What could have saved the Jag?

[zzip]

23 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

The 3D thing is hard to say for the time. Sure, the PS1 proved that solid 3D prowess was indeed the future and something that was needed post-PS1 launch, but before that, it's arguable that the Jaguar's 3D capabilities were sufficient, as long as they weren't overtaxed, which of course Atari insisted upon more than once. The 3DO was far more forward-thinking, being both CD-based and with more robust 3D capabilities, but it still didn't make much of a difference in the end, despite selling something like 9x the amount the Jaguar did. It was just a bit too early for the 3D stuff to be what it eventually needed to be.

I think the fact that it could pull off a reasonable Doom port (and AvP) was impressive enough at the time..   Before that, you needed a reasonably powerful PC to run that, but then there's this inexpensive console showing it could do that too!    True it's not "real 3D", but it took a few years and dedicated 3D hardware to arrive before we understood what that really meant.

 

27 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

I think what we missed out on with the Jaguar that would have helped was more premium 2D experiences like Rayman. That goes back to the budget thing, though. Even if the Jaguar couldn't necessarily wow with 3D, it should have consistently wowed with 2D. That could have been enough to move the needle to at least respectable sales, if not the nigh impossible task of saving Atari itself (much like Dreamcast with Sega).

To me one of the great tragedies of gaming is when we finally got the hardware to do beautiful 2D graphics without compromises,  the world decided it would rather have ugly, blobby primitive, low-polygon 3D graphics instead.   Suddenly everything had to be in 3D, even games where it didn't make sense and they suffered for it.

[Bill Loguidice]

7 minutes ago, zzip said:

To me one of the great tragedies of gaming is when we finally got the hardware to do beautiful 2D graphics without compromises,  the world decided it would rather have ugly, blobby primitive, low-polygon 3D graphics instead.   Suddenly everything had to be in 3D, even games where it didn't make sense and they suffered for it.

Fortunately, that has changed for the most part. We have games of every graphic style and type now in abundance. It's not perfect - never was and never will be - but now is definitely a golden age of gaming these days, from hardware to software. While I agree that the industry went too hard on 3D early on at the expense of 2D, that's inevitable with any shiny new tech regardless of media. It takes a while for the industry to course correct and incorporate a technology rather than have it purely dominate.

[Gentlegamer]

13 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

Fortunately, that has changed for the most part. We have games of every graphic style and type now in abundance. It's not perfect - never was and never will be - but now is definitely a golden age of gaming these days, from hardware to software. While I agree that the industry went too hard on 3D early on at the expense of 2D, that's inevitable with any shiny new tech regardless of media. It takes a while for the industry to course correct and incorporate a technology rather than have it purely dominate.

I remember looking at Tomb Raider with the blocky low-poly models and low res textures smeared across them and thinking 3D was analogous to Atari 2D graphics. On top of graphics, that era saw the dawn of voice acting in CD media where the VA was horrific (King's Quest Mask of Eternity embodies both).

 

Thankfully, great 2D has come back and picked up where we could have been in the 90s, as you note. I especially like games that don't go for imitation pixel art and really go for beautiful 2D presentation.

Edited November 13, 2023 by Gentlegamer

[Bill Loguidice]

Just now, Gentlegamer said:

I remember looking at Tomb Raider with the blocky low-poly models and low res textures smeared across them and thinking 3D was analogous to Atari 2D graphics. On top of graphics, that era saw the dawn of voice acting in CD media where the VA was horrific (King's Quest Mask of Eternity embodies both).

 

I had a different reaction at the time. I was definitely impressed by the relative freedom and speed of games like Tomb Raider and Super Mario 64. The low poly nature of these games never really registered with me. For the most part, outside of the obvious turkeys, they looked good at the time. It was just new and exciting tech, and, per usual, I was along for the ride. With that said, going back to those low poly games is much harder for me, relatively speaking, than even the blockiest 2D games, so there's no denying that much of their appeal is of their time.

[zzip]

8 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

I had a different reaction at the time. I was definitely impressed by the relative freedom and speed of games like Tomb Raider and Super Mario 64. The low poly nature of these games never really registered with me. For the most part, outside of the obvious turkeys, they looked good at the time. It was just new and exciting tech, and, per usual, I was along for the ride. With that said, going back to those low poly games is much harder for me, relatively speaking, than even the blockiest 2D games, so there's no denying that much of their appeal is of their time.

Since I was primarily a PC gamer at the time, 3D-games meant forced upgrades, bad performance and having to mess with  Drivers/DirectX/Other settings to resolve crashes.   And so many 2D franchises rushed to 3D "just because" and ended up looking and/or performing worse because of it.    So early 3D still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

[alucardX]

23 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

I had a different reaction at the time. I was definitely impressed by the relative freedom and speed of games like Tomb Raider and Super Mario 64. The low poly nature of these games never really registered with me. For the most part, outside of the obvious turkeys, they looked good at the time. It was just new and exciting tech, and, per usual, I was along for the ride. With that said, going back to those low poly games is much harder for me, relatively speaking, than even the blockiest 2D games, so there's no denying that much of their appeal is of their time.

I agree. Seeing Mario 64 for the first time with it's amazing soundtrack and 3D polygonal 360 degree play fields was an experience in itself. Throwing Bowser into bombs after swinging him 360 degrees by rotating the analogue stick, just totally immersive.

 

I remember being completely taken away by Pilotwings 64. It was the best it had been and it didn't matter *at that time* how crude it was. The experience was new and we all wanted a chance to experience it. Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racer had similar appeal for me.

Edited November 13, 2023 by alucardX

[alucardX]

3 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

Take something like Hoverstrike on the Jaguar CD, the deluxe version of the game, coding moved to the GPU for a very minimal frame rate increase. 

 

It could be argued Atari should of canned the cartridge version, kept Hoverstrike as a CD exclusive, lord only knows the add-on needed quality exclusives, but it was never going to have the impact the original Battlezone had and it's journey, if claims are true, starting out as BZ2000, but deviating so far from the source, it had to become a stand alone title.. 

 

It wasn't ever going to convince people the Jaguar was a must-have system, it was just a shot in the arm for those who bought it, as quality titles so scarce. 

It's really a shame that more didn't happen for this title. It was one of my favorite Jag CD games (so many to choose from!). I liked the way the physics were done and really thought they did a pretty good job with the graphics. It really pushed what we'd seen on the Jag up to that point.

[Editorb]

On 11/10/2023 at 8:46 AM, Bill Loguidice said:

While I personally enjoy the concept of games that pushed the technology of hardware, the reality is we never did see, for all the 64-bit hype, a truly awe-inspiring Jaguar title.

 

On 11/10/2023 at 9:11 AM, jerseystyle said:

I totally agree- some great games came out on the Jag, but nothing that blew my mind in terms of graphics, sound, etc. AVP, T2K, and Battlemorph were awesome but due much more to design then tech. 

 

T2K inspired awe in me at time (and still). I bought game and console sight unseen from friend via mail. But, I was also a huge Atari fan and wanted to enjoy inspired awe.

[+Stephen]

It's probably been mentioned, but having a 5 processor system sharing a single bus and requiring wizard level assembly coders (like Jeff Minter) to make the system perform did not help matters at all.  Few years later, Miller & Mathieson proved they did not learn anything by making the same mistake with the Nuon architecture.

[jerseystyle]

2 hours ago, alucardX said:

It's really a shame that more didn't happen for this title. It was one of my favorite Jag CD games (so many to choose from!). I liked the way the physics were done and really thought they did a pretty good job with the graphics. It really pushed what we'd seen on the Jag up to that point.

Hoverstrike CD was an awesome game. I liked the cart version but the CD version nailed it. Hey Atari- give us more Hoverstrike!

[Matt_B]

1 hour ago, Stephen said:

It's probably been mentioned, but having a 5 processor system sharing a single bus and requiring wizard level assembly coders (like Jeff Minter) to make the system perform did not help matters at all.  Few years later, Miller & Mathieson proved they did not learn anything by making the same mistake with the Nuon architecture.

Mathieson did eventually go on to lead the Nvidia Tegra team though, so he eventually figured it out.

[alucardX]

21 minutes ago, Matt_B said:

Mathieson did eventually go on to lead the Nvidia Tegra team though, so he eventually figured it out.

I'd say he was ahead of his time with this design.

[agradeneu]

Lol, everything in games tech is parallel processing now.

The Jaguar Design was somewhat radical but Sound, and improved and fixed some shortcomings with Jaguar 2. 

 

Many issues of Jaguar were caused by Cost saving measures by Atari

 

 

[agradeneu]

14 hours ago, zzip said:

I think the fact that it could pull off a reasonable Doom port (and AvP) was impressive enough at the time..   Before that, 

 

To me one of the great tragedies of gaming is when we finally got the hardware to do beautiful 2D graphics without compromises,  the world decided it would rather have ugly, blobby primitive, low-polygon 3D graphics instead.   

Why we had the first ridiculous primitive Cars when we had those shiny carriages with beautiful horses?

3D was always fascinating, even on C64 or Amiga, stuff like Doom on PC or Jag was next Level! 

 

Early 3D like Elite was still Miles ahead of any average mascot platformer or gazillions of Street Fighter clones on NeoGeo.

Edited November 14, 2023 by agradeneu

[zzip]

3 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Why we had the first ridiculous primitive Cars when we had those shiny carriages with beautiful horses?

3D was always fascinating, even on C64 or Amiga, stuff like Doom on PC or Jag was next Level!

I was never all that impressed.   I remember being excited for Flight Simulator II in my 8-bit days, only to encounter 2-5fps max and barely any 3D objects.   ST could do 3D better, but still a lot of blocky objects and weak framerates

 

Doom blew me away,  finally fully-rendered 3D environments!  But it wasn't true 3D, it took shortcuts to fake it.   The games that used true-3D to good effect were still years away.

[agradeneu]

It does not really matter if something was not "true" 3d if it blew us away!

 

Furthermore, we already had fine 3D action simulation games with polygon graphics on PC and in the Arcades.

 

The Jaguar closed the gap between home consoles and PC/Arcades quite a bit. So it has its place in history for pioneering later and stronger 3D systems.

 

 

2D games, on the other hand, struggled with  oversaturation and became a bit stale with lack of creativity.

 

Anyway, we would not  have all those fancy modern 3d graphics today if there was no early 3D experiments and the era of flat shaded poly graphics. 

 

BTW which have their own unique pleasant aesthetics.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

[zzip]

17 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

It does not really matter if something was not "true" 3d if it blew us away!

It totally mattered.   I got into WAD editing and was frustrated that I couldn't design the levels the way I wanted to because they were essentially 2D maps with height tricks.

 

22 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

Anyway, we would not  have all those fancy modern 3d graphics today if there was no early 3D experiments and the era of flat shaded poly graphics. 

That's fine, but they should have kept 3D away from traditionally 2D/isometric franchises until it was ready.  That's my issue, so many games rushed to become "3D" and didn't benefit from it.

[Bill Loguidice]

35 minutes ago, agradeneu said:

The Jaguar closed the gap between home consoles and PC/Arcades quite a bit. So it has its place in history for pioneering later and stronger 3D systems.

 

No reason to quibble, of course, but I'd argue the 3DO was the clearer embodiment of what you're implying. 

[Lostdragon]

20 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

The 3D thing is hard to say for the time. Sure, the PS1 proved that solid 3D prowess was indeed the future and something that was needed post-PS1 launch, but before that, it's arguable that the Jaguar's 3D capabilities were sufficient, as long as they weren't overtaxed, which of course Atari insisted upon more than once. The 3DO was far more forward-thinking, being both CD-based and with more robust 3D capabilities, but it still didn't make much of a difference in the end, despite selling something like 9x the amount the Jaguar did. It was just a bit too early for the 3D stuff to be what it eventually needed to be.

 

It's debatable if the 3DO was far more forward-thinking in terms of it's hardware design. 

 

2D was still very big in Japan, was it not? a territory it needed to succeed in. 

 

 

When developers got the hardware, there were those who were happy to voice concerns over the direction the designers had taken it. 

 

Mark Johnston (Argonaut's 3DO coder) feeling tyarbthe SNES pretty much wiped the floor with the 3DO in regard s to 2D.

 
Bill Heineman (interplay) saying  that the  3DO  was fast enough (almost) to handle just about every effect of SNES Mode 7, but you could still do it a lot faster on the SNES.. 

 

 

As for Atari insisting the Jaguar hardware was overtaxed.. 

 

Not so black and white. 

 

Thankfully we had more credible sources than Martin Hooley, confirm Atari were the ones asking for texture-napping in 3D Imagitec Design games like I-War, even though they knew it'd hit performance. 

 

But as they said, Atari were paying the bills, so they got what they asked for. 

 

 

As for Hooley himself, he initially claimed that Atari had suddenly asked them to include lots of custom lighting effects and texture-mapping to Freelancer for the Jaguar CD, so it could compete with first wave PlayStation and Saturn titles, but Martin has since changed his story as to why the game was canned, now he prefers to claim the company new the Jaguar CD was doomed to failure from the off, they'd never recoup the investment. 

 

 

Other Imagitec sources say the blame lay with the 'idiot producer' Hooley assigned to the project. 

 

And Hooley's initial claim doesn't go any way to  explain why they canned the actual in-development PC CD version (which was running terribly). 

 

 

ATD spoke about it with regards Battlemorph.. 

 

 

Missile Command 3D coder Martin Brownlaw claiming the decision to fully texture map the game was a decision Leonard Tramiel made...

 

Leonard also been blamed for Supercross 3D having performance-killing texture-mapping.... 

 

 

But there have been claims the  games coder himself  said in fact it was the bosses at Tiertex who wanted the game fully texture mapped.

 

Has anyone found and asked the Tiertex folk? 

 

Put the claims to Leonard, so he can give his version of events? 

 

It was Jane Whittaker's 'spaghetti A. I routines'  running on the 68000, that killed the frame rate on AVP, the decision to allow such a performance hit, that of Rebellion or Atari? 

 

Nobody ever seems to ask. 

 

 

All that seems to have found it's way etched into the annuals of history, is the story that Leonard Tramiel had seen Shockwave Assault on the 3DO and been impressed and wanted developers to push for texture-mapping on Jaguar CD titles, so the Jaguar could be seen as being able to compete.

 

 

We've never heard Leonard give his side of the story, have we? 

[agradeneu]

1 hour ago, Bill Loguidice said:

No reason to quibble, of course, but I'd argue the 3DO was the clearer embodiment of what you're implying. 

Jaguar and 3DO then  

 

The Jaguar was much more affordable and - on paper - had more processing power. 

Anyway, they don't exclude each other.

 

[Flyindrew]

What I often wonder, if during this time period, the Jaguar CD could have handled a port of Resident Evil? 

[agradeneu]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

It totally mattered.   I got into WAD editing and was frustrated that I couldn't design the levels the way I wanted to because they were essentially 2D maps with height tricks.

 

That's fine, but they should have kept 3D away from traditionally 2D/isometric franchises until it was ready.  That's my issue, so many games rushed to become "3D" and didn't benefit from it.

You did WAD editing 1993/94?

 

For a player, it is more about the expierience than the tech working behind the curtain - ask special effect artists of movies!

 

Doom was a breakthrough for FPS - for no reason then??

 

It created a detailed 3D world unlike anything before it, on rather low spec machines.   It still holds up for what it is. 

 

So you thought this was a tragedy and we should have sticked to cute 2D platfomers then? Ok, history proves otherwise......

 

Which franchises did not benefit from 3D?  Can you give some examples to back up your claims?

 

Edited November 14, 2023 by agradeneu

[Mittens0407]

 

36 minutes ago, Lostdragon said:

It's debatable if the 3DO was far more forward-thinking in terms of it's hardware design. 

In terms of its operating system it definitely was. Maybe a bit too forward thinking, as the OS sucked up around 500k of its memory. Programming to the metal isn't really a thing on the 3do, but that's what you trade for ease of development. The thing seems to run this part of Facts pretty well at least.

 

It doesn't really matter who forced who to implement texture mapping when the machine itself can't seem to handle it. Big gouraud polys aren't going to cut it in 1995.

21 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

I think what we missed out on with the Jaguar that would have helped was more premium 2D experiences like Rayman. That goes back to the budget thing, though. Even if the Jaguar couldn't necessarily wow with 3D, it should have consistently wowed with 2D.

That's true, but to offer 2D experiences comparable to other platforms onwards you'd need the CD drive, and that brings in all the issues with that thing.

Edited November 14, 2023 by Mittens0407

[Lostdragon]

21 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

The 3D thing is hard to say for the time. Sure, the PS1 proved that solid 3D prowess was indeed the future and something that was needed post-PS1 launch, but before that, it's arguable that the Jaguar's 3D capabilities were sufficient, as long as they weren't overtaxed, which of course Atari insisted upon more than once. 

Again, going with the above, what's your take on this industry claim? 

 

Marc from Eclipse :

 

"We worked on a new 3D engine designed around this routine to create a completely texture mapped racing game with a decent frame rate.

Unfortunately, as with some other proposed projects, Atari was justt to blind and unflexible to see what big step foward we could achieve

and so we had to cancel development after a few months as we couldn't
afford to proceed without Atari's support. At least some results from
our research were used in IS2."

 

Here's an example of a development team coming to Atari with exactly the type of game engine it appears they wanted, in order to be seen as being able to compete with the 3DO etc and Atari flatly turned them down. 

 

It appears extremely short sighted, but again, we only have 1 side of the story. 

 

[agradeneu]

1 minute ago, Mittens0407 said:

 

In terms of its operating system it definitely was. Maybe a bit too forward thinking, as the OS sucked up around 500k of its memory.

Which consoles before and right after the Jaguar had an operating system?