ptw-ace

Atari Owls impressive texture-mapped (and voxel) 3D engine:
 
 

After the OpenLara Jaguar exploits I remebered Wing Commander Prophecy on the GBA and thought it would be great to see if the Jag's trusty 68K could handle it.
This would be a fantastic title for the Jaguar.

Explains the pros and cons of the Atari Jaguar hardware VERY well. Great video.
 

Same here... I remember renting the original Top Gear from Blockbusters or Movie Gallery. I enjoyed it; definitely a memorable game, real fast pace and great music.
I can't tell you how long I wished and wondered why both the 7800 and 5200 never really caught on... Both systems had way better hardware than the any of the game console that came afterwards; the NES, the Sega Master System. I think in the thick of the business aspect, Atari just kind of lost focus and tons of money due to the arcade crash of 84. To be quite honest when I compared SNES "Top Gear 3000" with 7800 "Motor Psycho" looking at how they both performed, personally I believe the Atari 5200 has a really get chance of pulling "Top Gear 3000" style graphics where with some clever programming, it might be possible to hit a sweet spot in performance... That was really where my head was when I begin looking at both games.
I totally agree... The 7800 and the 2600 are more than deserving of extra hardware on the cartridge that really pushes the system and adds better ranges of graphics, sound and AI. I like the added music to the game; something that was very much needed on the 7800 in comparison to the 2600 sound chip. It sort of reminds me of "Gimmick and Batman Return of The Joker" for the NES by "Sunsoft". I think the cartridges for those games used extra ram and a sound chip that added more channels. I'd love to see more great games released for that system with better graphics and sound.
 
 

The 7800 is a very flexible system.  It's not limited to the processors it has been given (6502, TIA, MARIA, RIOT).  It's memory can be expanded upon through the cartridge as can it's sound abilities.  I'm betting if more time was taken that cartridge slot could also handle an additional CPU to work along side the 6502.  The 7800 is limited only by the imagination and willingness of the person developing for it.  And I also bet that, with a little bit of reworking, the 7800's sound abilities and expansions could handle a different sound processor besides POKEY.  
The SNES is an OK system but still suffers from some slowdown issues on some games when too much is going on onscreen at one time...something the 7800 doesn't have a problem with.  The original Top Gear is my favorite.  Spent a lot of hours on that one.

Hi everyone... Today I was looking at some stuff on the SNES via the Internet and ran into this game called "Top Gear 3000"... It's a typical racing game, but the game engine is very fast due to a co-processor on the cartridge to draw the roads on the fly. When I looked at the game play, it reminded me of the Atari 7800 game "Motor Psycho" where you race these tracks and even find yourself flying in the air when you hit a ramp. I was thinking the 7800, although not as fast as the SNES with a co-processor, really does hold its own when comparing both games.
 
 
 

Hi everyone... Today I was looking at some stuff on the SNES via the Internet and ran into this game called "Top Gear 3000"... It's a typical racing game, but the game engine is very fast due to a co-processor on the cartridge to draw the roads on the fly. When I looked at the game play, it reminded me of the Atari 7800 game "Motor Psycho" where you race these tracks and even find yourself flying in the air when you hit a ramp. I was thinking the 7800, although not as fast as the SNES with a co-processor, really does hold its own when comparing both games.
 
 
 

Thank you guys!
Here is my planned latest update:
 
 

Yea I use to compare the NES hardware with the 7800 later as I find out more info on the 7800 specs and wonder how Atari dropped the ball, but looking back, they just lost so much money they didn't really care too much for the gamer liked they should (IE WarnerBrothers) and saw a great product that could sell like slice bread considering how well the 2600 did. Even looking at the Atari 5200, which was basically the Atari 800 computer; even with the graphic chip the way it was, it still had way more leverage over the NES due to the amount of RAM the system was packing. Nintendo just had a better formula for making home games versus the shovel-ware the 2600 was getting... It was just so much hype, I guess because it was so much money in the air back in those days they just lost sight of things and let precious opportunities slip through their fingers. Didn't mean to rant on like that, but when I think of the "Atari System 1", I always think of the Atari 7800, which was out around the same year 1984... It was also the year I was in first grade remembering all of the Atari hype that was previously around before the NES debut so... lol 🤣 It's great memories for me as well.

Yea I use to compare the NES hardware with the 7800 later as I find out more info on the 7800 specs and wonder how Atari dropped the ball, but looking back, they just lost so much money they didn't really care too much for the gamer liked they should (IE WarnerBrothers) and saw a great product that could sell like slice bread considering how well the 2600 did. Even looking at the Atari 5200, which was basically the Atari 800 computer; even with the graphic chip the way it was, it still had way more leverage over the NES due to the amount of RAM the system was packing. Nintendo just had a better formula for making home games versus the shovel-ware the 2600 was getting... It was just so much hype, I guess because it was so much money in the air back in those days they just lost sight of things and let precious opportunities slip through their fingers. Didn't mean to rant on like that, but when I think of the "Atari System 1", I always think of the Atari 7800, which was out around the same year 1984... It was also the year I was in first grade remembering all of the Atari hype that was previously around before the NES debut so... lol 🤣 It's great memories for me as well.

It's funny you phrased it that way. I always thought the same thing. In the mid-80s, (certainly before I had seen the NES) I always saw the Atari 7800 as a robust, industrial strenth arcade machine, the same way we saw the Neo-Geo Gold a few years later. The 7800 was released in 1984 in some markets. Had Warner held on a few more months (even if they ended up "loaning" the company to Jack) the 7800 would've seen national distribution and perceptions would be different. That two year gap cost them big time.
What's more is Atari's loss of the Lorraine chipset from Amiga, which Atari had licensed for a new video game system. Imagine Amiga-like graphics on a home video game system from Atari in 1986. That TRULY would have been an arcade-quality console and would have been a 16-Bit console on the market 5 years before SNES reached US shores.

GCC were responsible for the amazing arcade games on the 7800.  If things would have worked out - the big IF, the 7800 would have came to market in 1984.  The arcade titles on the 7800, like Food Fight, Ms. Pac Man, Dig Dug would have blown anything out of the water back then.  I pictured it like this - Remember when we had our NES at home, then the Neo Geo home system showed up and you could actually play arcade perfect games in your living room... If the 7800 came out in 84, thats what it would have been like.  Atari’s Arcade division came out with some of the best arcade experiences of my life time, I loved playing them back in the day, and love playing them now.  

DEFENDER 2000 drops today on The Jag Bar. This is the first new episode of The Jag Bar since the Cybermorph Christmas Special in December 2016! The Boyz play @an ox Jeff Minter's Defender 2000 on the Atari Jaguar.  Four Defender games in one - Defender 2000, Classic Defender, Defender Plus and Plasma Pong. Make sure you’re subscribed. Big shoutout to @Atari Creep and everybody who made it to the livestream of the filming of this show (see my post above). New episodes coming all summer long:
 
 

I was just watching some of the video and Atari really just built a great name for themselves back in the early 80s... It's too bad they never consolized the "Atari System 1"; at one time I use to think that the 7800 was Atari attempt to bring arcade games like Road Blaster and Indiana Jones to the household until I researched the history. I would love to home-brew for the Atari System 1 and did some search on the hardware, but it looks like some has already manage to pull off something on the old arcade hardware.
 

I was just watching some of the video and Atari really just built a great name for themselves back in the early 80s... It's too bad they never consolized the "Atari System 1"; at one time I use to think that the 7800 was Atari attempt to bring arcade games like Road Blaster and Indiana Jones to the household until I researched the history. I would love to home-brew for the Atari System 1 and did some search on the hardware, but it looks like some has already manage to pull off something on the old arcade hardware.
 

Love my Road Blasters cabinet, but wouldn’t mind another just to switch out Indiana and Marble Madness.  
Such great memories with this game, from the music, to the digitized speech, and the chance to be Indy... wow.

Mine arrived!  Just about exactly 2 weeks after payment.  It's awesome. 
 

Rafał Jankowski has announced he will be releasing a new multicart for the Atari Lynx called the AgaCart.  The AgaCart will use an SD cart for storing ROM files. You choose the games using buttons on the back of the cartridge.  The Cart supports 256k and 512k games in .lyx format, 128k files need to be converted to 256k. The maximum number of files is 199.



Rafał Jankowski has released already a 48-in-1 Lynx multicart in the past, so he has experience with this type of project and this is essentially an updated version of his previous multicart.  



For those interested, the AgaCart can already be ordered by contacting Rafał at the Polish Atari Forums.  He plans to start a thread for taking orders on Atari Age as well.  If you're curious about the technical details, check out the thread at the Polish Atari Forum.

Ever wonder how we shoot an episode?  Well now you can get a look at how we shoot an episode of the Jag Bar.  If you ever wondered how to do it... its not that hard. 
 

hi everyone,
 
 
 
 
Here is our latest update to Novawolf, for the Atari 8-bit, on cartridge. Peter and I did some retooling and added another option: simultaneous 2-player game play. Thanks for viewing!
Lance
www.atarisales.com
 

It would've been cool if Atari added extra memory to the CD unit for the Jaguar... Also I was looking at the "Motorola 68881 FPU" and thought it a nice addition to the CD unit. If you look at the "Sega CD" it had added features like a faster 68000 with hardware to support scaling and rotating. Being that the Jags 68K and DSP are the only processors to have full access memory, every little resource would've helped. Is it possible to use the 68881 to control a CD unit...? Just a geek having fun with ideas, that's all. 😉

Seems like a good idea... Even with the Jag as it currently stands I often thought about the back ports on the current Jag adding some memory through those ports... To my understanding I think the DSP would be the only processor to have such access to something like that. The GPU OP probably wouldn't allow any access to any extra memory from the back unless my understanding of the Jaguar is flawed. The GPU back port is meant to display images only via the video chip receiving images from the OP; haven't find any documents to dispute those facts, which is shame for the GPU not to have access to extra memory without a workaround that's taxing to the system.