Missing Jaguar Games

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pacman000
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Missing Jaguar Games

Postby pacman000 » January 20th, 2018, 2:12 pm

https://youtu.be/o457jl9zZbs

Behold a video of Phear, the unreleased Atari Jaguar game which eventually became Tetrisphere on the N64.

A few of these unreleased Jag games look pretty good, on par with early PSX games. I doubt Atari could have turned things around in 1996, but still, it would be nice if some of these had seen a release. Any interest you?

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Stalvern
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Re: Missing Jaguar Games

Postby Stalvern » January 21st, 2018, 10:20 am

Doesn't look too impressive. Tetrisphere isn't great as it is, and this doesn't even have the textures.

The one Jaguar game that had even half a chance of making a difference in the system's image is Skyhammer. Still a far cry from what was on the PlayStation, but it wouldn't have looked too shabby in 1995. The only other fully textured 3D Jaguar games I can think of offhand are Hover Strike and, uh, Fight for Life (Doom and Alien vs. Predator use raycasting, not true 3D).

jon
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Re: Missing Jaguar Games

Postby jon » January 23rd, 2018, 4:21 pm

The Jag was going to get MK3 and a lot of other games when it got discontinued. I think NBA Jam was one of the last ones and somehow got approved even though things weren't looking too good for The Jaguar at that point. One game that wasn't released when the Jag was around but was shortly after is Zero 5. I have not played it but the graphics look unbelievable. It's my contention that the Jag was one generation of games away from having great games. A great example of its potential is I-War. The graphics are great and it's a good game. I-War and Hover Strike CD are perfect examples of games that could have been a lot better even if just one more generation of games was made in late 1995 or 1996. The dark atmosphere that a lot of Jag games have are so 90's. I wish more games had graphics like that.

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pacman000
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Re: Missing Jaguar Games

Postby pacman000 » January 23rd, 2018, 5:22 pm

There were a lot of rumored titles; which ones were started is a matter of debate.

Here's Zero 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IjRir-2KMM I think it was actually released, perhaps by Telegames.

I've thought for awhile Phase Zero looked like it had potential: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OPcFdkj0GU&t=59s As far as I know it was not released. It's not my style of game, but those smooth mountains and that texture-mapped terrain look beautiful.

Note that the Jaguar was not as powerful as the PSX; even Sam Tramiel admitted that. It had slower processors, less RAM, fewer dedicated 3D functions, etc. And it's architecture was hard for most programmers to work with; it was very easy for inexperienced programmers to run into bottlenecks. And yet... There's always untapped potential, right? There's an old interview, somewhere, where one of World Tour Racing's programmers said they were planning on making another game using the same engine. He said he would've gotten the game engine to run at a smoother frame rate for that game; that there were too many hands involved in the 1st game. World Tour Racing doesn't look that bad. If the frame rate was smoother it would look like an early PS1 game.

But Atari was running out of money and burning bridges with everyone who wanted to develop for them. Even if Atari had larger cash reserves they planned on releasing the Jaguar 2 in 1996. Sigh... Enough with realism. We know what happened. What might've happened if things went different; that's what I want to know. What other games were in development?

jon
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Re: Missing Jaguar Games

Postby jon » January 24th, 2018, 5:21 pm

My holy grail of what if is Native: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzKR7pFPb8c

This game has hands down by far the best 2d graphics I've ever seen. It's not even close. The wow factor is off the charts.

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ptdebate
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Re: Missing Jaguar Games

Postby ptdebate » January 24th, 2018, 6:10 pm

jon wrote:My holy grail of what if is Native: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzKR7pFPb8c

This game has hands down by far the best 2d graphics I've ever seen. It's not even close. The wow factor is off the charts.


I don't get what's impressive about this...it's just an insect clawing at a spaceship for four seconds. Why isn't the spaceship shooting?

jon
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Re: Missing Jaguar Games

Postby jon » January 24th, 2018, 8:09 pm

If I recall correctly (and trust me I'm not your historian) you weren't even around in the mid 90's. I didn't grow up on Mario 64, you did.

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ptdebate
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Re: Missing Jaguar Games

Postby ptdebate » January 24th, 2018, 9:47 pm

jon wrote:If I recall correctly (and trust me I'm not your historian) you weren't even around in the mid 90's. I didn't grow up on Mario 64, you did.


That's an odd thing to say. I most certainly was around in the mid-90s and I did also enjoy Mario 64. Not sure what either of those things has to do with this YouTube clip.

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pacman000
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Re: Missing Jaguar Games

Postby pacman000 » January 24th, 2018, 11:06 pm

The Native clip does have a large, well animated character. Background's a mess, but that preying mantis looks cool.

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Stalvern
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Re: Missing Jaguar Games

Postby Stalvern » January 24th, 2018, 11:22 pm

pacman000 wrote:I've thought for awhile Phase Zero looked like it had potential: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OPcFdkj0GU&t=59s As far as I know it was not released. It's not my style of game, but those smooth mountains and that texture-mapped terrain look beautiful.

That's not texture mapping; those are voxels. And very impressive ones! Compared to the big - relatively speaking! - voxel-based games of the early/mid-'90s (Comanche and CyberRace on DOS, Amok on Windows and the Saturn), it looks like it has close to the best resolution and draw distance of the bunch, except maybe for Comanche. This would have been a definite standout.

jon wrote:My holy grail of what if is Native: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzKR7pFPb8c

This game has hands down by far the best 2d graphics I've ever seen. It's not even close. The wow factor is off the charts.

Here's a video of some actual gameplay.

I wouldn't call those the best 2D graphics that I've seen, but they are very impressive. The rendering style and even aspects of the far-from-finished gameplay remind me of Blazing Star on the Neo Geo, the kind of association that's normally unthinkable for a Jaguar game (remember, its primary competition would have been friggin' Trevor McFur). I can see people paying hundreds of dollars for copies today if it had been released.


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