I like it but it isn't for everyone
Written: Dec 12 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Some very fun games, including Alien Vs. Predator, Rayman, NBA Jam TE, Primal Rage, Power Drive Rally, Battlesphere, and a few others.
Cons: A much greater number of cruddy games or 16-bit titles which don't remotely push the system.
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| Dracmania's Full Review: Atari Jaguar |
I bought a Jaguar the week that Rayman, the CD-ROM and the PSX came out. I've enjoyed Atari systems all along and I enjoy the Jaguar too. But I have to say that it isn't a system for everyone.
Like the Atari 7800, there's a lot of misinformation about the Jaguar. While it has flaws, a lot of the press and public were too hard on the system. Many of the comments made about the Jaguar are often reflective of extraordinary ignorance. Have you heard the old "Jaguar isn't 64-bit, it just uses two 32 bit processors running in parallel" argument? It's a crock, not even remotely true (the Jaguar has five processors running in parallel, not two) yet widely prevelant.
The Jaguar came at a weird time - the 16-bit consoles were starting to slow down while new 32-bit systems from Sony and Sega were looming on the horizon. The Jaguar and 3DO and CD32 came in that weird transition period and all died quickly when the Playstation came out.
The Jaguar was a 64-bit system (it has 64-bit processors, 64 bit memory and a 64-bit databus which pumped data through the system 64-bits at a time). But when it came to multi-processor systems, bitness meant squat and the 32 bit playstation outperformed the 64-bit Jaguar, thanks to dedicated 3-D hardware, greater RAM memory, better development tools, better lisences and better game designers.
This isn't to say the Jaguar wasn't innovative: it was ... by 1993 standards. It threw around more polygons than the Genesis, SNES or 3DO, offered a full 16-7 million colours, megabytes of RAM, decompression, Z-Buffering, texture mapping and a lot of other things which were just coming to consoles in the early 1990s.
But Atari took so long in getting all the elements needs for a launch together that when Sony arrived, the Jaguar's opportunity was lost. Some of the Jaguar's problems are listed below:
* Terrible development tools: the Jaguar was legendary when it came to "difficult consoles". I was once told by a developer that programming on a Sega Saturn was MUCH easier. The Jaguar had proprietary RISC processors that often needed to be programmed in assembly. This freaked out developers who often relied on the system's weaker but familiar 68000 processor instead of its more powerful RISC chips. It also caused many games to be delayed.
* Poor developer support. Atari really tried to get developers to support the Jaguar but they couldn't get the commitment needed to give the system life. Many developers were bargain basement guys who weren't as skilled as the developers found in Nintendo and Sega's fold. Many big name developers who signed on to create Jaguar games only seemed interested in doing quick (and cheap) ports of their 16-bit titles. Atari, given it's cash position, didn't really have the option of financing a big-named title either. I'm sure that RARE, given $30 million and four or five years to figure out the Jaguar could have come up with something that blew people away but the Jaguar didn't have the benefit of a $30 million budget, 5 years to live or interest from RARE.
* Poor games. I love the Jaguar but many of its games just sucked! A lot of games had potential or strong elements, but were so poorly executed that they weren't fun. Take Trevur McFurr in the Crescant Galaxy. A lot of people who saw pictures of this game in 1993 were impressed by its 24-bit graphics. The game, however, was terrible. Cybermorph was a big improvement in polygon graphics when compared to Starfox - it chucked around many more polygons and offered a 3-D environment instead of a game on rails. But it had flaws - polygon pop up, an irritating voice and some of the ugliest colours chosen for a game. Highlander looked pretty but was so boring and hard to control that I never played it. Blue Lightning looked 16-bit. Club Drive sounded like a fun game on paper, but horrendous control and butt-ugly graphics ruined it.
* Lack of continued support. People are often amazed at how much 7th generation games improve upon early games for a system. People raved when Donkey Kong Country came out for the SNES and how it blew the graphics on other 16-bit games (as well as many 3DO and Jaguar titles) away. People thought the Genesis had limits and passed out when they saw it doing Toy Story. Ditto for the Atari 2600 and Solsris, Mortal Kombat II for the Sega Master System, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game for the NES and many, many other games that pushed systems where people thought they couldn't go.
The Jaguar didn't have that luxery. Most developers quit the system long before they new how to really push the system. The few second generation games which were released did offer a glimpse into what experience could offer: Battlemorph and Iron Soldier II did improve over Cybermorph and Iron Solider I. But 2nd generation titles were unusual on the Jaguar and most developers quit after their first title.
This isn't to say the Jaguar is all bad. I like many of the games on the system and I think that if the system had released a majority of games at the quality level of Alien Vs. Predator, Doom, Battlemorph, Iron Soldier II, Rayman, Battlesphere, Skyhammer, Tempest 2000 and a few others - Atari might have found a niche before Sony hit the scene. But a combination of cruddy games like Kasumi Ninja, Club Drive, Checkered Flag (yeah - let's steer with a bar of soap), and I-War; as well as very 16-bit looking titles like Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, Dino Dudes, Baldies (the game is quite fun but nothing to brag about visually), Syndicate, Flashback, Cannon Fodder, Ruiner Pinball and others did little to convince anyone that this was truly a next generation system.
It was - and anyone who has played Battlesphere or Alien vs. Predator knows that it went where the Genesis and SNES could not go. But not enough for me to recommend it to mainstream developers.
Recommended:
No
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Dracmania
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