Is the Atari Jaguar the most underrated console system?

[Lost Dragon]

"Stunning conversions" was not my words. I was simply asked to list what I considered the 5 best conversions, NBA Jam:TE was the game missed out. Raiden takes the arcade version, adds some new music and extra detail/animations and keeps the same screen ratio (which why they put in the side bar). So in my opinion it was a very good arcade conversion, I was a big fan of the original game.

David's comment was put in to give people something to talk about, I knew it was controversial and was in two minds whether to include it. But as I said, I thought it would make an interesting talking point and, in a way, I was right. I didn't expect to be accused of making it up, putting there on purpose or of it being my own words though, but there we go. We live and learn, I will refrain from including controversial quotes in the future.

well, not being 'privvy' to the design process of a RG article, i can only give my impressions from a readers point of view and i'd yet to see Jaguar Raiden and stunning used together in any magazine article prior to the one in RG. No matter how good a conversion, it really did feel out of place on a 64 bit console.Too old and did nothing to showcase the hardware, something as i mentioned earlier on here, Atari was busy telling the press, they were working hard to ensure games being developed would do.So sure you can see how some could read it as being just a tad biased towards Jaguar, mind you, in fairness, not exactly spoilt for choice on Jaguar for Arcade Conversions....

Not sure who accused you of making David's words your own or making it up, came across very clear to myself you were quoting him, these were his views etc.

That was me, I did not accuse him of making it up or they were his own words. I accused him of influencing the way the conversation went. my reasoning being, the Laird several times accused the PS of introducing bland sterile games and being the introduction of everything he dislikes and that the Jag let developers be creative. Then in an article he writes, the interviewee expresses the exact same sentiment word for word. How am I supposed to come to any other conclusion.

The very concept of the jag being gamings last bastion of creativity is ludicrous and such a silly statement.

Yep for anyone to claim Sony killed creative gaming is a little absurd, all they did was tap into a market others had up until this point, pretty much ignored, in terms of home consoles.Nintendo went after the non-gamer with the GB and it was such a massive success, it set alarm bells ringing at Sony HQ, as they felt it was someyhing their engineering department should have created, not Nintendo.

Davids statement, to me (and i'm really sorry David, but it has to be said) did strike me as a little 'ignorant' (harsh, but cannot think of anything else to use at moment), and it seemed to show a lack of understanding of what had come after the Jaguar.Jeff went straight to Nuon and produce another update of Tempest, hardly breaking out much there, eh Jeff... and later arrived at MS for the 360 VLM and put a game out on XBLA which was very tempesty, put stuff out on iOS, PC, now beavering away on another Tempest-esq game, this time for Sony! and the PS Vita.
The PS2 was basically Sony taking developers comments onboard, they asked for 'low level access' to the hardware, basically give us the raw power, let us use it as/where we see fit, which Sony did with PS2, if nothing else it gave then flexibility with shaders and how to allocate CPU power where they wanted (cough, more Ram would have been a bonus..) and what did they get? WAHHHH it's too difficult to get the basics up and running.

The bland, repetive games, again, spoken from someone who appeared to be at best, blinkered onhow the industry works, the chaff pays for development of the wheat...the massive selling tat, likes of myself sneer at, brings in the revenue to fund the niche titles that press and likes of myself seem to love, masses don't.That's just the way the industry works...

You put that in an article, you've gotta expect a reaction from your readership...

[outdated_gamer]

I found an interesting pic.

[The Laird]

2X SH-2's
VDP1
VDP2
Processor controller and LSI for graphics.
Saturn Custom Sound Processor (SCSP) which contains a Yamaha FH-1 DSP
System Control Unit@ 14.3 Mhz-connects the systems 3 buses.
SH-1 processor for CD Drive
Sound CPU-Motorola 68EC00@22.6 Mhz

Not to mention the system manager and perpheral control, a 4bit Hitachi chip (and Sony made a part of Saturn hardware-The RGB Encoder).

Jaguar really more complicated?

You had what:Tom, Jerry chipsets, a blitter, object processor and a 68000, what am i missing?

Jaguar hardware:

32-bit GPU "Tom"
64-bit Object Processor
64-bit Blitter
DRAM controller
32-bit DSP "Jerry"
2 x Stereo DAC
UART
16-bit Motorola 68000
64-bit Data Bus
CD Manager "Butch" (Jaguar CD)
Cinepak Compression (Jaguar CD)

The other big difference is that the Saturn uses several "off the shelf" chips like the SH-1, SH-2 and Yamaha FH-1. It is much easier to emulate chips that are well documented. The only non-custom chip in the Jaguar is the 68k, the rest were designed purely for use in the Jag (and some arcade games).

[Lost Dragon]

the last console that let people be creative really bothered me as well.

indeed, it was one of the most ludicrous statements the mag has ever published, no question about that, but on the plus side it added a touch of genuine comedy to the article.

Indeed, considering its releases were as " by the numbers " as you could possiby see.

we need virtua fighter, ok lets di fight for life.
Mortal Kombat is popular = Kasumi ninja
Mariokart = atari karts.

remakes of old arcade games that while fun have little depth = missile command, defender etc.

Trevor mcfur, a space shooter with animal characters = might as well have called it 2d starfox.

littered with 16bit ports.

where is this creativity.

as for PS1, yes the franchises are still going, but people seem to forget that at the time they were the first appearences and they had never been seen before and developers were experimenting with 3d and there was a load of creativity. The likes of Tombraider, and resident EVil may be rehashed and spawned many sequels but you need to see things in context. At the time they were fresh exciting and were doing things people had never sen before. Hardly bland sterile and corporate.

You forgot:we need an answer to Sega's V.Racing, lets go with C.Flag

Ohh that 3DO Shockwave looks fantastic, bung in a lot of texture-mapping on Battlemorph will you ATD?

Bloody hell, Lemmings sold well, lets rename Humans and hope no-one notices.

Cybermorph was Atari's answer to Starfox, Old Trevor Mcf**kn uts (i mean seriousily, scanning a lions head onto a military uniform, this was greenlit?) Atari saying, err, we have'nt got Thunderforce or R-Type, but need something along those lines.

Tomb raider i've covered prior, Core dreamed up during MCD era, technology was'nt ready until Saturn.

Resident Evil, pfff only to look at PC Alone In The Dark.Wipeout? ST/Amiga Powerdrome says..HIYA!!!!

And so forth....

[Lost Dragon]

2X SH-2's
VDP1
VDP2
Processor controller and LSI for graphics.
Saturn Custom Sound Processor (SCSP) which contains a Yamaha FH-1 DSP
System Control Unit@ 14.3 Mhz-connects the systems 3 buses.
SH-1 processor for CD Drive
Sound CPU-Motorola 68EC00@22.6 Mhz

Not to mention the system manager and perpheral control, a 4bit Hitachi chip (and Sony made a part of Saturn hardware-The RGB Encoder).

Jaguar really more complicated?

You had what:Tom, Jerry chipsets, a blitter, object processor and a 68000, what am i missing?

Jaguar hardware:

32-bit GPU "Tom"
64-bit Object Processor
64-bit Blitter
DRAM controller
32-bit DSP "Jerry"
2 x Stereo DAC
UART
16-bit Motorola 68000
64-bit Data Bus
CD Manager "Butch" (Jaguar CD)
Cinepak Compression (Jaguar CD)

The other big difference is that the Saturn uses several "off the shelf" chips like the SH-1, SH-2 and Yamaha FH-1. It is much easier to emulate chips that are well documented. The only non-custom chip in the Jaguar is the 68k, the rest were designed purely for use in the Jag (and some arcade games).

Ok, but i still see 1 bus on Jaguar, 3 on Saturn, 2 CPU's, off the shelf or not, the fact they were bas*ards to work with well documented, i left out these from Saturn as i've no fecking idea what they do: Crystal oscillator and intergrated circuit clock controller.The SCSP has a DRAM controller for sound, cinepak compression must have been present on Saturn or at very least some form of codec software and given how likes of Climax, Capcom, let alone western developers said Sega kept best documentation on Saturn to themselves, i cannot see it being easy thing to gain access to it, if Capcom struggled to match Sega...yikes!.

[Lost Dragon]

I stand corrected, Sorry David, Jaguar then PS2, then PS3 being last creative hardware, allowing coders control of hardware etc is wrong sequence, it should go:Jaguar-SATURN, then..PS2-PS3.

Andy Beveridge, designer of PSY-Q development system for Saturn (and it's Playstation alternative) 'it's (the Saturn) a real coders machine.For those who love to get their teeth into asembly and really hack into the hardware, the Saturn will pack a few surprises.It's going to be sometime before we can see what it really can do'.

My bad....

[The Laird]

I am not talking about the kind of documentation used to create games, I am talking about the documentation needed to recreate the chips - i.e. how they work.

Also, until recently anyway, you had 32-bit chips on a pC trying to emulate 64-bit instructions, which explains a lot of the speed problems.

The main problem with Jag emulation though, as has been noted by the emu coders, is the Jag's bugs. Different coders found their own work arounds for these and that means you have to program the emulator to not just know what the bugs are, but know how all the work arounds work too!

[The Laird]

I can't speak for David, but I think what he was trying to say was that programmers were basically let lose to do what they wanted by Atari, hence why the Jaguar has quite a few really wacky games.

But whether that was just because Atari were really desperate for games or because they genuinely wanted people to express creativity in the hope they would discover the next big thing is up for debate.

[Lost Dragon]

I am not talking about the kind of documentation used to create games, I am talking about the documentation needed to recreate the chips - i.e. how they work.

Also, until recently anyway, you had 32-bit chips on a pC trying to emulate 64-bit instructions, which explains a lot of the speed problems.

The main problem with Jag emulation though, as has been noted by the emu coders, is the Jag's bugs. Different coders found their own work arounds for these and that means you have to program the emulator to not just know what the bugs are, but know how all the work arounds work too!

Erm, well given that likes of Jeff Minter on his 1st crack at a Jaguar game, coded the chip's backwards in his words to create the wonderous Tempest 2000, let alone his souped up version of Mode 7 and since the Jaguar died at retail, likes of Gorf and Atari Owl have not only discovered the crippling bugs in Jaguar chipset, but way's around them, surely the information on the Jaguar is pretty much out there? i mean sure Jeff used the 68000, GPU and Blitter, but if he's sat there coding chipsbackwards and getting scolded by chip designers for doing so, they don't appear that hard to figure out, compared to say Capcom sat there thinking, ahh fer f*cks sake we've got 2 CPU's here, but we cannot run both without 1 waiting on the other, this VDP1 is a sprite generator, the VDP2 is a background processor, a 32 voice sound processor with 2 CPU interfaces and a FH1 processor and it's a CD based machine, so why so O.T.T?, a bus state controller, CPU interface, not to mention gubbins here Sega never told us about...


Why don't those that found work arounds to the Jags bugs share information?.Jaguar community that inward looking?.

[The Laird]

All I can say is, you obviously never spoke to Gorf

If you ask him about Jaguar bugs he will go on a proper rant. He spent years finding a work around for one bug, Atari Owl found another way of doing the same thing. Nobody knows how programmers got around these bugs back in the day because there is very little source code or documentation out there explaining it. So when they are coding the emulators they just have to keep trying different things. Look at the newest version of Virtual Jaguar for example that came out very recently, some games actually don't work on the new version that worked on the last version but other run much better than before. I am not a coder so can't give you exact details on the ins and outs of it.

[Lost Dragon]

Really spun out now, so just to recap:

Bug work arounds found by Jaguar homebrew coders, but these solutions not shared into public domain, so emulators suffer?-could they not like, i dunno, ask Gorf or the Owl? or is it like the masonic lodge of Jaguar development?


David is all like Atari Man, most creative dudes on planet, let us do what the hell we want (and clearly never seen the 3DO software selection in terms of original titles..) which totally goes agaig'nst comments made by both Battlemorph and Freelancer 2120 developers who've gone on records saying how Atari was telling them to put in loads of textures etc, so games could compete with 3DO/Saturn and PS1 and...Jeff Minter who said Atari took Defender 2000 away from his vision (Defender Plus was more along lines of what he wanted to do) because they had ideas what a CD based game should be like and it appeared on cart anyway.

As for Gorf, speaking, well the arcade cabinet spoke to me, years ago at Butlins (Minehead) but it was only a 1 way conversation.

[The Laird]

Really spun out now, so just to recap:

Bug work arounds found by Jaguar homebrew coders, but these solutions not shared into public domain, so emulators suffer?-could they not like, i dunno, ask Gorf or the Owl? or is it like the masonic lodge of Jaguar development?

David is all like Atari Man, most creative dudes on planet, let us do what the hell we want (and clearly never seen the 3DO software selection in terms of original titles..) which totally goes agaig'nst comments made by both Battlemorph and Freelancer 2120 developers who've gone on records saying how Atari was telling them to put in loads of textures etc, so games could compete with 3DO/Saturn and PS1 and...Jeff Minter who said Atari took Defender 2000 away from his vision (Defender Plus was more along lines of what he wanted to do) because they had ideas what a CD based game should be like and it appeared on cart anyway.

At risk of repeating myself, I will say all the same things again in a different way.

Of course homebrew coders share stuff, but the commercial programmers didn't! If the emulator coders don't know what tricks they used then how the hell are they supposed to emulate them? If the chipsets and bugs are not properly documented then how the hell are they supposed to emulate them?

David Wightman only had one game published for the Jaguar, he had loads published for the PC, PlayStation, Amiga and had a game on the Saturn too. So he clearly has plenty of experience with other platforms. But I am not going to speak for him so you can think what you like.

[nakamura]

I can't speak for David, but I think what he was trying to say was that programmers were basically let lose to do what they wanted by Atari, hence why the Jaguar has quite a few really wacky games..

Point Blank. Hyper Bishi Bishi Special. Ape Escape. Parrapa. Vib Ribbon. Music Generator. Discworld. Bust a Groove. Dance Dance Resolution. Um Jammer Lammy. Burning Road. Tobal. Goal Storm. All Star Soccer 99.

Off the top of my head these are all 'wacky' games or crazy versions on a standard theme. PS1 among others was bursting with unique ideas. I suggest that David guy takes his blinkers off.

[Nemesis]

I can't speak for David, but I think what he was trying to say was that programmers were basically let lose to do what they wanted by Atari, hence why the Jaguar has quite a few really wacky games..

Point Blank. Hyper Bishi Bishi Special. Ape Escape. Parrapa. Vib Ribbon. Music Generator. Discworld. Bust a Groove. Dance Dance Resolution. Um Jammer Lammy. Burning Road. Tobal. Goal Storm. All Star Soccer 99.

Off the top of my head these are all 'wacky' games or crazy versions on a standard theme. PS1 among others was bursting with unique ideas. I suggest that David guy takes his blinkers off.

Indeed, there were all sorts of wacky interesting games on the PSone. If that's bland corporate gaming then let's have some more I say.

[gman72]

who the heck is this David guy anyway?