Slashdot Mirror
New Atari Jaguar Game Running $1,225 on eBay
Bill Kendrick writes, "The long-awaited Atari Jaguar game Battle Sphere has finally been released. A special signed copy of the game is running on eBay for $1,225. After the auction is over, the game will start being sold for about $80 a cartridge. All proceeds from the auction will go to diabetes research."
why does this post have score 1?
ahhh the jaguar I remeber being in fifth grade and desiring that machine. It was the first 64 bit machine, although with further research I found it wasnt truly 64 bit.
But on another topic , what person will buy a game for 80 bucks , for a system that was arguably one of the worst sytems ever.
Who needs games when u got GL enhanced Xscreensaver..
just kidding.
Although Tempest 2000 was the best game ever. I remember Kay-Bee Toy Store was selling new jaguars for $35 bucks, with any game of your choice. I should I have bought one then.
Damit.
Ever thought about patenting it? Or otherwise, Open Source it. One of those two happens to every useless idea.
/. does not need crap like this.
-Earthman
Earthman
Say it to me face w/ out wasting space...
Does anyone else think that there isnt really a fanbase for this game? Just a couple people on e-bay that think they can resell it on e-bay again in 2 months? I am waiting for my PSX2, this is old cheese.. -Fred http://www.fredbenenson.com
"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American Public." - H.L. Mencken
I had all of three games for the Jaguar, I can't even remember the exact names because once I bought it, it sat in a corner while I played Wild Arms and FF7 for PSX.
I even had the store where I got it from (Software Etc.) order me a Jaguar CD-ROM drive from a different store, but I chickened out when I saw the $75 price tag.
My Atari "64-bit" Jaguar now sits dismantled (I had my way with my trusty Phillips), broken, abused, and shattered in a dusty corner of the closet in my computer room.
I hadn't even thought about it until Slashdot posted this article (Damn you Slashdot :). The rest of my 5 minutes thinking about this worthless piece of 68K+Tom+Jerry crap is ruined! The fact that someone released a *NEW* game for it, when we now have true 128-bit consoles is...
I'm a budding console programmer (currently with my PSX), and even though I'm not a professional, I know that all games have a time and a place - as previous posters mentioned, Jaguar's place was in 1993-94, not 2000 (how in God's name did it make it this far?!).
Marcus
I bet your mother is as big as your posts.
The marketing claimed 64 bits but it was merely two 32 bit chips that I remember. If the other companies took to claims like that, maybe PS1 would be 128+ bits, same with the N64, as it seems both of them have extra hardware processors for specific tasks.
And would those mega-scroll asses please stop!
I'd always been a big Atari fan before the Jag came out, so I was really hoping it would be their big comeback/asswhoopin system. It may not be a true 64-bit system, but it is a dual-processor 32-bit system with chips that have interchangeable functions; it's truly badass. I coveted one desperately. Alas, I had no cash...
Then, about a year and a half ago, I found a Jaguar in a toy liquidation store for like $30. Sold. Hit eBay, bought up as many of the games as I could find for a reasonable price (still missing a few cool ones, like Atari Karts), and played Tempest 2000 and Flip-Out! like mad.
Most of the games for the Jaguar were fairly half-assed and didn't begin to take advantage of its impressive (especially for its time) power. It was this, the lack of available titles, and a slightly high price tag that killed the Jaguar. But now that you can pick one up for cheap, it's a great system for a gamer's collection.
From reading the press release, it appears this company has put some significant investment into producing this game. I cannot imagine the number of people who will purchase it will make this a profitable venture for them. They're destined to lose money simply based on the fact that the number of Jaguar owners is probably very small.
this game was created like years ago, but they never actually got it into a finished format... nor did anyone actually know how to get the cartridge pressed. heh. the whole story behind it is interesting. i don't remember where i read about it last, but it was more than two years ago. its rather amazing how something like this just pops up outta the blue. hehe.
hmm.. put that pic on the cart and I'd buy one..
Yeah, what next? Will they start running stories about that "Linux" thing that nobody's interested in?
Now atari released the jag and I was really impressed, but it uses cartridges (I do believe there's a CD Ad-on) which make it limited. The reason I don't know too much about it would have to be the key fact that it's not popular. I'm sure people have one, but not as many as Dreamcasts, N64, and PlayStations. And with the release of PS2 comming out I don't know how much more time Atari actually has.
Did everyone forget about the Black Box that Microsoft is coming out with. Or the fact that PS2 can browse the web and play DVD's ... heck PS2 might even bring competition to WebTV and standard DVD players along with companies like Atari.
And a special thanks to all the lamers who managed to make this forum look all that more childish. Nice maturity guys.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Actually, it wasn't two 32-bit chipps added together. There *were* 64 bit chips and busses in there doing real grunt work. It's just that the CPU was a 32-bit 680x0 (like the ST) and that's why people cried foul.
If the CPU is demoted to tasks like controlling I/O and keeping the other chips in line - and those chips are 64-bit -- I don't think it's unreasonable to call it 64-bit.
Of course, another way to draw the line is how the code is compiled... in this case 32-bit. But it's kind of interesting to think about this when we get to the point that CPU's don't matter.
CPU's only matter in today's architecture because ** INTEL SUCKS ** and they want everything tied in such a way that the system can't scale without upgrading the CPU. Well designed (in this respect) systems are Solaris, Alpha boxes, and even PowerMacintosh. For better or for worse though the market says that bad designs will win because of economies of scale.
On a different note, I had *really* hoped Atari would regain their glory with this system. A cartridge system could have scored big if Atari got this out on time. As it was, 18 months too late, CD rom was the only way to go. Atari later made a CD Rom expansion, but those type of expansions *always* fail because you fragment your market (just like Microsoft... LOL)
Ok, I remember distinctly that the Jaguar was capable of rendering 3D objects and such, yet was still limited due to the fact that it wasn't a PC. What I'm wondering is how the game is able to support multiple players. The web page stated that it can support up to 32 players, yet I don't remember Atari ever having modem or serial link capabilities to the system. Also, considering that I didn't get a clear look at all the images, is the game rendered in 3D or in sprites (I think the game Iron Soldier was in 3D, yet kinda ran slowly)?
You know, you gotta wonder what kind of moron would work on a game a full 6 years after the system was even slightly commercially viable.
:)
At least he or she has turned it into a good cause...
That's an easy promise to make when you're sure there won't be any profits. Perhaps companies like VA Linux should follow the example.
Ok, I know I am not the only one asking this, but what is Battlesphere? I went to the web page, and it seems like a crappy space sim reminiscent of Wing Commander 1 - and that was released in 1990....
Why is this game so important that it took 6 years to develop and cost over $1000 on ebay?? I can't possibly imagine, from the old screenshots, that it could be that good.
-Julius X
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
I think most people are missing the point. Battle Sphere has been in development since almost before the PSX came out. It takes some serious devotion (and capital, I'd imagine) to put out a game (a console game, no less!) that's been off and on for over 5(?) years.
I bet there's a hell of a story behind the development of this game.
Finally, the Jaguar version is out. That means they can finish up the Amiga port.
Check out some picks: Official Battlesphere homepage
Atari Jaguar info site: Jagu-Dome
All proceeds from the sale of the game go to diabetes research, not just the auction proceeds...
In an unprecedented move, Scatologic has announced that all profits from the sale of BattleSphere(tm) will be donated to diabetes research. Scatologic CTO Stephanie Wukovitz stated, "Videogames are stereotyped as a harmful influence on society, and we wanted to show that they can be a very positive factor. Donating the profits to diabetes research is our way of showing this, as well as a way to thank everyone who has helped us get this game produced."
Unfortunately I don't have a Jaguar, just a N64 and PS1.
Slightly off-topic, but while we're talking about old consoles, I picked up the "Intellivision Lives!" CD from http://www.intellivisionlives.com
What a time trip! I was very young when the IntelliVision was popular, and my oldest brother and I wasted *many* hours on their sports games like Baseball and Football. In many ways, the Intellivision was ahead of its time, and the multiplayer games were the best for the era. We had the IntelliSpeech module (B-17 bomber was awesome!) and most of the big games.
The CD is great. It contains an emulator and ROM images for many of the classic games (AstroSmash, etc..) some games that were never released, and all kinds of information on the development of the IntelliVision and the internal politics at Mattel and the rise and fall of the system.
Some of the old developers put the CD together, so it's much more interesting than the typical "100 classic games on a CD!" type packages.
It's too bad the software industry came down so hard on the emulation scene. Stuff like the intellivisionlives project is critical in providing a context and history for computer gaming. Without deep background like this, console developers and game developers will keep making the same mistakes over and over.
-Twid
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
This is definitly geek news. It hits on a number of topics that Slashdot has explored lately. How about the flaws of a proprietary encription scheme and the cracking there of a la DeCSS? That's geek news. Nostalgic gaming a la MAME? Geek news. No longer commercially viable platforms? Can you say Amiga? Geek news. Not to mention, a company that goes to pains to insure that their software doesn't turn out to be vapourware. Or how about about a company that, rather than putting out a shoddy last minute product, actually takes pride in it's quality. That's gosh darn commendable. The hacker ethic is all about perservering until a problem is solved. Besides, this game looks a hell of a lot more original than Parsec which for all it's shiny 3D graphics and sound effects, doesn't look like it will provide much in the strategy department.
Its really awesome that people do things for charities.. like real , honest to god charities. Its too bad that these organizations have a hard time geetting funds on their own.
oh well
--jay
Suppose the game will never be sold if we keep bidding up the auctioned cartridge indefinitely? But we individually don't have an infinite amount of money...
sure, and who cares about people who post shit about a really cool thing. Who cares about people who have nothing better to do with their time. And who cares about rubber ostriches. Ha! got you on that last one!
--jay
from http://home.sprynet.com/~thunderbird/bsphere.html "...which recently merged with Scatologic Inc. ..." ack... they have probably managed to come up with the worst company name of all time...
Hasbro Interactive acquired rights to many Atari properties, including the legendary Centipede, Missile Command, and Pong games, in a March 1998 acquisition from JTS Corporation.
This announcement will allow software developers to create and publish software for the Jaguar system without having to obtain a licensing agreement with Hasbro Interactive for such platform development. Hasbro Interactive cautioned, however, that the developers should not use the Atari trademark or logo in connection with their games or present the games as authorized or approved by Hasbro Interactive.
"Hasbro Interactive is strictly focused on developing and publishing entertainment software for the PC and the next generation game consoles," said Richard Cleveland, Head of Marketing for Hasbro Interactive's Atari Business Unit. "We realize there is a passionate audience of diehard Atari fans who want to keep the Jaguar system alive, and we don't want to prevent them from doing that. We will not interfere with the efforts of software developers to create software for the Jaguar system."
Before you make wild subject headers like that consider what you're writing. Atari was once a proud and mighty company that innovated the videogame industry into existence. Give 'em the honor they deserve.
There was a keyboard/modem/serial/parallel box under development. I have part #4 of 4 for it. I wrote a TCP/IP stack, most of an os and a (mostly) html 2.0 compliant browser for it. Fun, but atari died before it came out. Oh well.
Damn straight!
and all were lost...
They explain in the press release
that they have guessed one.
Atari was using the same tactic as for DVD,
to control who can publish for the console.
Is it the same for the modern
console systems ?
History...
Nice post, and don't forget we wrote this :-) starting way back in
thing under Linux
1994.
Scott Le Grand
Lead Coder
BattleSphere
The features of a given console are irrelevant - what's important is the quality of the games it has. The current generation of consoles has a long way to go to live up to the greatness of some of the earlier ones.
If somebody were to release a new Atari 2600 or Colecovision game today, I would be likely to buy it simply because it would be cool to see someone supporting a classic system. If it were actually a good game (as many 2600 games were), so much the better.
Lozerz.
Moderate this down to (Score:-1,Troll)
Trollz rool.
Nice.
Moderate this down to (Score:-1,Troll)
Trollz rool.
The BattleSphere Shrine
The BattleSphere FAQ
Next Generation's Preview/Review
Enjoy...
Slashdotted buddy
"500 Server Error
The hard access limit for this user has been reached"
Tee hee
I made the mistake of buying a Jaguar about 4 years ago when it was on clearence. I also go Checkered Flag and Iron Soldier. The games barely held my attention, and the controller was so bad i could barely hold it.
I can't believe this game actually came out. It was more like an urban legend. Then again, Atari and vaporware seem to go hand in hand. Auctioning it off on ebay is believable though, since it is related to Atari, hence it's outdated.
TROLLIN IN THE CENTER OF MEGASCROLLZ
It seems to me then, that the 68k processor works the same as it does in the Super Nintendo, as a data pump for custom graphics and sound chips. Of course, it's also 10Mhz faster than the SNES version 13Mhz vs 3Mhz, so the cartridges would load quicker when you turn the machine on. (Two minute wait for loading some SNES cartridges anyone?)
life is a canvas/and the paint is hope and promise/the world is ours/no one can ever take it from us.
It's not a troll, it's flooding. Trolls have brains. You don't.
Suck my cock, little boy. NO, stop choking, I said SUCK it.
Now SWALLOW.
Very good! You're learning.
Is that clear enough?
yeah. Tekken is no match for donkey kong or Super Mario Brothers. What was I thinking all these years. I think the problem you're encountering is that there were 1 or 2 "good" games in the old days, whereas now there are many good games, so the bar has been raised. Every time somebody makes a killer game the bar is raised and that killer game is just "average."
Please tell me what game from "the earlier ones" is "great," I would really like to know
* I thought The Legend Of Zelda was great, but Zelda64 kicked its ass. This is due to advances in technology mainly, but it is still a valid point.
your nostalgia for the games of yesterday is sadly misplaced.
It's not that new to see development on platforms
that have been deamed defunked. Just look at the
gameboy. The pokemon game revitlized the gameboy
because POKEMON RULEEEEEE!!!!!!!@!@!#!@#!@!@!21
MEOWTH THAT'S RIGHT
TEAM ROCKET BLASH OFF AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT,
SURRENDER NOW OR PREPARE TO FIGHT !!@!@!@!!@!
POKEMON 4 EVER
I LOVE YOU MAN...TAKE ME NOW
Hee hee, yeah, we got a little bit of a surprise this afternoon. While I wait for the bandwidth to reset, I'm working on an updated (streamlined?) version of the site. To those who had questions about our desire to contribute to diabetes research and our finances in general: We expect to make some money, believe it or not, based on feedback we've received. After we've taken out the cost of cartridge production and some expenses like the cost of incorporating and the webspace (not salaries or such), the rest of the money really IS going to diabetes research. We didn't really expect to make enough money to support ourselves on the profits (we're not deluded, merely extremely persistent). I happen to have been a type I diabetic from the age of four, so when we started discussing all of the good things we could do with the money, diabetes research seemed like a great choice. And hey, I bet all of YOU have some weird hobbies, too. We might actually manage to do some good with ours... :) -Stephanie (musician/programmer, Scatologic)
I still play my Jag more often than my PlayStation simply because the Jag games are often better. I'm not much of a fan of Battlemorph, but Tempest 2000, AvP, Defender 2000, Attack of the Mutant Penguins, etc. were great.
Those who are interpreting this as an attempt to ressurect the Jaguar are missing the point. All I can say to them at this point is "your loss." I'll definitely be ordering a copy as soon as it is available.
Thanks for all of your work. By the way, are you guys going to be at CGE2K?
Hmm... A Jaguar using a Nintendo controller? I don't think so...
[look at the icon, sheesh]
This is not Bruce Perens, but a childish imposter. Slashdot administrators, please disable this account.
User's account has maxed out. As usual, go to Google for the cached copy. Not much fun without the pictures, but at least you can read the text.
We all know that playing games involves excessive sugar intake -> coke, mountain dew
....
This game's prolly so damn good, the average player will consume at least 50 litres of fizzy drink trying to get past the 7th level, dammit.
Statistically, that gives you an increase in the possibility of developing diabetes - and if multiplied over the whole population who play this game, there's a good chance someone will develop this disease as a direct result of playing too much of this game.
Thus, the proceeds will better aid those less-fortunate friends who developed diabetes from drinking too much coke (and pizza.)!
There's a reason behind everything
Some people here just don't get it when it comes to Battlesphere. This program was started when the Jaguar was a current machine. Rather than just giving up, these people stuck with it and finished their product. BTW, the programmers all had full time jobs and wrote Battlesphere in there spare time. They have overcome so many obstacles its amazing. My hat is off to these people.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Ummmmm.... Is this a joke? Or is the company really called Scatologic?
I find it hilarious that it took such a long time to brute-force the crypto on the Jaguar than it did to make DeCSS... It's great when a half-decade old failiure of a console system is more secure than the "Future of Home Movies"...
---
Matt
"REPENT HARELQUIN! Said the TicktockMan."
I was just wondering, you said a 68k processor? I've always heard the Jaguar ran on OS/2, so a 64-bit processor or a non-x86/PPC chip would be very surprising to me, did I just hear wrong about what Operating system runs it, or? Just curious.. TIA!
;)
;)
-Ajay
BTW: Are there still jaguar systems available somewhere for relatively cheap? (I'm not sure anymore if I still want one, I figure I'll finally supplement my (8-bit power!) Nintendo with a PSX2 next year, but..
(It's always cool to see articles sent in by people you know, huh?
the article said 109 comments. i clicked on read more and there were only 4. i even hit refresh. anyone else getting this ?
I actually dug up all my old jaguar development hardware to give to these guys a year or two ago.
Unfortunately, it turned out that I had lost the C compiler that I had retargeted to the jaguar RISC engines, so DOOM was no longer buildable.
There is something noble about developing on a dead platform -- it is so completely for the joy of the development, without any commercial motivation.
The quick recap on the jaguar:
The memory, bus, blitter and video processor were 64 bits wide, but the processors (68k and two custom risc processors) were 32 bit.
The blitter could do basic texture mapping of horizontal and vertical spans, but because there wasn't any caching involved, every pixel caused two ram page misses and only used 1/4 of the 64 bit bus. Two 64 bit buffers would have easily trippled texture mapping performance. Unfortunate.
It could make better use of the 64 bit bus with Z buffered, shaded triangles, but that didn't make for compelling games.
It offered a usefull color space option that allowed you to do lighting effects based on a single channel, isntead of RGB.
The video compositing engine was the most innovative part of the console. All of the characters in Wolf3D were done with just the back end scalar instead of blitting. Still, the experience with the limitations and hard failure cases of that gave me good amunition to rail against microsoft's (thankfully aborted) talisman project.
The little risc engined were decent processors. I was surprised that they didn't use off the shelf designs, but they basically worked ok. They had some design hazards (write after write) that didn't get fixed, but the only thing truly wrong with them was that they had scratchpad memory instead of caches, and couldn't execute code from main memory. I had to chunk the DOOM renderer into nine sequentially loaded overlays to get it working (with hindsight, I would have done it differently in about three...).
The 68k was slow. This was the primary problem of the system. You options were either taking it easy, running everything on the 68k, and going slow, or sweating over lots of overlayed parallel asm chunks to make something go fast on the risc processors.
That is why playstation kicked so much ass for development -- it was programmed like a single serial processor with a single fast accelerator.
If the jaguar had dumped the 68k and offered a dynamic cache on the risc processors and had a tiny bit of buffering on the blitter, it could have put up a reasonable fight against sony.
Now the LYNX, on the other hand, was very much The Right Thing from a programming standpoint. A fast little processor (for its niche), a good color bitmapped display, and a general purpose blitter.
Price and form factor weighed too heavily against it.
John Carmack
a comparison of the different consoles? I saw one a long time ago, and it seems like, feature-wise, the jaguar was cool (working from seriously old memory here). I also remember that comparison saying the Playstation sucked rocks, but loa and behold - the Jaguar has gone the way of the kiwi, and the Playstation is kicking butt. Am I remembering wrong or is this another example of the better *marketing* winning? (Seems like that is becoming way too common nowadays)
mas cerveza, por favor politically incorrect stu
Congratulations to the whole Battlesphere team. This has got to be one of the greatest feats of perserverence in the face of adversity that this industry has ever seen.
John, you mentioned the Lynx as an example of a well designed platform for game programming. RJ Mical and Dave Needle were both engineers (principle, I think) on the Lynx design. They also did a lot of the design on the original Amiga. Now, this depends on your knowledge of Amiga hardware and OS design, but I was wondering if you noticed any consistencies in the way the Lynx and Amiga are laid out (HW or OS)? For that matter, do you see the signature of their (Mical, Needle) designs in the 3DO specification?
I loved the Lynx. It was the most sophisticated color portable at the time, beating out the game-boy easily (won't it ever die?). Of course, as Atari usually was, they had the technology behind them but no support.
BTW, the CD-Rom add-on for the Jag was pretty cool because it made the thing look like a toilet! How's that for forshadowing? Destined for the crapper...
It's too bad that the noisiest members of the Amiga community also tend to be those least in touch with market realities. Someone (Dave Haynie, I think) observed that choosing your favorite computer/OS falls somewhere between choosing a sports team to back and choosing a religion (or political party). All have their zealots. I'm suprised, though, that your opinions of what is essentially a specification set are mostly colored by fanatics. I was just asking if you saw design similarities to other systems by the same designer(s). A commentary on the communities surrounding them seems out of place.
BTW, nothing beats Major League Baseball (with the voice module) on the Intellivision! YER OUUUT!!!
From the game publisher's perspective, carts suck. Profit margins are obscene for CDs, compared to Carts, and allowed Sony to reduce top-of-the-line game prices for "classics" while Nintendo had to suffer along charging a MINIMUM $30 a pop, and not making hardly a dime on them. How much does a CD game cost? How about $1.50 per game, including development, packaging, and promotion for popular titles? Two years later, they are still selling that game for $19.95 as a classic. Carts, on the other hand are EXTREMELY costly to make, and production is another problem. While there are only a handfule of facilities able to produce carts (forcing allocations to the most popular units), Cds are much easier to reproduce... take the glass master to any "real" CD mastering plant, and viola! gmaes are getting mass-produced. Scrap 50% of your inventory for a bomb of a cart game, and you could lose millions... scrap 50% of your bomb of a CD-based game, and you've probably not lost any money at all. The only advantage to carts from a consumer perspective is speed of loading. So what. I prefer to have the raw storage capacity of CD/DVD/FMD-ROM discs. Of course, the "cart" could make an optical comeback, with the FM technology. All the advantages of carts with none of the drawbacks. Maybe Nintendo will get smart on the Dolphin and impliment a DVD with FMD-ROM and an FM-Clear card port. *SOME* games could be in a proprietary clear card format - with 4-20GB of data.
for answering my actual question.
http://www.best.com/~sebab/dvidgames/dsphere/spher e.shtml Is no longer availiable as of 11:30 EST because of the slashdot effect. Oh well.
- Of all the thing that I have lost, I miss my mind the most.
If so, does anybody know where I can find some information on it? Thanks
Now the LYNX, on the other hand, was very much The Right Thing from a programming standpoint. A fast little processor (for its niche), a good color bitmapped display, and a general purpose blitter.
I played with one of these back in the day. If I remember correctly the Sega GameGear and the Nintendo GameBoy were already established. (The GameGear may have already been in decline.) This kid at "Geek Camp" had one. What I remember about it was not only that it was quick, but that it's color screenm unlike the GameGear was crisp. (Playing Sonic on the GameGears was very much like playing with your eyes closed. The pixels simply didn't refresh fast enough, so all you got was a blur.)
Price and form factor weighed too heavily against it.
I don't remember it being that big. Maybe a bit bigger than the GameGear, but nothing absurd. It was quite expensive wasn't it.
I'll have to see if I can track down one of these things to purchase some time. It's by far my favorite piece of failed hardware.
Congratulations to Scott, Stephanie, and the rest of the 4-Play team!
;) ), and BattleMorph was just excellent. There are many more excellent games that I don't have (like Defender 2K), but wish I did. And nothing beats the VLM that is built into the JagCD (except maybe the one in the NUON), I have yet to find a better Light Machine (as the Yak calls it) for the PC. I know about C-Thuga, but it's still not as good.
:) I still play my Jag every now and again, I sometimes get a craving for some Tempest 2000. Ah, there's nothing like starting at level 1 and seeing how far, or how long, you can go. Just for the heck of it.
I was a semi-active member of the Jaguar E-mail list, and participated in several discussions, some with Scott LeGrand himself. Those were the good-ol-days (for the Jaguar anyway), but all too often the good-ol-days come to an end.
As for the Jag itself, I don't care what other's think, I loved the Jag's controllers. Those itty-bitty, flimsy things that came with other consoles were too small for my hands. But the Jag controller fit just right, and it's sturdy too. I'd like to use them with my PC, but I haven't found a way to do that yet.
I loved the games, T2K rocked, AvP scared me to death (almost
I really hoped that the Jag would make it, but sadly it did not. The biggest problem (IMO) was the mis-managment, and (suspicions) underhanded tactics from the other console makers (buy off developers, gameing-rags and such).
But, I have Linux now, and it's not going to disappear any time soon.
Oh well, again congrats to the 4-Play team, I'll be getting my copy some day.
I was and always will be,
The JagKeeper
(a.k.a. Shatterblade)
SNES uses a 65816 (16-but successor to the venerable 6502), you idiot.
Moderators, the above post was not written by the real Anonymous Coed. It is a childish imposter. Please moderate it down. Slashdot administrators, please disable this account immediately and take steps to ensure that this guy is spanked several times. Thanks a shitload!
> People who choose to respond are under no obligation to address a single thing you want them to.
No, but I can certainly reply with thanks to those who do. I have enormous respect for Mr. Carmack in his professional capacity, and I think he treated fairly the thread that developed from my question. But the fact remains he never did answer it; someone else did, despite seeing that I was already getting a response from JC. So, I thanked them. The only one who got bitchy was yourself, based on some kind of between-the-lines reading.
http://sls.mcs.usu.edu/~kurto/lynx/faq.html
Other notable Amiga-derived features include:
- palette of 4096 colors (16 per line, I think, using Amiga "Copper"-like tricks.)
- Blitter w/ logical ops and scaling features (more powerful than Amiga)
- Previously mentioned sprite hardware (much more powerful than Amiga)
- Sound specs suspiciously similar to Amiga
Basically, the idea and implementation of the helper chips (including a special hardware multiply, and graphics and sound processors) evolved directly from much of Jay Miner's work, although Needle & Mical certainly innovated on their own. Their Sprite hardware engine (as I said before) was quite a powerful feature. STUN Runner showed this off quite well.The next step was moving away from integer ops and sprites, into true 3D. Hence the 3D0 (the next RJ Mical, Dave Needle (and David Morse(?)) collaboration).
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
Star Raiders for the Atari ST works under some of the ST emulators that I tried. Doesn't seem to work with STonX, which is the only one that runs under Unix :(, but I've played it under PacifiST.
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
no, no...er nope... Atari was still in business at the time, and would use there own operating system, more than likely based off a 68k proc.. probably used a variant of TOS(used in the atari ST..etc) with GEM gui stripped out... TOS was actually based on CP/M 68, if memory serves.... Of course atari could possibley be still in business today if it wasn't for amiga backstabbing atari in the back and selling all of there atari funded porjects to commodore... This is why commodore made the amiga and not atari...
I grew up on the Atari 520 ST personal computer.
I loved that thing. But give me a break...the company is called "Scatologic"? this sounds more like a joke than anything else.
Heh, and then I incorrectly spell Nietzsche. The preview button serves a purpose, I suppose.
can we say descent rip?
Umn, please, as a diabetic, I beg you...
Don't further the myth that eating sugar causes diabetes. It's no more true than saying that thinking gives you Alzheimer's disease.
Diabetes is actually one of two diseases:
Type I (formerly "juvenile diabetes") is caused by an autoimmune response that destroys most or all of the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas (actual cause unknown, viral infection suspected), and requires that the person take insulin shots regularly for the rest of their life, barring medical breakthroughs. This is the type of diabetes I have.
Type II (formerly "adult-onset diabetes") is caused by a desensitizing of the body's cells' insulin receptors, and is often associated with aging and obesity. It can often be treated with changes in diet and exercise habits and oral medication, but occasionally requires supplemental insulin if these therapies fail. My father recently developed this form of diabetes. It's more common than Type I at about a 9:1 ratio.
(There's also 'gestational diabetes,' which is a cousin of Type II....)
Eating sugar has nothing to do with the onset of either of these diseases. I only go out on a limb and talk about this because public misinformation about what diabetes is, and how it works, could potentially kill me (see the movie "Con Air" for a REALLY REALLY bad example of horrible diametrically-opposite incorrect possibly-fatal misconceptions about diabetes).
And, to be moderately on-topic, it's ASTOUNDINGLY cool that the authors are giving this money to diabetes research; diabetes is the nations's fourth-largest killer disease, and largely goes undiagnosed for over 50% of the people who have it. Get your blood sugar checked if ANYTHING seems weird in your health. It can't hurt, and might save your life.
--
emerson,
please forgive me for what seems to be an ignorance of diabetes - I apologise for my previous post for those who are offended by it's misinformation.
Thanks for the correction, I now stand better educated, and I revoke my previous comments.
I apologise to all that this post may have offended.
Ian.
Don't forget that Jay Miner was one of the key developers of the Atari 8-bit systems (400/800).
:) Even 10 years ago, all people thought about when they heard the name "Atari" was "Pong" and really sucky games for the Atari 2600.
;)
John Carmack mentioned that the Amiga was destined to go the way of the consoles. Atari did that first, too.
If you're bored, grab a copy of "Atari800" (for Unix/Linux) or "Atari800Win" or some other Atari 8-bit emulator, and try running some of the really kick-ass demos created in the European demo-scene in the past 10 years.
Consider that the hardware's capabilities have been the same since the late '70's / early '80's, and wonder why Apple II's were so popular.
If the Jaguar had gone the way of the Kiwi, it would still be being manufactured. Kiwis are alive and well and breeding in the wild.
I suggest you use dodos or moas when you need to use an extinct flightless bird as a metaphor.
I had an Atari Lynx for a while. Nice little machine with some rather cute games. I remember trying so hard to get the maximum rotations (4 or 5? "Awesome!") on that surfing game.
BattleWheels and Road Blasters also show off the Lynx's excellent 3D capabilities.
BTW, there's a new Lynx game coming out based on BattleWheels' 3D engine, called CyberVirus...
Hey! I started working on an Open Source game based on VidGrid's concept. It loads MPEGs and lets you slide them around... I need to finish working on it.
:)
One of its other cool features will be a Virtual Light Machine mode so you can play MP3's and MOD's and slide around a visual representation of the sound.
Okay, it is obvious the system failed, but it wasnt because it was cartridge. Being cartridge based dosent mean anything, look at Nintendo 64, it made it, and look at Dreamcast, it failed. =P (if dreamcast has not failed by the time you read this, give it 2-6 months)
That game looks horrible! Why the hell is anyone even mentioning this? It looks like something I wrote for DOS 2 years ago.
And in all fairness, the Tramiels kept managing
to buy into the most amazing techno toys like
the Portfolio, the Lynx, the STBook, and the
STPad but then they'd get cold feet when it
came to marketing these suckers so they'd die
each time.
Similar things happened with the jaguar: for a
couple million dollars they could have bought
exclusive locks on games like Mortal Kombat II
but they thought it was too much to pay. Just
imagine a Xmas '94 where the only console playing
the hottest fighter was the jag. Hit titles like
Tomb Raider, Tetrisphere and Rayman all started
out as jaguar projects. They were Atari's to lose
and that's exactly what happened.
I never cease to be amazed by the way these guys
managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
>Actually, it was the other way around: Atari took the code for Last Starfighter and converted it to Star Raiders II. Hmmm, I know I have a copy of the game the last starfighter somewhere, and I distinctly remember it sucking. Did the Last Starfighter ever get released at all, or was it only SR2?
I think the sega genesis used a 68k series chip...
I assume you have no clue what your talking about you dumb slashtroll. "In an unprecedented move, Scatologic has announced that all profits from the sale of BattleSphere(tm) will be donated to diabetes research." I don't think they are betting the bank on this one smart guy.