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Interview With Atari Jaguar creator John Mathieson
Bill Kendrick writes "The website Toxic Mag has an interview with John Mathieson, creator of the short-lived Atari Jaguar 64-bit game system - the system we can thank for such awesome games as the original Alien vs. Predtor, Iron Soldier, and the gorgeously psychadelic Tempest 2000. The beginng and end of the interview are in French, but the actual questions and answers are 'en anglais.'"
why the obsession with atari?
were en Anglais....
Atari innovated the crappy console controller, that contoller was roughly the size of a lincoln towncar, Microsoft had great inspiration for the Xbox's gorilla-sized controllers.
I hate sigs.
Naaah...while i agree about star wars, the cornerstone of my childhood was Intellivision :)
"Herbivores eat well cause their food never, ever runs."
I'm all confused, damn you Jobs
Now the Jaguar came out quite a while back, and if I remember correctly, quite a while before the N64. I remember there was some "catch" to the "64-bt" aspect. Was it really 64-bit?
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"Those who quote others are more likely to one day be quoted" -Tom Planter
It's ineteresting to note that the Jag had no regional lockouts - cartirdges and CDs from the US would workm in Europe and vice versa. The Jaguar would detect if it was NTSC or PAL and properly written software would display properly on the TV. Pity things aren't so simple these days...
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
In our house we have NES, SNES, Genesis, PS and PS2. Also many PC games. My 10 year old plays 2600 games on emulator. That's a tribute to appeal of these games.
LETS DECOMPOSE & ENJOY ASSEMBLING
I was so excited about getting it, that my first wife actually bought it for me. I never did buy all the games for it though. Ahh nice memories.
...Gotta say I've never heard of it. But: cartidge-based and a less-than-aesthetic external CD module, this project was destined to be still-born.
Mindblowingly realistic, but probably very similar games. Nothing much changes in video games...
Sad but true - off the top of my head, I can only think of two recent original games that really made a splash - the Sims and Pikmin
Everything else is more of the same. That doesn't mean games aren't still fun though - Mario Sunshine is a blast but not really that original.
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
The Block Diagram at the bottom of the interview is great. For anyone that want's to compare it to the XBOX's Block Diagram, here it is: http://www.ddj.com/documents/s=882/ddj0008a/0008af 1.htm
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"Those who quote others are more likely to one day be quoted" -Tom Planter
For those who might be interested you can find an Open Source emulator here
Since it's French, shouldn't it be Toxique Mag? ;)
There was another alien vs predator. It was a side scrolling beat 'em up game for the SNES. Much in the style of final fight and streets of rage. It was actually pretty crappy. There might have been an even earlier AvsP, but I don't remember it.
Does anyone remember the game with the cavemen for the Jaguar? I always wanted to play it, but I don't know the name.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Mindblowingly realistic, but probably very similar games. Nothing much changes in video games...
Mind-blowingly realistic Grand Thief Auto. Does that include realistic pain?
I have one of these in my datacenter. But I'd have to say that the Tempest upright is far more popular. Of course, it IS set on free play mode. ;)
;)
PS: It is so strange that Atari could embrace such great products and ideas, but have the most spectacular failures when it comes to the business side of things.
PS: Which system play more like 'real basketball'? Was it the Atari 2600, or the Intellivision?
OOPS Here is the link http://www.ddj.com/documents/s=882/ddj0008a/0008af 1.htm
Hope it works
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"Those who quote others are more likely to one day be quoted" -Tom Planter
I would have thought that, after all their hype, the Battlesphere people would have the claim to the game that pushed the Jag the hardest. And given that Carmack has said he could optimized DooM better if he had it to do over again, I find it difficult to believe that it's pushing the Jag to the limit. Surely something that pushed more texture mapped polygons was tougher for the system to handle.
Other than that, it was an ok interview, I suppose. I'm not sure that there is a whole lot there that we haven't heard before, except for some of the details about the next-gen hardware. Would have been neat to see an example of the full-antialised graphics from their next sytem, given that good AA is still something people are stiving for today. (E.g. PS2 with jaggies galore on some games. Ick.)
Jag ramblings to follow...
Iron Soldier on the Jag was a great game, FWIW. Since playing IS1, I've had a chance to played Iron Soldier 3 on the PSX but not Iron Soldier 2 on the Jag. The update is both better and worse. The Jaguar, for all its faults, had the most button-laden controller to ship with a console, and for a game like Iron Soldier, that rocked. Unfortunately, the PSX control scheme just doesn't work well enough. On IS1 (and presumably IS2) you could choose the weapon mounted on either shoulder or either hip or one of the two hand weapons with a single button press. For IS3 on the PSX, you have to cycle through weapons, and that turns out to be a step back in terms of control.
Of course, the graphics on the PSX are a step up, but not all they could have been.
And it's true that Tempest 2000 was the best game for the system. Best music and best control and best gameplay experience. Defender 2000 (also by Jeff Minter) and Power Drive Rally are my other favorites. I sold all the rest, including the much-ballyhooed Battlesphere (which was definitely not worth the wait or the price).
(Shameless plug: I also compared Tempest 2000 for the Jag and Tempest X for the PSX here. Jag wins, despite the better hardware of the PSX.)
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
The jaguar was also succesful at reinventing the telephone to be used as a game controller.
That, my dear fellow, is the correct British English pronunciation of the word "Jaguar".
If it was intended to be pronounced "jag-wire", it would be spelt Jagwir, after all.
in the canadian govt, i tried to view that screenshot and got blocked by the content filtering proxy. it seems very strange. it sends an email to the admin telling them i was bad, and now i have TWO. both for something innocuous. last time it was bbs.yahoo.com, now atariage.com. what the hell? does atariage.com usually host porn or hate?
- since I first laid hands on a square old 2600 joystick and draw a psychadelic multirainbow Atari logo on my bag.
Atari always seemed a bit more edgy, less businesslike. You kinda thought that Atari was more interested in screwing your older sister than your wallet.
The Jaguar was discounted before it even came out in the UK as far as I can remember - poor bastard.
Nice system, too bad it was the nail in Atari's coffin.
Wow, this guys has some track record. Those are two wonderfully successful technologies!
Intellevision.
"Now you can tell the difference between atari and intellivision with your eyes closed"
(Re: the voice module which only 2 games worked with!)
I watched all those old atari and intellivision games- made me realize how much I hate real player. But then again, those videos were probably left "rotting" on a crappy vhs all these years, so I shouldn't complain. For a person who still remembers most of the MEGAMANIA song, I should sit down and shut up.
working my way backwards: the fabulous disaster that was atari has a long and proud tradition of doing the wrong thing. In some ways, kind of like apple under the command of scully and Jean louis-gasse (after Jobs was given a dishonorable discharge- I guess he showed them).
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Myself and a friend picked up a Jaguar each at a reduced price. Never used them, we figure we would return them for credit on something else. The people didn't want to give us credit, they gave us a cash refund (I'm pretty sure this doesn't happen anymore). However, they gave us 3x what we paid for them. "That's what the computer says, take the money". Thanks Atari.
(Looking at the bottom right of the motherboard diagram) What advantages are there to on-motherboard butter? Does it make the games creamy and smooth? Doesn't butter make heat dissipation a serious issue?
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
I've seen the Jaguar boxes showing in the shops since the day it came out. Now, the shops are full of PS2, xboxes, GameCubes, etc.. but i can still see the Jaguar boxes down in some corners! Not that they are THAT popular, but with a 20$-30$ price and a reasonably decent catalogue of quality cheap games, I am sure they still sell some units. It's better than throwing them to the bin
Buying a Jaguar now is like adding POWER to your nostalgia. I remember me and my friends reading about a secret Atari 64 bit machine while we were playing to our SNES and some of us still with their NES or Master System. Jaguar was like the FUTURE, a potent and incredibly future! 64 bits seemed they could do anything. The fact of seeing in a shop what you considered when young the GREAT FUTURE adds to your nostalgia what MAME adds. Beeing able to play at home something you previously felt as unaccesible. (Though the pesent might be very different)
__
Sig: Marine Stock Photos
Anyone remeber ATARI's TV ad?
Introducing Alien vs. Predator for the 64 bit ATARI Jaguar
*silence, lil' boy playing in dark room, scary ambiente*
You might not wanna play it alone!
Maybe some ATARI fan around here still has a digitized version of it?
I was an "early adopter" and bought the Jag for $250 when it was rolled out, and on the strength of one game, Tempest 2000. (Kind of like people buying the Xbox just for Halo.) But aside from a couple more good games (AvP, Doom, and the system's last gasp, Defender 2000) all the other games I got for the Jag were awful... two particularly bad ones were Cybermorph and TrevorMcFur. There were too many bad games and not enough 3rd party support for this console, even though it was the most powerful piece of pre-PlayStation hardware out there. I wonder if maybe Atari had cloned about a dozen John Mathiesons and Jeff "Llama" Minters that the story would have turned out differently.
Well that's five minutes I won't be getting back. I mean, that crap about his game at the end, what the hell was that? A lot of people need to realize that they are not journalists.
If you meant the sega portable genesis it was the Nomad. Then only nice thing about it was it could be hooked into a genesis controller port to be used as a 6 button controller
I bought one of those piece of crap systems. I bought it, and the toilet bowl CDROM that went with it. Yes, AVP and Tempest2k were top notch, but they were one of the few lights of a console thatdied because of the absolute shittiest management this side of the galactic rim. Everything they tried to do seemed to be a pissing match with other systems titles and nearly everytime they tried such a stunt, they failed miserably. Their VR Racing game was crap compared to Sega's. Their fighting games couldn't even compare to Killer Instinct on the SNES, for cryin' out loud. The Morphing spaceship game didn't hold a candle to Starfox (even though the latter was on rails). Vid Grid for the CDROM was an interesting premise, but then I poped in Blue Lightining, otherwise known as "Monty Python's Air Combat". It felt like I was piloting a horribly rendered cardbord cut-out fighting other horribly rendered cardboard cut-outs. It was at this moment i knew I had been taken. Flim-flammed. Bamboozeled. I had sunk my hard earned money into a less than year old platform that was never going to amount to anything. "the system we can thank for such awesome games as the original Alien vs. Predtor, Iron Soldier, and the gorgeously psychadelic Tempest 2000."??? No, screw this. Thank the developers for those games, not the console which was a first rate piece of shit thanks to the people who managed it. Bitter? Oh yeah.
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Do you own the cartriges for all those games you play on the emulator?!!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The article poster listed every single good game for the Jaguar. There were no others. The rest were garbage.
:)
I paid $250 for one of those stupid things, and the lack of games was infurating. Then, when one trickled down, it felt like a half-assed development at best.
If that wasn't enough, the 3DO was kicking it's butt graphically even though it was supposedly so powerful. Part of me wonders if the Jaguar suffered the same fate that the Saturn did by being powerful, but awkward to program for. Tempest and AvP were awesome, and that was really it.
Okay, I'm done ranting, guess I can go read the interview now.
Ey, what about Jeff Minter, the guy that wrote Tempest 2000 for the Jag... Not to mention a long line of 8-bit hits involving ungulates??
The Jag did have some truly great games (AvP, Tempest 2K, IS) and the Jag CD had Virtual Light Machine for playing music CD's to a trippy light show. I was at the '95 E3 to shoot videos for AEO. At the time we were shown a working prototype of JagVR. It was pretty cool, the guys from virtuality in the UK were behind it. But it never saw the light of day. They (Atari) were also working on AvP2 that would hook up the Atari Lynx (another great system) to the Jag as a "smart controller". But they didn't have the cash, developers, or customers to stay alive. Atari lost a lot of retailers and customer faith even before the Jag arrived. Many customers felt that Atari didn't support their products which translated to poor sales for retailers who didn't want to give up shelf space to Atari when Sega and Nintendo were King. But in all, I enjoyed my Jag. Esp playing my first networked (two Jags, two tv's and headphones) Deathmatch Doom games until 3am. Just like delicious dish - good times.
And I've got to say the only game I wasn't disappointed in was Tempest 2000. It was an absolute gem (and the only reason to buy a jag). AvP was repetitive and Iron Soldier was too sparsely detailed to allow me to feel I was in a 200-foot killer robot.
The problem was, at the time the PC had just raised the bar for computer games, with Doom and Ultima Underworld the year before. If you had any money to throw around it was thrown in the direction of the system with the best games (plus it was way easier to get my parents to provide a PC for 'studying' - I had to pay for my jag myself).
It was basically a choice between a console and a PC at the time of the PCs greatest inroads into peoples' mindshare. Office applications, a usable windowing system, hardware like CDROMs, and the best games made PCs unbeatable as a games platform at that time. The only reason the PS wasn't stillborn was the 3D hardware was better than anything the PC had at consumer level (for about 6 months).
And don't go on about Marathon on the Mac. Duke kicked that cyborg's ass square.
Gary
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
Why not just post something like "I'm an asshole" instead of this. It would save you trouble of trying to look like you are clever while still getting your overall message across loud and clear.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
I remember when the Jaguar came out, I was gonna buy it. It was the Jaguar or the SegaCD. I decided on the SegaCD because my dad said he didn't think Atari would last. Well, he was right and my SegaCD gave me lots of fun with games like SoniCD, Final Fight CD, MK and more.
I owned a jaguar once it went on clearence.
Checkered Flag was a disappointing race game. Seemed like a stripped down VR Racing, with no real excitement factor.
Iron Soldier was a disappointment too. I just couldn't get used to the controls, and eventually just got bored and smashed buildings.
Among one of the worst games was a MK-ripoff called Kasumi Ninja. I remember seeing a review, and one of the fighers was in a kilt. His special move? He lifted up his kilt and a fireball came out.
I swear the lack of licensing killed it. You dind't get Mortal Kombat, but really bad ripoffs like the ones mentioned above.
Then there was the whole battlemorph fiasco, which has got to have Duke Nukem beaten in terms of vaporware. It's sad if you lose the docs to a console's encryption scheme, delaying a game for years until after the console's achieved "Classic" status.
Yah, your Pop was right and now I'm jaded into not being an early adopter of consoles, which was probably the prudent course of action to begin with. And Night Trap. Can't forget Night Trap and Sewer Shark ;)
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They ( and their offspring as they fled to other companies ) are responsible for starting the ball rolling, and were YEARS ahead of their time in technology..
But for marketing.. damned tramiel brothers were idiots.. grr
---- Booth was a patriot ----
> I am not much of a gamer
Aha. People who DON'T play games designing games consoles. Not a wise move IMHO; you don't know what the developer or player really wants.
Jaguar's poor lifespan (250,000 units sold) was the result of a multitude of factors, but this is another interesting slant on it.
Shame really. I liked the Atari ST, until I melted it (don't ask).
I remember many nights playing AvP on the big screen TV, with the lights off. Every now I then I almost soiled my pants.
I rented AvP for the Jaguar and a few years later played the demo of the PC version. My first thought was "The Jaguar version is way better." It seemed to capture the scary feel of the movies.
I don't understand people's complaints about the Jaguar controller.. I've had a Jaguar since it was new, and I still think it has one of the best controllers around. The number pad is especially useful with games like Doom where you can switch weapons with a single button.
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
The 68000 in the Jaguar is (in my opinion) only really included in the design so that programmers can work with something they already know, and to assist in porting efforts. Supposedly, the Jaguar's custom chips were difficult to program, and had some annoying bugs that had to be worked around (I can't provide any proof of this though). Someone already mentioned that most designers (and I think Atari themselves) actually only recommended using the 68000 to read the joystick ports. A game that is properly written can completely bypass the 68000 and run entirely on the Tom chip. Of course, it's not all that useful to shut the chip down... even though it's not as powerful as the rest of the system, it can still be used for something...
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
No, the Saturn never claimed to be anything other than a 32-bit system. The Saturn uses dual SH-2 chips at it's core, which are both 32-bit I believe. There's also about half a dozen other processors in there to do extra stuff like 3D and 2D (Yes, these were done in seperate chips in the Saturn)... this apparently made it very hard to program.
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
And battlesphere WAS released (albiet in limited quantities).
It's worth noting that there are other systems with more dubious claims of bitness than the Jaguar. For example:
The Lynx - This system (also made by Atari) was advertised as a 16-bit handheld system. However, the only reason to call it a 16-bit system was because of the graphics engine, which was actually fairly sophisticated (I've actually programmed for it before), and had some (limited) 3D capabilities. However, the Lynx uses a 65C02 as it's CPU, which most of you probably know is 8-bit (the C-64 and Apple II used almost the same chip).
The TurboGrafx-16 - Similar to the Lynx, the only thing 16-bit about this system was it's graphics engine. The main processor is an HuC6280, which is 8-bit. From what I've played of TG16 games (which hasn't been all that much), they're only about as sophisticated as Master System games, but with much better graphics.
The NeoGeo - This is the worst offender in my opinion. SNK billed the NeoGeo as a 24-bit game system, but there is absolutely nothing 24-bit about it at all! It uses a 68000 (16-bit) as it's main processor, and a Z-80 (8-bit) as a sound chip. SNK was able to get away with this because the games they made were so big, and had SO much animation that people never questioned it's power. In reality, the only advantage it had over the Genesis (which was also based on a 68K + Z-80) was an obscenely large addressing space (The cartridges had TWO seperate edge connectors, were about the size of a VHS tape, and some held over 80 megabytes [not bits]). I'm not saying the NeoGeo wasn't an impressive piece of technology... after all, they're still in arcades across the continent... but it's not 24-bit.
Some may say that the Jaguar isn't "really" 64-bit, but it all depends on what you consider to be a measure of bitness. In the end, you get only a vague idea of anything whatsoever. Even if the Jaguar is 64-bit, it's obviously less powerful than the 32-bit Playstation, so who really cares about this arbitrary number? After all, there's a reason that the video game industry (mostly) stopped using this absurdity.
It's also worth pointing out that the Jaguar is 64-bit where it needs to be, and not 64-bit where it doesn't have to be. The sound chips are 32-bit, but would there really be any advantage to having 64-bit sound chips? I doubt it. The graphics chips are 64-bit, and would probably suffer if they were anything less. Instead of Atari charging us more money for unnecessary power, they decided to cut costs... and with good reason in my opinion.
I should point out that I actually have a Jaguar (As well as the JagCD), and I still play it. I do consider it to be 64-bit, but I wouldn't compare it's power to the Playstation or the N64...
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
First, I have to agree. AvP Jaguar was in some strange and twisted way better than the PC versions I've played. Oh, sure the graphics are way better now, but it almost seems like the PC AvP can't get the mood right (though bursting out of somebodies stomache is a step in the right direction). Beats me. Tempest and AvP are the only games I'll vouch for on an otherwise piece of shit system. Vid Grid would also be nice on a modern system these days. It was fun rearranging the video before it completed.
And finally, if your gonna mod this guy a zero, at least give a reason why, you chump. His comment is on-topic, It's not supremely offensive. It's not a loaded troll. Damn, somebody has got a serious case of brain hemmeroids....
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If you mumble to yourself, you're mentally ill,
if you mumble to yourself with a crowd in a church, it's a religion.