Weird. Why? Who will play it? Via emulation? Why bother with emulation if you can just make a PC game. It just seems strange to make a game for a defunct console that did not even sell well.
After seeing the alpha port of Tomb Raider 1 running fine on the 3DO and the GBA (yes, the GBA!), I kinda wanna see the OpenLara team try and tackle the Jag
I was a Jag developer. The description at 2:15 is wrong. The GPU/Tom chip and the DRAM both have a 64 bit data bus and some functions are natively carried out 64 bits at a time. Like most modern consoles, the hardware uses a mix of different bus sizes.
@@ChronicUnderachiever420 I would but I don't see what's incorrect about it. AtariAge's "theaveng" wrote: "They use 32-bit instruction sets, that makes them 32-bit processors with 64-bit data paths." Tom is a 32-bit RISC processor and Jerry is a 32-bit DSP. On my part, claiming it doesn't natively perform 64-bit might've been an error, though I believe it's accurate to call the Jaguar a pseudo-64-bit system.
The Jaguar and 3DO stand as fine examples of how it really doesn't matter as much how powerful your hardware supposedly is over your competitors if it doesn't play the must-have games people want to buy.
i love how "wasn't bad" means some games are considered classics on some platforms, sometimes even "it's not absolute garbage/It's playable" does that. "it won't actually burn your house down" = YES
It's around September 1993. My family and I were living in a Holiday Inn Suites in Burbank, CA for a couple of months. Our home in Glendale wasn't finished being constructed yet. I get the EGM and GamePro Magazine showing the Atari Jaguar. Was only $250. Told my parents I wanted that for Christmas. So Christmas rolls around and I kinda forgot all about it. I just turned 13, so it's not something I'm always thinking about. I did get a Game Gear for my birthday 3 weeks earlier. So I open my present and there it was. An Atari Jaguar. I didn't think they could get it because it was in NY and SF. But they had some at Toys R Us but in limited supply. And it was over $300. Til this day, the Jaguar along with my Air Jordan VII Bordeaux I got the year before are still my favorite Christmas presents. This is why the Jaguar still means a lot to me even though it's without a doubt the worst console I've ever owned. I actually still had it for 23 years until I left some things in the Philippines 🇵🇭 in 2016. If you ever seen 8-Bit Christmas (2021), it's not really about getting the NES. It's your moments spending time with your family and friends. It was never about the Jaguar. They're just things. It was the thought and effort I put my parents through to get it is why the Jag meant a lot to me. That, and it has a really cool name, cool red and black font, cool boot-up, and cool design even if it lacks a dust cover and how the back is exposed. Thank you, Mom and Dad, for getting me that Atari Jaguar for Christmas of 1993 . Will always remain grateful for those Christmas presents in 1992 and 1993. Now I just use RetroArch on my Android smartphones to play Jaguar games like Rayman.
The retail version of Cybermorph only has half the ROM size of the pack-in version, and as such is basically half the game. Green Lady has a lot more to say in the bundled version!
I never knew this. I wonder why they sold it as a retail box when all systems came with it bundled in. BTW, I was one of the first owners of this system when it first was released in NY in 1993. Cybermorph was terrible then, and terrible now.
@@CharlesHepburn2 Any version (Retail or Pack-In) with a 1994 copyright, is the reduced cost/cutback version, Atari had ATD cut animation, speech etc to fit game on a 1 Meg cart to save money. Game started out as a tech demo, Atari wanted it turned into a full game, but ATD didn't have the resources to do something to match say Starfox on the SNES.
This explains why the Jaguar has the reputation of being the Tempest 2000 machine, it's kind of the only exclusive that sticks out of the bunch as worth playing.
AVP was another flagship title for it's time, but soon became technically dated next to Alien Trilogy and Alien Resurrection on PlayStation, the AVP on PC. Iron Soldier, whilst the superior Mech game, didn't have the texture mapping of Metal Head on the 32X
As a kid, I found a three button Jag controller at a rummage sale and had no idea what it was for, so I took it apart. Oh, the things I wish I hadn't taken apart as a kid (I didn't figure out how to put things back together until later).
Let me also say, if console creators weren't so tight-assed about their 'proprietary tech' and actually released developer kits and explained HOW to program games for their consoles, I promise you that the Jaguar would have been a rocking system. But most game developers just chose to utilize one of the processors which was drastically under powered.
Well said! The same goes back to the Atari 8bit. There's a homebrew called Atariblast that, if made in 1983, probably would have revitalized the industry while quashing the competition as no other system had those graphical capabilities. Okay the homebrew is 1MB so they'd have to release the game in numerous sections (the game is comprised of 5 or 6) , but even 1 on its own would not be reproducible on other systems of the day...
My dad was a diehard Atari fan, so even though we moved on as a Nintendo family with NES and SNES, he still had to get a Jaguar. Even way back then, he was well aware of how touchy the hardware was (especially with the CD attached), so he was the only person in the house who was allowed to change games in it. I still remember the year he spent my birthday doing his taxes and FINALLY opened Rayman for me as apology. Rayman, Theme Park, and Attack of the Mutant Penguins were pretty much all I played on the thing personally. And Myst on CD. But we have roughly half the library, at least one of which was never opened.
I love this collaboration! I've enjoyed Second Opinion Games' content for quite a while and you indeed have an Atari Jaguar expert as your tag partner here, Frame. Great job guys!
@@SecondOpinionGames1 Both the Jag and 3DO versions are based on the Mac port, which is probably the best version of them all. Imagine the 3DO version with higher resolution graphics.
Hell yeah! Thank you for your gracious unboxing as well 👏 especially since given how expensive they have become. Can't wait to see more reviews by you! I hope in the future that FR collabs with Pandamonium Games for Sega Saturn.
That simple aesthetic of un textured polygons can be seen in a lot of Amiga games too. Before then there was a famous music video called "money for nothing" that most people had seen from TV.
Complex back then, simple now, but there is a charm that transcends. Or that those games had more variety than city streets? Or there it is possible for something to be "too perfect"?
I don't personally agree with SOG's take, but I admire his ability to share unfiltered opinions. Talking about fifty games in under fifty minutes, something's bound to upset people.
Honestly, the Jaguar always looked great design wise... minus the lack of dustcover for the cartigage and the exposed pcb in the back. Otherwise, I loved the look of it, the silly toilet bowl look to the cd drive as well.
As soon as I heard "llamas and sheep" I knew Defender 2000 had to have been a Jeff Minter game. No idea why I wasn't aware of it, maybe because Tempest 2000 was the Minter game that made a big splash and nothing else really got as much attention.
Jeff's second official attempt at doing Defender, he did Defender 2 on the ST and Amiga years before carried over things from it (Lightning gun) to Jaguar Defender 2000
First and foremost, I just want to say, That I have been watching your channel and Second Opinion games' channel for some time. This is honestly a pretty good collaboration. Very well done. I do regular videos on the Atari VCS and will be releasing a video on emulation soon. (It's a process). If you want an in-depth and honest review, I have two videos you may find of interest for the Atari VCS (My Honest review video, and my games to buy videos as well).
@@SecondOpinionGames1 you are correct about that. Personally I love my Atari Jaguar and my Atari VCS respectively. By the way I also did a video regarding Wave1Games. oh, and I gave you a shout-out because I used some of your gameplay footage. Primarily it focuses on JAG zombie but covers all games featured at Wave1Games
Fantastic overview. About the only issue I had was SOG's opinion of Pinball Fantasies; that's a classic across multiple systems with excellent audio that is extremely fun to play. I'm guessing SOG has only played pinball games where the entire playfield is visible in perspective? In any case, thanks for noting when real console footage was used and when an emulator was used; it's really important when documenting a system's library and not giving people the wrong impression.
Pinball Dreams and Fantasies are the best pinball games of that decade by far! The legendary soundtrack (especially Pinball Dreams) and the fast smooth scrolling on the Amiga ! Nothing more boring than seeing the entire playfield all the time.. 🙄
as someone who used this hardware back in the day when it was released (my cousin had it in 1994 with the CD add on and CatBox that he sometimes hooked up to his Atari ST Monitor), and it was a blast. loved playing games on the CD add on like VidGrid as well as AvP and Tempest. His gf (now wife) loved Baldies, and the overlays were dope. His friend gave him a stack of dot-matrix printed cheats (along with a schematic to add the rotary controller to play tempest 2000). this hardware didnt get a fair shake, and could have been a poorman's Neo Geo with is being as capable as it is. They simply needed the software/programmers and a good angle at the marketing. If they had been smart, they could have sold systems and peripherals by publishing a good port of Street Fighter II with a 6 button stick (also sold separately for other titles), as i feel it could have done some good hardware ports of CPS1 stuff at the very least. Sadly, you had mugs in the office (Jack included) who either didnt see the market as a whole (hence the missed Neo Geo-niche competition that was uncontested, as well as old stuff like keypads and no dustcovers and the raw rear card edge connectors (older cost-minded designers vs forward thinking and innovation, that gamepad could have been decent with the keypad shaved out to two grips and 6 buttons, and even an optional screw-in thumbstick!)
I was a graphic artist in the Industry at the time and Fight for life's character models where interesting to say the least. Polygons where prescious rare things in those days, you had to consider there placement with some rumination. So seeing characters with sometimes complicated upper arms ( 48 poly Pill shape) but with a simple box ( 12 poly's) for a chest made me ponder the quality of the team.
Remember that episode of Doug where's he's over at the two nerdy brothers' house and they start playing this really confusing looking Egyptian-themed puzzle game on their computer? That's what FlipOut always makes me think of. Your description sounds simple enough, but something about the way it's presented just makes my brain turn to oatmeal.
Thanks for a great vid. I would like to say I had Syndicate (my brother has the system nowadays), and that with the manual it's easy to learn the game and the controls. Syndicate is actually a good game, but if you don't have patience for strategic infiltration games, there's no way you will like it. Playing without the manual or an equivalent guide, it would be like playing the Alien in AvP and not knowing about the claw-tail-claw cocoon combo.
Fun video to watch. I never owned a Jaguar but a friend had one. I always thought there were come very fun games that got overlooked due to the systems reputation.
Every time I look at my Jaguar the only think that I hear is :,, Where did you learn to Fly?,,. That's why the Game is way way in the back of my game collection. I can hear it calling me every time I stand in front of my game shelves XD
Great video! I've always had a fascination with these less popular systems. If you dive into the libraries you can find some gems that didn't get the attention they deserved due to the system they were on. Just another reason why I embrace emulation highly. It's a shame that Jaguar emulation still isn't 100%. Hopefully someone will pick up development on the older emulators and fix those games that have issues or even add CD support which I think is sorely needed. Would love to see a video on the 32X at some point. Always enjoyed a fair few games on that system as well as a few prototypes and homebrews that have cropped up over the years.
I really enjoyed this review. I've seen a number of jaguar videos and this is certainly up there with the best. I have a special fondness for the Jag as I was at a London expo when it launched, as a teenager. For me tho it just couldn't keep up with the PC industry that had kicked off since doom and the swiftly smashed by playstation. Still. Such strong nostalgia. I really feel sorry for Atari but if you look at their lineup, have they been relevant since the 80s?
The only Atari game that looked cool to me post 80s was a 3D arcade fighting game called 10th Degree from the late 90s and that was canceled though you can play a beta of it on MAME emulation
Excellent Work, I'm a Jag collector since 2013, this Is the best and Honest review I've ever seen ! Finally a review that try To understand the console instead of making fun of it like most people in that Bandwagon !! Perhaps a follow up of that video with Jaguar CD and Homebrew Games would be great for fans of both your RUclips channels and Perhaps more Subs !!!! Take care, Phil.
I'm pretty sure Virtua Racing on the 32X not only looks better, but also runs and plays much better too. Not really the best show off for what's supposed to be a next gen system at the time lol
@@VexAcer it was a contract title for Rebellion, not the studio you wanted doing a VR clone, they'd never done a racing game and it was the main coders first ever commercial video game he'd written.
90% of RUclips videos covering the Jaguar are too harsh, so it's really nice to see one that's actually fair and doesn't trash the console every 5 seconds. There is something extremely unfortunate about the Jaguar version of Theme Park. I can't recall if it's due to a bug or some other issue, but apparently after a certain point the framerate tanks and it becomes unplayable.
Great video. Always had a soft spot in my heart for the Jag. It was always a head scratcher why Atari never thought to have an exclusive mascot to debut the system with. Mario and Sonic were very well established by then and at least swinging for the fences with an original mascot attempt that makes a solid pack-in game is a good way to get attention out of the gate. Lots of kids/teens back then read gaming mags, it certainly couldn’t have been worse than how the Jag started with Trevor McFur 😬
Irons Soldierb1 & 2 were AWESOME!!! IS2 did have an invulnerability code. I think they both had unlock all weapons & unlimited ammo codes. The smooth animation & extremely far clipping horizon was mind blowing & even better than many N64 games!
I knew there was a big British influence on the Jaguar, through Argonaut and Jeff Minter's llama obsession. I still didn't appreciate the amount of classic Amiga games on this system. It's weird. Obviously they weren't the best versions and most of them used a mouse originally, but Cannon Fodder, Theme Park, Worms, Syndicate and especially Sensible Soccer (Zool was the "British Sonic" for 5 minutes and merits a special mention), are all absolutely legendary UK games. Great video.
On Iron Soldier 2 & Zero 5, those were one of several titles that were 99% complete, but not released during the Jag's official production run ('93-'96). That's why the packaging is so strange - it was handled by Telegames and released in '97/'98 (as was Hyper Force, Worms, World Tour Racing, & Towers II). The Yellow version of the IS2 CD is the rarer CD version...I got the black. But I did buy IS2 from a locally owned game store called the Game Pedler. They were still selling the console and games until about 1999. Overall, it's a great overview, just too bad you had to miss out on some of the pro grade releases like BattleSphere(understandable since it isn't emulated and the carts are ridiculously overpriced), SkyHammer and the CD games. Looking past the faulty units, the CD had better versions/sequels of games like BattleMorph, IS2 and Hover Strike. Also, Baldies on the JagCD was another strategy game, so Theme Park wasn't the only one ;) Oh and the notion that the Jaguar was getting 64-bits from having two 32-bit processors is false. There were real 64-bit components in the system - two of the five processors, the system bus and the RAM. It was still a hodge-podge of bits and yeah, bits didn't matter, but it wasn't exactly lying about the bits...just stretching it a little since it was a little harder to explain than just saying "64-bits!" ;)
@@bubsy3861 As much as i LIKE the Jag version the PS1 version is MUCH better. The graphics are higher res, dynamic lighting, music, and so many levels. Remember the PS1 version came out 1 year after the jag version.. I got the jag version in winter of 1994. It is a shame the 3do version was not that good. It shows how the raw processing power of the Jag was much better than what most games used.
@@johnjay6370 Well. I mean it still a same game. Jag don't feels like cut down version for poor people. Ps1 version of course have doom 2 maps but still.
@@johnjay6370 Well, tbf, the 3DO version was programmed in like, a month, so the results there were expectably bad. Truly sad, could've been better had it not been handled by complete morons.
I pined over the Jaguar for years when i was a kid. The ads just made it look so awesome! Glad i never wound up with one because we didnt have a lot of money growing up and I would have been stuck with it for a long time
30:30 The irony here is the average babe was seriously disinterested in any man or man-child who actually played video games regularly. At least in the mid-90's. Now you go to Twitch and well......
@@Turbulation1 Btw, few people mention that besides the poor performance, the 32x version for whatever reason is also missing the sampled drums from the music...
The speed was fine. How anyone can vote NO for Sensible Soccer is the thing I don't get. Perhaps the Jaguar version was terrible where every other port of the game is great...
@@Trusteft Only thing Jaguar version is missing is the mouse controls, I think the issue at the time was the price, some colour enhancements aside, you were basically paying twice the cost to play Amiga Sensi on the Jaguar as you were for the Amiga experience.
with the comment on the vcs, I'm thinking its gonna end up as one of those post-life bloomers. I own one, I enjoy my console and its capabilities as a mini-pc/streaming device. However since the vcs team is so small its hindered by slow releases and no exclusive games. As for the games on the vcs itself, my personal favorite is Asteroids recharged, music kicks ass and its, yknow, asteroids. After that my gf n i both enjoy Mutazione, solid port of a solid game. But frankly there isn't enough for the broader market at the moment. Back to my main point ig, I think the console will end up being like the wii homebrew scene, where you just have a bunch of people programming for the system for the hell of it and breathing life into an otherwise lifeless corpse. great video as always, take care :)
I'd say "underwhelming" is a good word for the entire library. It's better than the CD-I, for sure, but still, only a handful of games I'd ever want to actually play. Atari never could do comfortable controllers for shit, though. EVERY SINGLE ONE that ever came with their systems had the worst ergonomics imaginable. Even after the simple design of the NES controller, they just couldn't get it right. I remember my hands turning into claws after hours on the 2600 joystick as a kid.
My brother sold my Genesis for a Jaguar, only game I remember liking for it was Alien Vs Predator, Tempest 2000, Doom and Bubsy. I had some fun with it , not as bad as the CD-I.
It’s about games that you get for it. If you been lucky and get “top 10” ones it’s not bad at all. But... It’s also preferable to have old genesis at same time)
Penguins, Evolution DinoDudes, Tempest and Cybermorph are way-cool and IMHO worthy to collect. (A shame Atari ditched their computer market to focus solely on games as the hardware was more often forward-thinking, and the Falcon was the Amiga-killer...) Also, I like the green floaty head of navigator Lieutenant Ilia from Star Trek asking me where I learned to fly. Now THAT is a true need comment! 😁 Fight For life needed to be finished as it was a neat spin on the genre...
I think it ultimately shows the futility of the bit wars, when your system (kinda, when you do the math) can get up to 64 bits, but most developers don’t really know what to do with the 3 main brains of this thing and just port over a bunch of Amiga games. So much could have been done better if they bothered putting 6 more months into refining the architecture (particularly the 3D models it creates).
Yeah, this was one major thing that killed hype for the Jaguar outside of Atari's incompetence with development of consoles and games for it. Many of the games made for it looked comparable in graphics to 16-bit consoles of the time and led many to think the Jaguar was more underpowered than it really was. In reality, Atari's two main Tom and Jerry chips were difficult for many to program games for and Atari didn't provide good documentation for developers on how to properly program games for both. Instead, many programmed games based around the Jaguar's Motorola 68000 chip (meant to serve as a "manager" to communicate between different parts of the system) because it was familiar for many programmers to work with because of its use on a number of game console, arcade, and home computer systems like the Amiga, Sega Genesis, and Capcom's CPS-2 arcade system.
I recall there was a coordinating processor that was 16bit and then the actual processors that were 32 or 64bit and doing queueing to synchronize. Definitely a technological cluster to have to master, I can understand why Atari focused solely in one venue and dropped the others. Jaguar was nifty despite being a hot mess, but the developers really needed to make better use of the graphical capabilities. No game should have had poor frame rates on that console...
@@ShamrockParticle exactly and studios like Imagitec Design only getting 30 fps from Pitfall Mayan Adventure when base Sega Genesis version ran at 60 fps, was shocking
The Atari Jaguar though is powerful and modern games made and released for the system post 2000s have on occassion truely shown off what the jaguar could have done had the software been there.
It's the saddest irony of gaming that Atari were the biggest pioneer of home gaming but became the kiss of death to anything they got involved in the gaming industry.
As someone who came upon the Jag in it's $49.99 price from Kaybee Toys (itself long gone) there was a nice selection of games for $5.99 for it. I have most of them, and I will share the following: 1. Club Drive was great little "let's see if I can get over there" game 2. Hoverstrike was great (especially the CD version, no more mashing the brake button) 3. Kasumi Ninja was hilarious. I mean it was terrible, but so bad it's good? Watch the little guy in boat on the Scottish background... 4. I-War was ok at best but the main theme music features a Cylon saying "love to jack off" over and over. Once you hear it... 5. Ultra Vortek is easily the best fighter on the system. It even has unlockable secret levels! Great fun. 6. The CD addon was pricey but to me it was worth it for Video Light Music (VLM) and Battlemorph (just like Cybermorph but improved in every way and the soundtrack was god like)
I think it's worth mentioning that Jaguar Doom is missing both of the boss characters in the game, leading to some very anticlimactic final levels. I don't know why they left them out (even SNES Doom had them), and it's a shame.
Weirdly enough, that's a common theme with the 90s console ports. The SNES, PS1 and Saturn versions had all of the bosses, while the Jaguar, 3DO, and 32X versions had none of the bosses.
yeah, but even then SNES Doom was a poor version. To this day, Carmack said the Jag version was his favorite console version of Doom. but I guess he'd say that because he had a direct hand in its programming. ;) And he's not counting modern consoles because modern consoles are just running "emulated" PC code. He was referring to console ports.
AVP and Defender 2000 are really the only good games that weren't ported to other systems or weren't just rereleased 16-bit titles. I mean I had a Jag and played Flashback on it because I found a cart for $5...but it's exactly like Genesis flasback. Same with cannon fodder and sensible soccer, fun games, but might as well be Genesis games. Tempest 2000 was really fun at the time but got ported to other 32-bit era systems shortly after. Saturn gets a bogus wrap as not being developed to its fullest but this is the system that really never got system pushing games.
You can't add up chips to get 64-bit. If you did that to the Saturn you'd get 144 bit. It has a 16-bit main CPU and 2 32-bit co-processors (usually using one for graphics and one for sound, although one of them could act as a CPU under some conditions). It's VERY limited and nowhere near as powerful as any of the true 32-bit systems. It's better than the 16-bit systems but not by a lot. Also, Atari went out of business after this. The "Atari" today is just a holding company that paid to use the name. The current "Atari" is also a scam company.
There were parts of the Jaguar that were 64 bits. Notice there isn't a that texture wobbling like on the Playstation? That's the 64 bits part doing it's work. Bits, like megaherzes, are kind difficult to use as a benchmark. I mean, I've got here a 486 with a whopping 128 bits FPU! It makes it 128 bits for performing floating point calculations, but the CPU is still 32-bits, and it can only adress the videocard via a 16 bits ISA bus. So as you can see, the bits are all over the place. You can only have an indication of the power of a system when you actually develop for it and fully understand it's design choices.
Fun Fact about Bubsy on the jaguar, the exclamation mark on Bubsy's shirt was only Yellow due to a hardware problem, it was supposed to be red but the hardware wouldn't comply with the color, and it actually doesn't matter if your player 1 or player 2, it will always be yellow.
Well, there were 5 processors (!) -- 2x 64-bit, 2x32-bit, and a 16-bit 68000 class processor that sadly got used as primary for all too many games. So it *did* have native 64-bit in there. But all the chips made for a hard device to target well.
I was so excited to get my jaguar, and it came with cybermorph of course, and the store had Trevor Mcfur and that's it. I kept going to ALL places videogames were available in my area and they only said "shipments r coming. I sold my machine for a heavy loss out of anger after a while. I remember turning it on the first time hearing the hiss inside the machine and telling people THATS power right there!! Now I don't even know if the machine is SUPPOSED to hiss because it's the only one I've seen hooked up in the real world.
Jeez, :54 in and I’ve already heard one glaring mistake. “The Atari Jaguar caused Atari to step down in the console race.” Uh, the script reader and certainly the script writer seem to be in the dark about where Atari was circa ‘93. Dead. Atari had been dead since the Lynx failed spectacularly. And even that was just a portable console, and a small potato compared to say, the Gameboy or even Game Gear. Nintendo and Sega had the markets locked down. Jaguar was Atari’s attempt to salvage its legacy after being out of the game for decades.
The Pinball Fantasies one stung. Personally, I think the Jaguar port is one of the best renditions of this it (sans, of course, the voice samples). Maybe it's an acquired taste?
If Atari had put a good sound chip in the 7800 I really think the system would've been successful enough for the Jaguar to not be a half assed system that was DOA
@@FrameRater the biggest issue with the 7800 was that it was still releasing simple games that revolved around a single idea you would play to get a high score. Which was fine, but at that point platformers and rpgs were offering a far more interesting and varied gameplay for people
@@FrameRater I certainly don't think it would have been more successful than the NES, but I definitely know I'm not alone in saying that the 7800's sound chip was borderline nightmare fuel most of the time.
The problem was ATARI was bleeding money before the ATARI 7600 was even released and ATARI was bankrolling two Consoles development. Launched the Jaguar when ATARI was already bleeding money. So ATARI was basically in horrible financial debt the whole time of the Jaguar and most games was not even finished for the Jaguar. Heck ATARI financial problems was so far back Pack Man and E.T for the ATARI 2600 was unfinished Prototype game releases! With E.T. even being developed by one man! That's how bad ATARI was doing financially.
I had a game called Vid Grid. It came with the Jaguar CD. It was a puzzle game that played music videos and you slid tiles around trying to put the pieces in the correct place to see the video. You failed if you didn't solve the puzzle before the video ended. It was probably my favorite game. Also, you missed Blue Thunder, the flying game that came with the CD add on
So, it's a game that doesn't really get talked about much in these videos, or their comment sections, but I've always really wanted to try Evolution Dino Dudes, specifically the Jag version. If you compare it to the other ports (On Amiga, PC, SNES, and Genesis as The Humans), you'll note that the Jaguar version has about twice the resolution of the other versions, meaning substantially higher field of view of the map (some genesis version screenshots seem to have about the same amount of viewing space, but by crushing and character sprites so everything's smaller). It's also far and away the most graphically impressive, with much nicer looking sprites and backgrounds. I know it's a silly puzzle game, but the fact that the Jaguar didn't get just another lazy port, but a custom version that takes advantage of the Jaguar's 2D capabilities is pretty cool to me.
I want to add more information on Trevor Mcfur, There's ability have enable cheats but you would need a second atari jaguar controller to active the cheats.
If I had purchased Trevor McFur (44:25), I would have been pissed not just by how thematically the box (at least back then) would have been understood as promising Wing Commander when this was far from a decent knock-off of that, but also by the fact that this arguable Wing Commander wannabe turned out to be just a 2D shmup -- on a supposedly next-level console. Wing Commander worked its 3D magic on 16-bit x86 PCs, and Trevor couldn't even get close on a 64 bit console. Sad frowny-face. I would have felt that this was not just parody but a joke at my expense.
AVP frame rate was originally far superior, until Jane Whittaker put the A. I routines in using the 68000 and crippled it. Developers admit in hindsight the acid puddles should of disappeared over time.
It’s a shame that only the official releases were covered. Probably some of the best games for the Jaguar were third party games that were cancelled before they could be released. Skyhammer and soccer kid are probably my favorite games for the system
Fun fact: the graphic designers of Defender 2000 would go on to work on Gex: Enter The Gecko! And about the Jaguar ending the bit-wars; that isn’t necessarily true. I thought the XBox 360 was the last to ever use bits. Think about it: 360 is divisible by 8. It has enough bits to make a perfect circle!
I’m reviewing a new Jaguar game on February 7. Yes they are still making games for the system 😃
Weird. Why? Who will play it? Via emulation? Why bother with emulation if you can just make a PC game.
It just seems strange to make a game for a defunct console that did not even sell well.
@@kryptokrypto702 it’s for the hard core collectors
@@SecondOpinionGames1 Gotcha. Just subbed! Thanks. Can't wait to see the game, actually kind of excited.
After seeing the alpha port of Tomb Raider 1 running fine on the 3DO and the GBA (yes, the GBA!), I kinda wanna see the OpenLara team try and tackle the Jag
Finally you r back to jaguar reviews.
I was a Jag developer. The description at 2:15 is wrong. The GPU/Tom chip and the DRAM both have a 64 bit data bus and some functions are natively carried out 64 bits at a time. Like most modern consoles, the hardware uses a mix of different bus sizes.
I might be missing something, but I'm not sure how this makes the description incorrect. As you said, only some functions are 64-bit.
@@FrameRater bro just take the L
@@ChronicUnderachiever420 I would but I don't see what's incorrect about it. AtariAge's "theaveng" wrote: "They use 32-bit instruction sets, that makes them 32-bit processors with 64-bit data paths." Tom is a 32-bit RISC processor and Jerry is a 32-bit DSP. On my part, claiming it doesn't natively perform 64-bit might've been an error, though I believe it's accurate to call the Jaguar a pseudo-64-bit system.
@@FrameRater just do the math
@@ChronicUnderachiever420 If you need to go into technicalities, It's not a true 64 bit system like the box claimed
The Jaguar and 3DO stand as fine examples of how it really doesn't matter as much how powerful your hardware supposedly is over your competitors if it doesn't play the must-have games people want to buy.
i love how "wasn't bad" means some games are considered classics on some platforms, sometimes even "it's not absolute garbage/It's playable" does that.
"it won't actually burn your house down" = YES
It's around September 1993. My family and I were living in a Holiday Inn Suites in Burbank, CA for a couple of months. Our home in Glendale wasn't finished being constructed yet. I get the EGM and GamePro Magazine showing the Atari Jaguar. Was only $250. Told my parents I wanted that for Christmas.
So Christmas rolls around and I kinda forgot all about it. I just turned 13, so it's not something I'm always thinking about. I did get a Game Gear for my birthday 3 weeks earlier. So I open my present and there it was. An Atari Jaguar. I didn't think they could get it because it was in NY and SF. But they had some at Toys R Us but in limited supply. And it was over $300.
Til this day, the Jaguar along with my Air Jordan VII Bordeaux I got the year before are still my favorite Christmas presents. This is why the Jaguar still means a lot to me even though it's without a doubt the worst console I've ever owned. I actually still had it for 23 years until I left some things in the Philippines 🇵🇭 in 2016.
If you ever seen 8-Bit Christmas (2021), it's not really about getting the NES. It's your moments spending time with your family and friends. It was never about the Jaguar. They're just things. It was the thought and effort I put my parents through to get it is why the Jag meant a lot to me. That, and it has a really cool name, cool red and black font, cool boot-up, and cool design even if it lacks a dust cover and how the back is exposed.
Thank you, Mom and Dad, for getting me that Atari Jaguar for Christmas of 1993 . Will always remain grateful for those Christmas presents in 1992 and 1993. Now I just use RetroArch on my Android smartphones to play Jaguar games like Rayman.
The retail version of Cybermorph only has half the ROM size of the pack-in version, and as such is basically half the game. Green Lady has a lot more to say in the bundled version!
I never knew this. I wonder why they sold it as a retail box when all systems came with it bundled in. BTW, I was one of the first owners of this system when it first was released in NY in 1993. Cybermorph was terrible then, and terrible now.
@@CharlesHepburn2 Did you buy it at a Nobody Beats the Wiz?
@@Tempora158 I have no idea… I ordered it via mail order from some game shop in New York City in 1993. My serial number was in the 200’s.
Fr they fumbled hahaha
@@CharlesHepburn2 Any version (Retail or Pack-In) with a 1994 copyright, is the reduced cost/cutback version, Atari had ATD cut animation, speech etc to fit game on a 1 Meg cart to save money.
Game started out as a tech demo, Atari wanted it turned into a full game, but ATD didn't have the resources to do something to match say Starfox on the SNES.
This explains why the Jaguar has the reputation of being the Tempest 2000 machine, it's kind of the only exclusive that sticks out of the bunch as worth playing.
AVP was another flagship title for it's time, but soon became technically dated next to Alien Trilogy and Alien Resurrection on PlayStation, the AVP on PC.
Iron Soldier, whilst the superior Mech game, didn't have the texture mapping of Metal Head on the 32X
As a kid, I found a three button Jag controller at a rummage sale and had no idea what it was for, so I took it apart. Oh, the things I wish I hadn't taken apart as a kid (I didn't figure out how to put things back together until later).
i feel you on that lol, i broke so much stuff that would be worth an arm and a leg nowadays
Let me also say, if console creators weren't so tight-assed about their 'proprietary tech' and actually released developer kits and explained HOW to program games for their consoles, I promise you that the Jaguar would have been a rocking system.
But most game developers just chose to utilize one of the processors which was drastically under powered.
Well said!
The same goes back to the Atari 8bit. There's a homebrew called Atariblast that, if made in 1983, probably would have revitalized the industry while quashing the competition as no other system had those graphical capabilities. Okay the homebrew is 1MB so they'd have to release the game in numerous sections (the game is comprised of 5 or 6) , but even 1 on its own would not be reproducible on other systems of the day...
It would have still failed, Would have been a waste of time to learn to develop for it, Also look at that horrible controler
My dad was a diehard Atari fan, so even though we moved on as a Nintendo family with NES and SNES, he still had to get a Jaguar. Even way back then, he was well aware of how touchy the hardware was (especially with the CD attached), so he was the only person in the house who was allowed to change games in it. I still remember the year he spent my birthday doing his taxes and FINALLY opened Rayman for me as apology.
Rayman, Theme Park, and Attack of the Mutant Penguins were pretty much all I played on the thing personally. And Myst on CD. But we have roughly half the library, at least one of which was never opened.
I love this collaboration! I've enjoyed Second Opinion Games' content for quite a while and you indeed have an Atari Jaguar expert as your tag partner here, Frame. Great job guys!
Hi 😃
+1
There's nothing in that library that makes me think, "Gee, I really misjudged the Jaguar," but it's good to know.
Play wolf 3D. It’s like the arcade version of the game 😃
@@SecondOpinionGames1 Both the Jag and 3DO versions are based on the Mac port, which is probably the best version of them all. Imagine the 3DO version with higher resolution graphics.
You think all the games suck?
@@jaywest3734 heck no. Most are very playable. Just not worth the high price they are going for. 😃
@@SecondOpinionGames1 or the fact that they were priced higher than SNES games on release but were often just direct ports
Holy Crap! I love Second Opinion games! I'm glad to see him in a colab, he deserves more views for his love of the Jag
Hi. This was the most fun I had making a video 😃
Hell yeah! Thank you for your gracious unboxing as well 👏 especially since given how expensive they have become. Can't wait to see more reviews by you! I hope in the future that FR collabs with Pandamonium Games for Sega Saturn.
@@ShippoFoxD I’m in 🤔
What a great console library video. I'm going to have to watch it *_All over again._*
I'm so glad this is FrameRater's JoJ
Right? He can lift a house his videos are so good.
Early 3D games specifically, the ones on the Jaguar have a very charming "simple" aesthetic
Yeah, kinda like baldi’s basics
That simple aesthetic of un textured polygons can be seen in a lot of Amiga games too. Before then there was a famous music video called "money for nothing" that most people had seen from TV.
@William Burns No i had not, im surprised because its music is by Jan Hammer who was pretty famous back then. Thanks.
Complex back then, simple now, but there is a charm that transcends. Or that those games had more variety than city streets? Or there it is possible for something to be "too perfect"?
Second opinion games is such an underrated channel. Glad to see the collaboration.
Thanks 🙏. I just F around. I never thought people would really like my stuff 😃
you are going to get soo ripped apart for the comments about sensible soccer, the game is an entire cult!
I don't personally agree with SOG's take, but I admire his ability to share unfiltered opinions. Talking about fifty games in under fifty minutes, something's bound to upset people.
@@FrameRater This is the internet dude, giving ANY sort of opinion is going to upset someone! :D
Even SOG knows Kick Off 2 was much better, and he's never heard of it.
Honestly, the Jaguar always looked great design wise... minus the lack of dustcover for the cartigage and the exposed pcb in the back. Otherwise, I loved the look of it, the silly toilet bowl look to the cd drive as well.
As soon as I heard "llamas and sheep" I knew Defender 2000 had to have been a Jeff Minter game. No idea why I wasn't aware of it, maybe because Tempest 2000 was the Minter game that made a big splash and nothing else really got as much attention.
Jeff's second official attempt at doing Defender, he did Defender 2 on the ST and Amiga years before carried over things from it (Lightning gun) to Jaguar Defender 2000
First and foremost, I just want to say, That I have been watching your channel and Second Opinion games' channel for some time. This is honestly a pretty good collaboration. Very well done.
I do regular videos on the Atari VCS and will be releasing a video on emulation soon. (It's a process).
If you want an in-depth and honest review, I have two videos you may find of interest for the Atari VCS (My Honest review video, and my games to buy videos as well).
The VCS is no Jaguar 🐆 😃
@@SecondOpinionGames1 you are correct about that. Personally I love my Atari Jaguar and my Atari VCS respectively. By the way I also did a video regarding Wave1Games. oh, and I gave you a shout-out because I used some of your gameplay footage. Primarily it focuses on JAG zombie but covers all games featured at Wave1Games
Fantastic overview. About the only issue I had was SOG's opinion of Pinball Fantasies; that's a classic across multiple systems with excellent audio that is extremely fun to play. I'm guessing SOG has only played pinball games where the entire playfield is visible in perspective? In any case, thanks for noting when real console footage was used and when an emulator was used; it's really important when documenting a system's library and not giving people the wrong impression.
Sorry it just felt bland with out voice samples.
Pinball Dreams and Fantasies are the best pinball games of that decade by far! The legendary soundtrack (especially Pinball Dreams) and the fast smooth scrolling on the Amiga ! Nothing more boring than seeing the entire playfield all the time.. 🙄
I have the entire Jaguar library and all I can say is... bless you FrameRater for trying all of these so that we don't have to.
So it’s just you and me 😃. Yes I did open a rare game just for a few seconds of video for this.
as someone who used this hardware back in the day when it was released (my cousin had it in 1994 with the CD add on and CatBox that he sometimes hooked up to his Atari ST Monitor), and it was a blast. loved playing games on the CD add on like VidGrid as well as AvP and Tempest. His gf (now wife) loved Baldies, and the overlays were dope. His friend gave him a stack of dot-matrix printed cheats (along with a schematic to add the rotary controller to play tempest 2000). this hardware didnt get a fair shake, and could have been a poorman's Neo Geo with is being as capable as it is. They simply needed the software/programmers and a good angle at the marketing. If they had been smart, they could have sold systems and peripherals by publishing a good port of Street Fighter II with a 6 button stick (also sold separately for other titles), as i feel it could have done some good hardware ports of CPS1 stuff at the very least. Sadly, you had mugs in the office (Jack included) who either didnt see the market as a whole (hence the missed Neo Geo-niche competition that was uncontested, as well as old stuff like keypads and no dustcovers and the raw rear card edge connectors (older cost-minded designers vs forward thinking and innovation, that gamepad could have been decent with the keypad shaved out to two grips and 6 buttons, and even an optional screw-in thumbstick!)
I was a graphic artist in the Industry at the time and Fight for life's character models where interesting to say the least. Polygons where prescious rare things in those days, you had to consider there placement with some rumination. So seeing characters with sometimes complicated upper arms ( 48 poly Pill shape) but with a simple box ( 12 poly's) for a chest made me ponder the quality of the team.
This video is amazing. Probably the best video about the AtariJaguar I've ever seen.
Remember that episode of Doug where's he's over at the two nerdy brothers' house and they start playing this really confusing looking Egyptian-themed puzzle game on their computer? That's what FlipOut always makes me think of. Your description sounds simple enough, but something about the way it's presented just makes my brain turn to oatmeal.
You should see the last level 🤯
Thanks for a great vid. I would like to say I had Syndicate (my brother has the system nowadays), and that with the manual it's easy to learn the game and the controls. Syndicate is actually a good game, but if you don't have patience for strategic infiltration games, there's no way you will like it. Playing without the manual or an equivalent guide, it would be like playing the Alien in AvP and not knowing about the claw-tail-claw cocoon combo.
Fun video to watch. I never owned a Jaguar but a friend had one. I always thought there were come very fun games that got overlooked due to the systems reputation.
Every time I look at my Jaguar the only think that I hear is :,, Where did you learn to Fly?,,. That's why the Game is way way in the back of my game collection. I can hear it calling me every time I stand in front of my game shelves XD
Great video! I've always had a fascination with these less popular systems. If you dive into the libraries you can find some gems that didn't get the attention they deserved due to the system they were on. Just another reason why I embrace emulation highly.
It's a shame that Jaguar emulation still isn't 100%. Hopefully someone will pick up development on the older emulators and fix those games that have issues or even add CD support which I think is sorely needed.
Would love to see a video on the 32X at some point. Always enjoyed a fair few games on that system as well as a few prototypes and homebrews that have cropped up over the years.
I really enjoyed this review. I've seen a number of jaguar videos and this is certainly up there with the best. I have a special fondness for the Jag as I was at a London expo when it launched, as a teenager. For me tho it just couldn't keep up with the PC industry that had kicked off since doom and the swiftly smashed by playstation. Still. Such strong nostalgia. I really feel sorry for Atari but if you look at their lineup, have they been relevant since the 80s?
The only Atari game that looked cool to me post 80s was a 3D arcade fighting game called 10th Degree from the late 90s and that was canceled though you can play a beta of it on MAME emulation
Excellent Work, I'm a Jag collector since 2013, this Is the best and Honest review I've ever seen ! Finally a review that try To understand the console instead of making fun of it like most people in that Bandwagon !! Perhaps a follow up of that video with Jaguar CD and Homebrew Games would be great for fans of both your RUclips channels and Perhaps more Subs !!!! Take care, Phil.
As long as I don’t have to review Highlander I’m in 😃
Jaguar had no great exclusives, that hurt it badly.
The jaguar on the floor looks like it will have little arms underneath itself and start crawling towards you
Honestly Checkered Flag looks like Virtua Racing if they sucked the soul out of it
that’s just what it is, it’s a bad ripoff of virtua racing lol
I'm pretty sure Virtua Racing on the 32X not only looks better, but also runs and plays much better too.
Not really the best show off for what's supposed to be a next gen system at the time lol
@@VexAcer it was a contract title for Rebellion, not the studio you wanted doing a VR clone, they'd never done a racing game and it was the main coders first ever commercial video game he'd written.
12:24 attack of the mutant penguins was also on ms-dos, is not a jaguar exclusive
I’ve been waiting for this for so long. Glad it’s finally here.
90% of RUclips videos covering the Jaguar are too harsh, so it's really nice to see one that's actually fair and doesn't trash the console every 5 seconds.
There is something extremely unfortunate about the Jaguar version of Theme Park. I can't recall if it's due to a bug or some other issue, but apparently after a certain point the framerate tanks and it becomes unplayable.
Great video. Always had a soft spot in my heart for the Jag.
It was always a head scratcher why Atari never thought to have an exclusive mascot to debut the system with.
Mario and Sonic were very well established by then and at least swinging for the fences with an original mascot attempt that makes a solid pack-in game is a good way to get attention out of the gate. Lots of kids/teens back then read gaming mags, it certainly couldn’t have been worse than how the Jag started with Trevor McFur 😬
Irons Soldierb1 & 2 were AWESOME!!! IS2 did have an invulnerability code.
I think they both had unlock all weapons & unlimited ammo codes.
The smooth animation & extremely far clipping horizon was mind blowing & even better than many N64 games!
I knew there was a big British influence on the Jaguar, through Argonaut and Jeff Minter's llama obsession.
I still didn't appreciate the amount of classic Amiga games on this system. It's weird.
Obviously they weren't the best versions and most of them used a mouse originally, but Cannon Fodder, Theme Park, Worms, Syndicate and especially Sensible Soccer (Zool was the "British Sonic" for 5 minutes and merits a special mention), are all absolutely legendary UK games.
Great video.
Flashback, the successor of the legendary Another World, started on Amiga as well..
On Iron Soldier 2 & Zero 5, those were one of several titles that were 99% complete, but not released during the Jag's official production run ('93-'96). That's why the packaging is so strange - it was handled by Telegames and released in '97/'98 (as was Hyper Force, Worms, World Tour Racing, & Towers II). The Yellow version of the IS2 CD is the rarer CD version...I got the black. But I did buy IS2 from a locally owned game store called the Game Pedler. They were still selling the console and games until about 1999.
Overall, it's a great overview, just too bad you had to miss out on some of the pro grade releases like BattleSphere(understandable since it isn't emulated and the carts are ridiculously overpriced), SkyHammer and the CD games. Looking past the faulty units, the CD had better versions/sequels of games like BattleMorph, IS2 and Hover Strike. Also, Baldies on the JagCD was another strategy game, so Theme Park wasn't the only one ;)
Oh and the notion that the Jaguar was getting 64-bits from having two 32-bit processors is false. There were real 64-bit components in the system - two of the five processors, the system bus and the RAM. It was still a hodge-podge of bits and yeah, bits didn't matter, but it wasn't exactly lying about the bits...just stretching it a little since it was a little harder to explain than just saying "64-bits!" ;)
Massive review of the Jaguar 24 bit ... Thanks!
It’s definitely a console that would be worth getting if it weren’t so expensive these days. Given the price it’s hard to justify.
Jaguar Doom is the best version of doom for the home system until PS1. It is better than the Saturn Version.
Well ps1 version it’s not that much better to jag honor) (and I personally hate ps1 sound design))
@@bubsy3861 As much as i LIKE the Jag version the PS1 version is MUCH better. The graphics are higher res, dynamic lighting, music, and so many levels. Remember the PS1 version came out 1 year after the jag version.. I got the jag version in winter of 1994. It is a shame the 3do version was not that good. It shows how the raw processing power of the Jag was much better than what most games used.
@@johnjay6370 Well. I mean it still a same game. Jag don't feels like cut down version for poor people. Ps1 version of course have doom 2 maps but still.
@@johnjay6370 Well, tbf, the 3DO version was programmed in like, a month, so the results there were expectably bad. Truly sad, could've been better had it not been handled by complete morons.
I pined over the Jaguar for years when i was a kid. The ads just made it look so awesome! Glad i never wound up with one because we didnt have a lot of money growing up and I would have been stuck with it for a long time
30:30 The irony here is the average babe was seriously disinterested in any man or man-child who actually played video games regularly. At least in the mid-90's.
Now you go to Twitch and well......
The problem with the Jaguar port of Pitfall the Mayan Adventure is that it runs at 30fps compared to the Genesis original that runs at 60.
Same with the Raiden port.
Other ports of Pitfall Mayan Adventure ingeneral are quite inferior to the genesis. The 32x port runs even worse at 20FPS.
@@Turbulation1 I'd say the three best ones are the Genesis, PC, and Sega CD ports.
@@Turbulation1 Btw, few people mention that besides the poor performance, the 32x version for whatever reason is also missing the sampled drums from the music...
@@bombjack1984 what do you expect when Atari gave the conversions to the lowest bidders, Imagitec Design? Pay peanuts, you get monkeys
Where did you learn to fly?
Just subscribed, the racing games look like the graphics frim stunrace FX from the SNES
I wonder if you're hitting a 50/60Hz thing with Sensible Soccer? That footage looked really fast, even for an arcade-like sports game.
The speed was fine. How anyone can vote NO for Sensible Soccer is the thing I don't get. Perhaps the Jaguar version was terrible where every other port of the game is great...
@@Trusteft it’s good just very hard. But I can play 2 player all day. 😃. I was thinking most people today would not like it as much.
@@Trusteft Only thing Jaguar version is missing is the mouse controls, I think the issue at the time was the price, some colour enhancements aside, you were basically paying twice the cost to play Amiga Sensi on the Jaguar as you were for the Amiga experience.
@@Trusteft same for Pinball Fantasies
with the comment on the vcs, I'm thinking its gonna end up as one of those post-life bloomers. I own one, I enjoy my console and its capabilities as a mini-pc/streaming device. However since the vcs team is so small its hindered by slow releases and no exclusive games.
As for the games on the vcs itself, my personal favorite is Asteroids recharged, music kicks ass and its, yknow, asteroids. After that my gf n i both enjoy Mutazione, solid port of a solid game. But frankly there isn't enough for the broader market at the moment.
Back to my main point ig, I think the console will end up being like the wii homebrew scene, where you just have a bunch of people programming for the system for the hell of it and breathing life into an otherwise lifeless corpse.
great video as always, take care :)
I think the AtariVCS is doing quite well actually. I'm betting the Jaguar's line up ends up on it as well as Atari's PC game library.
alright!! finally!! i'm so happy to see this
I'd say "underwhelming" is a good word for the entire library. It's better than the CD-I, for sure, but still, only a handful of games I'd ever want to actually play. Atari never could do comfortable controllers for shit, though. EVERY SINGLE ONE that ever came with their systems had the worst ergonomics imaginable. Even after the simple design of the NES controller, they just couldn't get it right. I remember my hands turning into claws after hours on the 2600 joystick as a kid.
Just found this channel and I’m impressed.
Awesome content 👍🏻
My brother sold my Genesis for a Jaguar, only game I remember liking for it was Alien Vs Predator, Tempest 2000, Doom and Bubsy. I had some fun with it , not as bad as the CD-I.
DOOM was also great
It’s about games that you get for it. If you been lucky and get “top 10” ones it’s not bad at all. But... It’s also preferable to have old genesis at same time)
@@SuperHns As was Iron Soldier if you liked Mech Games
@@thefurthestmanfromhome1148 oh dude I love that game Iron Soldier 1 and 2, IS1 is one of the first Jaguar games I ever played.
I hear the Bubsy game on the Jag is the worst one out of the 2D games. At least you had other good games. Imagine only having games like Kasumi Ninja.
Penguins, Evolution DinoDudes, Tempest and Cybermorph are way-cool and IMHO worthy to collect. (A shame Atari ditched their computer market to focus solely on games as the hardware was more often forward-thinking, and the Falcon was the Amiga-killer...) Also, I like the green floaty head of navigator Lieutenant Ilia from Star Trek asking me where I learned to fly. Now THAT is a true need comment! 😁
Fight For life needed to be finished as it was a neat spin on the genre...
I think it ultimately shows the futility of the bit wars, when your system (kinda, when you do the math) can get up to 64 bits, but most developers don’t really know what to do with the 3 main brains of this thing and just port over a bunch of Amiga games.
So much could have been done better if they bothered putting 6 more months into refining the architecture (particularly the 3D models it creates).
Yeah, this was one major thing that killed hype for the Jaguar outside of Atari's incompetence with development of consoles and games for it. Many of the games made for it looked comparable in graphics to 16-bit consoles of the time and led many to think the Jaguar was more underpowered than it really was. In reality, Atari's two main Tom and Jerry chips were difficult for many to program games for and Atari didn't provide good documentation for developers on how to properly program games for both. Instead, many programmed games based around the Jaguar's Motorola 68000 chip (meant to serve as a "manager" to communicate between different parts of the system) because it was familiar for many programmers to work with because of its use on a number of game console, arcade, and home computer systems like the Amiga, Sega Genesis, and Capcom's CPS-2 arcade system.
I recall there was a coordinating processor that was 16bit and then the actual processors that were 32 or 64bit and doing queueing to synchronize. Definitely a technological cluster to have to master, I can understand why Atari focused solely in one venue and dropped the others. Jaguar was nifty despite being a hot mess, but the developers really needed to make better use of the graphical capabilities. No game should have had poor frame rates on that console...
@@ShamrockParticle exactly and studios like Imagitec Design only getting 30 fps from Pitfall Mayan Adventure when base Sega Genesis version ran at 60 fps, was shocking
The Atari Jaguar though is powerful and modern games made and released for the system post 2000s have on occassion truely shown off what the jaguar could have done had the software been there.
It's the saddest irony of gaming that Atari were the biggest pioneer of home gaming but became the kiss of death to anything they got involved in the gaming industry.
As someone who came upon the Jag in it's $49.99 price from Kaybee Toys (itself long gone) there was a nice selection of games for $5.99 for it. I have most of them, and I will share the following:
1. Club Drive was great little "let's see if I can get over there" game
2. Hoverstrike was great (especially the CD version, no more mashing the brake button)
3. Kasumi Ninja was hilarious. I mean it was terrible, but so bad it's good? Watch the little guy in boat on the Scottish background...
4. I-War was ok at best but the main theme music features a Cylon saying "love to jack off" over and over. Once you hear it...
5. Ultra Vortek is easily the best fighter on the system. It even has unlockable secret levels! Great fun.
6. The CD addon was pricey but to me it was worth it for Video Light Music (VLM) and Battlemorph (just like Cybermorph but improved in every way and the soundtrack was god like)
The commercial for the jaguar was one of the greatest things i have ever seen. lol.
glad to see you updated the video to reflect actual hardware, no way Checkered Flag should be getting any rating but HORRIBLE.
1:04 Dude, we're right here, you don't have to yell.
I think it's worth mentioning that Jaguar Doom is missing both of the boss characters in the game, leading to some very anticlimactic final levels. I don't know why they left them out (even SNES Doom had them), and it's a shame.
Memory restrictions, commercial deadlines perhaps?
I suspect the former
Weirdly enough, that's a common theme with the 90s console ports. The SNES, PS1 and Saturn versions had all of the bosses, while the Jaguar, 3DO, and 32X versions had none of the bosses.
yeah, but even then SNES Doom was a poor version. To this day, Carmack said the Jag version was his favorite console version of Doom. but I guess he'd say that because he had a direct hand in its programming. ;) And he's not counting modern consoles because modern consoles are just running "emulated" PC code. He was referring to console ports.
40:05: Is this a racing game done with the Pit Fighter engine?
It's here!! We've been blessed once again!
Plays the game stoned once a month?
HELL YEA! FRAMERATER ALWAYS 420 BLAZE IT SMOKE WEED ERRYDAY!!!!
When you edited Furious Karting into Furious Farting I couldn't help but chuckle.
Ah Trevor McFuraffinty a game so mediocre that the developer didn't even give it a proper ending.
Keep up the good work!
AVP and Defender 2000 are really the only good games that weren't ported to other systems or weren't just rereleased 16-bit titles. I mean I had a Jag and played Flashback on it because I found a cart for $5...but it's exactly like Genesis flasback. Same with cannon fodder and sensible soccer, fun games, but might as well be Genesis games. Tempest 2000 was really fun at the time but got ported to other 32-bit era systems shortly after. Saturn gets a bogus wrap as not being developed to its fullest but this is the system that really never got system pushing games.
Concepts planned for Jag CD AVP were used as basis for the later PC AVP game by Rebellion.
Dunno who's idea it was, but thank you both for the HoH SiS reference. Cs188 would be *proud* (rest his soul!)
You can't add up chips to get 64-bit. If you did that to the Saturn you'd get 144 bit. It has a 16-bit main CPU and 2 32-bit co-processors (usually using one for graphics and one for sound, although one of them could act as a CPU under some conditions). It's VERY limited and nowhere near as powerful as any of the true 32-bit systems. It's better than the 16-bit systems but not by a lot. Also, Atari went out of business after this. The "Atari" today is just a holding company that paid to use the name. The current "Atari" is also a scam company.
There were parts of the Jaguar that were 64 bits. Notice there isn't a that texture wobbling like on the Playstation? That's the 64 bits part doing it's work. Bits, like megaherzes, are kind difficult to use as a benchmark. I mean, I've got here a 486 with a whopping 128 bits FPU! It makes it 128 bits for performing floating point calculations, but the CPU is still 32-bits, and it can only adress the videocard via a 16 bits ISA bus. So as you can see, the bits are all over the place.
You can only have an indication of the power of a system when you actually develop for it and fully understand it's design choices.
Fun Fact about Bubsy on the jaguar, the exclamation mark on Bubsy's shirt was only Yellow due to a hardware problem, it was supposed to be red but the hardware wouldn't comply with the color, and it actually doesn't matter if your player 1 or player 2, it will always be yellow.
Well, there were 5 processors (!) -- 2x 64-bit, 2x32-bit, and a 16-bit 68000 class processor that sadly got used as primary for all too many games. So it *did* have native 64-bit in there. But all the chips made for a hard device to target well.
you should do a console library on the nuon
"My friend and I play this game stoned at least once a month."
Awesome. I love it.
Pretty sure SOG had his eyes on opening that box and you gave him the perfect excuse :P Great showing
Club drive had a really fun tag option to play with friends. Also a really cool half pipe stage.
I was so excited to get my jaguar, and it came with cybermorph of course, and the store had Trevor Mcfur and that's it. I kept going to ALL places videogames were available in my area and they only said "shipments r coming. I sold my machine for a heavy loss out of anger after a while. I remember turning it on the first time hearing the hiss inside the machine and telling people THATS power right there!! Now I don't even know if the machine is SUPPOSED to hiss because it's the only one I've seen hooked up in the real world.
Lmao, mine doesn't hiss! 🤣
@@FrameRater if u turn it on and press the bottom to your ear it's silent?
The ATARI Jaguar was the worst piece of garbage I ever bought in my life
"Where did you learn to console ??? "
I'm reviewing a new Jaguar game this Monday :)
Jeez, :54 in and I’ve already heard one glaring mistake. “The Atari Jaguar caused Atari to step down in the console race.”
Uh, the script reader and certainly the script writer seem to be in the dark about where Atari was circa ‘93. Dead. Atari had been dead since the Lynx failed spectacularly. And even that was just a portable console, and a small potato compared to say, the Gameboy or even Game Gear. Nintendo and Sega had the markets locked down. Jaguar was Atari’s attempt to salvage its legacy after being out of the game for decades.
The Pinball Fantasies one stung. Personally, I think the Jaguar port is one of the best renditions of this it (sans, of course, the voice samples). Maybe it's an acquired taste?
If Atari had put a good sound chip in the 7800 I really think the system would've been successful enough for the Jaguar to not be a half assed system that was DOA
Hard to say, the NES had some phenomenal games. Can't say the same for 7800.
@@FrameRater the biggest issue with the 7800 was that it was still releasing simple games that revolved around a single idea you would play to get a high score. Which was fine, but at that point platformers and rpgs were offering a far more interesting and varied gameplay for people
@@FrameRater I certainly don't think it would have been more successful than the NES, but I definitely know I'm not alone in saying that the 7800's sound chip was borderline nightmare fuel most of the time.
Too little too late ....Nes launched in 83 , Master System in 85 were much better
never had access to a jag - thanks cool video
The problem was ATARI was bleeding money before the ATARI 7600 was even released and ATARI was bankrolling two Consoles development.
Launched the Jaguar when ATARI was already bleeding money.
So ATARI was basically in horrible financial debt the whole time of the Jaguar and most games was not even finished for the Jaguar.
Heck ATARI financial problems was so far back Pack Man and E.T for the ATARI 2600 was unfinished Prototype game releases! With E.T. even being developed by one man!
That's how bad ATARI was doing financially.
No wonder the jag failed. It was inbetween a SNES and an N64.
It seems devs did not know what to do with the Jag.
A lot of developers used the 68000 processor to make relatively straight ports of Amiga and Genesis games, so that’s where those titles came in.
Hey bro, you want to get high and play Tempest? Yes, yes I do.
I had a game called Vid Grid. It came with the Jaguar CD. It was a puzzle game that played music videos and you slid tiles around trying to put the pieces in the correct place to see the video. You failed if you didn't solve the puzzle before the video ended. It was probably my favorite game. Also, you missed Blue Thunder, the flying game that came with the CD add on
The Jaguar version of Wolfenstein 3D was developed by id Software themselves to test if the Jaguar could run Doom.
Pitfall - the Myan Adventure got a GBA port. I owned it.
zoop.. got a jaguar release? I played it on Playstation and got pretty good at it.
So, it's a game that doesn't really get talked about much in these videos, or their comment sections, but I've always really wanted to try Evolution Dino Dudes, specifically the Jag version. If you compare it to the other ports (On Amiga, PC, SNES, and Genesis as The Humans), you'll note that the Jaguar version has about twice the resolution of the other versions, meaning substantially higher field of view of the map (some genesis version screenshots seem to have about the same amount of viewing space, but by crushing and character sprites so everything's smaller). It's also far and away the most graphically impressive, with much nicer looking sprites and backgrounds. I know it's a silly puzzle game, but the fact that the Jaguar didn't get just another lazy port, but a custom version that takes advantage of the Jaguar's 2D capabilities is pretty cool to me.
Music is also nice.
I felt sorry for Falcon owners who'd been waiting for the game though, it was put on hold till Jaguar version released.
I want to add more information on Trevor Mcfur, There's ability have enable cheats but you would need a second atari jaguar controller to active the cheats.
If I had purchased Trevor McFur (44:25), I would have been pissed not just by how thematically the box (at least back then) would have been understood as promising Wing Commander when this was far from a decent knock-off of that, but also by the fact that this arguable Wing Commander wannabe turned out to be just a 2D shmup -- on a supposedly next-level console. Wing Commander worked its 3D magic on 16-bit x86 PCs, and Trevor couldn't even get close on a 64 bit console. Sad frowny-face. I would have felt that this was not just parody but a joke at my expense.
AVP frame rate was originally far superior, until Jane Whittaker put the A. I routines in using the 68000 and crippled it.
Developers admit in hindsight the acid puddles should of disappeared over time.
It’s a shame that only the official releases were covered. Probably some of the best games for the Jaguar were third party games that were cancelled before they could be released. Skyhammer and soccer kid are probably my favorite games for the system
Maybe some day!
I think that my futur retro gaming session will be on Jaguar... ❤
your attack of the mutant penguins review really cracked me up- reminds me of AVGN :)
An awesome review!
Fun fact: the graphic designers of Defender 2000 would go on to work on Gex: Enter The Gecko! And about the Jaguar ending the bit-wars; that isn’t necessarily true. I thought the XBox 360 was the last to ever use bits. Think about it: 360 is divisible by 8. It has enough bits to make a perfect circle!