You have to remember that the Jaguar was released in late '93 right around the time the original 'Doom' for the PC was released. Software 3D rendering was just starting to catch on considering Wolfenstein 3D was just released the year before. The state of the art consoles at the time were the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. Saturn wasn't released until '94 while the Playstation didn't really hit the market until '95(it was launched Dec 3rd 1994 in Japan, Sept 9th 1995 in the U.S).
Most likely it was a combination of bad timing and bad marketing on Atari's behalf. Atari's reputation was already tarnished because of what happened back in the 80s considering it had been something like ten years since they were last considered a serious contendor in the console market.
As a result most people were pretty much convinced Jaguar was doomed from the start, sort of like how the mindshare of the Sony PS2 crowd was convinced that Dreamcast would fail because of Sega's screwup with the Saturn. My feeling is that it became a self fulfilling prophecy - get enough naysayers who are convinced a product will fail and you scare off most of the potential consumer base.
Atari now is nothing more than just another brand used primarily to capitalize on the nostalgia associated with the Atari corporation of yore. The only connection Infogames has with Nolan Bushnell's Atari is that they happen to be the latest in a long line of companies since Warner Bros(Jack Tramil, JTS, Hasbro etc) that have bought and sold the intellectual property/trademarks associated with the Atari name.
Incidentally June 25th marked the 20th anniversary of the release of Blade Runner. Atari's long decline, which began after the great video game crash of '83, has long been associated with the so called 'Blade Runner Curse'. Atari, along with Pan Am, Cusinart, and Ma Bell were just a few of the companies whose logos were prominantly featured in the film only to suffer a complete financial collapse in the 1980s. Other companies, such as Coca Cola, suffered minor setbacks(i.e. New Coke) while others such as Budweiser and TDK emerged unscathed.
Here's a clue folks - Salon isn't subsidized by a rich parent corporation like Slate is(and we all know who that is).
People on Slashdot love to complain about the homogeneity of corporate media sites, but when push comes to shove most of them won't put their money where their mouth is.
As for me, I've been an avid reader of Salon since '97 and I didn't hesitate for one second before signing up for Salon Premium when it became available last year.
Rationalize it anyway you want, but the fact is bandwidth, servers, web designers, and writers all cost $$$. If you read the site everyday and you find its information of value, then you really don't have an excuse. The $30 a year subscription price works out to $2.50 a month and less than 9 cents a day - quite a bargain if you ask me.
Unfortunately most of the so called libertarian organizations out there are what you call the pseudo-libertarian type. They advocate big business and privitization while pretending that goverments are the only organizations that become less efficient and more corrupt the bigger they get.
A good example in this is the 1996 Telecommunications Act which paved the way for corporations like Clear Channel Communications to homogenize radio programming. Prior to the '96 Telecommunications Act companies were prohibited from owning more than two stations in any given market and no more than 26 nationwide. Once that cap was removed the market rapidly consolidated with the end result being a lower quality product for the consumer - centralized programming, homogenized playlists, and more commercials per hour to pay for Clear Channel's acquisitions debt. Clear Channel now controls something like 1200 stations nationwide and around 60% of the FM Rock format.
Of course RIAA has a role in this as well, as the five corporations that control 85% of the recording industry are the only one's who can afford to pay to have their songs 'promoted' on Clear Channel stations. There's a lot of great new music out there, but for some strange reason the 'free market' in this case is doing a very poor job of getting to consumers.
I suspect this is one of the reasons why P2P is not hurting music sales as much as Mr. Liebowitz expects. He doesn't see the flaws in the current distribution system because his unfailing faith in the 'free market' won't allow him to. It's never crossed his mind that P2P turns people onto music that RIAA and radio largely ignore.
Heh.. I remember watching the demo video for Duke Nuke'em Forever four years ago at e3 '98 in Atlanta. It's been what.. six years since Duke Nuke'em 3D came out?!?!?. I know "It will be done when its done", but there's a certain point when it become ridiculous.
Warcraft III is just as bad though, considering its been nearly seven years since Warcraft II was released. However, at least Blizzard has the excuse they were working on other projects during the time in between(Diablo I/II, Starcraft, etc).
What has 3D Realms produced since '96? Duke Nuke'em 'Manhattan Project' - a side scrolling shooter!!!
Okay.. If we're going to play 'When I was in high school' I'll guess I'll toss in my two cents worth.
When I was in high school the best computers we had were Apple IIes with 64k RAM, though we did have one with 128k that I used to do an independent study in Pascal(does anyone even know how to program in Pascal anymore???).
Oh my 15 year high school reunion is this Saturday. I graduated in 1987.
Oh we played lots of Apple II games at school back then - Choplifter, Hard Hat Mack, Lode Runner, Karateka, etc. Of course networks in public schools were basically non-existant at the time. Except we did have a funky 70s teletype terminal with a 300 baud modem(with coupler!) that you could dial into the county mainframes with.
Is it just me or does the name of the new Matrox card 'Parhelia' sound like some sort of dairy product?
But seriously, I remember back in my Pentium 90 days(circe 1995) when the Matrox Millennium was the bomb. In those days before the 3D revolution, Matrox was king of the 2D hill. Unfortunately they dropped the ball in '97 with thelackluster 3D features of the Millennium II and Mystique cards.
I'd love to see Matrox make a comeback and provide some serious competition for Nvidia, but Nvidia has the mindshare of gamers. Unless Nvidia somehow screws up by resting on their laurels(like 3Dfx did), I don't see the situation changing anytime soon.
If your college is especially lame, like the one where I went to grad school, they only broadcast over the campus cable TV system.
Yep that's right.. Listen to the radio through your TV.
The upside was that since the ratings were so low it was very easy to become a volunteer DJ. The downside was that they only allowed DJs to play songs from their stupid collection of ASCAP/RIAA approved Top 40 CDs.
I did it once before walking out in disgust. No wonder no one ever listened to the damn thing.
Selected Ambient Works 85-92 is actually quite nice.. The first time I heard it back in '93 was one of those pivotol listening experiences that turned me on to electronic music in general. Selected Ambient Works II, while quite a departure from the former, is probably one of the most creative, yet disturbing pieces of music I've ever heard. Sort of thing you would listen to after eating a tray of magic brownies while driving through the industrial nightmare landscape of the New Jersey Turnpike.
As for his most recent stuff, basically anything since '95/'96, I've been seriously disappointed. Perhaps the fame got to his head, as the one time 'Mozart in Mirrorshades' seems content to produce albums full of mostly shrieking noise.
Ummmm.. That would be something like $24 a gallon which just doesn't sound plausible to me. I was in Germany two years ago and it was around $3.50 a gallon. The most expensive gas in Europe at the the time, in the UK, I believe was around $4.50 a gallon. Somehow a six-fold increase in prices in just two years doesn't seem very likely.
For Christmas of 1981 I received an Intellivision from my parents which at that time was still selling for its launch price of $250 dollars, which adjusted for inflation is around $515 today. By comparison, an Atari VCS/2600 sold for around $129 in 1981 or roughly $266 today.
Games? Most retailed at around $30 back then.
Oh.. And 5.25" floppy disk drives sold for about $500 back then, or roughly $1030 in today's dollars.
Yeah like he was really prolific after finishing up 'Return of the Jedi' in '83.
I can just see it now.. 'The Jar Jar Binks Christmas Special' or 'Clones on Ice'
Not true.. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the governement agency created by the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, supplies about 12% of the funding for public radio with an additional 3% coming in the form of Federal grants. An additional 18% of the funding comes from State and local governments. Altogether direct public funding makes up around 33% of the budget for public radio.
Loss of power to an engine is one thing, physically losing an engine from the airframe is a catastrophe so severe that pilots don't even train for it. A similar accident occured with an American Airlines DC-10 that crashed in Chicago shortly after takeoff form O'Hare in 1979.
"The aircraft crashed on takeoff from Chicago O'Hare. During rotation, the no.1 engine separated from the wing, tearing out vital hydraulic lines. The loss of the no.1 electrical generator disabled the slat disagreement system, and the aircraft rolled over as the left-side slats retracted causing that wing to stall."
Think about it.. The rationale behind making it Xbox only at first has to do with the economics of launching a new console. The Xbox needs a killer app to sell the console, especially when faced against the tough competition of veterans such as Nintendo and Sony. The console world is all about mindshare and Microsoft thinks the best way to generate word of mouth for the Xbox is to provide something that none of their competitors have. In this case that something is Halo, which has been one of the most eagerly awaited games for the PC in the last couple of years.
The PC(and Mac) versions as far as I know are still in development and I imagine they will be superior to the console version. In the meantime if you just can't wait for the PC version then you'll have to pony up the cash to play it on the Xbox when it hits the store next week.
Bah Panzer tanks suck.. It was the Tiger tanks that really kicked ass and made the allies shit in their pants. Lucky for them the Germans couldn't build enough of 'em or scrounge up enough petrol at the end to keep 'em running.
Oh yes.. The infamous Star Wars holiday special that George Lucas wishes would go away.
I saw it the first time around in '78. I was 9 years old at the time, so I don't really remember much. Until recently I wasn't sure if it was real or just some horrible bad dream from my childhood. Nevertheless it is real and Salon did a piece on it about a year ago.
http://www.salon.com/ent/tv/feature/2000/12/05/s ta r_wars_tv/index.html
Actually CivNET was the horribly buggy multiplayer version of the original Civilization. Civ II Gold Edition is the version of Civ II that includes multiplayer support.
Yeah you definitely sound like you're referring to Call of Power which Sid Meier had nothing to do with(if its published by Activision its not the real thing). The "real" Civilization II was released by Microprose in the spring of '96 and looks much more like the precursor the Civ III then CTP ever did.
I miss the FMVs after building a wonder of the world from Civ II as well. What's even more annoying is when you build one it doesn't even tell you what it does right away. You have to find the wonder on the city view screen and click on it to bring up a description from the civilopedia screen.
There are also a few other usability problems that are mildly annoying - having to click twice on some buttons and only once on others. When your cities go into revolt there is no jeering crowd sound to let you know they are revolting. The smoke emitting from the city is the only real indication that this is occuring. I also wish the currently selected active unit would flash like it did in the previous versions.. The animated rotating disc just isn't as useful.
Also, I miss the sentry function from Civ I/II that would allow units to automatically wake up whenever an enemy unit moved into an adjacent sqaure.
One more thing, what's up with the lack of offensive capabilites on catapults and cannons? I'm still only about halfway through the game, but it seems a bit odd to me that these units can only be used in an augmented defensive capacity.
I hope the artillery units don't work the same way, but I have a bad feeling they do.
The Lian Li case is definitely worth the $$$. However Thinkgeek is a little pricey and you can pick up the basic pc60 case for $149 elsewhere, or in my case I got the pc65(which is the pc60 with a buily in window) for $169.
If anything, a case is one of the few PC components that can be considered an investment and I plan to keep my Lian Li as the basis of my future upgrade path(at least as long as the ATX motherboard format is supported).
I agree the SIS735 offers great bang for the buck.. I got my ECS K7S5A SIS 735 board from Newegg for $65 a few weeks back. It's rock solid and even comes with built in 10/100 ethernet.
Yeah changing out the fan made a big difference. Not too mention getting the Volcano 6CU+ on my motherboard was a total pain in the arse. The Silverado by comparison snapped on quite easily.
Slashdot Mirror
You have to remember that the Jaguar was released in late '93 right around the time the original 'Doom' for the PC was released. Software 3D rendering was just starting to catch on considering Wolfenstein 3D was just released the year before. The state of the art consoles at the time were the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo. Saturn wasn't released until '94 while the Playstation didn't really hit the market until '95(it was launched Dec 3rd 1994 in Japan, Sept 9th 1995 in the U.S).
Most likely it was a combination of bad timing and bad marketing on Atari's behalf. Atari's reputation was already tarnished because of what happened back in the 80s considering it had been something like ten years since they were last considered a serious contendor in the console market.
As a result most people were pretty much convinced Jaguar was doomed from the start, sort of like how the mindshare of the Sony PS2 crowd was convinced that Dreamcast would fail because of Sega's screwup with the Saturn. My feeling is that it became a self fulfilling prophecy - get enough naysayers who are convinced a product will fail and you scare off most of the potential consumer base.
Atari now is nothing more than just another brand used primarily to capitalize on the nostalgia associated with the Atari corporation of yore. The only connection Infogames has with Nolan Bushnell's Atari is that they happen to be the latest in a long line of companies since Warner Bros(Jack Tramil, JTS, Hasbro etc) that have bought and sold the intellectual property/trademarks associated with the Atari name.
Incidentally June 25th marked the 20th anniversary of the release of Blade Runner. Atari's long decline, which began after the great video game crash of '83, has long been associated with the so called 'Blade Runner Curse'. Atari, along with Pan Am, Cusinart, and Ma Bell were just a few of the companies whose logos were prominantly featured in the film only to suffer a complete financial collapse in the 1980s. Other companies, such as Coca Cola, suffered minor setbacks(i.e. New Coke) while others such as Budweiser and TDK emerged unscathed.
Here's a clue folks - Salon isn't subsidized by a rich parent corporation like Slate is(and we all know who that is).
People on Slashdot love to complain about the homogeneity of corporate media sites, but when push comes to shove most of them won't put their money where their mouth is.
As for me, I've been an avid reader of Salon since '97 and I didn't hesitate for one second before signing up for Salon Premium when it became available last year.
Rationalize it anyway you want, but the fact is bandwidth, servers, web designers, and writers all cost $$$. If you read the site everyday and you find its information of value, then you really don't have an excuse. The $30 a year subscription price works out to $2.50 a month and less than 9 cents a day - quite a bargain if you ask me.
3D Realms published Max Payne - Remedy Entertainment out of Finland actually developed it.
Apparently they did 'Death Rally' as well.
http://www.remedy.fi/games/index.html
Unfortunately most of the so called libertarian organizations out there are what you call the pseudo-libertarian type. They advocate big business and privitization while pretending that goverments are the only organizations that become less efficient and more corrupt the bigger they get.
A good example in this is the 1996 Telecommunications Act which paved the way for corporations like Clear Channel Communications to homogenize radio programming. Prior to the '96 Telecommunications Act companies were prohibited from owning more than two stations in any given market and no more than 26 nationwide. Once that cap was removed the market rapidly consolidated with the end result being a lower quality product for the consumer - centralized programming, homogenized playlists, and more commercials per hour to pay for Clear Channel's acquisitions debt. Clear Channel now controls something like 1200 stations nationwide and around 60% of the FM Rock format.
Of course RIAA has a role in this as well, as the five corporations that control 85% of the recording industry are the only one's who can afford to pay to have their songs 'promoted' on Clear Channel stations. There's a lot of great new music out there, but for some strange reason the 'free market' in this case is doing a very poor job of getting to consumers.
I suspect this is one of the reasons why P2P is not hurting music sales as much as Mr. Liebowitz expects. He doesn't see the flaws in the current distribution system because his unfailing faith in the 'free market' won't allow him to. It's never crossed his mind that P2P turns people onto music that RIAA and radio largely ignore.
Heh.. I remember watching the demo video for Duke Nuke'em Forever four years ago at e3 '98 in Atlanta. It's been what.. six years since Duke Nuke'em 3D came out?!?!?. I know "It will be done when its done", but there's a certain point when it become ridiculous.
Warcraft III is just as bad though, considering its been nearly seven years since Warcraft II was released. However, at least Blizzard has the excuse they were working on other projects during the time in between(Diablo I/II, Starcraft, etc).
What has 3D Realms produced since '96? Duke Nuke'em 'Manhattan Project' - a side scrolling shooter!!!
Okay.. If we're going to play 'When I was in high school' I'll guess I'll toss in my two cents worth.
When I was in high school the best computers we had were Apple IIes with 64k RAM, though we did have one with 128k that I used to do an independent study in Pascal(does anyone even know how to program in Pascal anymore???).
Oh my 15 year high school reunion is this Saturday. I graduated in 1987.
Oh we played lots of Apple II games at school back then - Choplifter, Hard Hat Mack, Lode Runner, Karateka, etc. Of course networks in public schools were basically non-existant at the time. Except we did have a funky 70s teletype terminal with a 300 baud modem(with coupler!) that you could dial into the county mainframes with.
Is it just me or does the name of the new Matrox card 'Parhelia' sound like some sort of dairy product? But seriously, I remember back in my Pentium 90 days(circe 1995) when the Matrox Millennium was the bomb. In those days before the 3D revolution, Matrox was king of the 2D hill. Unfortunately they dropped the ball in '97 with thelackluster 3D features of the Millennium II and Mystique cards. I'd love to see Matrox make a comeback and provide some serious competition for Nvidia, but Nvidia has the mindshare of gamers. Unless Nvidia somehow screws up by resting on their laurels(like 3Dfx did), I don't see the situation changing anytime soon.
If your college is especially lame, like the one where I went to grad school, they only broadcast over the campus cable TV system.
Yep that's right.. Listen to the radio through your TV.
The upside was that since the ratings were so low it was very easy to become a volunteer DJ. The downside was that they only allowed DJs to play songs from their stupid collection of ASCAP/RIAA approved Top 40 CDs.
I did it once before walking out in disgust. No wonder no one ever listened to the damn thing.
Selected Ambient Works 85-92 is actually quite nice.. The first time I heard it back in '93 was one of those pivotol listening experiences that turned me on to electronic music in general. Selected Ambient Works II, while quite a departure from the former, is probably one of the most creative, yet disturbing pieces of music I've ever heard. Sort of thing you would listen to after eating a tray of magic brownies while driving through the industrial nightmare landscape of the New Jersey Turnpike.
As for his most recent stuff, basically anything since '95/'96, I've been seriously disappointed. Perhaps the fame got to his head, as the one time 'Mozart in Mirrorshades' seems content to produce albums full of mostly shrieking noise.
Ummmm.. That would be something like $24 a gallon which just doesn't sound plausible to me. I was in Germany two years ago and it was around $3.50 a gallon. The most expensive gas in Europe at the the time, in the UK, I believe was around $4.50 a gallon. Somehow a six-fold increase in prices in just two years doesn't seem very likely.
For Christmas of 1981 I received an Intellivision from my parents which at that time was still selling for its launch price of $250 dollars, which adjusted for inflation is around $515 today. By comparison, an Atari VCS/2600 sold for around $129 in 1981 or roughly $266 today.
Games? Most retailed at around $30 back then.
Oh.. And 5.25" floppy disk drives sold for about $500 back then, or roughly $1030 in today's dollars.
Yeah like he was really prolific after finishing up 'Return of the Jedi' in '83. I can just see it now.. 'The Jar Jar Binks Christmas Special' or 'Clones on Ice'
Not true.. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the governement agency created by the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, supplies about 12% of the funding for public radio with an additional 3% coming in the form of Federal grants. An additional 18% of the funding comes from State and local governments. Altogether direct public funding makes up around 33% of the budget for public radio.
r s/ brooks%20radio.pdf
http://www.arts.cornell.edu/econ/graphic/semina
Loss of power to an engine is one thing, physically losing an engine from the airframe is a catastrophe so severe that pilots don't even train for it. A similar accident occured with an American Airlines DC-10 that crashed in Chicago shortly after takeoff form O'Hare in 1979.
. cg i?date=05251979&airline=American+Airlines
"The aircraft crashed on takeoff from Chicago O'Hare. During rotation, the no.1 engine separated from the wing, tearing out vital hydraulic lines. The loss of the no.1 electrical generator disabled the slat disagreement system, and the aircraft rolled over as the left-side slats retracted causing that wing to stall."
http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi_bin/view_details
Think about it.. The rationale behind making it Xbox only at first has to do with the economics of launching a new console. The Xbox needs a killer app to sell the console, especially when faced against the tough competition of veterans such as Nintendo and Sony. The console world is all about mindshare and Microsoft thinks the best way to generate word of mouth for the Xbox is to provide something that none of their competitors have. In this case that something is Halo, which has been one of the most eagerly awaited games for the PC in the last couple of years. The PC(and Mac) versions as far as I know are still in development and I imagine they will be superior to the console version. In the meantime if you just can't wait for the PC version then you'll have to pony up the cash to play it on the Xbox when it hits the store next week.
He even says Madden 2001 for PS2 is better than this!
A football game on a console... OOOOooooohhhh.. Now that's revolutionary concept!
Bah Panzer tanks suck.. It was the Tiger tanks that really kicked ass and made the allies shit in their pants. Lucky for them the Germans couldn't build enough of 'em or scrounge up enough petrol at the end to keep 'em running.
Oh yes.. The infamous Star Wars holiday special that George Lucas wishes would go away.
s ta r_wars_tv/index.html
I saw it the first time around in '78. I was 9 years old at the time, so I don't really remember much. Until recently I wasn't sure if it was real or just some horrible bad dream from my childhood. Nevertheless it is real and Salon did a piece on it about a year ago.
http://www.salon.com/ent/tv/feature/2000/12/05/
Actually CivNET was the horribly buggy multiplayer version of the original Civilization. Civ II Gold Edition is the version of Civ II that includes multiplayer support.
Yeah you definitely sound like you're referring to Call of Power which Sid Meier had nothing to do with(if its published by Activision its not the real thing). The "real" Civilization II was released by Microprose in the spring of '96 and looks much more like the precursor the Civ III then CTP ever did.
I miss the FMVs after building a wonder of the world from Civ II as well. What's even more annoying is when you build one it doesn't even tell you what it does right away. You have to find the wonder on the city view screen and click on it to bring up a description from the civilopedia screen.
There are also a few other usability problems that are mildly annoying - having to click twice on some buttons and only once on others. When your cities go into revolt there is no jeering crowd sound to let you know they are revolting. The smoke emitting from the city is the only real indication that this is occuring. I also wish the currently selected active unit would flash like it did in the previous versions.. The animated rotating disc just isn't as useful.
Also, I miss the sentry function from Civ I/II that would allow units to automatically wake up whenever an enemy unit moved into an adjacent sqaure.
One more thing, what's up with the lack of offensive capabilites on catapults and cannons? I'm still only about halfway through the game, but it seems a bit odd to me that these units can only be used in an augmented defensive capacity.
I hope the artillery units don't work the same way, but I have a bad feeling they do.
The Lian Li case is definitely worth the $$$. However Thinkgeek is a little pricey and you can pick up the basic pc60 case for $149 elsewhere, or in my case I got the pc65(which is the pc60 with a buily in window) for $169. If anything, a case is one of the few PC components that can be considered an investment and I plan to keep my Lian Li as the basis of my future upgrade path(at least as long as the ATX motherboard format is supported).
I agree the SIS735 offers great bang for the buck.. I got my ECS K7S5A SIS 735 board from Newegg for $65 a few weeks back. It's rock solid and even comes with built in 10/100 ethernet.
Yeah changing out the fan made a big difference. Not too mention getting the Volcano 6CU+ on my motherboard was a total pain in the arse. The Silverado by comparison snapped on quite easily.