How difficult is it to come across? I've seen a few people with prototypes, but I've never seen an actual auction up. It looked like it would've been a great game. I don't own a Jaguar, by the way, but what would be required to run something like this? (The prototype board, at that)
You need a CD-Bypass cartridge or "Protector SE" game cartridge to run it, available from http://myatari.com and http://songbird-productions.com/ respectively. This is because they weren't encrypted before release (which encryption is actually possible now), and these carts essentially serve as hardware hacks to override the checks. Obviously, you will need both the Jaguar and Jaguar CD in order to run it. I own a complete 3 volume set of prototypes and never-before released items that Jason Smith - http://jaysmith2000.ipbhost.com/ has collected from the remains of Atari throughout the years. The only two real "releases" (with permission of the original programmers , who actually talk with the community a lot) was in Jaguar Extremist Pack #1 (of the three-volume set). Good luck finding one for less than $75.00, though -- there were 150 made, from what I understand. I know of only one other revision that found a small release a couple of years ago by another hobbyist. That one's an absolute bitch to find anymore, but when I do find it, it goes for about $50 and I don't know if any more than 50 were ever made. The game is actually really neat, if not a bit buggy. For 1995, it was pretty damn ambitious. You can do a lot, but not really play the game in any linear fashion (as far as I'm aware). There are differences between the released revisions, with bugs in some places rather than others, along with some other changes. There's also a full guide in PDF available on the net which pretty much maps the entire thing out, tells where bugs exist, items are, and other things. FYI, Jason Smith actually owns about 23-25 revisions of that game from alphas on down [among the loads of other things he has].
Vanadium, they've cracked the encryption now? Last I remember, noone could, and whoever had access to the documents left over from Atari couldn't find any info. Who did it, and when? That was one of the best encryptions on a console, wasn't it? How many pirate Jag games were there in its day?!?! BTW, why does what you made sound like the rarer one go for less??
No pirate Jag games because how many pirates owned Jaguars...? Also, how cheap could a 32M game be pirated for?
As for why the rarer one seems to go for less... Good question. I'm just going by what I've seen it hit on eBay, really. They did find the original encryption tools to both the JAguar and the Jaguar CD sometime in the last year and a half. Now they're released to developers and anyone who wants them in order to develop new games, etc. There's still, believe it or not, a Jaguar scene, and they are currently working on gaining rights to unreleased games, help find lost Atari stuff, etc. Nope, so far as I'm aware there are no pirate Jaguar games other than the ROMs floating around the net. I have seen "copies" of Soulstar for the Jaguar CD on eBay, though the guy has since stopped selling them. And thanks retro... It was an impulse buy.
IIRC Bandai bought out a fair bit of Atari, including the copyright on the Jaguar design, and they made the console "open", ie there are no royalties required to develop a game for Jaguar. You can manufacture and sell a Jaguar/CD game legally. I believe you can also manufacture the console hardware if you desire, although in practice nobody would, except perhaps to make better control pads (which the Jaguar sorely needs). The same is true for Lynx too, as I recall. I've certainly seen homebrew/unreleased Lynx games legally for sale.
Is there a rough estimation on how complete the game is? Also, since there seem to be more than a few copies around, how expensive would a copy go for (for a more completed copy)?
Actually, it was Hasbro that bought them out for about $5 million from JTS [a hard drive company Atari had folded into after the Jaguar died], and after about two years of nagging and negotiation and searching, a few dedicated people got Hasbro to declare it an open system. Problem was, the encryption tools hadn't been found, so while they could make new games, they couldn't encrypt them. The Jaguar's key was the first to be found (though BattleSphere used brute force to be encrypted by the developers because the key hadn't been found yet) and then about a year ago the CD files were found. The original molds for the Jaguar were sold to a dental appliance company, and they actually produce a dental appliance that looks exactly like a Jaguar and its cartridge. I guess a few Atari Age people were talking about licensing the molds for a run of Jaguar cases, but I don't know much more than that. Songbird Productions finishes/produces/publishes games for the Lynx and Jaguar, and as people obtain rights to release previously-unreleased or unfinished games, they generally make limited runs available. I think the Lynx arrangement is the same as the Jaguar though in terms of being an open system. Alpine Games is a very recent original release by a small company called Duranik, and I'd have to say it's probably the best-looking if not one of the most advanced games on the system. Worth checking out if you're a Lynx fan.
Bought some of Jay Smith's collection? He's the only person known to have all those revisions (see earlier posts).
Yup, he bought everything related to the game + the creator of the game on the FB group Jaguar Sector III has revealed more tidbits of the game.
