Sabertooth

I have I-War. I haven't played it in about 4 years but it's pretty cool IMHO. I enjoyed the computer theme and its one of the better Jaguar tank-style games. Also, IIRC there is an "on rails" bonus stage in between levels that makes for an interesting change of pace. I'll have to dig it out and give it a spin soon.

Raiden is a great "couch game". Games like Raiden, Contra, Ikari Warriors, Double Dragon - basically any two-player co-op game involving a red player and a blue player were absolute blasts to play. Some of my favorite gaming memories involved these types of games. Also, way to improvise to create an episode in the middle of a hectic work schedule! Loved it!

Do you have picks of the Saturn. I've been thinking about adding one back. Is it functional and cosmetically clean?

Nice, Rick! Its important to stay organized. I've had to resort to underbed storage for most of my CIB games. I can get 50-60 CIB games in a bin depending on the system.

I got rid of most of my games in 1998-99 as a single lot. When I started getting back into old games I focused on Atari. The collection is really Atari heavy at this point. My favorite systems are the Jaguar, Lynx and 7800. Atari: Video Pinball Touch Me 2600 Six Switch w/ Composite 2600 4-Switch Vader 2600 Jr Sears Video Arcade Heavy Sixer 5200 2-port 7800 (x2) w/ LHE mod XEGS Lynx II (x2) Jaguar (x3) Jaguar Cd (x2) Nintendo: Famicom (JDM) Wii Magnavox: Odyssey 2 Sony: PS3

@Lost Dragon: I tend to agree with your assessment. However, I don't think that its unreasonable to suggest that the Jaguar wasn't pushed as far as it could have been. In my view, this is simply because of its short commercial lifespan. We really got 2.5 years of development. Only a handful of developers did more than one title: ATD, Eclipse, Rebellion, Llamasoft, and id. These devs could learn from the stumbles of their early efforts to get more out of their second games (except in the case of id where Wolf3D was a phone-in). Further, I believe that only Eclipse and ATD had the same teams work on two titles: IS2 and Battlemorph, respectively. Compared this to Saturn, released in '94 in Japan and continued to be supported through '98 in NA and '00 in Japan. As such, devs used learned techniques to really push the software in later games - in many cases beyond what was accomplished on PSX. Veteran teams were able to get 3 or 4 titles out in its lifecycle. Additionally, Atari didn't have the benefit of strong first party in-house development like Sega with Sonic Team, Team Andromeda and AM2. These teams were critical to Sega's quality (stunning) first party output. Compare this to the mostly inexperience (re:CHEAP) contractors that Atari hired for most Jaguar development.

Thanks for finishing this up RP! It was really well done!

Out of the three ReadySoft games, I could never get into Space Ace. Would love it if someone found DL2: Time Warp and released it.

I read about this on atari.jaguar.co.uk. This is impressive as a concept/mock-up. If he can come in with a functional and affordable alternative to the (fantastic) Atari Jaguar Pro-controller, I may be interested.

Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales (Atari Jaguar) Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy (Atari Jaguar) Battlezone (Atari 2600) The first one on the list was played in response to a forum Labor Day weekend challenge over on AA. The second was played in the hopes that I would find something positive to write/say about it for the Atari Jaguar Game By Game Podcast (I did not). The last was because it is every bit as fun today as it was when I was six years old!

There was a guy years back offering Jaguar end labels but he has long since gone. From what I recall, there were at least a few runs. It might be worth giving it a go.

Does anyone know what she worked on for the Jaguar? A Jag credit doesn't appear on her site, wiki or the Giant List of Classic Game Programmers (entry under her birth name, Bill Heineman). Maybe she was involved in Wolf 3D or Doom, given her association with the 3DO ports? Or it could have been some involvement with one of the abandoned titles. Also, as I understand it, development systems could use an IBM pc or Atari TT030s (though some folks undoubtedly used the Falcon). I do agree that creating a user friendly development environment is critical to 3rd party support and was a major barrier for jaguar software development.

The Lynx version Blue Lightning was largely an excellent After Burner clone that took advantage of the Lynx's sprite scaling capability to great effect. It did everything a pack in should do: a solid, fun gaming experience that demoed the power of the system. By contrast, Jaguar CD Blue Lightning didn't have the fluidity and arcade action of its predecessor, nor did it play to any of the Jaguar's strengths. As it is, Blue Lightning is just "ok". Its a shame that ATD and Atari did not put the level of care into this title that they did into Battlemorph. That was a real showpiece for the Jag CD. if you want to see great aerial arcade action from the time, After Burner for 32x is one of that system's stand out titles. Its all 2D sprites and it absolutely roars.

Dang it! Shinto beat me to the punch. Oh well, I guess that I'll have to be a contributor instead.

One of the reasons that I'm so fascinated by the Jaguar era of Atari Corp. is that they would try random things like this. It seems like Atari didn't have a unified vision for the platform or what a next generation console could/should be. As a result, they spent millions on developing new concepts/innovations as if in an effort to "find" the right formula that would resonate with consumers. The American Hero "GameFilm" concept is a prime example. It was an attempt to up the ante for FMV games by providing players choice that would change the outcome. It was not really fun outside of the glorious camp. Also, by '95 the FMV trend was losing steam and Atari's concept was well off the mark. Playstation and Saturn would essentially ignore FMV altogether in favor of 3D rendered cutscenes. To be fair, in the early-mid 90s game developers were struggling to take advantage of the CD-rom medium. Instead of making bigger, better games with great soundtracks, they tried to wow us with FMV clips and "interactive" movies. This really plagued the earliest CD platforms (Sega CD, CDi, 3DO, PC) the most. American Hero, had it been commercially released, would have been among the worst of these curiosities.

Great write-up, Rick. I picked up the SD version of the AtariMax last year. It is a little pricey but well worth it for the reasons you mentioned. I'm a huge fan of multicarts for classic systems. Having recently stored most of my collection, its a convenient way to play as it allows instant access to entire libraries on real hardware. i cant wait for the Concerto 7800 cart. A Lynx SD card is in the works too!

I subscribed to this and recommend it. Keep up the good work @nosweargamer!

Thanks for sharing RunPC. It's like a dream!!!! You don't have any kiosks left, do you?

@nosweargamer: I heard Ferg plug this on his latest podcast. I've always enjoyed your submissions to his show and will look forward to it!