What could have saved the Jag?

[Matt_B]

It's worth remembering that Jeff's preceding games had been shareware titles like Llamatron and the remake of Revenge of the Mutant Camels.

 

The idea that he'd got a flagship game for a new console in him wouldn't have been on anyone's radar at the time.

[Clint Thompson]

28 minutes ago, Matt_B said:

It's worth remembering that Jeff's preceding games had been shareware titles like Llamatron and the remake of Revenge of the Mutant Camels.

 

The idea that he'd got a flagship game for a new console in him wouldn't have been on anyone's radar at the time.

The thing about T2K development specifically is he had a team that was able to reign him in and control him a little bit. Between that and the outstanding soundtrack, it was dynamite. Left unhinged and you get Tempest 3000.... not that there's anything wrong with that.

 

 

Really though, Tempest 2000 and the Jag's VLM will forever remain his best works ever in my book. It just doesn't get any better than that.

[Bill Loguidice]

6 minutes ago, Clint Thompson said:

Really though, Tempest 2000 and the Jag's VLM will forever remain his best works ever in my book. It just doesn't get any better than that.

I'd say the Xbox 360 version of the VLM is better, but I generally agree that his games after Tempest 2K got TOO psychedelic for my tastes.

[JagChris]

3 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

I'd say the Xbox 360 version of the VLM is better, but I generally agree that his games after Tempest 2K got TOO psychedelic for my tastes.

I didn't like the 360 one. It threw up as much as it could at the screen all the time regardless of whether there was music playing or or not.

 

Then when there was music actually playing it didn't give it much room for blossoming effects when everything was exploding constantly.

[+Stephen]

1 hour ago, JagChris said:

I didn't like the 360 one. It threw up as much as it could at the screen all the time regardless of whether there was music playing or or not.

 

Then when there was music actually playing it didn't give it much room for blossoming effects when everything was exploding constantly.

It was meant to be used as a performance device, not a "Winamp plugin".  When used with 4 controllers, and 4 people running it, the experience was amazing.  That's the thing.  Jeff's VLMs are not automatic visualizers.  They re meant to be played like an instrument.  Even the 8-bit Colourspace had I think 30 to 40 page manual explaining it.

[agradeneu]

TxK was really good. 

[Lostdragon]

9 hours ago, Matt_B said:

It's worth remembering that Jeff's preceding games had been shareware titles like Llamatron and the remake of Revenge of the Mutant Camels.

 

The idea that he'd got a flagship game for a new console in him wouldn't have been on anyone's radar at the time.

He's done the likes of:Andes Attack, Defender 2, Photon Storm etc as commercial titles, but yes, he wasn't  seen the same light as say high profile teams such as The Bitmap Bros or Bullfrog. 

[Lostdragon]

The 3DO has been mentioned in this thread a few times, so I thought it might be worth sharing the following.. 

 

 

Stephen Landrum, Ex-Epyx and 3DO :

 

 

Regarding Worldbuilders:

 

"we were far too ambitious for first titles on a new
platform. We needed to get titles out, not to spend tremendous time
and resources on a title that was somewhat nichy and a serious
gamble. We needed to license popular titles. We needed to admit to
ourselves that we were selling a game machine, not the next new
"mutli-media educational entertainment experience".

"Worldbuilders could have been great if 3DO didn't have to be the
company to develop it. It was a huge mistake for 3DO to be working
on it at all." 

Regarding the planned educational content for the game:

*Another mistake when we needed products that could be finished in
months for the product rollout, not in years. Then we attempted to
repeat exactly the same mistakes for initial M2 title development -
Not in focusing on entertainment, but on trying to make titles that
were so ambitious and broad in scope that ignoring the fact that we
were also attempting to do it on a new architecture that we were
still attempting to do products that needed schedules of years to
complete when we needed to have a line of products ready for
rollout.

 

 

Educational products sound nice, but in reality aren't where the
main market is. Once a good income stream was achieved, putting a
lot of effort into educational products would have been workable.
Alternatively, if we had not been trying to make a universal machine
that could do anything, then it would have made sense to pick a
segment of the market, budget for it and focus on it, and we'd have
had a chance of achieving something.

It's a moot point now but many of us signed on with 3DO on the basis of
that commitment. We did *not* want to be flogging shoot-'em-ups to the
kiddies, at least not solely.

And that was a serious mistake, because 3DO wanted to sell millions
of the machines, and to do that it needed fighting games and
shooting games to get the product launched. But that wouldn't fit
with the PR monster we'd created, so we ignored the fact that it was
necessary.

 

 

 All through that frenzied rollout year
 there was a contingent within 3DO who were pushing for the company not  to lose focus on important peripheral committments, like educational
uses.

 

 

The problem is that there were so many "focuses" that the company
lost sight of the fact that it needed to launch a product. We had
way too many "important" peripheral commitments. The mistake was
in making the commitments to them in the first place, not in failing
to meet those commitments.

It was enough of an issue internally that Trip had to address it
a couple of times at company meetings, I recall. He always pointed toW orldbuilders and Noah  Falstein as  proof we were "doing the right thing" orw hatever. And then he let all that die out slowly.

Which was probably appropriate, because there were so many
distractions by that point, and we needed people to make a product
that had a chance in the marketplace, not a dream product that
would languish and die. Still, we managed to figure out how to make
a product that would languish and die."
 

 

 

Regarding the 3DO itself:I don't think the promises Trip made were
realistic to begin with, we had a basic problem in that we had a
company that was making one product (a game machine), trying to sell
it as another (the new standard in multi-media entertainment), and
were partnered with one company that had no idea how to roll out the
type of product we were making, and partnered with another that had
an unfortunate amount of input in many of the early decisions, but
also had an ongoing resentment with 3DO because Trip had started
another company to do what they felt like they should have been
controlling. Our marketing people were inept at best, we got taken
in by our own hype, and most of the company lived in a fantasy world
for a long time.

Stephen on Trip  Hawkin:

*Trip's problem here was attempting to do way too much. Once that's
been done, and it's been realized, a lot of things have to be put
on hold or stopped. The problem is that a lot of people get tied
to some of those early ideas, and now it's a political nightmare to
get things back on track.

3DO was an organizational mess from the beginning. Too many parts
of the company were working for completely different goals, and
there was too little of the company working together to be able to
create something useful. A lot of the Dilbert strips hit way too
close to home.
 

[LordKraken]

Quote

and
were partnered with one company that had no idea how to roll out the
type of product we were making, and partnered with another that had
an unfortunate amount of input in many of the early decisions, but
also had an ongoing resentment with 3DO 

Which companies is he referrign to?

 

always thought 3do got a lot of support from EA, which sounded like a good thing right?

 

[Lostdragon]

2 hours ago, LordKraken said:

Which companies is he referrign to?

 

always thought 3do got a lot of support from EA, which sounded like a good thing right?

 

Sadly, he didn't appear to follow up with any specifics. 

 

I always assumed E. A were one of the platforms staunchest supporters. 

 

#Found the lack of specifics on details an issue before, R. J Mical making reference to some game he witnessed, supposedly doing things he never thought possible on the 3DO hardware, but he never stated what the game was.. 

Edited December 1, 2023 by Lostdragon

[walter_J64bit]

More 3rd party games!

Edited December 1, 2023 by walter_J64bit

[Editorb]

I long regarded T2K as Mr. Yak's magnum opus. After procuring PS4 last December and tripping balls to Polybius, I bought Akka Arrh. I wasn't overly impressed, but occasionally played a bit more, then two bits, and now I'm moving into borderline obsession.The starfield and pod bonus scene after each round is like Jag dèjá vu. Marvelous.

 

I enjoy the lifestyle feature Polybius/Akka Arrh offer of requiring button press to continue to next round, providing a chance for refreshing quaffs to steel myself for the action to come. (Only cooler thing would be if games stated, "PRESS THE BUTTON," but that's probably a Reboot trademark that would require licensing fees.)

[Editorb]

Hmm. Akka doesn’t require button press. I just drink fast. 

[KidGameR186496]

A very interesting piece of the Panther/Jaguar lore was dropprd today!

 

https://www.timeextension.com/features/interview-it-was-a-suicide-mission-larry-siegel-reflects-on-ataris-failed-war-on-nintendo

[alucardX]

3 hours ago, KidGameR186496 said:

A very interesting piece of the Panther/Jaguar lore was dropprd today!

 

https://www.timeextension.com/features/interview-it-was-a-suicide-mission-larry-siegel-reflects-on-ataris-failed-war-on-nintendo

Thank you for sharing this, it had a lot of insights. In combination with some of the other accounts people have shared of their time at Atari this is very interesting. This guy is talking about his hotel room in New York and how he was rebuked for spending too much. This contrasted against another story (I forget the name of who told it) where he was rewarded for getting the cheapest flight he could find really paints an interesting picture of how Jack Tramiel handled expenses. Another interesting insight was the mentality of having the cheapest hardware, as described in the article. Jaguar may not have been the cheapest but they really banked hard on the 64-bit marketing which seems to suggest that they really thought having the "most powerful" console was enough to sell units.

 

The situation with software developers, as described, seems like it was a pretty dire one as well.

[Lostdragon]

On 12/4/2023 at 5:23 PM, alucardX said:

Thank you for sharing this, it had a lot of insights. In combination with some of the other accounts people have shared of their time at Atari this is very interesting. This guy is talking about his hotel room in New York and how he was rebuked for spending too much. This contrasted against another story (I forget the name of who told it) where he was rewarded for getting the cheapest flight he could find really paints an interesting picture of how Jack Tramiel handled expenses. Another interesting insight was the mentality of having the cheapest hardware, as described in the article. Jaguar may not have been the cheapest but they really banked hard on the 64-bit marketing which seems to suggest that they really thought having the "most powerful" console was enough to sell units.

 

The situation with software developers, as described, seems like it was a pretty dire one as well.

You might be thinking of Andrew, now Jane Whittaker and his claims of being rewarded by the Tramiel family. 

 

Claims now  further ridiculed by the account of just how tight they were, by Larry. 

[Lostdragon]

On 12/4/2023 at 2:11 PM, KidGameR186496 said:

A very interesting piece of the Panther/Jaguar lore was dropprd today!

 

https://www.timeextension.com/features/interview-it-was-a-suicide-mission-larry-siegel-reflects-on-ataris-failed-war-on-nintendo

As has been so often the case, when anyone from the industry is asked about the Panther, there appears to be some conflicting information contained within the interview. 

 

I forwarded the link to Rees, for inclusion on his site and he came back with the following point.. 

 

 

"Larry specifically  stated that the Panther was already under development at Flare and was then acquired by Atari, which goes against what some of my other sources say." 

 

 

The comment that interested me the most from the interview with Larry was where he talks of.. 

 

" Sam and Jack were adamant that it was this, that, or the other. And not only that, but, ‘You’re not going to spend a dollar marketing it because you believe if you put it on the market at $49 and all the other game systems are at $149, they’re going to buy the Panther and that’s not the case.’

 

IF the Tramiel family really were looking to launch the Panther at around $100 cheaper than the SNES or Genesis, I can't see the systems 'pathetic' amount of on-board Ram being increased for the commercial unit and that the sophisticated Ensoniq ES5505 (AKA “OTISR2”) sound chip would of been pulled and replaced with a cheaper, weaker alternative. 

 

Given that the likes of Jeff Minter have hinted that the machine's sprite-handling abilities were less than what Atari had promised, further performance reductions to cut costs, would of made the machine perform further still from what had been put forward. 

 

I think this will always be the case with Panther research, a lot of anecdotal evidence as so little documented evidence remains and we are asking people to remember with clarity, events of long, long ago. 

[alucardX]

1 hour ago, Lostdragon said:

You might be thinking of Andrew, now Jane Whittaker and his claims of being rewarded by the Tramiel family. 

 

Claims now  further ridiculed by the account of just how tight they were, by Larry. 

I will have to try and remember the interview I read but the story was roughly that he booked an airline ticket through a someone he knew and was confident in it being the best price. Jack challenged him and said that if was so sure it was the best price he'd pay for his wife to go on the trip with him if Jack couldn't find a flight for a better rate. If Jack could find a flight for a better rate then he had to pay for it himself. If I run across that story I'll post here just to have a reference in place.

[Lostdragon]

10 hours ago, alucardX said:

I will have to try and remember the interview I read but the story was roughly that he booked an airline ticket through a someone he knew and was confident in it being the best price. Jack challenged him and said that if was so sure it was the best price he'd pay for his wife to go on the trip with him if Jack couldn't find a flight for a better rate. If Jack could find a flight for a better rate then he had to pay for it himself. If I run across that story I'll post here just to have a reference in place.

Having slept on it, I have a feeling it might well of been Bill Rehbock, Whittaker always made the changing anecdote of the completion bonus he was given by Tramiel family for AVP, plus keys to a sports car. 

 

Think at 1 point he claimed Tramiel'S flew his girlfriend over? 

 

Know he constantly claimed they paid to fly him and Mike Beaton back to UK to finish AVP development as homesick issues kicked in, Purple Hampton counters that says Beaton stayed in USA till the end..

 

But Bill Rehbock does feel more familiar, just can't remember which interview with him it was said. 

 

Definitely a podcast type, not magazone one. 

[alucardX]

8 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

Having slept on it, I have a feeling it might well of been Bill Rehbock, Whittaker always made the changing anecdote of the completion bonus he was given by Tramiel family for AVP, plus keys to a sports car. 

 

Think at 1 point he claimed Tramiel'S flew his girlfriend over? 

 

Know he constantly claimed they paid to fly him and Mike Beaton back to UK to finish AVP development as homesick issues kicked in, Purple Hampton counters that says Beaton stayed in USA till the end..

 

But Bill Rehbock does feel more familiar, just can't remember which interview with him it was said. 

 

Definitely a podcast type, not magazone one. 

I think you're right and I think it was Arcade Attack.