Interesting Conversation

[Atari 5200 Guy]

Long story short, I was watching this video on the Jaguar and Jag CD by someone named Adam Koralik.  I posted a comment at least a year ago.  Through out the night there has been someone going by the name Gorilla Jones that has been replying to my comments.  I asked to share those posts on the forums here and even sent him an invite to the site.  But...wow...I don't even know what category to put this under.  Adjust accordingly.

 

We'll start with my original post that got the ball rolling:

 

Michael Allard

Highlighted comment

The Jaguar had the capabilities a Falcon was suppose to do.  Jag's only downfall is that Jack was a penny pincher.  With that said, sadly, the Jaguar only got 2 MB of RAM instead of 4.  That is the true bottleneck of the system...lack of RAM.  If it had more memory to play with then more might have been done with it.  What it got was impressive.  I've been a Jag owner since 1993 and consider it one of Atari's better ideas done wrong.  It's good but should have been better.

Gorilla Jones

Michael Allard ding ding ding. I visited Atari many times back in the day. We posed this question and Jack said it was still undecided. This was before Jaguars release. With a competent toolset, documentation, and 4MB of RAM it would have been a different story, truly.

 

Me: It does make one wonder "what if" if the Jaguar would have had that extra bit of RAM for developers to play around with. I have read the documentation that developers got for the system and it really isn't any wonder that they had trouble understanding it. To me it seems to bounce all over the place and it isn't really clear on how they system works from a programmer's point of view. It's still an awesome console and testament of what made Atari what it was.

 

 

Gorilla Jones

 

+Michael Allard​​ what a lot of people don't realize is that Atari wasn't really corporate or professional about a lot of things. If you ever got to visit Sunnyvale you'd notice how messy things were. In reality, most of the Atari staff were just 70s nerds who were doing something cool. They were a cool bunch. And yes, Jack was a massive penny pincher. I always thought Leonard was afraid of Jack LOL. I remember during the official Jag reveal conference how laid back it was. Just some fold out tables covered with table cloths from a wedding caterer. They all had Jag T shirts, and pretty much addlib the conference. At the end they handed out Jaguar duffle bags filled with Jag goodies, like the chocolate CD, super soakers, hats. The **** people at the airport confiscated the super soakers lol. Still have the bag and other stuff though. The chocolate CD turned to dust. Jack was cheap, but when it came to media he spared no expense. He would pick us up in stretch limos and put us up in nice hotels, take us to amusement parks, dinners. Wish he would have put that money into the console. 

 

Michael Allard

Wow! It sounds like Jack had his good points, too. I agree that the money would have been beneficial if it were spent on the hardware he was trying to market. Would it be OK if I copy-pasted your comment with my friends at Atari.IO?

 

Gorilla Jones

+Michael Allard Sure. I'll try and remember more. It's been a long time and I'm an old man lol. I met Minter a couple of times. Such a cool laid back guy. I interviewed him for an article, but have spent years looking for the **** audio cassette. A funny story about one of our visits. We were on a stop over flight with the EGM guys. They were really obnoxious. When we landed since me and my partner only had carry on we went straight to the limo. When the driver asked us if there was anyone else we said no. We arrived at the hotel and registered as the EGM guys since they had a suite. The next day they were furious. Yeah, kind of childish but they deserved it. They were ****. Trying to remember the Atari employee who showed us around that day, he had false vampire teeth implanted surgically, so weird. I think he was involved with black ice white noise but can't remember. He was super nice. 

 

For family-friendly reasons I did edit some of the posts.  If you want to view the postings in full I will link to the video.  Mine should be the top-most post.

 

 

Sounds like an interesting guy.  If you guys know Gorilla and don't want him here for one reason or another then my apologies.  It just sounds like he has a lot of information pertaining to Atari that might be of interest. 

[Atari 5200 Guy]

From my understanding, the Jaguar development systems were the same as production units.  The only difference was a switch on the underside of the system to set it for development or a common system.  

 

And I blame most lack of software development on the documentation they made.  It's all over the place and lacks any real information to help a developer whether new to programming or veterans.  

 

As far as the Jag CD goes it would have made sense for the add on to also increase the RAM in the entire system.  Sega's CD for the Genesis/Mega Drive enhanced the abilities of the main console when CDs were used.  A slight increase in RAM and graphic abilities were ever present.  The downfall was that no one knew what to do with the new CD technology in a gaming environment.

[Atari 5200 Guy]

The Jaguar, in my opinion, was a true testament as to where video games were headed.  It was the first 64-bit console even out doing modern PC's at that time.  It is also the first stand-alone console to offer hardware that could perform 3D gaming.  I never noticed Hover Strike's frame rate issue mainly because I was use to seeing game play similar on the 386 without a math co-processor struggling to play some later 3D games including Doom.  It did get some incredible games to play or sure.  It is a sexy machine, too, that I believe lived up to what it was designed for.

[Atari 5200 Guy]

I had both cart and CD versions of Hover Strike.  While the CD port does offer a bit more "flare" the cart version is spot-on good time fun.  If others are dogging it then they are either not giving it a fair chance, comparing it to games on consoles that came after the Jaguar, or are simply keeping up the "hype" from others without even playing it.  Give it a chance before dogging it.  Cybermorph, too.  They are technical achievements in gaming that should not be overlooked.  Cybermorph was polygon-based lacking texture mapping while Hover Strike introduced the texture-mapping of the hardware.  In my opinion both are unique and fun games that are original, have remained original, and not another company or individual has ever tried to recreate those games on any platform.  They remain one of a kind.  I*War too for that matter.  

 

Seriously...the Jaguar, Cybermorph, and Hover Strike are not that bad.  Just like how dedicated NEO*GEO gamers will defend that console Jaguar gamers that honestly find the system enjoyable will defend the Jaguar with their last breath.  It was headed in the right direction from a technical stand point and they style of games coming out.  Not all were good but those that were accomplished technical feats that were not done before.