soxinthebox
Member
First pictures of Mike Kennedy's new console
First pictures of Mike Kennedy's new console
The Atari that released the Jaguar no longer owned Asteroids, Missile Command, Centipede, Millipede, Pole Position et al, FYI. By then those were owned by Atari Games, not Atari Corporation. Also, by the time of the Jag, Atari Corporation no longer had the money to license titles like Pac-Man and the like.
I still think Lynx had the best support among the Atari Corp. consoles.Atari Corp also had deals with Namco and Tecmo on the Atari Lynx and games like Ms. Pac-man, Pac-Land, Rygar, Ninja Gaiden arcade and Ninja Gaiden III were released on that system.
E3 1995 behind the scenes video: https://youtu.be/fC9ZJWHFjhc?t=738
The headset was pretty ahead of its time for something from 1995. It has an IR tracking system, gyroscope and external CPU. But even though this would have been the cheapest commercial VR headset on the market in 1995, it was still too pricey for Atari to produce. Also the LCD technology and 52 degree FOV was a little bit problematic. But it is still really impressive for what it was, and it was a real VR headset unlike the Virtual Boy.
When I finally bought a 3DO a few years back Gex was one of the first games I picked up. You could say I was stunned by the fact that it runs at an unstable 30fps. I mean, a simple 2D platformer with minimal parallax scrolling running at 30fps or worse most of the time? Made worse by the fact that the console only outputs 480i which is bad news for 240p 2D titles.3DO launched with junk, and it remained that way until Gex finally arrived. But too little too late, and Street Fighter was a bit further down the line.
There just wasn't enough games to garner interest, and consumers knew bigger, better consoles were on the way. With games that obliterated 3DO's.
Wtf @ that controller. Am I going to order pizza lol!?
I wouldn't be so sure. I bet that one didn't have any stolen parts.First pictures of Mike Kennedy's new console
Yeah amazing. To think that someone can do mistakes like this because English isn't his native language. Thankfully, we have now the proof.proof that someone doesn't know how to use past and present tense properly.
So it's not time travel? Bummer.Yeah amazing. To think that someone can do mistakes like this because English isn't his native language. Thankfully, we have now the proof.
You are deluded if you think the Jaguar could have been a success or maybe we have a different definition of success.
Jaguar sold about 125K in total, to have sales perfomance that could be called success you need 10-100 times that number.
I believe Tramiel's Atari didn't have the cash at hand to invest into the project to really become a success no matter what.
What killed the 3DO and Jaguar was poor Japanese third party support.
This was back when Japan was the king of the hill in console gaming and not having Square, Konami, Capcom, and so on hurt them.
The original Panther console seemed like it had a great spec/cost/time of release ratio and had a less problematic architecture. they probably should have gone with that design instead.
3DO launched at $699 (in early 90s US Dollars), which is what really hurt it.
I always thought (as a EGM/Gamepro reader at the time) that 3DO and Neo-Geo seemed cool, but were insanely expensive and had very limited game libraries compared to Nintendo and Sega. We were already hearing about the Saturn and Playstation by the time 3DO actually came out.
Jaguar just looked dumb from the start.
While I agree that Rayman is a lot better than any Gex game, Rayman 1 is really not a good game.
It's decent, and it looks gorgeous, but isn't a killer app. It had bad hit detection, loose controls, blind jumps and levels with lots of unfair hazards.
Rayman really entered the great game category with Rayman Origins/Legends.
Rayman couldn't have been that big. It was a 2D game and at the time people were excited for 3D.
Any console without Japanese games in the mid '90s was DOA.
Jaguar sold over 200k
Jaguar sold over 200k
The 3DO had a lot of japanese support. The reason the 3DO failed was because of a high entry price which they cut fast but too late, and they didin't market it really as a games consoles, hense the add-on to play Video CDs and other plans that were scrapped. Still sold million.
I still have mine in the closet. Was worth it for AvP and Doom alone.
Why does the OP read as if the Jag still has a shot in 2016?
Brutal Sports Football is never mentioned and that was one of the Jaguar's best games. It wasn't just any old football game
What was the purpose for all those buttons? Did games actually use all of them? Dialling phone numbers? Running calculators?
The PS1, Saturn, and N64 destroy it in 3D capabilities, and that controller wasn't going to be sufficient.
I think even if it had been initially successful, it would have been quickly overshadowed. Much like the Dreamcast, which would have quickly had problems being the only console of that generation without a second thumb stick
The Jaguar did have some great ports but really not much else. It wasn't even that much more powerful than a Super FX'd SNES.
The biggest problem with the Jaguar is that it came out too late. If it came out in say, 1992, where it was competing against the SNES/Genesis I think it could have done much better. But having to compete against the 3DO, then Saturn/PS1? R.I.P.
We DID do the math, and the math added up to a console being way outdated by 1994/1995.
"Put it this way -- nothing's going to come along to knock Jaguar off the top"
Eeeeh, i don't know. Allow me to have some doubts about this. The gap looks too big to be covered with just one additional chip while keeping everything else (CPU, RAM, etc) the same.
By the way, even the 32X and GBA are probably weaker systems than the Jaguar.
When those 3 were released in 93/94 the world was already waiting for the Sega Saturn. That's even before Sony came along with the Playstation and laid waste to all before it. Alas all three sit in the same annals of history as the 32X.
The Jag with a CD drive could have competed with the Saturn/PSX but were Atari even relevant enough at the time to attract the needed 3rd party support anyway? Sony did the right thing with PSX's launch and call on the Japanese 3D Arcade heavy weights (Namco and Capcom) along with Square to support the new machine day 1.
I think the Namco/Capcom support alone was enough for PSX to beat Saturn in to the ground, and Square helped murder the N64 before it was even launched.
Of course neither Sega, Commodore, Atari, or 3DO could have foreseen any of this in 1993.
Ha, no. All it took to kill Jaguar was people comparing Starfox and Cybermorph and seeing no distinct difference in visual quality. For a system priding itself on being much much stronger, that is EMBARRASSING.
Lol, Atari's idea of 1st party titles...
Atari 2600 - Asteroids, Breakout, Space Invaders, Asteroids, Missile Command, Warlords, Bezerk, Centipede, Defender, Pac-Man, Galaxian, Pole Position, Ballblazer, Battlezone, Choplifter
Atari 5200 - Super Breakout, Space Invaders, Missile Command, Bezerk, Centipede, Defender, Pac-Man, Galaxian, Pole Position, Ballblazer, Choplifter
Atari XEGS - Ballblazer, Battlezone, Choplifter
Atari 7800 - Asteroids, Centipede, Ms. Pac-Man, Pole Position II, Ballblazer, Choplifter
Atari Jaguar - Tempest 2000
Mmm, I think there might be a pattern here...
If you look how the console was received and positioned back then you'd never claim such an outlandish thing. It makes the 3D0 look like a big deal in comparison.
With a controller like this?
*Laughs*
Never.
To put it into context, the PSX sold 120,000 units at launch, I think.
The Jaguar hardware wasn't good enough (the PSX launched in Japan a year later and looked a full generation ahead) and the games mostly stunk. A few good ports and Tempest 2000 is not going to make a system. The 3DO had a better chance but overall I think the whole industry was waiting for Sega, Nintendo, and then Sony.
I'm pretty sure that Policenauts on the 3DO was the first home console game that Hideo Kojima was directly involved with. Before that he strictly worked in the PC sector of Konami and had no involvement with developing console games. But the 3DO was the console where he made that migration from Japanese PC's to home consoles. Kenji Eno also made his name of the 3DO as well with WARP and D. The console did have a bit of a cult following for being an anime/ adventure game machine in Japan because it was the most capable home machine at the time for producing those types of games on. It even had a little success as being a Karaoke machine as well.
They weren't. Sony was a question mark until after the E3 and still tok a second to kick. Nintendo upset people with delays and Sega was a question mark because they kept stacking retailers with genesis to push the 32X, the Saturn also was rushed out to fight press concerns.
The games did not mostly stick, most people only know of like 7 games of it's around 70 game library. The Jaguar hardware was good enough, and for some reason people seem to think early PSX games were rash 3 levels at alunch, that's not how that worked.
I bought a Jaguar and it was the dumbest knee-jerk thing I ever did.
The system was too expensive and they did not have a solid third-party.
I even bought Checkered Flag! Man that was dumb.
3DO launched with junk, and it remained that way until Gex finally arrived. But too little too late, and Street Fighter was a bit further down the line.
There just wasn't enough games to garner interest, and consumers knew bigger, better consoles were on the way. With games that obliterated 3DO's.
Let's put it this way: compared to the Jaguar, the 32x was a smash success.
.
With the ST and Lynx in decline and the TT and Falcon bombing hard, Atari didn't have much left in the tank to support the Jaguar. If Atari would have won the Sega lawsuit back in early '93 and if the Jaguar would have been a CD based system, it could have MAYBE been a mild success at best.
I'm a big Atari fan and have been a Jaguar owner since 1993. I've enjoyed the system and have a near complete collection, but wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless you are a hardcore Atari fan or like to collect niche systems.
One cool thing about the Jaguar is that new games are still being released to this day and the community is very knowledgeable and quite active.
I'm pretty sure Konami and Capcom never published games on Atari systems.
Namco licensed some properties on Atari systems which were actually developed by Atari, for example Ms Pacman and Pole Position.
This isn't different than , say, Namco licensing their game IPs to Epoch for porting the games to the Super Cassette Vision.
Microsoft was in far much better position than Atari Corp. simply because Microsoft could spend billion of dollars to buy support and marketshare.
EDIT:
Mmmh actually Konami published 3 games on Atari 2600, the more one knows...
Capcom licensed Commando to Activision and that's it.
The general point stand.
Atari Corp. consoles (Atari 7800, Lynx and Jaguar) had very weak third-party support and first party software was cheaply made.
I'm not sure why anyone would want the Jag to succeed in retrospect. The hardware just wasn't up to par and would not have been able to provide the types of games that we would see in the five years following its release. The hardware was sluggish, the controller was limited, and the sound capabilities poor.
When I finally bought a 3DO a few years back Gex was one of the first games I picked up. You could say I was stunned by the fact that it runs at an unstable 30fps. I mean, a simple 2D platformer with minimal parallax scrolling running at 30fps or worse most of the time? Made worse by the fact that the console only outputs 480i which is bad news for 240p 2D titles.
Well, even if this is the case, nobody was sitting around thinking Atari is the savior.
Most people only know 7 games because only 7 games are good unless you're an Atari fanboy. Early PSX games, in terms of graphics, were awesome. Compare Ridge Racer to Checkered Flag or BAT to Kasumi Ninja.
I'm not saying the system was worthless, it just wasn't good enough, the games weren't good enough, and I don't think there was anything they could have done to get people off Genny and SNES in 1993 and onto an Atari system. Those systems were really riding high at that point and nobody was going to ditch Secret of Mana to go play Trevor McFur.
Nah, no worries, to be fair i should be flattered. If you didn't notice it's not my native language it must mean i'm pretty good at it, thus the title does look like a dumb grammar mistake in the end.So it's not time travel? Bummer.
Take it easy man, it was just a joke. I didn't know English isn't your first language. Apologies if you are offended.
The GBA was far more capable than the Lynx. There is no alternate universe where the Lynx can handle stuff like Doom or (let alone) V-Rally. There's a proper, full generation gap right there.The GBA can barely outdo the Lynx. Which is just sad. Took Nintendo until the DS to start having "decent" portable hardware.
Loved my CD-32
Still a more varied game library than most modern consoles
And no, Tempest wasn't the right game to push the console to people. As great as it was, it was still a retro-looking game. People wanted to see awesome, colorful graphics and new tech, not a remake of an 80's vector arcade game. This should have been seen as a bonus in the Jaguar library, not a "killer app".
Thoughts?
I don't think so OP. And both Doom and Wolfenstein were on SNES.
Jaguar's lineup was in large part, a joke. Couple that with a garbage controller, lame marketing, and lack of the hottest games, and it did as well as it deserved to.
If they can reboot the power pack ill be there.
This is what I grew up on
I think the controller was a huge reason why it didnt do very well.
What a hideous , hideous beast of a controller ugh
Nah, no worries, to be fair i should be flattered. If you didn't notice it's not my native language it must mean i'm pretty good at it, thus the title does look like a dumb grammar mistake in the end.
The GBA was far more capable than the Lynx. There is no alternate universe where the Lynx can handle stuff like Doom or (let alone) V-Rally. There's a proper, full generation gap right there.
I got an Atari Lynx not too far out of launch and thought it was the bees knees. It made Atari look like they were on the vanguard of mobile gaming development compared to Nintendo in those early days, with decent games and incredible tech. Of course Game boy followed with way better games fairly quickly, but that's another story. Lynx was able to keep a half-decent profile with a competent library padded with solid conversions of their popular arcade games - mind you arcade Atari was still quite a big deal back during this period (Stun Runner, Rampart, Hard Driving, Xybots) and it was sweet to have a machine at home that could properly emulate these experiences on that powerful hardware.
As the Lynx got on in years, their Arcade line slowed down and games released for the handheld started to get way more lame (Basketbrawl, Dirty Larry) and it looked like Atari's spot in the sun had once again receded dramatically. The system's price and support both plummeted.. meanwhile true 16-bit systems were owning the media. Cue Atari and their talk of a more powerful Panther and then Jaguar, but to a half-savvy gamer of the time, it didn't look terribly promising at all, compared to most of what else was going on.
Still I paid attention, and I rented the system for a weekend after it had been out for a bit. Ugh... Cyber morph and tempest. Of course tempest was cool but I wasn't really going to play that for hours compared to, say, anything on the Snes at the time. And cyber morph felt half baked. Yeah launch game syndrome, but when you look at what launch lineups typically were in those days (Super Mario World, Ghouls n Ghosts) and considering what had gone down with the Lynx line, a clear message of Stay Away was broadcast.
Again, it's a shame as 90s Atari (Games) really was kicking ass in the arcades and as for genuinely fun/different mobile gaming, Lynx was on point for a good while there. Maybe in some other dimension they became a modern Activision..
Uh nobody thought any of the consoles was the savior.
Also there were more than 7 good games, you are among the ignorant, the 7 games usually consist of some games that are considered bad as well.
You then compare 1993 launch games and early 1994 games to late 1995 games?
I mean you aren't even trying to have a logical argument.
The first year of the Jagaur had, Trevor Mcfur, Bubsy 3 (Bubsy was a popular franchise btw, I know some revisionist will come in and say lol), Alien Vs. Predator, 2 3D racing games, Iron Soldier, Bruce Lee, Doom, Kasumi Ninja, Zool 2, WOlf3D, Raiden, Tempest 2000, 3D snowboarding game.
That's an amazing line-up no matter what you say while waiting to buy the console.
Bruce Lee, Doom, Snowboarding, Wolf3D, Zool2, Raiden, Tempest, Iron Soldier, Avs.P, Club Drive, Mcfur, are considered good to amazing games out of that line-up, giving plenty to play.
Then the next year you had Blue Lightning, Battlemorph, Rayman, Dragons Lair, Primal Rage, Powerdrive, Superburnout, Ultravortek, Syndicate, I-war, Missle Command 3d, Theme Park, Nba Jam, Flashback, Double Dragon V, Couple good soccer games, Canon fodder, Myst.
Thats a pretty damn good collection of games.
I totally wanted a Jaguar until I went over to a buddy's house and played it. That killed my new console lust almost immediately. Same went for 3D0.
https://youtu.be/PMTF6OVsvxg
Skip to 1:42 and watch from there.
They weren't that far apart. WIth that said, the GBA was stronger, but it wasn't too far out. The games that look the biggest generational gaps are usually crappy ports that run near unplayable. Or they are an eye sore to look at.
With that said some guys got some racing games to look pretty good. But that's like of the very few that look like they are a decent gap ahead of the Lynx.
But the gap you are implying is uh, exaggerated.
As December 1995, Atari had shipped 125K units in total with 100K more in inventory.Jaguar sold over 200k
Konami had published 3 games on 2600, I don't think Capcom has ever published a game for Atari consoles (they licensed their IPs to other companies though, for example Commando).Neither of those companies really mattered to be honest. But either way they both had published games across the 2600,7800 lines.
Can you find me the Jaguar racing game that looks and runs like Ridge Racer? Or the fighter that looks and runs like BAT? I mean, I just looked up I-War after reading your post, it came out in 1995, compare it to Warhawk, says a lot IMO. Maybe it's unfair to compare a 1994 PSX game to an earlier Jaguar game, but your opinion seems to be that the PSX was unimpressive at launch and I can assure you it was not.
Since you seem to be a big Atari fan, could you elaborate on why you don't think this system failed? Many of the games you listed (Syndicate, Primal Rage, NBA Jam, Flashback, Double Dragon, Doom, Wolf, Cannon Fodder, etc.) were on one or the other 16-bit systems, and even if the Jaguar versions were objectively superior in some way, nobody was going to drop hundreds of dollars to play a slightly better Primal Rage. Some of the other games you could have just waited a bit to play on PSX or Saturn, which is what people obviously did.
Remember that Atari had to convince people to drop a system that they were probably satisfied with and get them to go with one from a hardware maker that hadn't done much worth a damn since the early 1980's. You need to do a lot better than Zool 2.
Going back through the memory banks, I remember being impressed with AvP. But that same Christmas I was playing Chrono Trigger, Yoshi's Island, etc.
Can some mod fix the grammar mistake in the title please?Is the OP a time traveler? Why is the post written in present tense?
Which is why the 3DO sold millions. No wait.
Also the 3DO did not launch with "junk" It launched with Battle Chess, a popular PC kids game with Putt Putt, It launched with one of the most amazing party games and best use of FMV I've seen with Twisted, it had Crash N' Burn, which got the press talking and plays really well, It had Draxons Revenge a 360 scale 3D shooter, It had the must play superior version of the popular Flashback. It had a pretty good doom style FPS with escape from Monster Manor, Also it had Guardian War for an Jrpg.
It had a pretty good line-up to a person watching during it's 1993 launch.
Also no the PSX nor Saturn had games that obliterated the 3DO, and inf act both shared games with it for a few years. The 3DO got obliterated after it died.