Indeed Flare should have given up on hardwae after the failure to release the Flare One, the Konix Multisystem or the TXE Multisystem. The Jaguar hardware was dated and slow by the time it came out, if Atari had finished the Panther and released that back in 1990 or 1991 then Atari might have had more success. One of Atari's worst failures was the failure to get any Japanese developers to come on board to make games for any of the Atari systems ever. Still I love Tempest 2000 and it's the only game I have for the machine and it is probably the only game that is playable, hasn't dated and isn't a port of an Amiga title.
The Jaguar is also the only console ever to have it's design sold off to make dental equipment :lol: Yakumo
So is the Saturn/PS1 version of Tempest 2000 really bad as people say? If so why? I like Tempest 2000, but not enough to keep the console around for it.
The Saturn port is a half arsed effort. There is no reason what so ever for it not to wipe the floor with the PS version. More memory, superior 2D, faster. Yet the Saturn port is missing many effects found in the PS version. Both still play pretty well though. Yakumo
The Saturn T2K was farmed out, so it was a rush job. They copied the visuals as best they could but forgot about the gameplay balancing, which was (and is) one of the things Jeff is really good at - so it looks similar but plays totally differently. He wasn't involved at all, so he gets quite angry about it even now I disagree the Jag was slow, unreleased games like Phase Zero (sprite-based tank fighting, but on a gorgeously smooth 3D voxel landscape) and even the later, CD games like Battlemorph and Iron Soldier 2 were very advanced and waaay beyond the capabilities of the SNES etc. There were a lot of problems with the architecture though, it took a hell of a mind to make full use of the hardware (and its attendant bugs...). I think the kicker was that Atari oversold it as a 3D machine, which it was never really very good at - it could texturemap but it was really hard to hardware-accelerate (see the dog-slow attempts in eg Hover Strike, at 8fps :lol. What it was really really good at was throwing Gouraud-shading around (see Zero5 and T2K) and at doing fast high-res 2D and Mode7 effects. Rayman and Atari Karts both looked amazing at the time, just because they were able to run at a decent clip while using very high-res graphics - the Object Processor allowed you to do a lot of complex stuff in hardware which speeded things up considerably. So I think a lack of focus on its strong points was what did for it - the developers didn't know what to aim for and it drowned in a sea of mediocre games. I think Sony learned a lot from it when launching the PS1 - what people wanted were tons and tons of texture-mapped 3D games, so that's what was churned out by the vast majority of developers. Just IMO Stone
Build quality? What about the build quality of the Jaguar? (I'm talking about just the console and carts in general, not the CD drive) I have very bad experiences with classic second-hand consoles... for example, the Atari 7800 that I bought in a "as new" condition broke very soon after I got it (it used to produce good quality graphics the first few times I've played it, but now the signal is so weak you can barely see it... of course the 7800 is more than 20 year old, so I won't blame it. Bummer I can't play Ninja Golf though :lol: )... so I don't really have the guts to pay a lot for a console that may break again very soon after I got it :shrug: I always was very intertested in the Jaguar... it was way out-of-my-reach back when it was released, although I drooled at the thought of owning one. I recently watched a video of Hover Strike (cart version) on youtube (video by DeanPook)... I'm sure I would have enjoyed that title quite a bit, because I am still obsessed with Battlezone-inspired titles and although it looks very slow and quirky, I really would like to play it.
By the time the Jaguar was supposedly going to reach its prime there were already three, nay SIX 32-bit consoles on the market (counting the CDi, CD32 and 32X) and it was inevitable that most of them would go the way of the dodo.
I was super pissed to see a boxed jaguar sell for 7$ +8$ shipping on ebay last week. I missed it while I was at work. I see various carts once in awhile at yard sales/thrift shops/goodwill.
Watch as your gamer credentials slip further into the abyss. There are bad games, and then there's Kasumi fucking Ninja. I guess so. I bought one back in 2002 or so, acquired the all "best" games, and nothing on there justified the system at all. It's the only console I've sold and not regretted. There's pretty much nothing on there that's worth playing that doesn't have a nicer port elsewhere.
Tempest? European? Ah yes, that often forgotten European developer, Seibu Kaihatsu Inc. :lol: Hey! There are lots of good European developed games! The console had a lot of good games. Of course AVP has to be mentioned. I could still play that today. Tempest never really did it for me, but it is meant to be very good. Doom and Wolfenstein, yes. Defender 2000, Dragon's Lair on CD, Flashback, Myst on CD, Pitfall lol, Syndicate, Theme Park, Worms. It certainly had some good games. There was a fair bit of dross, too, though.
if you didn't you would have regretted it more it's always like that. i get similar feelings from my wii...
Temptest 2000 was developed by Jeff Minter. I'm pretty sure you know this, too, so I'm not really sure what you're getting at. Like I say - pretty much all of these were better elsewhere, and most are lazy home computer ports. Playing mouse games like Syndicate and Theme Park on a pad? I'll skip that thanks. Defender 2000 is worth a mention, it's true, but AvP has aged horrifically. I don't know how anyone without a heavy dose of nostalgia could put up with it today. That said, if you want to see what the Jag can do, get Minter's games and AvP, because they are the most interesting titles on the system.
I've made the comparison a few times before here, but imagine the Win95 3D-Maze screensaver, in nothing but greens and browns, and you're pretty close. As far as Doom clones go, I guess at the time it was a contender, but it's plain ugly today, and the gameplay is pretty thin and uninteresting regardless of which race you choose.
So true, this is the only game besides biohazard on the ps1 that scared the shit out of me when i used to play it in the middle of the night. the creepy visual and sound, plus the aliens popping up out of nowhere behind those doors.. and not to forget the predators voice!!!
