Was not releasing with CD at launch the biggest mistake Atari made with the Jaguar?

[Lostdragon]

11 hours ago, Clint Thompson said:

 

 

I think you're confusing an early beta build that just so happens to play better than the game that was actually finished and released. This has been a rumor that continues to be revived time and time again. Directly from his mouth while working at Apple in 2012: He got paid (late) but he did get paid and the released version is the final version. The changes that appeared with the final game were a result of Atari wanting the matches to last longer and one of the testers being Pentecostal.

I last saw the rumour being passed off as fact (in this case a back story to the main focus on the game itself) in a 2018 publication, by someone who likes to consider themselves something of an authority on Atari and the Jaguar. 

 

 

I'd assume it was simply text reused from a much older entry, but that is pretty poor to simply paste it into a paid for publication, without doing any due diligence research into seeing what new information had come to light. 

 

Little wonder the rumour gains more traction and can never be laid to rest, if more modern  writers are content to simply regurgitate years old, incorrect information as fact, rather than use new work as an opportunity to bring matters upto date and establish themselves as a credible source of information. 

[Zerosquare]

4 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

FFL will be released IF and WHEN it meets Atari standards. (...) Atari remains faithful to publishing software under strict
guidelines so that the product Atari customers buy meets or exceeds their expectations.

Who said Atari didn't have a sense of humor?

 

[ataritiger]

52 minutes ago, Lostdragon said:

I last saw the rumour being passed off as fact (in this case a back story to the main focus on the game itself) in a 2018 publication, by someone who likes to consider themselves something of an authority on Atari and the Jaguar. 

 

 

I'd assume it was simply text reused from a much older entry, but that is pretty poor to simply paste it into a paid for publication, without doing any due diligence research into seeing what new information had come to light. 

 

Little wonder the rumour gains more traction and can never be laid to rest, if more modern  writers are content to simply regurgitate years old, incorrect information as fact, rather than use new work as an opportunity to bring matters upto date and establish themselves as a credible source of information. 

I saw it in a recent Larry video too. Top 5 games ruined by publishers or something.

[+madman]

1 hour ago, ataritiger said:

So no final ffl rom has been confirmed even in our old thread? Well I'm interested in virtua fighter like one with less moves was that e3 beta? We listed 4 or 5. Thank god ffl wasn't on cd. About mini, if I cant get avp doom or wolf3d on it then whats the point. Also shells seem to change owners here and without paying krikzz or terraunion owner $250,000 yeah that won't work on fpga. A emu mini with no avp doom etc sucks even with great homebrew or legacy games. Happy? Yall won and I see now. Im not paying 2 million just for license fees from Microsoft. This was a dream but without some miracles it won't happen.

For those keeping track:

Day 1: ataritiger isn't sure if the Jag Mini, as mentioned on a fan sourced "ideas wiki" is real or not.

Day 2: He emailed some people and he's making a Jag Mini.

Day 3: He's Googled and now the Jag Mini is FPGA based. 

Day 4: The child is grown, the dream is gone. RIP Jag Mini.

[Reaperman]

I recall Jaguar already being expensive enough to keep me out of it, without adding a ~$100 cdrom drive. I only got my jag years later, $35 off of a pallet at a computer show booth with three games (around 1997). But even at that time, years after jag flopped, SNES and Genesis were still doing well enough on carts. So no, carts weren't the problem. Back then it was common for a cd game to make extremely poor use of the cd's storage space anyway, so there wouldn't be much benefit for the consumer half of the equation.

 

The problem with me, and likely others, is that Jaguar didn't play the games I wanted to play on a console at the time. I'm sure there will be some pushback to that statement here, since this is a jag forum, and I suspect most of the fans of its library (worldwide) are in this thread. I primarily wanted my consoles playing the Japanese games from Capcom, Namco, Konami, Square, etc. Atari did what it could with some decent arcade-style games, which did sway me towards it for a bit, but where were the 'Atari Games' arcade ports that did so well on lynx?

[Lostdragon]

43 minutes ago, ataritiger said:

 

43 minutes ago, ataritiger said:

I saw it in a recent Larry video too. Top 5 games ruined by publishers or something.

Larry is clearly very good at what he does, providing entertaining videos for his very healthy YT following, but the Fact Hunt ones really border on the ironic title at times, the levels of due diligence research on them is so poor. 

 

 

Thought he might of upped his game after getting egg on his face over the Jaguar Zero 5 claims, where he took the script provided to him at face value and proclaimed Atari UK and Telegames ripped the coder off, never thought to approach other sources within Telegames or Caspian Software, let alone Atari UK for their side of the story. 

 

 

Sites like GTW and Unseen64 are never going to get the traffic prolific YT channels like Guru Larry recieve and have little to no chance putting the record straight. 

 

The myths just get further and further ingrained into becoming fact.

 

 

But do today's YT viewers and casual article readers really care about facts?. 

 

As long as the story entertains, they seem more than content. 

Edited August 4, 2021 by Lostdragon
Post appeared double quoted.

[Bill Loguidice]

Again, working in Electronics Boutique (Woodbridge, NJ) at the time (and only having that personal data point and obviously being up on contemporary magazines, etc.), both the 3DO and Jaguar suffered from shared primary issues early on and that was getting enough game software on the shelves in their first year. Now, the 3DO did have an advantage in that it was able to pull off demonstrably cool demos and truly looked next gen, but it was obviously held back by its high launch window pricing. Nevertheless, both systems really missed out on having content that would have brought in more owners faster. It was literally the same few titles on the shelves (and in the 3DO's case, several non-game titles) for months on end. Now, the 3DO platform righted the ship eventually and got proper support and successive price drops on the consoles that helped a lot, while the Jaguar obviously never really recovered to the point to make a difference, particularly since it had few titles that made you go "wow" and the magazines were - justified or not (I'd argue in many cases they were) - pretty brutal on it.

I think overall that what would have helped both systems survive was to have a better, more consistent software release plan/schedule and a better focus on quality. For the 3DO, it would have been that and getting that launch window pricing on the console down lower, even if it meant taking greater losses for a while. They really weren't THAT far off from making it to the M2, and every little bit of additional sales and cache would have gotten us/them that much closer to that promising successor. Considering how far off the Jaguar was to reaching a sustainable user base, I suspect many other things would have had to have happened for it to make it to a Jaguar 2.

[ataritiger]

How bad was jag cd load times better than neo geo cd but same as sega cd about? Imagine a slow ffl match in between 10 second load times ? 

[Goochman]

Primal Rage CD will give you a good idea of what a FFL CD would be like.  Not awful but not as good as a cart

Edited August 4, 2021 by Goochman

[ataritiger]

^ Yeah I'm glad jag released as cart based at first then. Playing 20 great games on cart instead of cd better for jaguar. Why couldn't primal rage be on cart like genesis snes?

[rayik]

8 minutes ago, ataritiger said:

Why couldn't primal rage be on cart like genesis snes?

 

It's 233 MB.  Would not fit on 4 MB cart.

[ataritiger]

1 hour ago, rayik said:

 

It's 233 MB.  Would not fit on 4 MB cart.

Oh wow. Is it best version ? then, compared to the 32x or genesis or snes etc even though has ?load times? I like mortal kombat sega cd ? but some audio tracks are switched compare to cart and i ultimately just went back to cart genesis version with no load times. Same reason I like tempest on jag instead of saturn. Saturn load screens alone take minutes, gotta show 3 company logo screens, then game loads screen then ? 

Edited August 4, 2021 by ataritiger

[Bill Loguidice]

42 minutes ago, ataritiger said:

Oh wow. Is it best version ? then, compared to the 32x or genesis or snes etc even though has ?load times? I like mortal kombat sega cd ? but some audio tracks are switched compare to cart and i ultimately just went back to cart genesis version with no load times. Same reason I like tempest on jag instead of saturn. Saturn load screens alone take minutes, gotta show 3 company logo screens, then game loads screen then ? 

It probably goes something like Arcade/Emulation > PC DOS > Saturn > PS1 > 3DO > Atari Jaguar > 32X > Others

[ataritiger]

25 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

It probably goes something like Arcade/Emulation > PC DOS > Saturn > PS1 > 3DO > Atari Jaguar > 32X > Others

I'm surprised it is better than 32x even with jag ? load times. That is cool. 3do then jag then 32x version. Not bad. Genesis and Snes versions were meh. Maybe I'll add primal rage ? to top 20 mini emu or fpga jt list then  Madman, make a updated commentary post - the dream lives! Only 2 years of fpga r&d, field testing and tweeking and $250,000 to krikzz...2023 baby!

Edited August 4, 2021 by ataritiger

[Leeroy ST]

13 hours ago, agradeneu said:

Sony was selling every Playstation at a loss, they could afford it. 

Had nothing to do with the CD drive and doesn't explain the other consoles.

 

13 hours ago, agradeneu said:

The main problems for Atari were the low hardware and software sales. 3rd parties did not reckon the Jaguar as a commercially viable platform. Even ID was dispappointed with W3D and Doom sales and then stopped any further software development for the system. Nobody could tell a CD system would have fixed all those issues. Its highly questionable to make such assumptions.

Software sales would have been improved somewhat by cheaper and easier to produce CDs.

 

Sorry but you are imagining the CD tax. It wouldn't have jumped up the price was I keep seeing, we have to much evidence of this with the other consoles and CD player manufacturers.

 

Sure there's a chance it will cost more, maybe $50 or so more, but that's really a drop in the bucket since now marketing shows off more impressive games, better sound, and cheaper game prices to the consumer.

 

It would still drop in price fast by the next year anyway.

 

Atari making a stand alone drive was the much more expensive solution for themselves and the consumer. You remember how much it cost? And only for something like 10 games?

 

I'd argue that killed whatever chance the company had of surviving more than anything. Otherwise they could have went third party from a niche.

 

13 hours ago, agradeneu said:

I remember Nintendo showing "Mario 64" and every gaming journalists writing about it as groundbreaking stuff. 

You mean at the time it didn't exist and didn't have a demo yet? Impressive.

 

 

 

 

[Leeroy ST]

12 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

Other than Darryl Still and his bizzare claim of an X-rated version of Fight For Life (Jenny.. Tits oot for the Ladz) in one UK magazine, the Fight For Life info i have shared is this lot:

 

 

1. Ted Hoff: I would like to also share with you that Francois Bertrand
   has been asked back to complete work on Fight for Life.
   It’s important that I also tell you that our official
   position is the same as it has been for months…. that FFL
   will be released IF and WHEN it meets Atari standards.
   As you may have heard, the latest test reports have been
   favorable and I’m delighted to review it, but if Atari
   personnel answer your inquiries that the title remains on
   hold, then they are answering your question accurately.
   Atari remains faithful to publishing software under strict
   guidelines so that the product Atari customers buy meets
   or exceeds their expectations.

    
    
    

2. From the coder himself, F.Y.B:

   FFL is going to be a 4 Mbyte (32 Mbits) cartridge for the Jaguar64

   Most of the character are fully Texture mapped (not as Virtua Fighter), and the type of fight is closer to TEKKEN than to Toshiden.
   ..the frame rate in FFL is very good (up to 27 frame/second) and an
   average of 22.We has some design problem and some visual problems.If you look at the latest screen shot from the game, you will see that the graphics have improved a lot, and the game is now pushing the Jaguar as it should have done from the beginning.

   I am just finishing to clean up the latest texture for some of the
   characters, and debugging whatever the test department doesn’t like.When you devellop a game, you can make some choice which seems logical to you but are sometime not the best solution.The test department is doing a great job on this side.GA

   FFL does include a lot of thing you will not find on any of the other
   platform.The fact that you can devellop your own fighter, fight after
   fight is unique.I did include a combo system in the game, which give it a deeper gameplay.And I did devellop a morphing system, that is a first on a 3d fighting game.Stick with your Jaguar.Nobody else give you this sort of thing.

    
    
   The Jaguar architecture is different than the playstation’s one. I do believe that the Jaguar may be stronger in certain area, but not all

3. of them. The Jag+Jag CD is a strong environment, and you should see some
   beautiful products coming out for those two.

   More from FYB: During the development of FFL, I did discover some new way (faster way) to do things.Sometime, it wasn’t too late to make the modification to include those new tricks in the code, but not all of the time. If I had to redo FFL from scratch today,I do believe I may go faster on some area.But the actual result is still pretty impressive.

    
    
    
4.  

   Statement from Don Thomas :

    FIGHT for LIFE
    
    To me, it seems like a decade since the Fight for Life
    project began. For a long time, Mr. Francois Yves Bertrand,
    it’s creator, worked in a cubicle next to mine at 1196 on
    Borregas Avenue. Every once in a while, Francois would
    invite to peer over the wall at his latest revisions and
    little by little I saw Fight for Life come together as if I
    were watching time lapse photography.
    
    Francois is an extremely talented individual. He initiated
    the project virtually on a single handed basis. As he
    developed the project, he solicited the talents of other
    wizards to help with some of the bit maps, texture maps and
    sound effects used in the game. By the time Francois was
    finished and submitted the final copy, the Fight for Life
    team was numerous, exhausted and proud… and they should be
    proud.
    
    Atari Corporation has always prioritized the famous “fun
    factor” over almost any other element in a game. The reason
    for this is because eye candy is only appealing in the store
    or when you show off a game to a friend for the first time.
    If the game isn’t fun, then consumers look for ways to
    return or sell it as soon as they decided it is boring to
    play.
    
    Bill Rehbock, the executive producer, and J Patton, the
    producer of Fight for Life believed very much in the “fun
    factor” formula and asked Francois to work on those parts of
    the game engine first. As he did, news began to leak out
    that Atari was working on a polygonal fighter and before
    long, Atari was pressed into providing work-in-progress
    demos to the gaming press. Unfortunately, the gaming
    magazines decided to evaluate the game by terms other than
    how it was being developed. While Francois was spending
    relatively little time making it look good and a lot of time
    at making it play well, the magazines insisted on
    evaluations based on how well the screen shots appeared in
    their glossy magazine pages. By the end of the third quarter
    of 1995, Atari felt compelled to announce that Fight for
    Life was “indefinitely postponed” while, behind the scenes,
    Francois and his team accelerated final development with a
    focus on the graphic elements of the game.
    
    On Friday, April 19, 1996, Atari released Fight for Life to
    the Jaguar community. As you will see below by unsolicited
    Internet feedback, the game is being touted as an excellent
    new addition to the Jaguar library. I finally got a chance
    to look at it this morning. Please let me say first, that I
    am not pretending to be a polygonal fighter expert. I’ve
    seen the Virtual Fighter clones, but I have not played them
    any more than maybe a quarter’s worth each. That being
    established, Fight for Life definitely has the fun factor
    elements I’d expect from an Atari product. Not only does the
    game look GREAT!, but the mechanism to “earn” new moves as I
    win bouts is a challenging motivation. I also like the fact
    that each bout feels like a real time fight. Even in
    instances where I found a particular one move that seems to
    defeat my opponent, I have to work hard using it to win.
    
    I’ll let the comments that follow speak for themselves, but
    overall, I’d say Fight for Life kicks BUTTered buns!
    

 

Arcade Attack interviewed others who worked on the game. 

Hmm

 

Quote

Atari Corporation has always prioritized the famous “fun
 factor” over almost any other element in a game. The reason
 for this is because eye candy is only appealing in the store
 or when you show off a game to a friend for the first time.
 If the game isn’t fun, then consumers look for ways to
 return or sell it as soon as they decided it is boring to
 play.

This is hilarious too look back at now.

 

Also 22fps being very good.

[Leeroy ST]

8 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

I last saw the rumour being passed off as fact (in this case a back story to the main focus on the game itself) in a 2018 publication, by someone who likes to consider themselves something of an authority on Atari and the Jaguar. 

 

 

I'd assume it was simply text reused from a much older entry, but that is pretty poor to simply paste it into a paid for publication, without doing any due diligence research into seeing what new information had come to light. 

 

Little wonder the rumour gains more traction and can never be laid to rest, if more modern  writers are content to simply regurgitate years old, incorrect information as fact, rather than use new work as an opportunity to bring matters upto date and establish themselves as a credible source of information. 

Video Game Crash fits your bottom point perfectly. It will never be corrected in the mainstream.

 

7 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

For the 3DO, it would have been that and getting that launch window pricing on the console down lower, even if it meant taking greater losses for a while. They really weren't THAT far off from making it to the M2, and every little bit of additional sales and cache would have gotten us/them that much closer to that promising successor. Considering how far off the Jaguar was to reaching a sustainable user base, I suspect many other things would have had to have happened for it to make it to a Jaguar 2.

The issue is Panasonic and ARM were major reasons for the high price because 3DO couldn't afford to make or produce hardware themselves. Their whole entrance into the industry was to find away around that which is why they went with their model.

 

Outside Panasonic wanting to take heavier legendary losses I dont really think there was much 3DO could have done to drop the price. 

 

There original plan was to get other companies on board to help drop the price, which did happen in 94 later, but it seems that would have been an issue in 93.

[ataritiger]

24 minutes ago, Leeroy ST said:

Had nothing to do with the CD drive and doesn't explain the other consoles.

 

Software sales would have been improved somewhat by cheaper and easier to produce CDs.

 

Sorry but you are imagining the CD tax. It wouldn't have jumped up the price was I keep seeing, we have to much evidence of this with the other consoles and CD player manufacturers.

 

Sure there's a chance it will cost more, maybe $50 or so more, but that's really a drop in the bucket since now marketing shows off more impressive games, better sound, and cheaper game prices to the consumer.

 

It would still drop in price fast by the next year anyway.

 

Atari making a stand alone drive was the much more expensive solution for themselves and the consumer. You remember how much it cost? And only for something like 10 games?

 

I'd argue that killed whatever chance the company had of surviving more than anything. Otherwise they could have went third party from a niche.

 

You mean at the time it didn't exist and didn't have a demo yet? Impressive.

 

 

 

 

Maybe he meant mario32cd, the screenshot of Mario vs bowser in 3d  and article was seen in magazines then about snescd, which later became mario64 once Philips and Sony screwed Nintendo and vice versa.

[Clint Thompson]

5 hours ago, rayik said:

 

It's 233 MB.  Would not fit on 4 MB cart.

A lot of that is fluff/empty filler. Does Primal Rage even have FMV? I don't recall there being any but its been forever. It looks like the SNES version was 2MB so I don't see any reason as to why it couldn't have been cart even if at 4MB, other than they just needed more reasons to sell the JagCD.

[RetroSonicHero]

8 hours ago, ataritiger said:

I saw it in a recent Larry video too. Top 5 games ruined by publishers or something.

That's where I got it from too. I think he has great content overall, but he'll make a couple of slips here and there. I was repeating what he stated because that was before I knew that he wasn't always accurate about facts like that.

 

My mistake for not researching it after the fact. I've learned that people like LGR or The 8-bit Guy are much better at providing accurate information that we know was obtained from heavy researching beforehand.

Edited August 4, 2021 by RetroSonicHero

[+Stephen]

4 hours ago, ataritiger said:

I'm surprised it is better than 32x even with jag ? load times. That is cool. 3do then jag then 32x version. Not bad. Genesis and Snes versions were meh. Maybe I'll add primal rage ? to top 20 mini emu or fpga jt list then  Madman, make a updated commentary post - the dream lives! Only 2 years of fpga r&d, field testing and tweeking and $250,000 to krikzz...2023 baby!

I'm confused.  I thought that dream had passed.  Did your meds wear off and you are now back to working on the Jag mini FPGA?

[ataritiger]

1 hour ago, RetroSonicHero said:

That's where I got it from too. I think he has great content overall, but he'll make a couple of slips here and there. I was repeating what he stated because that was before I knew that he wasn't always accurate about facts like that.

 

My mistake for not researching it after the fact. I've learned that people like LGR or The 8-bit Guy are much better at providing accurate information that we know was obtained from heavy researching beforehand.

Indeed. Been on a LGR and Techmoan kick lately.

[ataritiger]

2 hours ago, Clint Thompson said:

A lot of that is fluff/empty filler. Does Primal Rage even have FMV? I don't recall there being any but its been forever. It looks like the SNES version was 2MB so I don't see any reason as to why it couldn't have been cart even if at 4MB, other than they just needed more reasons to sell the JagCD.

Yeah exactly.

[ataritiger]

2 hours ago, RetroSonicHero said:

That's where I got it from too. I think he has great content overall, but he'll make a couple of slips here and there. I was repeating what he stated because that was before I knew that he wasn't always accurate about facts like that.

 

My mistake for not researching it after the fact. I've learned that people like LGR or The 8-bit Guy are much better at providing accurate information that we know was obtained from heavy researching beforehand.

@ 10:22 

Was revised this or original had the rumor in it 

 

[RetroSonicHero]

1 minute ago, ataritiger said:

@ 10:22 

Was revised this or original had the rumor in it 

 

I'm pretty sure the original had it as well actually.

@14:20 is where you can hear Larry mention it directly, in this video at least.