Clint Thompson

You know, I hadn't even realized that it said 16-bit as I was posting it! Nice catch, I wonder what the real story behind that is then or if it's because the processor was 16bit and something else was 32? It's mentioned as having the same Blossom video processor as the ATW800?

Good! I'm glad because the cheap ChineseNES ripoff I got for $22 is garbage. One of the controllers is shorting out, the screen flickers every 30 seconds and it doesn't have the SMB games I was wanting to play. I also don't want to pay $250 for an NES either.

Exactly this. They would have to retain me as a customer for 6 more months just to recoup what they've spent on my movie watching but again, there's just not that much time to watch that many movies in a short period of time thus nullifying the need to keep the card for extended periods anyway. Blade Runner and done. Well, I'll probably use the remainder of my month and watch whatever but that's it.

Yeah, there really are so many options available to us anymore across the board when it comes to entertainment. Like I said, I don't imagine myself keeping it after Blade Runner. I think something like this could be cool when it comes to more overly expensive casual sports like bowling. Without a coupon or group deal, bowling for 2 people including shoes and 3 games each quickly reached the $40 mark.

It basically acts as a credit card that you check in once you get to the theater with an app that loads the card so you can purchase the movie ticket. It's pretty easy really but since they're going through a shockwave, it may take 2-3 weeks for you to get your card. It took about 2 1/2 weeks for ours to arrive.

The $9.95 a month for unlimited theatre movies? I too thought it was too good to be true but my significant counterpart and I both got one so we could give it a try. So far combined, we've seen $92 worth of movies for $19 and even got to see the new IT and Close Encounters of the Third Kind with it. Those two alone made the price of the subscription itself worth it. We love movies and watch them a lot but don't really go out to the theaters and for a good reason, it gets expensive. We're taking advantage for what it is for now but the reality is, there just aren't that many great movies to see right now. Blade Runner is the next one I'm really interested in seeing and then after that, will probably cancel because even as much of a great deal it is, just going out to see a movie 6 times a month to really take advantage of the subscription seems kind of... excessive. Does anyone else have a subscription? The only downfalls I see are you can't see 3D movies (not a big deal to me) and they can't be FathomEvent movies (though I was still able to watch CE3K) just as long as they're not on a special wall to wall screen that AMC seems to have implemented.

I always find it strange when an entire audience of a movie theatre claps at the end but that's what they did... it was packed.

Did anyone get to see it last night or are planning to see it this weekend? No spoilers but it turned out better than I expected. I want to say I like it even more so than the original. Pennywise is super creepy in this one - at first I thought he was just kind of silly but that changed after I saw the movie and what happens. Felt like I was watching an 80s movie... =D

... and I couldn't believe just how incredible it was. This is why magazines died. Not because it was bad but because they used to actually be REALLY good! I sat and read the entire thing. From topics of how cats talk, to women rubbing drugs over their bodies, to computer babies and introducing your infant to your computer from the first day you bring them home up into their 8th month to recognize patterns and colors and shapes from the screen and then talks about CD-ROMs being the medium of the future. It was such a refreshing read. It's weird how something from 1986 jam packed in under 120-pages could bring such joy and entertainment in 2017. The ending was my favorite part... The Last Word, and it was a story about a guy going to different food joints to eat genetically engineered foods that were micro-sized and you could pop them into your mouth. Seriously, where else can I find that many strangely interesting topics to read about in a short period of time? Facebook is full of cat videos and memes and the world seems super depressing with news, rants and bitching about literally everything. This was everything but.... we're talking about the future! Even more-so interesting were the talks of medicine and Taurine. My girlfriend has multiple different types of seizures for the past 7-years, has a VNS installed and has tried probably more drugs than any lab rat should be subjected to, only to still have them. The magazine mentions scientists have known that Taurine has helped with seizures for a long time now. That was in 1986 and it's 2017 and she's still struggling with every known man made drug to find something that works. Sure enough, we did a quick search about Taruine and I'm finding that many people say it has helped or even cured them of seizures for years. So that's what we're going to try this weekend to see if it helps control them. It was also mentioned that it helps with floaters? Interesting. It also made me realize how diluted and boring things have become in comparison. How can I find something written from almost 30-years ago so fascinating? Things I wouldn't have really read as a kid or most likely unable to even really comprehend but now re-discovering for the first time. It's really refreshing. I'll definitely be picking up a few more magazines to see what else lies in store. There are definitely some bizarre stories to be read but at least it was truly entertaining. Just wanted to share how something so old can make someone feel really alive... even if only for a moment. It was magazines like this that helped people dream. Imagine. Inspire. Really look forward to the future.

I've never really given it much thought like that but you've brought up a really great point and that's pointing out the transition titles of the Jaguar. The second wind and the truly stellar titles that the system was capable of. Iron Soldier 2 and Zero 5 are both amazing games as they are. SkyHammer is impressive and could have been a real winner had it been properly finished and polished. I'm not saying it doesn't deserve it's own standing credit for being an unfinished game but had they really went all the way through with it and really polished the bits near the end, that would've been a truly great example to side along with IS2 and Zero 5. Then there's World Tour Racing. So much promise that needed to be corrected before an actual release happened. I love what it could have been and it shows so much hope but the framerate ultimately kills it for me. The fact that an even better version is said to have existed makes matters even worse. Then there's BattleSphere, which goes without saying. Strangely I was never a hardcore fan of BattleSphere nor got into it like many others did but I can recognize a really great game and give it credit for what it is capable of, even if it's not exactly my cup of tea.

I spend a lot of time thinking about design, it's one of the best things about Atari that has always drawn me into their machines/consoles. They were always ahead of their time. I've been wanting an Atari ST Book for a long time now but have yet to find the perfect one that isn't exceeding $2,000 in price but still with no luck. For some reason, I really started questioning the LCD design layout tonight. What if I told you that the bezel area on the left-hand side was to serve as a form of alternate input recognition for signatures or writing and the ST to translate into text? Seems logical considering the time period was also when they were experimenting with the STPad and hand-written input recognition. I mean... why else have that 'area' there? Maybe I haven't discovered anything and this isn't news to anyone and it was actually intended to be just that all along but if so, I've never read or heard about it. Judge for yourself: ST Book - as in, something you could literally write into...

Very cool! So it's actually a sub and not a shark? I couldn't help but feel this could've been a great JAWS game but I have an imagination I suppose...

Thanks for sharing your memories Rick. I've finally had a chance to come back around these parts and try and catch up with some things and found this thread =) the first pic gave me the warm fuzzies. That's a really nice looking VCR... do you remember the brand?

No updates really, life and work has taken its toll on me this year and I just haven't had nearly as much free time as I was hoping for to do anything at all really outside of just that - family life and work. With that said, this may just end up as a demo and nothing more. I'm not really sure the demand for strip poker on the Jaguar CD is really there but you never know, I may go through with it if I ever run across spare time. There's another project that I'm going to be doing renders for that will be a lot more fun in the end and meaningful and is expected to be on the Jaguar and who knows, maybe that'll push me into doing more on this here and there on the side but as it is time is non-existent. I miss coming around these forums and talking to people and reading the posts, too. What seems like a month or so quickly turns into 5.

One other very fair thing to point out was it's the first time all game titles originally MSRP started at $69. After taxes for a single video game, that's absolutely absurd. To think that people or parents would pay $69 for Skiing and Snowboarding for a $259 system that is slightly better when you can get it on the cheaper SNES and much cheaper game for the same game, parents listened to Atari and they Did The Math.

I don't think texture mapping hardware support is a fair flaw to point out or a flaw at all. The Jagauar had goraud shading that hardly anyone ever used. Martin Brownlow wanted to use much faster shading for Missile Command but Atari would've have it and instead made him texture map the game to death. The memory constraints are kind of legitimate, especially in regards to cache bug of the GPU and inability to jump directly within memory. It's like modern day CPUs, if you disable the cache on the CPU, performance drops quite significantly. However, every time someone may want to point out that the Jaguar is incapable of good performance, I want to point them in the direction of Rayman. Atari wanted it to be a machine it wasn't. Fans wanted it to be a machine it wasn't. The Jaguar just didn't have a fair chance regardless, too many things crippling it before it even got released and it all goes back to Atari.

I've slowly started to jump into programming the Jaguar in a very cheating fashion by using Rb+ - it really gives you an idea of what the system is capable of and quickly makes you realize the limited resources it has. Primarily being RAM. The one very interesting feature I like about the Jaguar are the ability to have objects in different resolutions. The character can be 4bit, the background can be 16bit and then the sprites can be 8bit, for example. Maybe it's like that on other consoles, I don't know but it seems unique in its ability.

Strangely enough, while Batman on the Lynx wasn't the greatest, I played it as a kid and wasn't a huge fan of the series but still mostly enjoyed it for what it was. It was a pack-in along with Hard Drivin', Ninja Gaiden and Tecmo Super Bowl and even tho I wasn't much of a football fan, found myself enjoying that game quite a bit as well too! Really makes me miss the potential the Lynx had and that maybe I should have focused more on Lynx games at the time than really shitty Jaguar games.

Thanks for the kind words guys. Added lasers and sound effects. Still wonky looking but I'm learning!

In the end and while I'm grateful for all the fascinting different designs and computers/systems that emerged from Atari, they just seriously had too much fucking hardware and serious lack of focus and commitment. All the hardware in the world and not a real single in-house triple A title worthy of screaming "I've got to get another Atari!" I find the reasons for the Lynx not succeeding nothing but an excuse. Even if they got screwed on the LCD prices, they ultimately dropped the ball. That handheld could have lived well into the late 90s had it been properly supported but the dropped it sometime in 89 it seemed only to re-emerge with it and release a few new titles to bring more attention back to them but by then it was too late obviously becuse everyone knew they had just dropped the Lynx. It's weird for a company to come back years later and surprise everyone with a re-launch with a few new titles - Missile Command, Jimmy Connors Tennis. They rushed everything with the Jaguar across the board and there was simply no way it was going to end well for them. I know they were hurting for money and time was against them but you either do it right the first time around or do it wrong by rushing it being entirely flawed and then dying out that way instead. I don't even think the Jaguar needed more time, it just needed more engineers thrown at it to ensure it was going to be right 100% before it left the facility. It's sad to learn about the massive amount of hardware bugs that hindered performance as a result. They also cheapened the hardware too much to the point of making it incapable of keeping up with the upcoming generation of consoles or even worse, a way to upgrade like the other consoles had. While it would have been nice to have a CD unit from the onset, 4MB of RAM would have been far more important IMO and hardware bugs fixed from the onset. If they could have just put it off a single year and released it at $299, it could have possibly afforded them to go a JagDuo route with the bugs fixed, CD hardware included and increased RAM size... not to mention ample time for developers to actually have decent titles to launch with the console. Checkered Flag could have been playable, imagine that! But no.... they rushed it all and the consumers ultimately got screwed in the end. It's insane to think that 2 people - just two people, developed the Jaguar itself. As if it's any wonder why they had the issues they did...

Even so, the Pokey is that to Atarians as the SID was to the Commodorians.... even to this day I still find the sound produced from the POKEY to be very warming and desirable to listen to, it simply was an amazing chip and honestly, Atari didn't need to go above and beyond to create an entirely new chip. They just needed to implement the one they already had and was proven to deliver amazing results. Crazy to think about that Atari, the creators of all this amazing hardware (even if they did get it wrong at times) at such a lower price point than their competition, you really would've thought developers would have flocked to their systems for that reason as well but then again, once you realize the potential and installed user base of the NES, it's hard to look anywhere else but where the gold is. Everything beyond that was done for probably a quick buck with little care because they knew it was a dying platform or just out of pure love for Atari and the system, which nothing really seems to shine from that as an example in 3rd party form at all sadly.

After seeing the list of games available as pack-in (though I"m kind of confused since all the games seem to be listed as released in 1987) Ms. Pac-Man definitely would have been the title to go with. I was going to say Xenophobe too but realized that was also released in 1987, though maybe just due to the launch time of the 7800 itself, I don't know. I played Pole Position II once... and it was awful. ;-) but really, once you play Rad Racer on the NES, nothing compares and you quickly equate the gameplay of still stuck in the earlier 80s. It's no surprise Nintendo become the giant it did. Punch Out Marble Madness Mario Bros x 3 Rad Racer Tetris Off Road I see MotorPsycho and shame Atari for their attempt to re-use Pole Position and turn it into a motorcycle game. One can't help but wonder what Nintendo would've been capable of producing for the 7800 if they owned the hardware. Then I'm just reminded about just how crippled the 7800 was.... released 3-years too late, forced to be backwards compatible with 2600, no amazing Pokey chip included on the unit itself. You have to be kind of amazed that it even got released at all by that time. Clearly shows that Jack didn't understand the value of fun games over amazing hardware.

Added a star field and captured via Fraps for clarity...

Now that I know I can use Rb+ for the other project, I've wanted to dive in with something far less demanding and give a go at doing something that will help me learn how to set everything up properly and will lessen the headache in the future for having to troubleshoot or understand what I'm doing wrong with more complex projects. I've got about 4 hours into it so far and most of it's rendering graphics and doing the music and toying around with the variables but... I've got a ship in space that flips around at 28 frames of animation with a few space debris rocks with 4 frames each for fun and is completely controllable. It's a start... A short video clip of it running... https://youtu.be/zrViex6J0gU Ultimately I would like to make a modernized Cosmic Ark clone for the Jag, should be simple and fast (but I know it's not going to be lol) and teach me a thing or two. If anyone remembers the 2600 game...

Those are incredible! =D Now when are we going to get the Tempest 2000 soundtrack on Vinyl ;-)