25, 2015 Share Posted April 25, 2015 I know there have been a bazillion responses so far, but I don't personally believe (with my limited knowledge of everything) that the Jaguar was doomed from the start. At least not due to its technology. I know it's complicated to develop for, but assuming it had proper financial backing, a good working relationship with the 3rd party (which it DIDN'T), and they didn't try to simply port over Atari ST games (un-improved)... then the Jaguar could have done well. The PlayStation clearly was more advanced... but the Jaguar could have held on a bit longer (and been profitable) at least long enough to hold out for it's replacement (Jaguar 2 or whatever) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lost Dragon Posted April 25, 2015 Share Posted April 25, 2015 The writing was on the wall for Atari long before the Jaguar launched, you look back at claims they'd made about hoping to sell over 2,000,000 Lynx+ST Laptops (Combined figures) and they'd dominate the handheld market within 5 years (this in 1989)... Or how they expected to sell another 150,000 STFM's in 1993 due to new low price point of hardware and put pressure on sales of MD/SNES, let alone get developers back who'd abandoned the ST (Virgin and Psygnosis at this point said at best ST versions of planned games would make up mere 25% of software planned for that year) or look at stores like Boots, WH Smiths, John Menzies etc who'd dropped the ST Hardware, were phasing out ST software... They had a mountain to climb to get retailers, developers etc back on board and really should of learnt from previous bullish claims. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lost Dragon Posted April 25, 2015 Share Posted April 25, 2015 Plus all that talk of Steel Talons and Road Riot 4WD being the kick start from Atari that'd see 3rd party software houses developing STE only software once Atari showed them what was possible, both never made it to STE did they? ended up on Falcon... And as for Atari UK's hopes that soon as STE hit, developers would write so much STE only software, that it'd have a software base more impressive than that of the Amiga's (and thus by making it STE only, you'd alienate the existing STFM userbase), i honestly have to wonder what on earth was going on at Atari... The 2 interviews Albert has will add further layers to much bigger picture of Atari during the Jaguar years... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KappaGuy99 Posted April 25, 2015 Share Posted April 25, 2015 (edited) ... assuming it had proper financial backing, a good working relationship with the 3rd party (which it DIDN'T), and they didn't try to simply port over Atari ST games (un-improved)... then the Jaguar could have done well. Don't get me wrong, I love speculation on what would have happened if such-and-such happened. One of my favorite things about Atari Age. Having said that, how is the above supposed to happen? Particularly the "proper financial backing," piece. People often look at the Tramiel family like some kind of golden goose, or money tree, and that is a fantasy IMHO. I would be surprised if they didn't have most of their family wealth tied up in Atari, and when you compare the financial backing Atari had with the likes of consoles like the 3DO, TurboGrafx, NeoGeo and others, I would say it was "proper." I think much of Atari's problems during the final decade leading up to the reverse merger with JTS was that it was playing catch up in one form or another. IMHO, Atari were playing catch up because they f*cked up the release of the 7800. I'm not a 7800 fan-boy, but it is clear to the most casual observer that the console was made to come out in 1984-1985, not 1987-1988. It sat in warehouses for years while the Tramiels tried to re-engineer the company into a computer company. They only realized the opportunity cost of not supporting or selling video games over a year into running the company, and that it is that time period that they were constantly trying to play catch up from. That put them behind companies like Nintendo, from both a product lifecycle standpoint and a financial standpoint. With the Lynx, they caught up to Nintendo on the product lifecycle standpoint, and arguably jumped ahead of Nintendo briefly, but they had not yet caught up financially, and as such, could not make a nationwide launch happen in time to compete with the GameBoy during the initial Christmas season. You could argue that is symptomatic of improper financial backing, but I think only an industry titan, if you will, could rush a major nationwide launch. I don't think Sega could have rushed a major nationwide launch, had they even been in the position Atari were, and I don't hear nearly as much about Sega's finances not being up to par. To me, two things completely f*cked the company: #1) Warner being way too involved in Atari, and in particular, not acknowledging Bushnell was right back about the 2600 market being saturated in 79-80. They created, singlehandedly, the bubble which led to the "crash" of the North American market in 1983. #2) Keeping the 7800 on the shelf for two years, basically taking the company out of the video game business until the success of the NES. (Oh sure, they sold lots of 2600 stuff during this time, but I have a feeling the company viewed it as selling off old inventory; more of a merchandising activity as opposed to actually being in the business of creating and selling video games). I feel like these two things are a root cause to every other mis-step they made. Edited April 25, 2015 by KappaGuy99 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Major Havoc 2049 Posted April 25, 2015 Share Posted April 25, 2015 (edited) Thread bump, but i'd like to 'return' to the notion that's been thrown around elsewhere over the years, that both the Jaguar could of been a much bigger sucsess if only more units were avaiable at launch and Panther should of been released as the Atari ST was still strong in the market place.For a 16 or 32-bit Atari console to have any chance at success, it would of had to be released back in like 1988, before the Genesis. The Genesis took off really quickly with the combo of Sonic, Madden Football and Sega arcade ports. I'm not saying that the Jaguar would have been a raging success, but Atari really did gimp the launch due to not enough supply and a slow trickle of games in late '93 and '94. There was some hype surrounding the Jaguar in late '93 and into early '94 in the US with several positive magazine cover stories from major publications like Gamepro, Video Games and Diehard Gamefan. I remember also seeing that the Jaguar even outsold the 3D0 in 1993, even with the horrible launch. I know this is only anecdotal evidence, but when I went into Electronics Boutique in December of 1993 and bought my Jaguar, the store only received two Jaguars and no extra games or controllers. I had to go to another EB across town to buy a copy of Raiden and an extra controller. When I got to that EB, the store clerk told me that their store only received one Jag console and three copies each of Raiden and Dino Dudes and two extra controllers. The clerk said a bunch of people were coming into the store and asking to buy a Jaguar, but he didn't have any to sell to customers. Then AVP was delayed from an early '94 release into a late '94 release, thus destroying the hype from the positive Video Games cover story in early '94. By the time Atari got their shyt together, the Playstation, Saturn and N64 hype was in full effect. A missed opportunity by Atari. Edited April 25, 2015 by Major Havoc 2049 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+madman Posted April 25, 2015 Share Posted April 25, 2015 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Isgoed Posted April 25, 2015 Share Posted April 25, 2015 (edited) Edit: Never mind, it's not worth it. Edited April 25, 2015 by Isgoed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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