What could have saved the Jag?

[+cubanismo]

Yeah, one problem for sure was that if you hadn't played Tempest in the arcade (Me), Tempest 2k did not look awesome in magazines. All the reviews *said* it was awesome, but who could ever really trust those? I suspected I would like it, but had no way of trying it locally (No one had a Jaguar, no kiosks in stores near me). On the other hand, I knew I liked Ridge Racer, Teken, Daytona, Virtua Racing, Virtua Fighter, etc. because I'd played them in the local arcade. They were actual timely arcade ports I was familiar with. There were also Playstations and Saturns set up in every Toy/Electronics/Department store I went into I could try out if I hung around long enough to get a turn.

 

AvP looked good in magazines, but then, so did Checkered Flag and even Trevor McFur, and those did not review well, so I was conflicted. I did know I liked Raiden, but I liked Raiden 2 a lot more. No purple beam, no deal, sorry. In the end, I got a Saturn, and later split a PSX with a close friend that lived nearby (awkward arrangement, but we made it work).

[Bill Loguidice]

8 minutes ago, cubanismo said:

Yeah, one problem for sure was that if you hadn't played Tempest in the arcade (Me), Tempest 2k did not look awesome in magazines. All the reviews *said* it was awesome, but who could ever really trust those? I suspected I would like it, but had no way of trying it locally (No one had a Jaguar, no kiosks in stores near me). On the other hand, I knew I liked Ridge Racer, Teken, Daytona, Virtua Racing, Virtua Fighter, etc. because I'd played them in the local arcade. They were actual timely arcade ports I was familiar with. There were also Playstations and Saturns set up in every Toy/Electronics/Department store I went into I could try out if I hung around long enough to get a turn.

 

AvP looked good in magazines, but then, so did Checkered Flag and even Trevor McFur, and those did not review well, so I was conflicted. I did know I liked Raiden, but I liked Raiden 2 a lot more. No purple beam, no deal, sorry. In the end, I got a Saturn, and later split a PSX with a close friend that lived nearby (awkward arrangement, but we made it work).

I remember Tempest 2K used in many Jaguar demo stations in New Jersey retailers. I think one might have been at The Wiz, if I remember correctly. It's a fun game, especially with modern rotary controllers, but certainly not something that seems like it's state-of-the-art visually. It's probably a bit "stealth" in regards to the quality of its audio-visuals, of course, but I'd argue not something that the average person would pass by and immediately think, "wow!". AvP was definitely a "wow" title, and probably the Jaguar's most obvious such visual experience (top of my head) before Rayman, the latter of which was first released on PS1 anyway, taking some of the steam out of it being on the Jaguar.

 

As I've stated before, the Jaguar had some bad timing. It was going against 16-bit titles on the Genesis and SNES at their audio-visual peaks/primes with top-notch studios that understood the ins and outs of the hardware, and a new platform in the 3DO that, while high-priced, had the benefit of being CD-based, better-backed, and matching or exceeding anything the Jaguar could do in terms of raw audio-visual punch. With its lack of financial backing, the Jaguar really didn't stand a chance.

[Mittens0407]

16 hours ago, CyranoJ said:

Better sales could have saved it, and thats the bottom line.

Well duh, of course better sales could have saved it. I thought we were talking about why it sold poorly. How could we solve all droughts in the world? More water lol

 

17 hours ago, CyranoJ said:

Lack of support from people is what killed it. Apathy towards Atari.

I don't think the lack of support should be viewed in a vacuum. There seemed to be a fair amount of hype for the hardware itself. I think a lot of the apathy is towards the software library.

 

17 hours ago, CyranoJ said:

Also Club Drive and Checkered Flag. They killed it dead as well. LOL.

Hard agree, both titles really gave bad optics to the whole 64-bit marketing stuff.

 

[zzip]

17 minutes ago, Mittens0407 said:

17 hours ago, CyranoJ said:

Lack of support from people is what killed it. Apathy towards Atari.

I don't think the lack of support should be viewed in a vacuum. There seemed to be a fair amount of hype for the hardware itself. I think a lot of the apathy is towards the software library.

Yeah, you can't just dump a console on the market and if people fail to buy it, blame the consumers.    Maybe that worked when you had one of the first consoles like the 2600.   But now they had to market the hell out of it and provide games to make it a better choice than what Nintendo and Sega were offering.   Only a small percentage of the public are going to buy based on hardware alone, and any hardware advantage the Jag had was very short-lived.    Most consumers are only going to buy it for the games.

 

Atari may have once had the mindshare to sell a new console based on name alone, but they squandered that starting in 1984 and allowed Nintendo and Sega to eat their lunch.   They'd have a lot to prove to get back on top and they didn't have the resources to do it.

[Machine]

If the Jaguar came out 2 years earlier, it would have had a better chance.

[Clint Thompson]

5 hours ago, Machine said:

If the Jaguar came out 2 years earlier, it would have had a better chance.

Feel like if the Jaguar would have come out 2 years earlier, we would have gotten the Panther instead and Atari would have died before the Jaguar could even materialize. 
 

End result always seems to be Atari dying, because the Panther was not at all going to compete against the SNES or Genesis from the hardware side.

 

Laughably looking back at the launch ads with Dino Dudes and Raiden did far more harm than good. 

[Lostdragon]

8 hours ago, Clint Thompson said:

Feel like if the Jaguar would have come out 2 years earlier, we would have gotten the Panther instead and Atari would have died before the Jaguar could even materialize. 
 

End result always seems to be Atari dying, because the Panther was not at all going to compete against the SNES or Genesis from the hardware side.

 

Laughably looking back at the launch ads with Dino Dudes and Raiden did far more harm than good. 

Panther wouldn't of competed on the software side either. 

 

From actual games known to have been in development or at least greenlit for development.. 

 

A conversion of Shadow Of The Beast, a conversion of the awful Tiertex Strider II, a RPG that had started on the Konix, Jeff Minter trying his hand at something Star Raiders - esq.. 

 

Totally agree on the launch ads side of things. 

 

Delaying Falcon Dino Dudes to have it ready as a Jaguar launch title, a game which design wise, started life on the Lynx and as a commercial title, first appeared on the Amiga... 

 

Raiden is even more concerning, if what Marc from Eclipse has stated, went down, Eclipse offering to create an  exclusive Wings Of Death style 2D shooter for the Jaguar, Atari not being interested. 

 

The impression I took was Atari had it in the works for the Falcon, then simply had Imagitec abandon it, create it for the Jaguar instead. 

 

Assume it would of been finished earlier and cheaper? than having Eclipse code an original title, was a known name.. 

 

But man alive, it was long in the tooth. 

 

 

[agradeneu]

Eclipse's first Jaguar project was delayed by 1 year after Atari refused their first proposal of a rail shooter showcasing Jaguars polygon graphics. 

 

It took another month or two for Atari to propose the concept of Iron Soldier to them. Then troubles were caused by overheating prototypes of the Jaguar hardware. 

 

Source: Marc Rosocha

 

 

 

 

[jerseystyle]

On 11/17/2023 at 11:34 AM, cubanismo said:

Yeah, one problem for sure was that if you hadn't played Tempest in the arcade (Me), Tempest 2k did not look awesome in magazines. All the reviews *said* it was awesome, but who could ever really trust those? I suspected I would like it, but had no way of trying it locally (No one had a Jaguar, no kiosks in stores near me). On the other hand, I knew I liked Ridge Racer, Teken, Daytona, Virtua Racing, Virtua Fighter, etc. because I'd played them in the local arcade. They were actual timely arcade ports I was familiar with. There were also Playstations and Saturns set up in every Toy/Electronics/Department store I went into I could try out if I hung around long enough to get a turn.

 

AvP looked good in magazines, but then, so did Checkered Flag and even Trevor McFur, and those did not review well, so I was conflicted. I did know I liked Raiden, but I liked Raiden 2 a lot more. No purple beam, no deal, sorry. In the end, I got a Saturn, and later split a PSX with a close friend that lived nearby (awkward arrangement, but we made it work).

I was the same way! I’m now a proud Minter fanboy but back then I had no idea who he was or what T2K was about. I’d never played original Tempest and the Wiz demo unit by me (Monmouth County NJ baby!) had T2K up but was running the Tempest Plus mode with no sound, so I didn’t grab the game. Took me a year to buy it, and now I’d say the 2k series is in my top 5 all time.

 

And yeah the ads at the time were brutal. Dino Dudes? Raiden? GTFO. I thought Trevor Mcfur looked great and bought that but goddamn what a sloppy, lifeless title. Not a good start for the Jag.

[guSTaw]

@Lost Dragon

Raiden is even more concerning, if what Marc from Eclipse has stated, went down, Eclipse offering to create an  exclusive Wings Of Death style 2D shooter for the Jaguar, Atari not being interested. 

 

It would definitely be the best 2D shooting game for the Jaguar...

[PeterG]

On 11/24/2023 at 10:59 PM, guSTaw said:

@Lost Dragon

Raiden is even more concerning, if what Marc from Eclipse has stated, went down, Eclipse offering to create an  exclusive Wings Of Death style 2D shooter for the Jaguar, Atari not being interested. 

 

It would definitely be the best 2D shooting game for the Jaguar...

From what I know it would have been a rail shooter a la Blue Lightning but with polygonal 3D graphics... Did not know they also had a 2D Shooter in mind, that would have been cool as well of course.

[guSTaw]

Support at the premiere of the Jaguar console for games from the following companies:

Psygnosis, Gremlin, Team 17, Inforgames, Agronaut Games, EA and Crystal Dynamics

[dudeguy]

Can anyone explain to me why the Jag games basically looked like SNES games, despite supposedly "better" hardware and "64 bits" of extreeeeeeeme power?

[Bill Loguidice]

1 hour ago, dudeguy said:

Can anyone explain to me why the Jag games basically looked like SNES games, despite supposedly "better" hardware and "64 bits" of extreeeeeeeme power?

Most of the reasons were mentioned here already. Basically, you had low development budgets, dev studios with limited skillsets, poor dev tools, some hardware design issues/limitations, etc. There obviously was sufficient audio-visual prowess to pump out "easily better than 16-bit" games, but we only occasionally got that. The Jaguar has a very small library of games, so the same dreck you find on other consoles is more noticeable because it's a higher percentage of the overall library. Across cartridge and CD combined, you could probably (doing top of my head math) have a really solid top 15 - 20 games from the original library that showcase what the system is capable of versus the remaining 40 or so that are, at best, mediocre, and at worst, embarrassing.

It also didn't help - again, as previously stated - that the Genesis and SNES were at their peaks, both well-understood and supported by the best companies in the world, and that a system like the 3DO was also released shortly before, so the Jaguar had a direct "next gen" comparison against a platform it could struggle against in terms of razzle-dazzle, especially with the whole cartridge versus CD thing.

[zzip]

4 hours ago, dudeguy said:

Can anyone explain to me why the Jag games basically looked like SNES games, despite supposedly "better" hardware and "64 bits" of extreeeeeeeme power?

It's power is spread over several custom chips,  it also had a Motorola 68000 chip that Atari claimed was just there to do minimal management tasks.

 

However, the 68000 was a well-known chip used in several computers and consoles, so there was a wealth of developer expertise around it, and not much for the new Atari custom chips.   

 

So the easiest way to approach the hardware was to write 68000-based games that didn't offer much improvement over Amiga/Genesis or SNES

Edited November 27, 2023 by zzip

[Cyprian]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

It's power is spread over several custom chips,  it also had a Motorola 68000 chip that Atari claimed was just there to do minimal management tasks.

 

However, the 68000 was a well-known chip used in several computers and consoles, so there was a wealth of developer expertise around it, and not much for the new Atari custom chips.   

 

So the easiest way to approach the hardware was to write 68000-based games that didn't offer much improvement over Amiga/Genesis or SNES

I would not blame 68000 for that, because 68000 13MHz in Jaguar is superior to SNES 65c816 3,58 MHz.

 

I would say that the key to the failure was the lack of money, which resulted in a poor development kit and the lack of large development studios

 

[agradeneu]

5 hours ago, dudeguy said:

Can anyone explain to me why the Jag games basically looked like SNES games, despite supposedly "better" hardware and "64 bits" of extreeeeeeeme power?

Games like AvP, Doom, Cybermorph or Iron Soldier were not possible on SNES or Genesis as the Jaguar has superior processing power compared to both. 

Same goes for Doom or Wolfenstein ports, clearly showing off the potential. Any texture mapped or gouraud shaded 3D game by default is beyond what either 16 bit system was designed for.

 

However, a lot of 2d sprite games were conversions from the Genesis and offered only minor improvements.

 

But, I have to say that e.g. Power Drive Rally, Theme Park or Worms look vastly superior to their 16 bit counterparts, although many people regard them as looking "16  bit".

 

As for "64 bits" - it just means the system can process a lot more data through the bus, e.g. large 16 bit color images require much more data than the usual 4 bit tiles of SNES or Genesis. 

 

However it does not mean that games were by default better - it is a matter of design and artistic quality.  

 

 

 

So, by the numbers, if you display and scroll a large image of almost 1 MB data on screen with Jaguar, it was impossible on SNES to do the same, not even close.

 

(SNES has 128kybte RAM btw) 

 

 

Edited November 27, 2023 by agradeneu

[alucardX]

6 hours ago, dudeguy said:

Can anyone explain to me why the Jag games basically looked like SNES games, despite supposedly "better" hardware and "64 bits" of extreeeeeeeme power?

One thing that I wonder about is the quality of the development systems being used at the time. We know id Software had some pretty nice development systems (NeXT Computers) but what about other teams in other companies? What hardware were they working with and how efficiently could the create really detailed, high color graphics and store and share them within their teams? Was this even an issue for devs and if so, to what extent did it limit their ability to create really nice looking games for the Jaguar? It seems to me that if you're tooled up to work on SNES and MegaDrive games then you may not quite have the tools to really work with something more powerful. If that was the case though, that would have been on Atari for not properly equipping developers with the tools they needed to harness the power of the Jaguar chipset and THAT topic has been beaten to death.

[zzip]

53 minutes ago, Cyprian said:

I would not blame 68000 for that, because 68000 13MHz in Jaguar is superior to SNES 65c816 3,58 MHz.

 

I would say that the key to the failure was the lack of money, which resulted in a poor development kit and the lack of large development studios

Yeah it's not the 68000's fault, without it, some developers may have chosen to not port games, resulting in even less software.   

 

Atari almost certainly didn't do enough to court and support developers.  I've heard the dev kits weren't so good.

[Clint Thompson]

21 hours ago, alucardX said:

It seems to me that if you're tooled up to work on SNES and MegaDrive games then you may not quite have the tools to really work with something more powerful. If that was the case though, that would have been on Atari for not properly equipping developers with the tools they needed to harness the power of the Jaguar chipset.

Most likely that’s true and is a fair assumption. They simply weren’t up to speed for what the Jaguar was capable of.
 

But you can’t expect Atari to provide third parties with $35,000 SGI workstations to create and render amazing artwork like what was used for Donkey Kong Country, that’s entirely on the developers. Same applies to musicians and their hardware or lack thereof to create it and programmers and their skills or lack thereof to program for it. 

[Bill Loguidice]

My opinion, of course, but tools, or lack thereof, doesn't change the fact that many of the games lacked polish and sophistication. Even if the devs were used to 16-bit tools and workflows, they still should have been able to produce games that would have stood out on 16-bit platforms gameplay- and depth-wise. Many of the releases didn't.

[alucardX]

56 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

My opinion, of course, but tools, or lack thereof, doesn't change the fact that many of the games lacked polish and sophistication. Even if the devs were used to 16-bit tools and workflows, they still should have been able to produce games that would have stood out on 16-bit platforms gameplay- and depth-wise. Many of the releases didn't.

I agree with this generally. If you're doing games for SNES and MegaDrive and that's what your tools work well on, then you'll probably think that a version of your work without the color restrictions and slowdown is a good enough bump up to make something for a new system, in this case the Jag. That lends itself all too well to having a short budget for a new title as well. Money for devs I guess is the big common issue. If it were simply a labor of love and they did it to see the best product get done then we'd have seen some more quality titles. Look at some of the stuff that is coming out now like Jumping at Shadows. There are some obvious advantages to developing in 2023 vs 1993 but the care being put into it is at a level that money can't buy. For game developers making their living this way they need that revenue stream of course and a lot is influenced by that. That's not to mention that Atari wanted everything they paid for to be able to fit on a 2Mb cart instead of taking advantage of the larger ROM sizes.

[Lostdragon]

On 11/27/2023 at 12:00 PM, dudeguy said:

Can anyone explain to me why the Jag games basically looked like SNES games, despite supposedly "better" hardware and "64 bits" of extreeeeeeeme power?

I put the question to Darryl Still of Atari UK, many years ago on a community RVG interview. 

 

He replied.. 

 

(Regarding how Fever Pitch Socfer came about) 

 

 

"Fever Pitch was a desperate response to losing FIFA and needing a football title. It didn’t really showcase much at all to be honest, but we did it in 6 weeks and it was quite playable is a short term fun kind of way…at the time!" 

(And regarding why so many 16-bit ports).. 

 

 

" In any catalogue you have to cover as many bases as possible. Some Jag users wanted to play the games that their SNES mates were playing, others wanted their own original IP to crow about and showcase what SNES could not do. It was the teams job to provide both options. From the outside it may have looked different, but when you understood the resources that were available to them, the job they did was pretty impressive."

 

Thought that might be of some help to you. 
 

[Lostdragon]

On 11/24/2023 at 9:59 PM, guSTaw said:

@Lost Dragon

Raiden is even more concerning, if what Marc from Eclipse has stated, went down, Eclipse offering to create an  exclusive Wings Of Death style 2D shooter for the Jaguar, Atari not being interested. 

 

It would definitely be the best 2D shooting game for the Jaguar...

Another commercial developer quote might help you have further understandings of the mindsets within Atari.. 

 

 

Starting with how the hardware was used for Zero 5..

 

"We found it to be significantly faster on plain flat-shaded polygons,

which usually form 90% of the game world (although some sections, such
as asteroid belts, are heavily texture-mapped). Memory was also an
issue as well, as we wanted triple bufferring, which was far more
feasable with 8-bit colour (especially as we give over something like
300K to in-game music, speech and sound FX, we really needed the RAM)."

" As for the number of colours, nobody at Atari noticed it was 8-bit
until we told them (they wanted us to use the trick of holding
textures in the colour palette), but perhaps that is more of a
reflection on Atari ..."

 

On future plans.. 

" .. we also knocked up a basic engine to use for a racing game
after finishing Zero 5, using a strange technique, which Atari weren't
interested in. This is something that, in theory, sounds like it
wouldn't work at all, but the effect was quite good. It used the
object processor to simulate texture mapping. Each scanline of each
polygon is effectively a 1-line high scaled sprite, with DATA and
HSCALE set to show the appropriate texture line. The trouble with
this technique (apart from about 1meg's worth of double buffered
object list) is that the texture has to stay upright, it can't rotate,
but it's amazing what you can get away with in the case of a racing
game with mainly flat road and side barriers ..."

Matthew Gosling

[Lostdragon]

On 11/17/2023 at 7:56 PM, Bill Loguidice said:

I remember Tempest 2K used in many Jaguar demo stations in New Jersey retailers. I think one might have been at The Wiz, if I remember correctly. It's a fun game, especially with modern rotary controllers, but certainly not something that seems like it's state-of-the-art visually. It's probably a bit "stealth" in regards to the quality of its audio-visuals, of course, but I'd argue not something that the average person would pass by and immediately think, "wow!". AvP was definitely a "wow" title, and probably the Jaguar's most obvious such visual experience (top of my head) before Rayman, the latter of which was first released on PS1 anyway, taking some of the steam out of it being on the Jaguar.

 

As I've stated before, the Jaguar had some bad timing. It was going against 16-bit titles on the Genesis and SNES at their audio-visual peaks/primes with top-notch studios that understood the ins and outs of the hardware, and a new platform in the 3DO that, while high-priced, had the benefit of being CD-based, better-backed, and matching or exceeding anything the Jaguar could do in terms of raw audio-visual punch. With its lack of financial backing, the Jaguar really didn't stand a chance.

Jeff Minter himself talking about the reception T2K received from Atari"

 

 

"I remember that T2K was
considered to be quite a "low-key" title on the Jag development list -
they didn't even show the proto at the official Jaguar launch. I think
they were expecting a reasonable "filler" title, and they were quite
surprised (and so was I!) at the response that T2K actually got.