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Interview With Atari Jaguar creator John Mathieson 156

Posted by Hemos from the rawr! dept.
Bill Kendrick writes "The website Toxic Mag has an interview with John Mathieson, creator of the short-lived Atari Jaguar 64-bit game system - the system we can thank for such awesome games as the original Alien vs. Predtor, Iron Soldier, and the gorgeously psychadelic Tempest 2000. The beginng and end of the interview are in French, but the actual questions and answers are 'en anglais.'"
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Interview With Atari Jaguar creator John Mathieson More

Interview With Atari Jaguar creator John Mathieson

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  • If only the slashdot blurb (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    were en Anglais....

  • xbox (Score:2, Funny)

    by Raven42rac ( 448205 )
    Atari innovated the crappy console controller, that contoller was roughly the size of a lincoln towncar, Microsoft had great inspiration for the Xbox's gorilla-sized controllers.
    • Don't forget the Jaguar had the plastic overlays you could put on the numeric keypad, just like the Intellivison. the Xbox controller was a breeze to use by comparison.

      Wow, the PS dualshock controller, or even the Dreamcast controller sure has come a long ways.
    • Hey! Remember the arcade size Tron Joystick that they were selling with the four Tron game cartridges? It was pretty cool but my fire button kept breaking. I gave up returning the poor controller after it broke for the third time.
    • But didn't the controller also include a small keyboard?

      Even now with the number of advancements in interface design I still haven't seen a good method for entering my name on high score screens that wasn't frustrating and didn't lead me to type in aaaa as my name each time.

      Anyway, I seem to remember that the controller wasn't actually uncomfortable even though it was oversized. A large controller, provided it is ergonomically designed can be much more comfortable than a small one. For example I have more problems with the Game Boy Advance than I do with the Gameboy classic.

      In shape though, the jaguar controller was almost the spiritual predecessor to the Dreamcast controller, although my favourite is still the N64 controller!
    • Actually, that controller is pretty damned useful in games like Iron Soldier and Battlesphere.

      In Iron Soldier, the various numeric buttons mapped to the various weapon mount-points on your IS. When I first got Iron Soldier 3 for the PlayStation, I found it very frustrating to have to hit L1 and R1 to try to cycle to the appropriate weapon.

      In BattleSphere, the leftmost numeric buttons map to some speeds (kind of like how [0] through [9] did in Star Raiders on the Atari 8-bit). The middle buttons were weapon-related. The right buttons were targetting.

      The nice thing was, the left-most firebutton ([C]) was thrust and rotation, the middle one ([B]) was fire-weapon, and the right-most ([A]) was auto-targetting.

      You really do just get used to the controller. (It was the same with the PlayStation when I first got it and tried to figure out how the hell to play Twisted Metal).

      The Jaguar controller's size doesn't make it too uncomfortable. Maybe if you had petite hands, or something.. :)

  • How to pronounce? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So de we call it Jagwar or Jagwire?


    I'm all confused, damn you Jobs

    • If you believe the car commercials, it's pronounced roughly "jhag-you-are".

      --Joe
    • The commercials pronounced it Jagwar (with the a in war sounding like the a in wall), which is the 'correct' American pronunciation. Given that we in the US live closer to the areas in which jaguars are actually native, I tend to believe the british have little claim to correct pronunciation ;p

      As for Jagwire, only young children that have trouble learning proper pronunciation say it that way.
      • Closer? There *are* jaguars in the USA. In Florida & Colorado at least. Hint: a Mountain Lion isn't a lion.

        Jaysyn
        • Closer? There *are* jaguars in the USA. In Florida & Colorado at least. Hint: a Mountain Lion isn't a lion.

          While they are closely related, there are distinct differences between jaguars and mountain lions (perhaps you're thinking of cougars, panthers, or pumas?). The Jaguar is the largest cat in the Americas, and its coat is spotted, so people often confuse them with leopards (though where you are should make it obvious enough, even in zoos they tend to have markers telling you what you're looking at, leopards and jaguars don't live on the same continents normally; jaguars live in South and Central America (the continent(s), not the States)).

  • Question about the "64" (Score:3, Informative)

    by briglass ( 608949 ) on Tuesday September 17, 2002 @09:43AM (#4272683)
    Now the Jaguar came out quite a while back, and if I remember correctly, quite a while before the N64. I remember there was some "catch" to the "64-bt" aspect. Was it really 64-bit?

    • Re:Question about the "64" (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      no.
      it was actually two 32 bit processors stuck togethor with gaffer tape as I remember.
    • No. The jaguar featured 2 32 bit processors on board. That was where the 64 came from.
      • No. The jaguar featured 2 32 bit processors on board. That was where the 64 came from.

        You're incorrect. It had a 64 bit bus--you could count the traces on the board, if you like--so if you consider that to be 64-bitness, then it is indeed a 64-bit machine. But if you go by that definition, then the PlayStation 2 is a 128-bit machine.
        • Virtually all of the registers on the EE are 128 bit too (although it's not particularly easy to make use of the top 64 bits of the int registers, other than by moving them into one of the numerous 4*32 bit float registers). The EE has more of a claim to 128bitness than any of the other current round consoles.

          But then bitness is a only a part of the picture. The lack of blend modes, is the main problem on the PS2 (which I guess is comparable to the Jag's lack of texturing), and is why PS2 games generally don't look quite as lovely as their GC and XB equivalents (with a few notable exceptions, and of course, assuming there is a GC or XB equivalent, hugely in it's favour is the sheer size of the PS2s catalogue).

    • Re:Question about the "64" (Score:5, Informative)

      by Saige ( 53303 ) <evil.angelaNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday September 17, 2002 @10:00AM (#4272807) Journal
      Depends on what part of the system you look at.

      The graphics processor, "Tom", consisted of the GPU, which was 32-bit, but could read all 64 bits of data off of the system bus, and the Object Processor and Blitter, both of which were 64-bit chips. The Sound processor, "Jerry", had a 32-bit DSP, and a couple other minor features. The 68000, the third chip, was the standard ship.

      Was it a 64-bit system? Well, it had a 64-bit system bus, and some chips that did 64-bit processing.

      There were a lot of ridiculous claims by people that the system was "64-bit" only by adding the bit sizes of all the chips together, or some silly garbage like that.

      clip from the faq for completeness:

      - "Tom"
      - 750,000 transistors, 208 pins
      - Graphics Processing Unit (processor #1)
      - 32-bit RISC architecture (32/64 processor)
      - 64 registers of 32 bits wide
      - Has access to all 64 bits of the system bus
      - Can read 64 bits of data in one instruction
      - Rated at 26.591 MIPS (million instructions per second)
      - Runs at 26.591 MHz
      - 4K bytes of zero wait-state internal SRAM
      - Performs a wide range of high-speed graphic effects
      - Programmable
      - Object processor (processor #2)
      - 64-bit RISC architecture
      - 64-bit wide registers
      - Programmable processor that can act as a variety of different video
      architectures, such as a sprite engine, a pixel-mapped display, a
      character-mapped system, and others.
      - Blitter (processor #3)
      - 64-bit RISC architecture
      - 64-bit wide registers
      - Performs high-speed logical operations
      - Hardware support for Z-buffering and Gouraud shading
      - DRAM memory controller
      - 64 bits
      - Accesses the DRAM directly

      - "Jerry"
      - 600,000 transistors, 144 pins
      - Digital Signal Processor (processor #4)
      - 32 bits (32-bit registers)
      - Rated at 26.6 MIPS (million instructions per second)
      - Runs at 26.6 MHz
      - Same RISC core as the Graphics Processing Unit
      - Not limited to sound generation
      - 8K bytes of zero wait-state internal SRAM
      - CD-quality sound (16-bit stereo)
      - Number of sound channels limited by software
      - Two DACs (stereo) convert digital data to analog sound signals
      - Full stereo capabilities
      - Wavetable synthesis, FM synthesis, FM Sample synthesis, and AM
      synthesis
      - A clock control block, incorporating timers, and a UART
      - Joystick control

      - Motorola 68000 (processor #5)
      - Runs at 13.295MHz
      - General purpose control processor

      • Well the original Pentium had a 64-bit wide bus, but it is no way a 64 bit processor by any stretch of imagination.
        • But the Pentium didn't have 64 bit processors on the chip, now did it? Besides the 64-bit system bus, the "tom" chip has two of it's three components doing full 64-bit processing, not just accessing the system bus.
          • Yes thats true, but the machine is still only partially 64-bit. Again I'ill use the Pentium as an example, which can do 80-bit FP operations, yet still a 32 bit processor.

            As far as I am aware, it is generally accepted that a machines bitness is only as large as it's CPU.

            • So how do you define the bitness of a machine that has no CPU? There are specialized graphics processors that are 32 and 64 bit on tom, specialized sound processors that are 32 bit on jerry, and one general purpose 68000 chip that's there, as some Jaguar developers put it, to read the joysticks. (IE it is NOT there to do any significant amount of processing, no matter what some fanboys used to scream in years past)
              • How about the logic of the game itself? I'm pretty sure that would have been run on the 68k.
                Was it a 68000? That's a 16-bit chip. I'm sure even 68020s (32 bit) were cheap back then.
                • That's probably pretty accurate - there were a few games that were simply ports from other systems that more or less restricted themselves to using the 68000 chip. Thus, those were clearly games that could be described as 16-bit games.

                  Some of the more complex ones, such as T2k, AvP, and Battlesphere, are definately not restricting themselves to that chip. If I remember right, it might have been T2K that actually send the 68000 chip a shutdown command after it got the game up and running, though it may have been another one.

  • No Regional Lockouts (Score:5, Interesting)

    by clickety6 ( 141178 ) on Tuesday September 17, 2002 @09:44AM (#4272687)
    It's ineteresting to note that the Jag had no regional lockouts - cartirdges and CDs from the US would workm in Europe and vice versa. The Jaguar would detect if it was NTSC or PAL and properly written software would display properly on the TV. Pity things aren't so simple these days...
  • I was so excited about getting it, that my first wife actually bought it for me. I never did buy all the games for it though. Ahh nice memories.
  • Mindblowingly realistic, but probably very similar games. Nothing much changes in video games...

    Sad but true - off the top of my head, I can only think of two recent original games that really made a splash - the Sims and Pikmin

    Everything else is more of the same. That doesn't mean games aren't still fun though - Mario Sunshine is a blast but not really that original.

    • Re:extremely true quote (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Tet ( 2721 )
      I can only think of two recent original games that really made a splash - the Sims and Pikmin

      The Sims is original how? It's just an enhanced version of LCP [retrogames.com], with a better graphics engine, and better AI due to the increased CPU horsepower. The game concept itself is far from original.

      • Whoops. FOrgot about Little Computer People. And now that I think about it, Pikmin is rather like lemmings.

        Nevermind, no originality at all, our entire culture is going in circles.

        Maybe it's time to become a black turtleneck wearing, goatee sporting, coffee swilling nihilist. I guess that's been done before too, though. Ah well.
    • "Mario Sunshine is a blast but not really that original"

      Yeah...there are enough old bits of kit out there that you can get hold of for next to nothing - to say nothing of all the Mame/etc emulators - that I see no point in chasing after the latest consoles and their expensive software. First it was polygon count, now its how many more times the frame can be redrawn than the actual display can physically display those frames (180 frames per second! thats handy.).

      What are the best 10 games, in terms of gameplay, which have been released in the last year or 2. When you`ve done that, perform a similar comparison with those of 10 years ago.
      • I see no point in chasing after the latest consoles and their expensive software.

        Super Monkey Ball and Pikmin. That's about it really - other than that, I play Pong (!) and Worms, both in their Playstation 1 versions. Used to play SSX Tricky too on the PS2, but while fun it's not as long-lasting as the games above.

        Cheers,
        Ian

    • dont forget the bemani line. rythm games are a pretty revolutionary concept.. Even if it is about 4 years old now :) Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Freaks, Beatmania, and Para Para Paradise are all fantastic games.
  • The Block Diagram at the bottom of the interview is great. For anyone that want's to compare it to the XBOX's Block Diagram, here it is: http://www.ddj.com/documents/s=882/ddj0008a/0008af 1.htm
    • OOPS Here is the link http://www.ddj.com/documents/s=882/ddj0008a/0008af 1.htm Hope it works
    • The Block Diagram at the bottom of the interview is great

      I think that must be of an early prototype. They replaced the big block of butter at the bottom right with some graphics stuff after initial testing.

  • Open Source Emulator (Score:3, Informative)

    by sdjunky ( 586961 ) on Tuesday September 17, 2002 @09:57AM (#4272788)


    For those who might be interested you can find an Open Source emulator here [jagulator.com]

    • And a ton of roms can be found he-..uh, nevermind.
  • There was another alien vs predator. It was a side scrolling beat 'em up game for the SNES. Much in the style of final fight and streets of rage. It was actually pretty crappy. There might have been an even earlier AvsP, but I don't remember it.
    Does anyone remember the game with the cavemen for the Jaguar? I always wanted to play it, but I don't know the name.
    • There was another aliens vs predator before the snes one in the arcades, and THAT one was GREAT to play. The SNES one was utter garbage compared to the arcade one, but the arcade aliens vs predator might be one of the greatest final fight style games ever.
      The skinny on the arcade version with a screen shot can be found here [www.mame.dk]
    • Does anyone remember the game with the cavemen for the Jaguar? I always wanted to play it, but I don't know the name.

      Dino Dudes Evolution. Not that great of game, really, but a good time-wasting puzzler. I never did get all that far in the game, it just never interested me enough to work past the tougher puzzles.
  • 16) How do you imagine the videogame systems in 10 years?

    Mindblowingly realistic, but probably very similar games. Nothing much changes in video games...

    Mind-blowingly realistic Grand Thief Auto. Does that include realistic pain?

  • I have one of these in my datacenter. But I'd have to say that the Tempest upright is far more popular. Of course, it IS set on free play mode. ;)

    PS: It is so strange that Atari could embrace such great products and ideas, but have the most spectacular failures when it comes to the business side of things.

    PS: Which system play more like 'real basketball'? Was it the Atari 2600, or the Intellivision? ;)

    • Intellivision, [theoldcomputer.com] of course! It was almost impossible to make a basket unless your aim was good. Just like real life. ;-)

      --Joe
    • Intellevision.

      "Now you can tell the difference between atari and intellivision with your eyes closed"
      (Re: the voice module which only 2 games worked with!)

      I watched all those old atari and intellivision games- made me realize how much I hate real player. But then again, those videos were probably left "rotting" on a crappy vhs all these years, so I shouldn't complain. For a person who still remembers most of the MEGAMANIA song, I should sit down and shut up.

      working my way backwards: the fabulous disaster that was atari has a long and proud tradition of doing the wrong thing. In some ways, kind of like apple under the command of scully and Jean louis-gasse (after Jobs was given a dishonorable discharge- I guess he showed them).

    • Re:Right! (Score:2, Informative)

      by DevNova ( 24921 )
      Blame it on the Tramiels! After the incredible success they had with the Commodore 64, they lived out the rest of their professional careers believing that anything they did would succeed via word of mouth. They saw no need for advertising or professional marketing. The Atari ST, Falcon 030, and Jaguar had incredible capabilities at the time and, given the right marketing would have been much more successful and Atari as it was might still be around today.

      My kids are still playing Jaguar today! They love Rayman and Val de'Iser (sp?) Skiing and Snowboarding. When they get a little older I'll introduce them to Doom and AvP.

  • Odd response, Jag ramblings (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jvmatthe ( 116058 ) on Tuesday September 17, 2002 @10:08AM (#4272869) Homepage
    The games that pushed Jaguar hardest was either Doom or Iron Soldier 2. Both of these took the machine to its limit. The Doom port took a lot of personal involvement from John Carmack. The best game is of course Tempest 2000.

    I would have thought that, after all their hype, the Battlesphere [battlesphere.com] people would have the claim to the game that pushed the Jag the hardest. And given that Carmack has said he could optimized DooM better [slashdot.org] if he had it to do over again, I find it difficult to believe that it's pushing the Jag to the limit. Surely something that pushed more texture mapped polygons was tougher for the system to handle.

    Other than that, it was an ok interview, I suppose. I'm not sure that there is a whole lot there that we haven't heard before, except for some of the details about the next-gen hardware. Would have been neat to see an example of the full-antialised graphics from their next sytem, given that good AA is still something people are stiving for today. (E.g. PS2 with jaggies galore on some games. Ick.)

    Jag ramblings to follow... ;^)

    Iron Soldier on the Jag was a great game, FWIW. Since playing IS1, I've had a chance to played Iron Soldier 3 [linuxgames.com] on the PSX but not Iron Soldier 2 on the Jag. The update is both better and worse. The Jaguar, for all its faults, had the most button-laden controller to ship with a console, and for a game like Iron Soldier, that rocked. Unfortunately, the PSX control scheme just doesn't work well enough. On IS1 (and presumably IS2) you could choose the weapon mounted on either shoulder or either hip or one of the two hand weapons with a single button press. For IS3 on the PSX, you have to cycle through weapons, and that turns out to be a step back in terms of control.

    Of course, the graphics on the PSX are a step up, but not all they could have been.

    And it's true that Tempest 2000 was the best game for the system. Best music and best control and best gameplay experience. Defender 2000 (also by Jeff Minter) and Power Drive Rally are my other favorites. I sold all the rest, including the much-ballyhooed Battlesphere (which was definitely not worth the wait or the price).

    (Shameless plug: I also compared Tempest 2000 for the Jag and Tempest X for the PSX here [linuxgames.com]. Jag wins, despite the better hardware of the PSX.)
    • Of course, allowing Minter to spew his poorly coded nonsense on the Jaguar invoked the Curse of Minter, and assured an early grave for what was a promising console. I`ve looked through Minters code (68k assembly) and it's really not very good. I remember the very first instruction of his Robotron for the Amiga being wrong, (he wrote into $96(a0) but a0 was zero - I think he was after the DMA, but neglected to lea $dff000,a0).
      • Well, not being a game coder, I'll simply say that the effectiveness of his coding didn't affect my enjoyment of T2k or D2k at all. :^)
        • Fair enough.

          I didn't try his Defender 2k. Did he remember to put a hyperspace feature in? He forgot to add it to the Amiga version!
          • Hrm. I don't think so, but it's been a while! The game does play significantly differently from Defender, IMO. You need to get into a trance and use the radar screen a lot and get the right combination of powerups. Stopping the alien capture of the humanoids is the primary focus and enemies are generally eliminated as they get in your way or you save a humanoid.

            Also, it includes the original Defender (a simulation, not emulation) and Defender Plus, an interesting hyrbid between the original and the new trippy version.

            FWIW, Defender Plus does have some odd slowdown in certain sections, which makes it seem as if it weren't completed or were unoptimized.

            Then again, the only Defender I really enjoyed was on the Atari 2600. :^) That and Atari 2600 Stargate.
            • "Then again, the only Defender I really enjoyed was on the Atari 2600. :^) That and Atari 2600 Stargate. "

              I had that! It was good, but not as good as Defender/Planetoid on the BBC Micro. And obviously that wasn't as good as the arcade one (or Mame!)

              Never really got into Stargate.

      • Minter's code may be crufty (all that time as a lone programmer doesn't exactly encourage good habits), but his game design skills are what earns him the die hard fans. No-one does stuff like he still does [llamasoft.co.uk]. Definately one of my hero's, and one of the reasons I got into professional games coding.

        He does seem to pick the platforms though (anyone got a nuon?) Fortunately he's primarily working on PocketPC stuff these days, so with any luck he'll sink Microsoft...
  • The jaguar was also succesful at reinventing the telephone to be used as a game controller.

  • I always liked Atari (Score:4, Funny)

    by squaretorus ( 459130 ) on Tuesday September 17, 2002 @10:11AM (#4272888) Homepage Journal
    - since I first laid hands on a square old 2600 joystick and draw a psychadelic multirainbow Atari logo on my bag.

    Atari always seemed a bit more edgy, less businesslike. You kinda thought that Atari was more interested in screwing your older sister than your wallet.

    The Jaguar was discounted before it even came out in the UK as far as I can remember - poor bastard.
  • Nice system, too bad it was the nail in Atari's coffin.

  • Wow, this guys has some track record. Those are two wonderfully successful technologies!
  • Myself and a friend picked up a Jaguar each at a reduced price. Never used them, we figure we would return them for credit on something else. The people didn't want to give us credit, they gave us a cash refund (I'm pretty sure this doesn't happen anymore). However, they gave us 3x what we paid for them. "That's what the computer says, take the money". Thanks Atari.

  • I have another question (Score:3, Funny)

    by shren ( 134692 ) on Tuesday September 17, 2002 @10:20AM (#4272951) Homepage Journal
    (Looking at the bottom right of the motherboard diagram) What advantages are there to on-motherboard butter? Does it make the games creamy and smooth? Doesn't butter make heat dissipation a serious issue?
  • Anyone remeber ATARI's TV ad?

    Introducing Alien vs. Predator for the 64 bit ATARI Jaguar
    *silence, lil' boy playing in dark room, scary ambiente*
    You might not wanna play it alone!

    Maybe some ATARI fan around here still has a digitized version of it?
  • I was an "early adopter" and bought the Jag for $250 when it was rolled out, and on the strength of one game, Tempest 2000. (Kind of like people buying the Xbox just for Halo.) But aside from a couple more good games (AvP, Doom, and the system's last gasp, Defender 2000) all the other games I got for the Jag were awful... two particularly bad ones were Cybermorph and TrevorMcFur. There were too many bad games and not enough 3rd party support for this console, even though it was the most powerful piece of pre-PlayStation hardware out there. I wonder if maybe Atari had cloned about a dozen John Mathiesons and Jeff "Llama" Minters that the story would have turned out differently.
  • Well that's five minutes I won't be getting back. I mean, that crap about his game at the end, what the hell was that? A lot of people need to realize that they are not journalists.
  • I bought one of those piece of crap systems. I bought it, and the toilet bowl CDROM that went with it. Yes, AVP and Tempest2k were top notch, but they were one of the few lights of a console thatdied because of the absolute shittiest management this side of the galactic rim. Everything they tried to do seemed to be a pissing match with other systems titles and nearly everytime they tried such a stunt, they failed miserably. Their VR Racing game was crap compared to Sega's. Their fighting games couldn't even compare to Killer Instinct on the SNES, for cryin' out loud. The Morphing spaceship game didn't hold a candle to Starfox (even though the latter was on rails). Vid Grid for the CDROM was an interesting premise, but then I poped in Blue Lightining, otherwise known as "Monty Python's Air Combat". It felt like I was piloting a horribly rendered cardbord cut-out fighting other horribly rendered cardboard cut-outs. It was at this moment i knew I had been taken. Flim-flammed. Bamboozeled. I had sunk my hard earned money into a less than year old platform that was never going to amount to anything. "the system we can thank for such awesome games as the original Alien vs. Predtor, Iron Soldier, and the gorgeously psychadelic Tempest 2000."??? No, screw this. Thank the developers for those games, not the console which was a first rate piece of shit thanks to the people who managed it. Bitter? Oh yeah.
  • The article poster listed every single good game for the Jaguar. There were no others. The rest were garbage.

    I paid $250 for one of those stupid things, and the lack of games was infurating. Then, when one trickled down, it felt like a half-assed development at best.

    If that wasn't enough, the 3DO was kicking it's butt graphically even though it was supposedly so powerful. Part of me wonders if the Jaguar suffered the same fate that the Saturn did by being powerful, but awkward to program for. Tempest and AvP were awesome, and that was really it.

    Okay, I'm done ranting, guess I can go read the interview now. :)
    • I owned a jaguar once it went on clearence.

      Checkered Flag was a disappointing race game. Seemed like a stripped down VR Racing, with no real excitement factor.

      Iron Soldier was a disappointment too. I just couldn't get used to the controls, and eventually just got bored and smashed buildings.

      Among one of the worst games was a MK-ripoff called Kasumi Ninja. I remember seeing a review, and one of the fighers was in a kilt. His special move? He lifted up his kilt and a fireball came out.

      I swear the lack of licensing killed it. You dind't get Mortal Kombat, but really bad ripoffs like the ones mentioned above.

      Then there was the whole battlemorph fiasco, which has got to have Duke Nukem beaten in terms of vaporware. It's sad if you lose the docs to a console's encryption scheme, delaying a game for years until after the console's achieved "Classic" status.
  • The Jag did have some truly great games (AvP, Tempest 2K, IS) and the Jag CD had Virtual Light Machine for playing music CD's to a trippy light show. I was at the '95 E3 to shoot videos for AEO. At the time we were shown a working prototype of JagVR. It was pretty cool, the guys from virtuality in the UK were behind it. But it never saw the light of day. They (Atari) were also working on AvP2 that would hook up the Atari Lynx (another great system) to the Jag as a "smart controller". But they didn't have the cash, developers, or customers to stay alive. Atari lost a lot of retailers and customer faith even before the Jag arrived. Many customers felt that Atari didn't support their products which translated to poor sales for retailers who didn't want to give up shelf space to Atari when Sega and Nintendo were King. But in all, I enjoyed my Jag. Esp playing my first networked (two Jags, two tv's and headphones) Deathmatch Doom games until 3am. Just like delicious dish - good times.
  • And I've got to say the only game I wasn't disappointed in was Tempest 2000. It was an absolute gem (and the only reason to buy a jag). AvP was repetitive and Iron Soldier was too sparsely detailed to allow me to feel I was in a 200-foot killer robot.

    The problem was, at the time the PC had just raised the bar for computer games, with Doom and Ultima Underworld the year before. If you had any money to throw around it was thrown in the direction of the system with the best games (plus it was way easier to get my parents to provide a PC for 'studying' - I had to pay for my jag myself).

    It was basically a choice between a console and a PC at the time of the PCs greatest inroads into peoples' mindshare. Office applications, a usable windowing system, hardware like CDROMs, and the best games made PCs unbeatable as a games platform at that time. The only reason the PS wasn't stillborn was the 3D hardware was better than anything the PC had at consumer level (for about 6 months).

    And don't go on about Marathon on the Mac. Duke kicked that cyborg's ass square.

    Gary

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