What could have saved the Jag?

[Editorb]

I've mused on what effect it might have had to cut prices sooner and add Tk2 and AvP as pack-ins. It would have hurt revenues and probably would not have made console achieve critical mass, but I imagine they would have sold a lot more Jags. While I'm indulging in wild speculation, may they could have offered option of the extra pack-ins or a free Lynx.

Edited February 20, 2022 by Editorb
Editorb's note: I edit what I want!

[Shaggy the Atarian]

On 2/18/2022 at 11:44 AM, vrocko said:

Hoverstrike was okay, not fantastic, but okay. Had they done it as Battlezone is supposed to look I think it may have done better. Add the original arcade game on the Cart/CD and you get 2 for the price of one if possible.

I always liked the pet name for HS, Hover Suck. They should have just taken the BattleZone 2000 game hidden in the Lynx version and beefed up the graphics. HS looks good on the CD version with the lighting effects and MIP mapping but it's a bore to play and the sliding controls are terrible. 

 

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Space War 2000 is a good game, unfinished but a good game and I think would have been a good addition to the Jag library if they'd finished it. Yeah I read about that they saw where Battlesphere was in development and decided to can Space War. Didn't know about Zero 5. Have Battlesphere and love it. Only seen video's of Zero 5. 

To each their own but what I've played of SW2k it wasn't shaping up to be anymore fun than collecting pods non-stop for hours. Maybe if the bounty hunting aspect had been applied and there was more to do than just 1v1 space battle arena. 

 

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Pitfall the Mayan Adventure needed work. I played it but it wasn't the original or even Pitfall II. An adventure like Tomb Raider or Indiana Jones on the Jaguar in the Pitfall vein would have done better I think. 

When I came across PMA I was hoping for Pitfall II, but yeah, wasn't all that great. It would've made more sense to have borrowed some ideas from Commander Keen 4 (overworld map going from place to place with smaller maps and treasures to find) instead of just doing more typical 90s platformer fare.

 

Pretty sure that we all would have preferred a remake to River Raid though. Something like that would've sold units, but mainly if it was exclusive to the system

 

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Maybe I'm biased to think updates to the original 2600 games would have done better on the Jaguar but that's what I'd be looking for on a new system from a known company. Pole Position was a great 2600 game as was Enduro. A 2000 version upgrade for both would have been great on the Jaguar, if done right.  

Sega did it with Sonic and I loved that game on the Genesis and Dreamcast. Nintendo does it with Mario and have been doing it for years.

 

Atari had hundreds of good games waiting for an update but it never happened. I know the "new" Atari VCS is doing that with some of the games but I don't have that system and haven't really wanted one. Now I'll just wait for the homebrewers to create more games for my old Jag. 

It might have, although I think they should have done some of that stuff with the 7800 and Lynx too, which could have helped keep some of those games in people's minds and maybe have made some new fans. Atari had ideas for other 2000 remakes - Centipede, Major Havoc, Asteroids, but here's the key for all the games Atari had on the roster: "if done right."

 

Combat on the 7800 or Lynx or Jaguar could have been cool but it should have introduced some new mechanic(s) on each iteration or maybe take a radical risk once in a while. But the Tramiels didn't seem to be on that page. BJ West who worked at Atari once said "The Tramiels didn't understand what made video games fun." They wasted a bunch of time on trying to come up with a mascot, just thinking that with the right mascot, that'd be good enough. Without a great game behind it though, it wouldn't have mattered.

 

 One reason Mario & Sonic have endured is not just because of marketing, but because the creators have reinvented the wheel in a fun way with those games...most of the time. If all Atari had done was present the same idea with their old IP with slightly prettier graphics then it wouldn't have much of an impact, much like we probably wouldn't be talking about Mario right now if all Nintendo did was make SMB1 (or by extension, Zelda, Metroid, Donkey Kong, etc) look slightly better on each sequel.

 

That extends to the rest of the games, imo. One reason the Jag didn't turn heads is that too many games didn't do anything really that special over ports of similar games on other systems and it didn't have huge names of the day like Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter to really turn heads. For as weak as the hardware was compared to stuff like the Saturn or PSX, it did have plenty of things it could do that the Genesis or SNES couldn't (or it could do it better, like "Mode 7" stuff), but how often did it put those to use? Not often enough, too late in the game, or not in a way that made people think "hey, this is next gen." 

 

 

[phuzaxeman]

In order for the Jaguar to have survived, there would have to be a high amount of 3rd party support maximizing the 64bit hype. 

Mortal Kombat 2, Super Street fighter 2, and Virtual Fighters were huge in 1993 and would have to be on the list.  With only a handful of decent games, the Jaguar was doomed.  

Also, you couldn't find the Jaguar at major retail stores.  It should have been released in major stores like Kmart.  I bought my Jaguar at EB Games.  

[JagChris]

More units out there. More units. You could have all those games, sell every damn unit available and it still wouldn't have been enough to keep them alive. 

 

They needed at least Lynx numbers out there in the public hands to still exist as a company.

[zzip]

On 2/19/2022 at 3:36 AM, Lostdragon said:

I think age was a factor on my part with the Pitfall games. 

 

Loved the original on the 2600 as a kid, but by the time i encountered the sequel, i was a good few years old and had been playing more advanced games on both the A8 and C64 and my tastes had changed greatly as you might expect. 

The 2600 was amazing at first.   But when I realized the goal was to get through 255 screens of mostly the same obstacles  with slight variations, it just became a slog.

 

I think I did have an Atari 8-bit by the time Pitfall II came out,  but I didn't have a disk drive yet, so I wasn't playing anything more advanaced, just cart/cass games with better graphics.   Pitfall II was the most advanced 2600 game I had seen at that point.  It really pushed the system.   There were different areas of the caverns that required different techniques to get through so it didn't get old for me as fast as the original.

 

On 2/19/2022 at 3:36 AM, Lostdragon said:

By the time of Mayan Adventure and then Pitfall 3D,nostalgia was probably the only reason i tried either, part of the adult me desperate to rekindle the magic of playing the original, but if i am honest, I don't really think I know exactly what I wanted from either.

To me Mayan Adventure was only nominally a Pitfall game.   sure it had some nods to the original, but it had many things not seen in the Pitfall franchise before.  I just thought it was a beautiful platform with good music and I always liked the jungle/lost ruins aesthetic.   So that's why I liked it.

 

On 2/19/2022 at 5:56 PM, Matt_B said:

The GBA has a significantly lower resolution than home consoles of the time; even a lot of 1980s hardware does slightly better. It's not much of a problem on the device itself, as it's only got a 3" screen so the pixel density is fairly high, but games do tend to look a bit fugly when you blow them up to monitor or TV size. Emulators offer filters that can help, but people doing comparisons tend not to turn them on.

This!    I always used filters when emulating GBA or Lynx stuff or it looks like crap.  

 

I don't think the GBA version of Mayan adventure looks bad considering the low resolution, main issue I see is the colors are a bit oversaturated.

[Djmicklovin]

On 2/8/2022 at 2:39 AM, Bill Loguidice said:

To be fair, just about every console (or computer) takes a while (sometimes years) to get its killer, system pushing software (a few notable exceptions are arguably Super Mario 64 for the N64 and Soul Calibur for the Dreamcast). And like just about every other platform, the Jaguar could have gotten by on good quality and good volume until that second generation of software (as developers got a better handle on the hardware) was ready to start to push the technology. It goes without saying that the platform really never stood a chance for a myriad of reasons, including Atari's own financial situation. We only have to look at the Dreamcast to see how even if you execute pretty darn well and have impressive hardware, if you don't have the funding to stick things out, you're still going to fail. In other words, we may as well say if the Jaguar was designed for x, y, and z, didn't have Atari as its producer, and got good support, it would have been a success. That's too many unrealistic changes.

 

The Jaguar was more expensive than the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis at the time at $250 versus $100, and the software didn't justify the price. If they had matched them on price it would have had a much better chance. It always comes down to price, it doesn't matter how impressive your console is. And the fact that the Sega Saturn and PS1 were right around the corner that offered better, more impressive games for the price. The most affordable system with the best and most games typically wins. Although by the Jaguar's second year on the market the games were vastly improved, it was too late by that point. It launched at a very awkward time in between the 2D and 3D transition as well.

Edited February 23, 2022 by Djmicklovin

[Austin]

On 2/18/2022 at 7:02 PM, jgkspsx said:

The Jaguar version of Mayan Adventure, like the 32X version, doesn’t just have a slow framerate - it has an extremely variable framerate. It slows down and speeds up like crazy. This messes with playability. It’s not nearly as bad as the 32X version, though.

This is 100% its biggest issue. It's not JUST 30fps, it fluctuates and can be extremely jarring. Some later levels are also made much more difficult because of it. You can't have an inconsistent, choppy framerate in a game that requires precision platforming with instant-death scenarios all over the place.

[vrocko]

On 2/20/2022 at 7:36 PM, Shaggy the Atarian said:

I always liked the pet name for HS, Hover Suck. They should have just taken the BattleZone 2000 game hidden in the Lynx version and beefed up the graphics. HS looks good on the CD version with the lighting effects and MIP mapping but it's a bore to play and the sliding controls are terrible. 

 

To each their own but what I've played of SW2k it wasn't shaping up to be anymore fun than collecting pods non-stop for hours. Maybe if the bounty hunting aspect had been applied and there was more to do than just 1v1 space battle arena. 

 

When I came across PMA I was hoping for Pitfall II, but yeah, wasn't all that great. It would've made more sense to have borrowed some ideas from Commander Keen 4 (overworld map going from place to place with smaller maps and treasures to find) instead of just doing more typical 90s platformer fare.

 

Pretty sure that we all would have preferred a remake to River Raid though. Something like that would've sold units, but mainly if it was exclusive to the system

 

It might have, although I think they should have done some of that stuff with the 7800 and Lynx too, which could have helped keep some of those games in people's minds and maybe have made some new fans. Atari had ideas for other 2000 remakes - Centipede, Major Havoc, Asteroids, but here's the key for all the games Atari had on the roster: "if done right."

 

Combat on the 7800 or Lynx or Jaguar could have been cool but it should have introduced some new mechanic(s) on each iteration or maybe take a radical risk once in a while. But the Tramiels didn't seem to be on that page. BJ West who worked at Atari once said "The Tramiels didn't understand what made video games fun." They wasted a bunch of time on trying to come up with a mascot, just thinking that with the right mascot, that'd be good enough. Without a great game behind it though, it wouldn't have mattered.

 

 One reason Mario & Sonic have endured is not just because of marketing, but because the creators have reinvented the wheel in a fun way with those games...most of the time. If all Atari had done was present the same idea with their old IP with slightly prettier graphics then it wouldn't have much of an impact, much like we probably wouldn't be talking about Mario right now if all Nintendo did was make SMB1 (or by extension, Zelda, Metroid, Donkey Kong, etc) look slightly better on each sequel.

 

That extends to the rest of the games, imo. One reason the Jag didn't turn heads is that too many games didn't do anything really that special over ports of similar games on other systems and it didn't have huge names of the day like Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter to really turn heads. For as weak as the hardware was compared to stuff like the Saturn or PSX, it did have plenty of things it could do that the Genesis or SNES couldn't (or it could do it better, like "Mode 7" stuff), but how often did it put those to use? Not often enough, too late in the game, or not in a way that made people think "hey, this is next gen." 

 

 

Yes Hover Suck is appropriate for that one. Needed work and could have been more fun. Boring!

 

I've always been a fan of space combat games and would have loved to see a finished product, again if done right. Add a story line, get rid of the creepy three-eyed guy, fix the weapons shop, add more ships maybe, something. 

 

I think they could have done something more with the 2k line with older games. Pole Position, Enduro, Combat, Moon Patrol, even Space Invaders could have had an update. Add new levels, different options, add power upgrades, something to make it better and fun to play. I've seen other companies do that for some of these games and it made me want to play them more! 

 

I know the Jag, 7800 and Lynx could have done so much more with more 3rd party developers but I don't think the Tramiels wanted to even be bothered with videogames. They turned down Nintendo when they came over to market the NES because they were concentrating on computers. Nintendo found it's own way into the US market and started the next generation of videogaming. I think the Tramiels just didn't want to deal with it. New owners, new direction.

 

I'm not saying Atari couldn't have come up with new games but they did have plenty of old stuff to work with. You've already invented the wheel now find ways to improve it. That's what Japan did after WWII. That's why Nintendo was a heavy hitter all over the world at that time. Atari could have used the old IP's and updated them and also done new games. Thinking about it though, those that made the games for the 2600 probably didn't work at Atari anymore. Like most people, you start to see the writing on the wall and start job hunting. Move on to the next job before this one is gone. Hard to develop new, fun games when those that came up with the originals aren't around anymore.    

 

The Tramiels looking for a mascot is a waste of time. When I think of Atari I think of the symbol. Yeah Nintendo has Mario, Sega Sonic, Microsoft Master Chief, Sony to an extent Crash Bandicoot or Lara Croft, but for Atari I see the symbol. No you can't use that as a mascot but it is what defines your company. When people see it they know, that's Atari. The "Fuji" worked and you knew who's game it was just by seeing it. Don't worry about a mascot, make more games, new games, update games, fun games. Apparently the Tramiels didn't know how to do that. 

 

Again we go back to the games.  You're right if they'd had more of the current games of the time that would have helped them along too. Fighting games were the rage at the time so like you said Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Fatal Fury, Virtua Fighter even TMNT would have helped boost the system. The fighting games they had were not the best of the crop, far from it. Fight for Life needed A LOT OF WORK. I would not consider it over Virtua Fighter or Soul Calibur.

 

More games, fun games, better games make the system. Wish Atari had them. Maybe they'd still be making systems. 

 

[Shaggy the Atarian]

1 hour ago, vrocko said:

 

I've always been a fan of space combat games and would have loved to see a finished product, again if done right. Add a story line, get rid of the creepy three-eyed guy, fix the weapons shop, add more ships maybe, something. 

IIRC, SW2k was supposed to have a bounty hunting component attached to it, which done right could have been interesting. But who knows, the proto we have seems like it was only 30% complete

 

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I think they could have done something more with the 2k line with older games. Pole Position, Enduro, Combat, Moon Patrol, even Space Invaders could have had an update. Add new levels, different options, add power upgrades, something to make it better and fun to play. I've seen other companies do that for some of these games and it made me want to play them more! 

Combat is one that I think Atari could've really done some cool things with, using some creative thinking. Instead of just vehicles fighting each other, it could have had characters attached to them and different stats, maybe having been a little like Super Smash Bros but with tanks & planes, have some banter going on between the characters when they'd get hit, that sort of thing. Some extra combative modes like submarines and top-down soldiers also could have been neat. But overall I was happy with what they did on T2k and Missile Command 3D. It's just too bad those weren't enough for the system.

 

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I know the Jag, 7800 and Lynx could have done so much more with more 3rd party developers but I don't think the Tramiels wanted to even be bothered with videogames.

 

I'm not saying Atari couldn't have come up with new games but they did have plenty of old stuff to work with. You've already invented the wheel now find ways to improve it. That's what Japan did after WWII. That's why Nintendo was a heavy hitter all over the world at that time. Atari could have used the old IP's and updated them and also done new games. Thinking about it though, those that made the games for the 2600 probably didn't work at Atari anymore. Like most people, you start to see the writing on the wall and start job hunting. Move on to the next job before this one is gone. Hard to develop new, fun games when those that came up with the originals aren't around anymore.    

I believe Curt Vendel had said that the Tramiels were interested in video games, but obviously their hearts were first set on the PC market. As BJ had said though, they didn't "get" what made games fun and to some degree just kept up with the Warner/Kassar mentality - do a port of an arcade game and call it a day. By the time they realized that a platform like the 7800 couldn't just get off on ports, it was too late to fight the Nintendo juggernaut.

 

On the guys who had been with Atari doing 2600 games, some had been laid off before the Tramiels, some did go find greener pastures, and others got the boot when Jack took over. IIRC, Howard Scott Warshaw was one of those, which was really unfortunate - he was one of Atari's most creative game designers and had they kept him on I imagine he could have done some cool stuff for the ST and later the 7800 (well, assuming he had wanted to stick around under the new management).

 

But I definitely agree that to make new-new games, you need talented, creative, and visionary people cooking those up. Something that would be nice to see at the present iteration of Atari, as you can only milk the old IP for so long.

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They turned down Nintendo when they came over to market the NES because they were concentrating on computers. Nintendo found it's own way into the US market and started the next generation of videogaming. I think the Tramiels just didn't want to deal with it. New owners, new direction.

From what I read in Atari Inc. - Business Is Fun, Warner Atari was going to turn Nintendo down as well. They'd just dumped a ton of R&D into the 7800 and they were leery about launching yet another system that had no backwards compatibility with the 2600. Atari engineers also didn't like the gamepads, funny enough. Of course after all the negotiating had gone through between Jack and Warner, I couldn't blame Jack for not wanting to then negotiate a big deal with a Japanese company. Maybe if Nintendo had approached Atari later in '84 when the Tramiels were having a dispute over payments on the 7800 to GCC, but its another one of those what ifs.

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The Tramiels looking for a mascot is a waste of time. When I think of Atari I think of the symbol. Yeah Nintendo has Mario, Sega Sonic, Microsoft Master Chief, Sony to an extent Crash Bandicoot or Lara Croft, but for Atari I see the symbol. No you can't use that as a mascot but it is what defines your company. When people see it they know, that's Atari. The "Fuji" worked and you knew who's game it was just by seeing it. Don't worry about a mascot, make more games, new games, update games, fun games. Apparently the Tramiels didn't know how to do that. 

 

Again we go back to the games.  You're right if they'd had more of the current games of the time that would have helped them along too. Fighting games were the rage at the time so like you said Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Fatal Fury, Virtua Fighter even TMNT would have helped boost the system. The fighting games they had were not the best of the crop, far from it. Fight for Life needed A LOT OF WORK. I would not consider it over Virtua Fighter or Soul Calibur.

 

More games, fun games, better games make the system. Wish Atari had them. Maybe they'd still be making systems. 

 The mascot thing only was a waste of time as they were doing it backwards - trying to come up with a mascot first, then a game second. Had they come up with a great, clever and fun game first, then it probably wouldn't have mattered who it was as the "mascot." That said, Atari did have quite a character roster to pull from, but since the Tramiels never reused any of them on the 7800/XE/ST lines, people forgot about them.

 

Fight For Life would've been better had the developer been paid what was due but that was another issue with the Tramiels and Atari's financial situation. Had the Jaguar hardware been backed with the resources of Nintendo or Sega, then it would have done fine. 

 

 

[JagChris]

2 hours ago, Shaggy the Atarian said:

Fight For Life would've been better had the developer been paid what was due but that was another issue with the Tramiels and Atari's financial situation. Had the Jaguar hardware been backed with the resources of Nintendo or Sega, then it would have done fine. 

FFL was paid for. And I don't believe that was the issue there. There was only one guy programming that, and in assembly language. You would have a  rough time doing a game like that with a team in assembly language in a year and half. And fighting games are some of the hardest to get right IMO.

 

But I guess it was Atari's cheapness that sank that. They wouldn't hire help for him. They didn't have the proper tools for him.

[Shaggy the Atarian]

3 minutes ago, JagChris said:

FFL was paid for. And I don't believe that was the issue there. There was only one guy programming that, and in assembly language. You would have a  rough time doing a game like that with a team in assembly language in a year and half. And fighting games are some of the hardest to get right IMO.

 

But I guess it was Atari's cheapness that sank that. They wouldn't hire help for him. They didn't have the proper tools for him.

Ah, I'd always heard that he got stiffed on a last payment and made the production build reflect that, which is why it plays worse than the beta, but I'd not read any interviews from him about it.

 

Still, even if FFL was better than VF and Tekken combined, it was all too late at that point.  

[vrocko]

Well guess we've beat that dead horse enough. ? I'll be happy with what homebrews come out and play them on my Jaguar. Can't complain too much. The games being made today are great and keep my Jag from getting covered in dust.?

[Editorb]

After decades of careful contemplation, I've come to conclusion that if the controller buttons were labeled in a proper A-B-C configuration rather than the jacked-up C-B-A, the cat would have been a roaring, roaring (roaring!) success.

[alucardX]

18 minutes ago, Editorb said:

After decades of careful contemplation, I've come to conclusion that if the controller buttons were labeled in a proper A-B-C configuration rather than the jacked-up C-B-A, the cat would have been a roaring, roaring (roaring!) success.

C-B-D order may have helped. Oh wait, not without the T-H-C top buttons.

[Matt_B]

I think L, S and D buttons would have been more in keeping with the rest of the design.

 

 

[+Stephen]

1 hour ago, Matt_B said:

I think L, S and D buttons would have been more in keeping with the rest of the design.

 

 

It's the fumes!

[roots.genoa]

I think what would have set the Jaguar controller really apart (and save the Jaguar at the same time, of course) is a more radical approach of button labeling, as on this Chinese phone:

 

 

 

Press the arrow thingy in a kind of half circle to pay respects

 

[MAYAman]

I worked for VGA publishing as Senior Editor and I can tell you before the Jag launched there was a lot of excitement from certain markets like UK, east coast USA, West Coast USA and all of our retail outlets.  If AVP, Tempest, Iron Soldier, Burnout, etc could have been available at launch the Jaguar would have had a really good chance.  Our distributor arm (Dolphin Cove) actually visited Atari and had spoken about carrying hundreds of thousands of Jaguars for distribution.  There was just too much mom and pop in Atari to function in the new age.  They were stuck in the 2600 era and the world had moved on business wise.  From what I heard Sam and Co. had the mentality of old where you'd have a couple guys finishing a game concept in a few months.  Despite it's limitations, in the right hands like Capcom, Konami, etc the Jaguar could have done some great things.

[zzip]

10 minutes ago, MAYAman said:

There was just too much mom and pop in Atari to function in the new age.  They were stuck in the 2600 era and the world had moved on business wise. 

My impression is there was a lot more "mom and pop" in the Tramiel era than there was in the 2600 (Warner) era

[pacman000]

Back to the original question...

 

Release a modem instead of a CD player. That way they could ride the dot com boom into relevancy.... for a few years. 
 

Not sure what this alt-universe Atari Corp should’ve done after the dot-com bubble, but that’s not what the topic’s about!

Edited March 4, 2022 by pacman000

[ColecoGamer]

I know this opinion won’t be popular, but - the Jaguar needed a team of people who (at the time) understood the (then) modern day video game market, and Atari didn’t.

 

When their internal team was asked to create a mascot-based game, the only thing they could come up with was a tie wearing crocodile with a suitcase. That right there proves how out of touch they were. 
 

 

 

[phoenixdownita]

mmmmhhh

 

 

sure the suitcase needs to go but the tie should stay in spite of:

 

[Atlantis]

^the systen’s mascot is from the first wave of (two) games: green Skylar and/maybe also Trevor

 

For real, green Skylar is the most famous mascot character of the Jag lore. No matter what we think of the game. Also Skylar -and Trevor- are considered comical, which is typical for console mascots (think Mario).

[zzip]

10 hours ago, ColecoGamer said:

I know this opinion won’t be popular, but - the Jaguar needed a team of people who (at the time) understood the (then) modern day video game market, and Atari didn’t.

 

When their internal team was asked to create a mascot-based game, the only thing they could come up with was a tie wearing crocodile with a suitcase. That right there proves how out of touch they were. 
 

 

 

Atari did have a mascot problem.   But they had Bentley Bear all the way back in 83 who they completely failed to capitalize on

[MAYAman]

18 hours ago, zzip said:

My impression is there was a lot more "mom and pop" in the Tramiel era than there was in the 2600 (Warner) era

Yes and no, Atari was still pretty autonomous even under Warner.  But I get your sentiment for sure, it's more the environment I was speaking about than the actual corporate structure.