Sam Tramiel interview - Next Generation 1995

[atarian63]

In total Atari only sold 250,000 Jaguars and 20,000 Jaguar CDs.

 

At the time they announced discontinuation, they had sold about 130,000 and had 100,000 in stock.

 

Less than 250,000 were ever built.

We got them in when the system was first released, sold quite a few at first, then it died. Very sad! Still have mine!

[STGuy1040]

At the end of the interview Sam Tramiel mentions Mortal Kombat 3 for Jaguar; I'm assuming this never went beyond the licensing stage.

[STGuy1040]

Gamespy.com seems to have an interesting spin on the same NG interview with Sam:

 

http://archive.gamespy.com/articles/june03...s/index22.shtml

Edited December 24, 2008 by STGuy1040

[Gorf]

At the end of the interview Sam Tramiel mentions Mortal Kombat 3 for Jaguar; I'm assuming this never went beyond the licensing stage.

 

Wow! That's pretty optimistic....I bet it never got that far. It could have been nothing more than

passing chatter with his pals he knows(knew) at Midway. Another great name about to be thrust

into oblivian!

Edited December 24, 2008 by Gorf

[STGuy1040]

At the end of the interview Sam Tramiel mentions Mortal Kombat 3 for Jaguar; I'm assuming this never went beyond the licensing stage.

 

Wow! That's pretty optimistic....I bet it never got that far. It could have been nothing more than

passing chatter with his pals he knows(knew) at Midway. Another great name about to be thrust

into oblivian!

 

I'm sure you're right about that but a Jaguar fan can dream.

[onlysublime]

Bitness does make a huge difference in memory bandwidth.

 

But Atari had limited resources and made educated guesses on where gaming technology would be. But of course, sometimes those guesses are wrong. Atari was in a 2D world with a monster sprite engine when Sony made the guess that 3D polygonal games would be the future. It works that way in all business. 3dfx almost drove Nvidia into extinction when the gaming industry designed games for Voodoo Graphics instead of the NV1. Luckily, Nvidia rebounded and learned how imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

 

The Jag is great for what it was designed to do. But it was limited by lack of memory and a few design flaws. Had the gaming world stayed a sprites, parallax-scrolling, etc. etc world, Jag could have been better. But to try to do Playstation hardware 3D rendering-style games with texture mapping via software rendering on Jag hardware was too much to ask.

 

Many of the sprite games looked spectacular: NBA Jam, Rayman, Burnout, etc.

None of the games with 3D and texture mapping looked good. Some of the 3D games with flat shading or Gouraud shading looked good.

[kevincal]

Great first post. Welcome to Atari Age.

 

Although I could argue that Iron Soldier and IS2 were 3d with "some" texture mapping, and looked great! There are some other examples of the Jag pulling off some pretty nice 3D texture mapping. But you're right, for the most part the Jag had a hard time with it...

[A Sprite]

The SNES was never 16 bit, did they go on and on about it in magazines? No they didn't.

 

Magazines always seemed to treat the Jaguar different than SNES and Genesis.

 

I have an EGM somewhere where they declare that the Jaguar isn't 64-bit because "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link and the Jaguar isn't 100% 64-bit in every way". Yet in the same issue, they talk repeatedly about the 16-bit Genesis (which includes at 8-bit Z80 processor) and never question its "bitness".

 

But how many Genesis games looked like they were programmed for the Z80?

 

Edit: Didn't see how old this topic was before typing. Missing that delete function...

Edited December 28, 2008 by A Sprite

[Thorsten Günther]

Great first post. Welcome to Atari Age.

 

Although I could argue that Iron Soldier and IS2 were 3d with "some" texture mapping, and looked great! There are some other examples of the Jag pulling off some pretty nice 3D texture mapping. But you're right, for the most part the Jag had a hard time with it...

 

I think Marc Rosocha had the best concept about this topic on the Jaguar: if you're to choose between frame rate and textures, don't sacrifice the frame rate. So he only had as many textures in his games as he could achieve (more in IS2 than in IS as his knowledge of the Jaguar capabilities had improved, of course) without letting the frame rate drop.

 

On the other hand, "Super Cross 3fps" is the perfect example how not to do it.

 

 

Thorsten

[DracIsBack]

But how many Genesis games looked like they were programmed for the Z80?

 

Edit: Didn't see how old this topic was before typing. Missing that delete function...

 

Ha - no worries.

 

Your point is legit. I guess it just always bugged me how EGM seemed to go a little far in their hatred to the point of extreme bias against.

[Gorf]

Bitness does make a huge difference in memory bandwidth.

 

But Atari had limited resources and made educated guesses on where gaming technology would be. But of course, sometimes those guesses are wrong. Atari was in a 2D world with a monster sprite engine when Sony made the guess that 3D polygonal games would be the future. It works that way in all business. 3dfx almost drove Nvidia into extinction when the gaming industry designed games for Voodoo Graphics instead of the NV1. Luckily, Nvidia rebounded and learned how imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

 

The Jag is great for what it was designed to do. But it was limited by lack of memory and a few design flaws. Had the gaming world stayed a sprites, parallax-scrolling, etc. etc world, Jag could have been better. But to try to do Playstation hardware 3D rendering-style games with texture mapping via software rendering on Jag hardware was too much to ask.

 

Many of the sprite games looked spectacular: NBA Jam, Rayman, Burnout, etc.

None of the games with 3D and texture mapping looked good. Some of the 3D games with flat shading or Gouraud shading looked good.

 

The PS1? Yeah it could texture everything and anything but it look anything but good.

The texture mapping in HoverStrike Cd is superior to a good deal of PS1 titles. Granted

the frame rate sucks but that is what happens when you think the 68k is the main processor.

[Gorf]

The SNES was never 16 bit, did they go on and on about it in magazines? No they didn't.

 

Magazines always seemed to treat the Jaguar different than SNES and Genesis.

 

I have an EGM somewhere where they declare that the Jaguar isn't 64-bit because "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link and the Jaguar isn't 100% 64-bit in every way". Yet in the same issue, they talk repeatedly about the 16-bit Genesis (which includes at 8-bit Z80 processor) and never question its "bitness".

 

But how many Genesis games looked like they were programmed for the Z80?

 

Edit: Didn't see how old this topic was before typing. Missing that delete function...

 

 

 

The 68k was the genny...the z80 was a sound processor. The analogy is not

applicable. There is no CPU in the Jaguar....the sooner folks(and coders) get

this in thier heads the sooner you will see much better performance form the

Jaguar.

[DracIsBack]

The 68k was the genny...the z80 was a sound processor. The analogy is not

applicable.

 

It is when you think of it in context. Someone wrote in and declared that "the Jaguar isn't 64-bit because not all parts of it are 64-bit in every way and a chain is only as strong as its weakest link". EGM completely agreed.

 

In the same issue, EGM spent a lot of time discussing the 16-bitters, including the Genesis.

 

Following their logic, the Genesis must not be 16-bit either because the sound processor was only 8bit and a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. But the Genesis wasn't subjected to EGM's bias and got off scott free.

 

Then again, a couple of issues later, EGM also spouted the infamous "Jaguar is 64 bit because it has two 32-bit processors running in parallel" line which is still quoted to this day.

[Crazyace]

The PS1? Yeah it could texture everything and anything but it look anything but good.

The texture mapping in HoverStrike Cd is superior to a good deal of PS1 titles. Granted

the frame rate sucks but that is what happens when you think the 68k is the main processor.

 

I think a more accurate statement would be that every single PS1 game had better texture mapping than almost all Jaguar games

[Gorf]

The PS1? Yeah it could texture everything and anything but it look anything but good.

The texture mapping in HoverStrike Cd is superior to a good deal of PS1 titles. Granted

the frame rate sucks but that is what happens when you think the 68k is the main processor.

 

I think a more accurate statement would be that every single PS1 game had better texture mapping than almost all Jaguar games

 

 

Talk about missing the point......It had a hardware engine for it now did'nt it? So yes is could TM FASTER

and more plentiful. but it looked like utter crap. Go play HoverStrike CD and pull up real close to one of

the mountains. Specifially, one of those breathing mountains......Then go to ANY PS1 game and do the

same thing. On HS....you will see well filtered and still very detailed TMapping. On the PS1 you will see

large blocks that make Affine TM look like perspective corrected TM.

 

Im talking quality, not quantity. PS1 wins on quantitiy.....in Tmapped triangles only. I find the Jaguar is

superior in 2D and in sound and it is a much more capable of high level AI and game logic. You cant do

everything and at top notch with one MIPS processor. Scott Legrand(coder BattleSphere) said he could

never pull off the same AI and game logic with the PS1's one MIPS as he did with the JAguar's two RISC's

without sacrificing a lot in the way of graphics and logic.

 

Put a double buffered blitter register file, both blit channels with fractionals and one more write back port

on the GPU and the PS1 would have nothing on the Jaguar....not one thing.

[Gorf]

The 68k was the genny...the z80 was a sound processor. The analogy is not

applicable.

 

It is when you think of it in context. Someone wrote in and declared that "the Jaguar isn't 64-bit because not all parts of it are 64-bit in every way and a chain is only as strong as its weakest link". EGM completely agreed.

 

In the same issue, EGM spent a lot of time discussing the 16-bitters, including the Genesis.

 

Following their logic, the Genesis must not be 16-bit either because the sound processor was only 8bit and a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. But the Genesis wasn't subjected to EGM's bias and got off scott free.

 

Then again, a couple of issues later, EGM also spouted the infamous "Jaguar is 64 bit because it has two 32-bit processors running in parallel" line which is still quoted to this day.

 

 

No I do understand the context, however, Sega never claimed that the z80 was a gen purp processor

nor did they encourage anyone to code that chip as the main processor. In fact I think the only reason

that was even put in the Genny was for SMS compatibility?

 

 

 

EGM..........The Microsoft of game mag world.....the most popular and easily the worst. Shoddy products,

BS info piled high and just an absolute embarrasment to those of us who actually give a damn about what

we put our names on.

[Crazyace]

The PS1? Yeah it could texture everything and anything but it look anything but good.

The texture mapping in HoverStrike Cd is superior to a good deal of PS1 titles. Granted

the frame rate sucks but that is what happens when you think the 68k is the main processor.

 

I think a more accurate statement would be that every single PS1 game had better texture mapping than almost all Jaguar games

 

 

Talk about missing the point......It had a hardware engine for it now did'nt it? So yes is could TM FASTER

and more plentiful. but it looked like utter crap. Go play HoverStrike CD and pull up real close to one of

the mountains. Specifially, one of those breathing mountains......Then go to ANY PS1 game and do the

same thing. On HS....you will see well filtered and still very detailed TMapping. On the PS1 you will see

large blocks that make Affine TM look like perspective corrected TM.

 

Im talking quality, not quantity. PS1 wins on quantitiy.....in Tmapped triangles only. I find the Jaguar is

superior in 2D and in sound and it is a much more capable of high level AI and game logic. You cant do

everything and at top notch with one MIPS processor. Scott Legrand(coder BattleSphere) said he could

never pull off the same AI and game logic with the PS1's one MIPS as he did with the JAguar's two RISC's

without sacrificing a lot in the way of graphics and logic.

 

Put a double buffered blitter register file, both blit channels with fractionals and one more write back port

on the GPU and the PS1 would have nothing on the Jaguar....not one thing.

 

To be honest I'm playing HS now - and it looks pretty crap to me ... It hasn't aged that well. ( I'd love to play Battlesphere, but I couldn't bring myself to bid above $300 last time there was an ebay, just to see the graphics )

I think that Scott maybe wasn't a good enough MIPs coder if he really made that statement - or else he made it before he worked on PS1

Even with the add on's ( which would have been really cool ) the Jag wouldn't match the performance of the PS1 GPU , regardless of what you ( or Sam Tramiel ) say

The PS1 graphics aren't perfect ( they aged pretty poorly as well.. ) - and it outperforms the Jag in 2D and audio as well ... 24 channels of ADPCM audio with 512K of dedicated ram is a lot better than anything offered on the DSP for example.

[Gorf]

To be honest I'm playing HS now - and it looks pretty crap to me ... It hasn't aged that well. ( I'd love to play Battlesphere, but I couldn't bring myself to bid above $300 last time there was an ebay, just to see the graphics )

 

 

Your loss.

I've seen plenty of PS1 games and up close the textures suck worse than the old 256 color

PC games of back in the day. I dont know what games you are looking at.

 

 

I think that Scott maybe wasn't a good enough MIPs coder if he really made that statement - or else he made it before he worked on PS1

 

Now this is a laugh...

 

When you show me a peice of work on the Jagur that even comes close to BS, then you might have something

to say about Scott's abilities....a 10 time patent holder and PHD. I'll take his word over it anyday...unless you can

provide better Jaguar coding credentials, other than Battlechess...you should be a bit more humble when it comes

to Mr. Legrand.

 

Even with the add on's ( which would have been really cool ) the Jag wouldn't match the performance of the PS1 GPU , regardless of what you ( or Sam Tramiel ) say

 

Even John Carmack said that just the double buffered Blitter registers would have been enough to keep pace.

I supposed he's not much of an authority either?

 

 

The PS1 graphics aren't perfect ( they aged pretty poorly as well.. ) - and it outperforms the Jag in 2D and audio as well ... 24 channels of ADPCM audio with 512K of dedicated ram is a lot better than anything offered on the DSP for example.

 

 

It does not out perform better than the Jag in 2D....4096 8x8 sprites?

Give me some credit.

 

I dont know what you think the PS1 has but its a MIPS with a texture triangle engine.

It was barely more powerful than the Jaguar.

Edited December 31, 2008 by Gorf

[Crazyace]

To be honest I'm playing HS now - and it looks pretty crap to me ... It hasn't aged that well. ( I'd love to play Battlesphere, but I couldn't bring myself to bid above $300 last time there was an ebay, just to see the graphics )

 

 

Your loss.

I've seen plenty of PS1 games and up close the textures suck worse than the old 256 color

PC games of back in the day. I dont know what games you are looking at.

Yes, I really did want to see it - as it get's the best comments here and at JaguarSector , maybe I'll catch it at at retro show sometime.

There are loads of crap PS1 games as well

 

I think that Scott maybe wasn't a good enough MIPs coder if he really made that statement - or else he made it before he worked on PS1

 

Now this is a laugh...

 

When you show me a peice of work on the Jagur that even comes close to BS, then you might have something

to say about Scott's abilities....a 10 time patent holder and PHD. I'll take his word over it anyday...unless you can

provide better Jaguar coding credentials, other than Battlechess...you should be a bit more humble when it comes

to Mr. Legrand.

I'm not saying anything about Scott's abilities on the Jag - I'm just crying bullshit about his comparision to the PS1. It would be interesting to see what he thinks of the machines nowadays.

 

Even with the add on's ( which would have been really cool ) the Jag wouldn't match the performance of the PS1 GPU , regardless of what you ( or Sam Tramiel ) say

 

Even John Carmack said that just the double buffered Blitter registers would have been enough to keep pace.

I supposed he's not much of an authority either?

You can compare the Jag and PS1 doom implementations - wasn't that where his quotes came from. But would the Jag handle Quake II as well as the PS1 did?

 

The PS1 graphics aren't perfect ( they aged pretty poorly as well.. ) - and it outperforms the Jag in 2D and audio as well ... 24 channels of ADPCM audio with 512K of dedicated ram is a lot better than anything offered on the DSP for example.

 

 

It does not out perform better than the Jag in 2D....4096 8x8 sprites?

Give me some credit.

 

I dont know what you think the PS1 has but its a MIPS with a texture triangle engine.

It was barely more powerful than the Jaguar.

 

I know what the PS1 was - I think the problem is that you have no idea It's a MIPs plus a geometry engine plus a texture triangle and rectangular sprite engine ( 66Mpixels/second at 16 bit pixel depth... ) plus a sound chip

4096 8x8 sprites at 60fps isn't too shabby.. especially as it has no real performance hit on the cpu .. ( The sprite demo on the jag was really impressive, but it took most of the memory b/w , leaving little for cpu work )

 

This is something that would be difficult to reproduce at that framerate on the jag - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz0SsXu0reo...feature=related

 

I think even Sam Tramiel knew the real comparision between the Jaguar and the PS1

[kevincal]

I think what it boils down to is, a system like the Playstation had HUNDREDS of genius programmers making games for it. The Jag only had a handfull, maybe a dozen of said genius programmers working on it. The Playstations hardware potential was reached PLUS more, whereas the Jag's potential was not maxed out... For one thing, from everything I've heard, the PS is a heck of a lot easier to program for than the Jag.

 

I guess we could look at it like this. Say the Jag is a powerfull V8 car, but has no traction control, therefore although it has a lot of power, it's hard to use any of it. The Playstation has similar power to the Jaguar (lets say a powerfull 4 cylinder rice rocket), however it has traction control and better suspension than the Jag. Therefore although both are similarly powered, the PS is much easier to handle and get more performance out of.

 

Imagine what mega talented/huge programming teams like Capcom, Psygnosis, Rare, EA, Nintendo or Sega could get out of the Jag! Wouldn't that be awesome to see what they could wring out of it.

[Crazyace]

The Jag was almost the ultimate 2D machine - it could take everything that a NeoGeo could handle, and then add extra effects, but it was stifled

Imagine if Trevor McFur had been programmed by Irem

There were mega talented programmers working on it - Carmac did the Doom port, and it was way better than the other versions out at that time - and Rayman was a glimpse at what could have been a host of 2D games, also Tempest showed off the pixel pushing/feedback effects combined with an awesome old school arcade game.

Without texture mapping I think the Jag could have given a perfect version of VF1 - that would have been really cool at launch.. Fight for Life was just too late, the frame rate sucked when compared to tekken at 60fps.

 

 

In your car comparision I'd say the Jag is like a lotus - small engine, but really tuned - and the Playstation is like a Ferrari, the best in it's field

[kevincal]

True enough, the Playstation was the best in the field... until the N64 came out But both were completely different types of systems. Love the Jag, PS and N64. Honestly not much of a Saturn fan... Loved the Genesis though.

[Gorf]

I'm not a PS1 expert admitedly but I do know enough about it specs to see that it has

it's own limitations.

 

The problem with the Playstation is it is what it is....The hardware triangles are all you get.

The quads are still two triangles. To add NON hardware effects you need software....this

gets very exspensive for the ONE Mips processor. You lose the hardware advantage and the

only compensation is blockiness...yes you have more effects but you also have more pixelization.

 

The T&J have to share a bus with an OPL, Blitter and a 1/2 speed 1/4 bus 68k that all too often is

over used. The PS1 has a two year technological advantage.....It should have been mipmapping in

hardware as well by then. Jaguar: the machine never stood a chance and had nothing in the way

of development compared to the tools the PS1 had.So far all of the PS1 title have shown me one thing.

it can throw a lot of texture mapped polies around at 60 FPS.....they look like shit.

 

To make them look better you lose the hardware advantage and it shows. The later PS1 games started using

mirror mapping and stuff but at a pixel size cost. It;s very noticable. Impressive, sure but very noticable.

HoverStrikes(CD) Not the cart....Has much better stuff going on. A better frame rate would be nice. But Tom

and Jerry are not restricted to a hardwired advantage like the PS1 is. HSCD was mostly 68k code...the sources

are out ther to prove this.

 

 

 

You cant get decent anything from the Jag if you insist on choking the bus with the 68k. The tools

provide no such avenue away from the 68k. If fact they moreso encourage its use.

 

The new tools are here now....as they get tweeked you will see the improvements I've been saying

are possible.

Edited January 1, 2009 by Gorf

[Gorf]

Oh an WOOOHOOO! Happy new year everyone!

[Crazyace]

True enough, the Playstation was the best in the field... until the N64 came out But both were completely different types of systems. Love the Jag, PS and N64. Honestly not much of a Saturn fan... Loved the Genesis though.

 

Yeah - the N64 was an amazing piece of h/w in terms of both it's graphics capabilities, and it's CPU - It actually had a similar architecture to the Jaguar in some ways.

The CPU was 3x faster than the PS1 , and it had floating point in h/w , and the graphics geometry engine was similar to the GPU in the jag , and the rasteriser was actually similar in some ways to the blitter on the Jaguar2 ( a lot faster though ) , way better in features than the PS1 GPU.