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[Afro Republican]

^Notice how he won't actually admit he fucked up comparing a tactical FPS to a Twitch FPS and has now completely shifted the subject to what 90's consoles I owned which has nothing to do about the fact he never played Space Hulk.

Is this Crowbrow??

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

If you read my post again then you can see that I stated it is my opinion. I was a teenager in 90s and everything regarding video games was just about appeal. 3DO with its games did not attract me, and the most people I knew, like Jaguar with AvP did. Also I still played 16-bit console games until I jumped to PS1/Saturn/N64 eventually.

Fair enough tbh; understandable to see things a certain way at the time. My post was more within viewing in hindsight fwiw.

Super Burnout is an official release, I don't think Skyhammer came out until 97 or later

While having more games is a big deal, you also have to realize the 3DO was easier to developer for, didn't treat third parties like shit, and had been built to show off its power much more effectively, which is why many developers that skipped the Jaguar or left it after one game went to the 3DO or were planning on releasing games on the 3DO.

Look at it this way, If the 3DO and Jaguar switched launch prices we would still be seeing 3DO machines coming out with the PS5 and Series X right now.

I do agree 3DO had a lot of potential and did a lot of things right, plus at the beginning had EA's full support and they were arguably the biggest 3rd party publisher even at that time. But they messed up with the licensing model; if they had found a way for other manufacturers to make revenue off game sales instead of needing to make all their money off the system sales themselves, things certainly could have played differently.

In fact it's possible MS wouldn't have made the Xbox and Sony would not have been as successful as they ended up being, if 3DO got the price right out of the gate. It did have some strong early software for its time.

 

[molasar]

^Notice how he won't actually admit he fucked up comparing a tactical FPS to a Twitch FPS and has now completely shifted the subject to what 90's consoles I owned which has nothing to do about the fact he never played Space Hulk.

Is this Crowbrow??

Like I wrote many times before you are using eristics instead looking for the truth. Nobody is shifting anything. You just do not want to become a laughing stock therefore you try to push your false narrative.
Probably I am the first one on the forum who found out it about you.
If you were a kid in 80s you would know that a lot of kids who watched Aliens 1986 were after everything that resembled Marines and Aliens, so one of this product was Space Hulk.

Again how old were you in 90s?

Also LOL, AvP a twitch FPS. Definitely you did not have Jaguar in 1994/95.

 

[SpiceRacz]

I'd never seen a Jaguar in all my years collecting until 2015. I got this one at a yard sale. I actually ended up finding another (just the console) at a Goodwill only a few months later. Haven't seen one since.

 

[Gavon West]

Man! I had the Jaguar and AVP. I LOVED that game! So intense and super fun! One of my fondest memories as a gamer growing up.

 

[Romulus]

Keep in mind I am not saying that the 3DO was comparable to the PSX, but it took the PSX some time before it really had a consistent flow of games that outdid the 3DO, to the point even some shovelware had some features the 3DO couldn't replicate. Even magazines were comparing the PSX to 3DO in the early days because they were comparable at the time. No one was doing that for the Jaguar for example.

What are a handful of the most impressive 3DO games? My dad's best friend had one with a bunch of games around 1995, but even as a kid I wasn't impressed at all. Maybe he was missing key titles though.

 

[Afro Republican]

Fair enough tbh; understandable to see things a certain way at the time. My post was more within viewing in hindsight fwiw.


I do agree 3DO had a lot of potential and did a lot of things right, plus at the beginning had EA's full support and they were arguably the biggest 3rd party publisher even at that time. But they messed up with the licensing model; if they had found a way for other manufacturers to make revenue off game sales instead of needing to make all their money off the system sales themselves, things certainly could have played differently.

In fact it's possible MS wouldn't have made the Xbox and Sony would not have been as successful as they ended up being, if 3DO got the price right out of the gate. It did have some strong early software for its time.

it's true it was the manufactures that lost money on consoles, at least until 3DO was forced to share in the losses for them to continue supporting the plan. Panasonic and Goldstar even resulted to publishing their own games, partnering with various companies to make up for the losses.

3DO should have just been one system and one model. Panasonic is all they needed.

 

[Afro Republican]

What are a handful of the most impressive 3DO games? My dad's best friend had one with a bunch of games around 1995, but even as a kid I wasn't impressed at all. Maybe he was missing key titles though.

What games are you thinking of?

 

[Romulus]

What games are you thinking of?

No, just in your opinion so I can go check them out. Maybe I missed out on the better games.

 

[Freedom Gate Co.]

Just realized OP made a 3DO vs. Saturn thread in 2017.

 

[Freedom Gate Co.]

I like Alien Vs. Predator, but most of the time I only play as the soldier. But I do appreciate how it's one of the few games that allows you to play a melee character in an FPS.

 

[RAIDEN1]

I like Alien Vs. Predator, but most of the time I only play as the soldier. But I do appreciate how it's one of the few games that allows you to play a melee character in an FPS.

Indeed I did make a 3DO V Saturn thread, as its only in recent years I wondered what was the capability of the 3DO machine, and how did it stack up against the competition...hence the thread...certainly the AVP project should have continued on...there was plenty of scope to it, and Rebellion had some big plans for it, ie taking it to V.R...

 

[Afro Republican]

No, just in your opinion so I can go check them out. Maybe I missed out on the better games.

I think these games are a few examples of fairly impressive graphically for the time:

 

[Freedom Gate Co.]

Red Robot thing actually looks pretty cool. Name?

 

[Agent X]

One thing to add I am surprised this game never got a multi-platform release! ie PS-1/Saturn they could have quite easily handled this...

It almost did appear on PlayStation and Saturn.

In early 1996, Atari saw that the Jaguar just wasn't destined to hit it big, and they didn't have the resources to compete with PlayStation and Saturn, so they decided to start making games for the competing systems. (Sega made a similar decision a few years after the Dreamcast was released.) One of the games they intended to bring over was Alien vs. Predator. However, it never actually happened--little or no work ever got under way.

The only game that Atari ever managed to get ported over was Tempest 2000. They initially released a PC (MS-DOS) version. Interplay later published another version for PC (Windows), and they also published the Saturn version and an expanded version for PlayStation version called Tempest X3.

Trevor looked better than a lot of 2D games and was rendered well at the expensive of taking up resources which included music due to a bug that caused leaking. They did fix the issue but that release only produced a few hundred copies or less so good luck finding those.

Wow, I never heard of this before, and I've been a loyal Jaguar fan since 1993..

The biggest issue with the Jaguar within the first few months of it's shelf-life was that no one could find one, or that there weren't any games in stock.

No, the biggest issue with Jaguar was that Atari totally mismanaged the software development schedule. They released only ten games throughout the entire first year...that's a rate of less than one game per month. There were entire stretches of time when two or even three months passed with no new games released.

Games kept getting delayed, and delayed again, and delayed yet again. Some of the games that were announced at launch (November 1993) finally came out more than a year later, and were still rough and unpolished (particularly Checkered Flag, Club Drive, and Kasumi Ninja, all of which became frequent targets of criticism). While there were some other legitimately great games (Tempest 2000, Alien vs. Predator, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Iron Soldier), they weren't coming out frequently enough to inspire long-term confidence.

Many early buyers of the system lost faith in Atari. They had a very powerful system, with barely any games to play on it. Retailers also felt uncertain, so they devoted less shelf space to the Jaguar and more space to the promising new systems like Saturn (which had a few issues of its own irritating retailers) and PlayStation.

By mid 1995, Atari was finally getting things under control, but it was too late. The market was evolving quickly. The successful launch of the PlayStation showed Atari (and Sega, and 3DO) just how a system release was supposed to be done.

 

[molasar]

It almost did appear on PlayStation and Saturn.

In early 1996, Atari saw that the Jaguar just wasn't destined to hit it big, and they didn't have the resources to compete with PlayStation and Saturn, so they decided to start making games for the competing systems. (Sega made a similar decision a few years after the Dreamcast was released.) One of the games they intended to bring over was Alien vs. Predator. However, it never actually happened--little or no work ever got under way.

AFAIK it was not supposed to be a straight port but a completely new game which ended up as AvP (Aliens instead of Alien) 1999 on PC only. Also I do not believe that Atari had anything to do with it as it would require acquiring license rights for it.

Here is E3'97 footage of PS1 early code version.

 

[alabtrosMyster]

In terms of hardware, it was released in 1994 with no hardware changes to the 1995 NA release. By the end of both consoles looking at all the games, PSX was way ahead. Even consindering that, the PSX wasn't easy to develop for and the 3DO was?

In the Us you still had to wait until late 1995 (unless you imported obviously). Also, 14 months back then meant a better process node for your chips, so more & cheaper CPU/GPU/RAM.

The 3D0 was very impressive at time of release, I recall seeing Crash and Burn in action for the first time at a local video rental place, sure not PSX level... but that was not to come for what appeared to be an eternity, and contrarily to the Jaguar you did not have to look twice to notice that you were playing some next-gen games.

 

[Afro Republican]

It almost did appear on PlayStation and Saturn.

In early 1996, Atari saw that the Jaguar just wasn't destined to hit it big, and they didn't have the resources to compete with PlayStation and Saturn, so they decided to start making games for the competing systems. (Sega made a similar decision a few years after the Dreamcast was released.) One of the games they intended to bring over was Alien vs. Predator. However, it never actually happened--little or no work ever got under way.

The only game that Atari ever managed to get ported over was Tempest 2000. They initially released a PC (MS-DOS) version. Interplay later published another version for PC (Windows), and they also published the Saturn version and an expanded version for PlayStation version called Tempest X3.

No, Atari wasn't doing that they were already in the process of the first phase of the Hasbro buyout.

 

[Agent X]

No, Atari wasn't doing that they were already in the process of the first phase of the Hasbro buyout.

Atari merged with JTS in mid 1996, which is when they discontinued the Jaguar and largely pulled out of gaming. The Hasbro purchase of the Atari properties from JTS was about 2 years later.

 

[RAIDEN1]

Well from the looks of it, especially from the magazine article shown above, the game would have been even better than the Jag version from the get go...which is ironic coming from the lofty heights of being on a "64 bit" machine and then dropping a level to get a PSX conversion....

 

[Afro Republican]

Atari merged with JTS in mid 1996, which is when they discontinued the Jaguar and largely pulled out of gaming. The Hasbro purchase of the Atari properties from JTS was about 2 years later.

I said first Phase. JTS wasn't trying to hold Atari they brought them (Reverse merger is basically the same thing) to get their assets so they could sell them later and see if they could profit on what they had, they already had contacted several companies about potential deals down the line to sweeten the pot, but they were not able to sustain themselves in general and took way too long to sell. So they had sold the assets and brand name to Hasbro because they were the best bid they could get after their plan backfired.

Point was, that Atari wasn't doing anything once the Jaguar stopped. They weren't publishing any games,

 

[Afro Republican]

Well from the looks of it, especially from the magazine article shown above, the game would have been even better than the Jag version from the get go...which is ironic coming from the lofty heights of being on a "64 bit" machine and then dropping a level to get a PSX conversion....

It would have been mostly a different game so we have no idea if it would have been better or not.

But it's clear that the tools, or lack of tools, the Jaguar had would make it easy to have ports from it run better on pretty much any gaming machine of the time. I'd like to see Checkered Flag on the 3DO with textures and a decent frame rate instead of what we got on the Jaguar which ran worse than Virtua Racing despite being on better hardware.

 

[RAIDEN1]

It would have been mostly a different game so we have no idea if it would have been better or not.

But it's clear that the tools, or lack of tools, the Jaguar had would make it easy to have ports from it run better on pretty much any gaming machine of the time. I'd like to see Checkered Flag on the 3DO with textures and a decent frame rate instead of what we got on the Jaguar which ran worse than Virtua Racing despite being on better hardware.

Exactly look at the irony, for a 64 bit system, the first one on the block at the time offering that level of power, yet it struggled to pull off a virtua racing clone, let alone any hope of a Ridge/Daytona like clone ever appearing with what would likely have been a crippled frame-rate...a poorly thought out system, little wonder it was the final nail in the coffin for Atari as a hardware manufacturer...

 

[Havoc2049]

No, Atari wasn't doing that they were already in the process of the first phase of the Hasbro buyout.

Agent X is right. Atari Corp was going to go the Sega route and become a 3rd party publisher and formed Atari Interactive. They initially announced Tempest 2000, Baldies, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Highlander trilogy and that they were in negotiations to hopefully port AVP to other systems. Atari only had the rights to publish AVP on the Lynx and Jaguar though, so they had to negotiate a deal to port and publish it on other platforms. Obviously the deal never happened, Atari Interactive only ever published one game (Tempest 2000) and Rebellion went on to develop a different AVP game for Fox Interactive on the PC (the Saturn and PSX ports were cancelled).

While AVP on the Jaguar and PC are both developed (co-developed in the case of the Jaguar, as Atari had a large role in development and had to clean up Rebellion's mess) by Rebellion, they only have the basic concept in common. I think both games are great, but I actually prefer the Jaguar version over the PC version, as the Jaguar version had more of a survival horror vibe and the PC version had more of an action vibe. I also really disliked the b-grade 90's FMV bits added to the PC version, as they were campy as fuck and kinda ruined the whole mood of the game, IMO.

As for the crappy port of Checkered Flag on the Jaguar, that wasn't the fault of the hardware, but falls squarely on the shoulders of Rebellion, who sent Atari a shitty, unpolished game, and the failure of Atari to polish it up. The same thing initially happened with AVP, which is why the game was delayed and James Hampton at Atari took the time to polish the game up. Hampton covers it in the video that Raiden posted. Rebellion has some good ideas, but the end results often varies. The Jaguar is capable of making some solid next gen (for the time) racing games, as shown by Super Burnout and World Tour Racing, but Rebellion and Atari obviously dropped the ball with Checkered Flag.

 

[Afro Republican]

Agent X is right. Atari Corp was going to go the Sega route and become a 3rd party publisher and formed Atari Interactive. They initially announced Tempest 2000, Baldies, The Rock Horror Picture Show, The Highlander trilogy and that they were in negotiations to hopefully port AVP to other systems. Atari only had the rights to publish AVP on the Lynx and Jaguar though, so they had to negotiate a deal to port and publish it on other platforms. Obviously the deal never happened, Atari Interactive only ever published one game (Tempest 2000) and Rebellion went on to develop a different AVP game for Fox Interactive on the PC (the Saturn and PSX ports were cancelled).

While AVP on the Jaguar and PC are both developed (co-developed in the case of the Jaguar, as Atari had a large role in development and had to clean up Rebellion's mess) by Rebellion, they only have the basic concept in common. I think both games are great, but I actually prefer the Jaguar version over the PC version, as the Jaguar version had more of a survival horror vibe and the PC version had more of an action vibe. I also really disliked the b-grade 90's FMV bits added to the PC version, as they were campy as fuck and kinda ruined the whole mood of the game, IMO.

As for the crappy port of Checkered Flag on the Jaguar, that wasn't the fault of the hardware, but falls squarely on the shoulders of Rebellion, who sent Atari a shitty, unpolished game, and the failure of Atari to polish it up. The same thing initially happened with AVP, which is why the game was delayed and James Hampton at Atari took the time to polish the game up. Hampton covers it in the video that Raiden posted. Rebellion has some good ideas, but the end results often varies. The Jaguar is capable of making some solid next gen (for the time) racing games, as shown by Super Burnout and World Tour Racing, but Rebellion and Atari obviously dropped the ball with Checkered Flag.

I never said the hardware wasn't capable of Checkered Flag, i said the tools for the Jaguar, or lack of, are the reason why the game turned out the way it did.

As for Atari Interactive, I don't recall any news about bringing games to consoles, I only know Hasbro used that name after the buyout when they published Retro games later on PlayStation and other machines.

I will admit I don't know too much about the Jaguar though compared to others in the thread, I was always more of a 3DO guy.

 

[RAIDEN1]

Agent X is right. Atari Corp was going to go the Sega route and become a 3rd party publisher and formed Atari Interactive. They initially announced Tempest 2000, Baldies, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Highlander trilogy and that they were in negotiations to hopefully port AVP to other systems. Atari only had the rights to publish AVP on the Lynx and Jaguar though, so they had to negotiate a deal to port and publish it on other platforms. Obviously the deal never happened, Atari Interactive only ever published one game (Tempest 2000) and Rebellion went on to develop a different AVP game for Fox Interactive on the PC (the Saturn and PSX ports were cancelled).

While AVP on the Jaguar and PC are both developed (co-developed in the case of the Jaguar, as Atari had a large role in development and had to clean up Rebellion's mess) by Rebellion, they only have the basic concept in common. I think both games are great, but I actually prefer the Jaguar version over the PC version, as the Jaguar version had more of a survival horror vibe and the PC version had more of an action vibe. I also really disliked the b-grade 90's FMV bits added to the PC version, as they were campy as fuck and kinda ruined the whole mood of the game, IMO.

As for the crappy port of Checkered Flag on the Jaguar, that wasn't the fault of the hardware, but falls squarely on the shoulders of Rebellion, who sent Atari a shitty, unpolished game, and the failure of Atari to polish it up. The same thing initially happened with AVP, which is why the game was delayed and James Hampton at Atari took the time to polish the game up. Hampton covers it in the video that Raiden posted. Rebellion has some good ideas, but the end results often varies. The Jaguar is capable of making some solid next gen (for the time) racing games, as shown by Super Burnout and World Tour Racing, but Rebellion and Atari obviously dropped the ball with Checkered Flag.

I think it is mentioned in here that World Tour Racing is about as good as it could get on the Jag, and to get anything beyond that isn't possible, (from a graphics point of view...) and that too with it having a low frame-rate...you would expect a hell of a lot more for its touted 64 bit power....not something that wouldn't even make the PSX/Saturn sweat...

 

[molasar]

Here is a video clip showing a compilation of screenshots from an article about cancelled version of AvP from 1997. It seems they wanted to use the same method of creating characters like in Jag version (digitized: human actors and figurines of Aliens and Predators).




Scans of the article (in Spanish)

avpshots

MediaFire is a simple to use free service that lets you put all your photos, documents, music, and video in a single place so you can access them anywhere and share them everywhere.

www.mediafire.com

 

[Afro Republican]

I think it is mentioned in here that World Tour Racing is about as good as it could get on the Jag, and to get anything beyond that isn't possible, (from a graphics point of view...) and that too with it having a low frame-rate...you would expect a hell of a lot more for its touted 64 bit power....not something that wouldn't even make the PSX/Saturn sweat...

Yep

I am not a big Jaguar guy, more of a 3DO guy, but I've been paying attention to the message boards over the years, including homebrew threads, and there's nothing that comes close to WTR as a total package. Having a fan demo where you have a single room with nice looking wall textures doesn't tell me anything. Can you make a whole game with that texture quality? Nope.

Honestly I don't even consider WTR to be impressive, I feel like it's more of an apology for Checkered Flag.

I think we can settle the Jaguar power debate with this, I was looking through my collection and I found a budget 3DO racing game called F1GP. It's not very demanding, doesn't push many polygons, and was clearly done on a budget. So let's compare this game graphically to World Tour Racing:

Don't get me wrong, the developers tried really hard with WTR (Right) but even a game that was done on a budget, barely pushing power on the 3DO, can give it a run for its money (Left).

• In F1GP(Left) The Frame Rate is clearly better than WTR (Right). WTR is clearly suffocating the Jaguar, but no one is calling an ambulance!
• The building textures are rushed in F1GP but still are cleaner and cover the whole structure unlike in WTR. IN WTR, if you look at the buildings closely, only one side of the buildings are textured, the other 3 sides are just blocks.
• F1GP draws faster than WTR.
• Both have a track where you go under a tunnel, the textures inside the tunnel are much cleaner and have less pixelation in F1GP than in WTR.
• While one could argue whether it counts or not, F!GP has less clutter on screen.
• F1GP also seems to have slightly better draw distance than WTR.

Keep in mind that developers had to dig in the mines to pull off WTR on the Jaguar. Yet it doesn't beat a rushed budget game on the 3DO, let that sink in. The Jaguar is extremely weak and while it may have had bugs and poor tools we have yet to see anything better than WTR in decades, so I no longer blame the tools for the Jaguars failure, it was just a weak machine period.

Maybe if the Jaguar was released a year earlier we would be having a different conversation.

 

[Agent X]

As for the crappy port of Checkered Flag on the Jaguar, that wasn't the fault of the hardware, but falls squarely on the shoulders of Rebellion, who sent Atari a shitty, unpolished game, and the failure of Atari to polish it up. The same thing initially happened with AVP, which is why the game was delayed and James Hampton at Atari took the time to polish the game up. Hampton covers it in the video that Raiden posted. Rebellion has some good ideas, but the end results often varies. The Jaguar is capable of making some solid next gen (for the time) racing games, as shown by Super Burnout and World Tour Racing, but Rebellion and Atari obviously dropped the ball with Checkered Flag.

Good point. I'd say Super Burnout (no relation to Criterion's later Burnout series) was a very impressive racing game, running at a rock solid 60 frames per second.

Despite being delayed a year, Checkered Flag was still a "rushed" product, as Atari felt they had to get something on the shelves in time for holiday '94. Remember, as I said above, Atari only released 10 games during the system's first year, and there was pressure from consumers and retailers to get more games out. So, Atari quickly wrapped up games like Checkered Flag and Club Drive, and sent them off to manufacturing. Both of these games came out right about the same time as The Need for Speed for 3DO, which was very embarassing for Atari...but that's on their shoulders.

Rebellion could turn good work, given the time. Many of the same people that worked on Checkered Flag went on to create the much more impressive Skyhammer.

I think it is mentioned in here that World Tour Racing is about as good as it could get on the Jag, and to get anything beyond that isn't possible, (from a graphics point of view...) and that too with it having a low frame-rate...you would expect a hell of a lot more for its touted 64 bit power....not something that wouldn't even make the PSX/Saturn sweat...

World Tour Racing was a decent game, better than Checkered Flag, but again was coming from a small developer. This game was also "unfinished", but for a different reason--it was still in development at the time when Atari merged with JTS and exited the video game market. Several games were completed and waiting in the wings, but Atari didn't want to spend any more money on gaming, so these games were effectively canceled. About a year later, Telegames negotiated with JTS to pick up the rights to release a few of those games, and WTR was deemed to be "complete" enough to produce (the alternative being that it never sees the light of day).

WTR was really more of a release for the hardcore Jaguar aficionados, rather than a polished showpiece. I don't know of any Jaguar fans who promote this game front and center as the pinnacle of the system's technical prowess.

For what it's worth, Electronic Arts did sign onto Jaguar development just a few months before Atari pulled the plug. One of the games that was announced was a version of Need for Speed. So if the Jaguar could've held on just a little longer, maybe we could've had a much better direct comparison, courtesy of one of the world's largest game producers.

 

[RAIDEN1]

Yep

I am not a big Jaguar guy, more of a 3DO guy, but I've been paying attention to the message boards over the years, including homebrew threads, and there's nothing that comes close to WTR as a total package. Having a fan demo where you have a single room with nice looking wall textures doesn't tell me anything. Can you make a whole game with that texture quality? Nope.

Honestly I don't even consider WTR to be impressive, I feel like it's more of an apology for Checkered Flag.

I think we can settle the Jaguar power debate with this, I was looking through my collection and I found a budget 3DO racing game called F1GP. It's not very demanding, doesn't push many polygons, and was clearly done on a budget. So let's compare this game graphically to World Tour Racing:

Don't get me wrong, the developers tried really hard with WTR (Right) but even a game that was done on a budget, barely pushing power on the 3DO, can give it a run for its money (Left).

• In F1GP(Left) The Frame Rate is clearly better than WTR (Right). WTR is clearly suffocating the Jaguar, but no one is calling an ambulance!
• The building textures are rushed in F1GP but still are cleaner and cover the whole structure unlike in WTR. IN WTR, if you look at the buildings closely, only one side of the buildings are textured, the other 3 sides are just blocks.
• F1GP draws faster than WTR.
• Both have a track where you go under a tunnel, the textures inside the tunnel are much cleaner and have less pixelation in F1GP than in WTR.
• While one could argue whether it counts or not, F!GP has less clutter on screen.
• F1GP also seems to have slightly better draw distance than WTR.

Keep in mind that developers had to dig in the mines to pull off WTR on the Jaguar. Yet it doesn't beat a rushed budget game on the 3DO, let that sink in. The Jaguar is extremely weak and while it may have had bugs and poor tools we have yet to see anything better than WTR in decades, so I no longer blame the tools for the Jaguars failure, it was just a weak machine period.

Maybe if the Jaguar was released a year earlier we would be having a different conversation.

On the flip side, as Atari deemed WTR ready to launch in whatever state it was, and were unwilling to add any polish to it, if more development time was given, could it have been closer to F1GP? Saying that though, I agree the 3DO could easily give the Jag a run for its money, no doubt...and a Need For Speed on the Jag, at what price would it come at? Minimal textures and just flat gourad shaded polygons? Clearly the Jag had a hard time in having a smooth running texture mapped game...(I could be wrong...) but that is the sense I am getting....

 

[Agent X]

On the flip side, as Atari deemed WTR ready to launch in whatever state it was, and were unwilling to add any polish to it, if more development time was given, could it have been closer to F1GP?

Atari didn't deem WTR ready to launch. Telegames did.

Atari was already out of the market for more than a year. This was just a way for Telegames to rescue a "canceled" game for a small base of hardcore fans.

 

[Afro Republican]

WTR was really more of a release for the hardcore Jaguar aficionados, rather than a polished showpiece. I don't know of any Jaguar fans who promote this game front and center as the pinnacle of the system's technical prowess.

It is commonly cited as one of the best looking games on the system, It's very doubtful you can find a game better than it as a whole package on the system. AVP doesn't compare, Iron Soldier 2 doesn't compare and the it's destruction gimmick is the only thing WTR doesn't have. The secret sauce doesn't exist.

On the flip side, as Atari deemed WTR ready to launch in whatever state it was, and were unwilling to add any polish to it, if more development time was given, could it have been closer to F1GP? Saying that though, I agree the 3DO could easily give the Jag a run for its money, no doubt...and a Need For Speed on the Jag, at what price would it come at? Minimal textures and just flat gourad shaded polygons? Clearly the Jag had a hard time in having a smooth running texture mapped game...(I could be wrong...) but that is the sense I am getting....

Polish what? It's already crying for help with buildings textured on one side, heavy compression, and lack of track-side objects.

Here's the latest build of a homebrew that came out for the Jaguar in 2019:


No one can figure out this thing, let's be real. The Jaguar was stronger than the 32X, but I have yet to see anyone figure out how to make a clone or any decent original 3D fighter on the system. Instead, I've seen people put out prototypes that have two polygons on screen in a black void running at 10fps. So the Fight for Life guy must have done his homework to be able to get that game to run as well as it did. It wasn't even a complete build though, Atari rushed the developer so he had to use an unfinished build for the official release.

One of the best accomplishments by the Homebrew community was adding music to the Jaguar version of Doom (The Jaguar version was ported to the GBA).

As for Texture mapping the Jaguar was clearly not designed with it in mind. You have to remember that despite the late release, the Jaguar started Production since early 1992 when Atari switched off and cancelled the Panther project, and had quickly moved to the more powerful 64-bit system as fast as possible. So we are talking about hardware that was planned with technology that was considered cutting edge in 1991! When the Jag was nearing completion and the demos started coming out in 1993, it was one of the earliest examples of 3D on a consoles.

Atari can use workarounds to add texture mapping but it's very limited. The system was designed for what was popular for the time, shaded polygons. the 3DO in comparison was forward thinking and while they cut some corners, had some of the best 3D tech you could get at the time and foresaw texture mapping becoming a major part of 3D gaming.

The Jaguar is unable to do texmapping in phrase mode and has to do it in pixel mode unless the copy is 1:1, which is uncommon. Since the ram is arranged in row/column pages, there is a page fault delay when texture and destination are not almost adjacent in ram. Using Pixel Mode reduces the speed significantly and makes texture mapping extremely slow on the Jaguar. You have to have fast access to ram for good texture mapping.

Think about those early 3D flat Sega arcade games, those are the games the Jaguar was created for.

Or better yet, think about those Atari ST/Amiga 3D games, the computers ran them at like 5fps but the Jaguar could run them with small textures and more polygons at 30fps.

 

[molasar]

It's very doubtful you can find a game better than it as a whole package on the system. AVP doesn't compare

LOL

 

[Afro Republican]

LOL

What is this suppose to mean? No one sane is going to say AVP is better GRAPHICALLY than WTR.

 

[RAIDEN1]

It is commonly cited as one of the best looking games on the system, It's very doubtful you can find a game better than it as a whole package on the system. AVP doesn't compare, Iron Soldier 2 doesn't compare and the it's destruction gimmick is the only thing WTR doesn't have. The secret sauce doesn't exist.



Polish what? It's already crying for help with buildings textured on one side, heavy compression, and lack of track-side objects.

Here's the latest build of a homebrew that came out for the Jaguar in 2019:


No one can figure out this thing, let's be real. The Jaguar was stronger than the 32X, but I have yet to see anyone figure out how to make a clone or any decent original 3D fighter on the system. Instead, I've seen people put out prototypes that have two polygons on screen in a black void running at 10fps. So the Fight for Life guy must have done his homework to be able to get that game to run as well as it did. It wasn't even a complete build though, Atari rushed the developer so he had to use an unfinished build for the official release.

One of the best accomplishments by the Homebrew community was adding music to the Jaguar version of Doom (The Jaguar version was ported to the GBA).

As for Texture mapping the Jaguar was clearly not designed with it in mind. You have to remember that despite the late release, the Jaguar started Production since early 1992 when Atari switched off and cancelled the Panther project, and had quickly moved to the more powerful 64-bit system as fast as possible. So we are talking about hardware that was planned with technology that was considered cutting edge in 1991! When the Jag was nearing completion and the demos started coming out in 1993, it was one of the earliest examples of 3D on a consoles.

Atari can use workarounds to add texture mapping but it's very limited. The system was designed for what was popular for the time, shaded polygons. the 3DO in comparison was forward thinking and while they cut some corners, had some of the best 3D tech you could get at the time and foresaw texture mapping becoming a major part of 3D gaming.

The Jaguar is unable to do texmapping in phrase mode and has to do it in pixel mode unless the copy is 1:1, which is uncommon. Since the ram is arranged in row/column pages, there is a page fault delay when texture and destination are not almost adjacent in ram. Using Pixel Mode reduces the speed significantly and makes texture mapping extremely slow on the Jaguar. You have to have fast access to ram for good texture mapping.

Think about those early 3D flat Sega arcade games, those are the games the Jaguar was created for.

Or better yet, think about those Atari ST/Amiga 3D games, the computers ran them at like 5fps but the Jaguar could run them with small textures and more polygons at 30fps.

Bit like the Saturn then, which was also conceptualised in 1992 and back then 2d may have still been all the rage, but come 1995 it was not, and the Saturn got found out!!

 

[molasar]

What is this suppose to mean? No one sane is going to say AVP is better GRAPHICALLY than WTR.

I consider myself sane and I say AVP is better GRAPHICALLY than WTR unless you only mean a technical point of view i.e. WTR uses more Jaguar's juices effectively than AvP. Then I can't say anything about it because a lack of proper benchmarking for it. However these two games should not be even compared to each other as they are not in the same genre. I do not even compare game series like Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon to each other for obvious reasons.

Also I would call someone insane who got Jaguar for WTR only (if it was released in 1994) instead of AvP.

Let's look at them again and see which one is more appealing as a whole package on the system.

 

[Havoc2049]

What is this suppose to mean? No one sane is going to say AVP is better GRAPHICALLY than WTR.

I think you focus too much on graphics. Like when you posted a bunch of gifs of impressive looking 3DO games and some of those games you posted were dogs. I would rather play AVP over Killing Time every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Killing Time has that horrible maze level at the beginning where you are shooting ducks and duck hunters, along with that super annoying quacking sound. The first person graphics do that vomit inducing thing where everything kinda warps around you really fast on the sides as you are moving around. The control is super slippery and to compensate, the developers made the hit boxes on the enemies about twice as big as the enemies themselves. Then the game gets overly busy in the later levels with annoying enemies, annoying voice acting and the frame rate gets super janky.

WTR, Super Burnout and Power Drive Rally are considered by most Jaguar fans as the best racing games on the Jaguar, but outside of a few super fans for each of those titles, they are not considered the best games on the Jaguar. As for best exclusive games on the Jaguar, games like Tempest 2000, AVP, the Iron Soldier series, Battlemorph and BattleSphere are the games that generally pop up as the best games on the Jaguar. Both Tempest 2000 and AVP received some end of year awards by the gaming press in 1994. Throughout the late 90's and early 2000's, I would see Tempest 2000 pop up on Top 100 games of all time lists every now and then. I've also seen AVP pop up on a few scariest games of all time lists throughout the years. And closer to release, Jaguar AVP would pop up on a few best FPS of all time lists.

 

[dacuk]

MK3 is a game what??

I'm not sure about your game list either, you can't use hindsight arguments when talking about the time period. For all anyone knew Kasumi Ninja was better than Killer Instinct,...

I stopped taking you seriously right here

 

[Afro Republican]

I think you focus too much on graphics. Like when you posted a bunch of gifs of impressive looking 3DO games and some of those games you posted were dogs. I would rather play AVP over Killing Time every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Your post has no purpose when the whole point was comparing and talking about the graphical capabilities of the 3DO and Jaguar. Not whether you liked Killing time or not.

If you want to talk about game quality than make that a new conversation.

I consider myself sane and I say AVP is better GRAPHICALLY than WTR unless you only mean a technical point of view

Your purposeful bad screen of WTR aside, your post is pointless. Multiple posts about graphical comparisons and technical explanations and now you're bringing up subjectivity in a tech conversation?

Bit like the Saturn then, which was also conceptualised in 1992 and back then 2d may have still been all the rage, but come 1995 it was not, and the Saturn got found out!!

Actually a good comparison, Saturn didn't think they had to do much for 3D so the original Saturn was focusing on the same graphical tech as the Jaguar, flat polygons. Then they ended up reacting to everyone elses decisions for 3 years in a panic as a result.

3DO was just ahead of the game, Sega is lucky that last second hardware change gave their consoles better graphics, eventually, than the 3DO. But like the PSX it took some time before it was consistently better, I would say it took until 1997 for the Saturn and 1996 for the PSX to have games consistently better than what the 3DO could do from budget to top tier games.

 

[molasar]

Your purposeful bad screen of WTR aside, your post is pointless. Multiple posts about graphical comparisons and technical explanations and now you're bringing up subjectivity in a tech conversation?

Actually your posts are pointless. If you really want to get serious comparison then create a proper criteria system for it (if you can because it requires critical thinking). And no, your WTR example is not better as a whole package than AvP. Even RGB EuroScart connection quality would not help your case.

I will ask again how old were you in the 90s? And I do not remember that people talked about tech side of things back in the day like they do nowadays. It was all about appeal and playability.

Again. LOL. WTR the best Jag game. LOL.

 

[Afro Republican]

Actually your posts are pointless. If you really want to get serious comparison then create a proper criteria system for it.

You are the only one jumping in a conversation between me, Raiden, and others talking about specs and graphics, take your garbage somewhere else. If you have nothing to add I would recommend not making pointless antagonizing replies. No one else is having an issue with this but you.

 

[molasar]

You are the only one jumping in a conversation between me, Raiden, and others talking about specs and graphics, take your garbage somewhere else. If you have nothing to add I would recommend not making pointless antagonizing replies. No one else is having an issue with this but you.

You just made me thinking that you are into recreational substances. IMO it is a bad thing and make you misjudge the situation.
Where did I make antagonizing replies? Better check your language first in your posts. It is your narrative again and your eristics won't work on me.
This thread is about AvP game and you are the one who already admitted that you do not know much about Jaguar.

I will admit I don't know too much about the Jaguar though compared to others in the thread, I was always more of a 3DO guy.

You just discredited yourself here big time by comparing games without a proper criteria system i.e. an F1 FPP/TPP racing game to a survival-tactical-horror FPP game. And at the same time having issues with me bringing Space Hulk as the closest 3DO's game to Jag's AvP.

Also you never answered to any of my questions about the 90s. So I assume you are just a kid who got into retro stuff which is not a bad thing.

Although one question you should answer here. What do you perceive by stating the best graphics and what criteria do you use for it.

 

[Dural]

I got a Jaguar Christmas 1994, played the shit out of it for a year until I got a PS for my bday in 1995. A lot of great memories playing AvP, I used graph paper to map out the ducts. Completed the game many times as each of the characters, it seriously blew me away. I hadn't played anything like it, there really wasn't much that could stand with it at the time.

 

[molasar]

More screenshots from a cancelled version of AvP which was planned for PS1, Saturn and PC. It seems that they abandoned digitized character sprites for polygonal versions.

 

[skit_data]

More screenshots from a cancelled version of AvP which was planned for PS1, Saturn and PC.

The xenomorphs look like caricatures, good thing they improved them before the AvP 1999 release

 

[molasar]

The xenomorphs look like caricatures, good thing they improved them before the AvP 1999 release

For PS1 in 1997 (the only prototype created) it still looked impressive. And it was supposed to be like an upgraded Jag's version.

 

[Enjay]

Great memories from this game of throwing killer discs at marines. Best and possibly only fps on the atari jaguar.

 

[Rob_27]

Loved this game.

 

[RAIDEN1]

I think this game would be a worthy successor, minus the Predator:

 

[molasar]

Great memories from this game of throwing killer discs at marines. Best and possibly only fps on the atari jaguar.

Yet it is not an FPS game but it has an FPS element in it among other elements.