So, how was Atari Jaguar tech? (and general Jag discussion)

[swaaye]

It may have been more powerful than 3DO. 3DO probably had more decent games though, believe it or not. CD-ROM let 3DO at least have no storage constraints, too, so there were some other game development avenues to go down if so desired. The lack of FMV capability probably really hurt Jaguar during its day lol.

 

[Mize]

I had both a Jaguar and 3DO. 3DO was quite fun but - like the Jaguar - few games. The Jaguar didn't just push sprites though...I remember a lame fly-shooter with phong shaded polys, don't I? Jaguar was so-so...That lame fly-shooter, Wolf3D, Tempest 2000, Doom & AvP are really the only games I remember...

 

[Mize]

I forgot about Iron Sodier - that was actually quite good...I guess I must have sold that thing...

 

[holsty101]

... lame fly-shooter ...

Cybermorph?

 

[Mize]

Yep, Cybermorph - came with the unit. not sprites but lame IMHO.

 

[Tahir2]

I remember finishing CyberMorph. It was OK - gouraud shaded rather than phong shaded however. Its "killer app" was the ability for the polygons to morph from one shape to another.
I know. . .a bit lame.

The Jaguar was a bit of a disappointment and a huge waste of money for me. I remember saving ages for it too.. hehe.

However Tempest 2000 really kicked ass, as did Alien vs Predator. Very scary games.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijjQpOuognI

 

[Danalys]

it's intresting to compare alien vs predator with alien trilogy on the PS1. in someways i think AvP was better. and then there are games that can be compared with things like the early sega virtua games. problem is that those games are sort of early experiments and were soon surpased.

i remember the scrolling on the jag was silky smooth. credits had never looked so good. they should have stuck to the techniques used for doom clones really. since they were far more visually impressive. the jag also seemed to be the first console using transparencies.

 

[Megadrive1988]

I remember seeing some specs on the Jaguar 2 or whatever it was called pretty impressive, and if I remember right, well to do in terms of superiority in respect to the PS1, Saturn, N64. However the ultimate unreleased console for that era was the 3D0 M2. That thing was a beast for 1997.

Jaguar 2 aka Project Midsummer sounded fairly impressive. more powerful than PS1 and N64, but nowhere near as powerful as Dreamcast. so more or less on par with M2. maybe a somewhat behind M2 in some areas, and somewhat ahead in other areas.


specs, info, etc

http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/jaguar/jag2.html
url]http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/jaguar/jag2sch.jpg[/url]

Keeping with the whole theme of the codename of the console: "Midsummer"
as in William Shakespears "Midsummers night dream" The new Tom & Jerry II
chipset was also given codenames reflecting the characters from
the well known play: Oberon & Puck
(a label underneath this unit says Oberon &Theseus.)

Unfortunately, just as the play's own message says "Love is blind" so was
the fact that Atari was blindly travelling down a short and windy road headed
for its painful demise as 1996 approached and with it the end of the Jaguar,
the hopeful Jaguar II and Atari itself as the company would be reverse
merged into JTS Corp, a small hard drive maker who quickly squandered
Atari's money and liquidated the warehouse of Atari Lynx & Jaguar stock,
then filed for bankruptcy in 1998.

Atari Jaguar II Spec's

The following Information was provided to
the Atari History Site by: Markus Kirschbaum

Size: 10.5" x 12" x 3.5"
Controls: Power on/off
Display: Resolution up to 1600 x 600 pixels (50 Hz/interlace)
32-bit "Extended True Color" display with 16,777,216
colors simultaneously (additional 8 bits of supplimental
graphics data support possible)
Multiple-resolution, multiple-color depth objects
(monochrome, 2-bit, 4-bit, 8-bit, 16-bit, 24-bit) can be
used simultaneously
Ports: Cartridge slot/expansion port (64 bits)
RF video output
Video edge connector (video/audio output)
(supports NTSC and PAL; provides S-Video, Composite, RGB
outputs, accessible by optional add-on connector)
Four controller ports
Digital Signal Processor port (includes high-speed
synchronous serial input/output)
Controllers: Eight-directional joypad
Size 5" x 4.5" x 1.5", cord 7 feet
Six fire buttons (A, B, C, D, E, F)
Pause and Option buttons
12-key keypad (accepts game-specific overlays)

The Jaguar 2 has seven processors, which are contained in three chips.
Two of the chips are proprietary designs, nicknamed "Tom" and "Jerry".
The third chip is a standard Motorola 68EC020 used as a coprocessor.
Tom and Jerry are built using an 0.3 micron silicon process. With
proper programming, all seven processors can run in parallel.

- "Tom"
- 1,250,000 transistors, 292 pins
- Graphics Processing Unit (processor #1)
- 64-bit RISC architecture (64/128 register processor)
- 64 registers of 128 bits wide (shadow-buffering)
- Has access to all 2 x 64 bits of the system bus
- Can read 128 bits of data in one instruction
- Rated at 127.902 MIPS (million instructions per second)
- Runs at 63.951 MHz
- 2 x 32K bytes of zero wait-state internal SRAM (matrix)
- Performs a wide range of high-speed graphic effects
- Programmable
- Object processor (processor #2)
- 64-bit RISC architecture
- Programmable processor that can act as a variety of different
video architectures, such as a sprite engine, a pixel-mapped
display, a character-mapped system, and others.
- Blitter (processor #3)
- 64 bits read and write at the same time! (multibuffering!)
- 8K read buffer (fifo)
- 8K write buffer (lifo)
- Performs high-speed logical operations
- Hardware support for Z-buffering and Gouraud shading
- Texture Mapping Engine (processor #4)
- 64-bit RISC
- 64 bits
- Programmable risc processor
- 256K "texture-work-ram" of zero wait-state internal CACHE
- capable of doing about 900000 texture-mapped polyons,
without textures there can do 2500000 polyons.
- realtime Gouraud and Phong shading
- J/MPEG "COMBI" Chip (processor #5)
- 64 bits
- not programmable!
- 8K own data rom (with sinus) table
- 128K CACHE (fifo)
- realtime J/MPEG decompression via CACHE (fifo)
- DRAM memory controller
- 4 x 64 bits
- Accesses the DRAM directly

- "Jerry"
- 900,000 transistors, 196 pins
- Digital Signal Processor (processor #6)
- 32 bits (32-bit registers)
- Rated at 53,3 MIPS (million instructions per second)
- Runs at 53.3 MHz
- Same RISC core as the Graphics Processing Unit
- Not limited to sound generation
- 96K bytes of zero wait-state internal SRAM
- CD-quality sound (16-bit stereo 50KHz)
- Number of sound channels limited by software (minimum 16!!)
- Two DACs (stereo) convert digital data to analog sound
signals
- Full stereo capabilities
- Wavetable synthesis, FM synthesis, FM Sample synthesis, and AM
synthesis
- A clock control block, incorporating timers, and a UART

- Motorola 68EC020 (processor #7)
- Runs at 26.590MHz
- perfect 68000 emulation
- General purpose control processor

Communication is performed with a high speed 64-bit data bus, rated
at 2400 megabits/second. The 68000 is only able to access 16 bits
of this bus at a time.

The Jaguar 2 contains eight megabytes (64 megabits) of fast
page-mode DRAM, in eight chips with 1024 K each.

 

[Megadrive1988]

I remember following development in EGM and other magazines of Atari's new console.....going from a 16-bit Panther to 32-bit Panther to new "64-bit" Jaguar.

Of course bits don't mean anything now, and started to lose their meaning even back then. Obviously of course the Jaguar couldn't touch the PlayStation or even the Saturn in 3D (or 2D).

I almost wish Atari had decided to go with the 16-bit/32-bit Panther in 1991 instead, and just make the Jaguar 2/Midsummer as the Jaguar in 1995 or 1996. Of course then I would've also wanted the M2 to come out.....

 

[pipo]

I forgot about Iron Sodier - that was actually quite good...I guess I must have sold that thing...

That was great. Rayman, AvP and T2K ruled.

And Doom, because it had network play...

 

[hey69]

as an amiga fan , i would say it sucked

 

[Johnny_Physics]

I remember hearing Atari pissing off a lot of retailers who wanted to stock Jaguar by demanding that they also had to stock Lynx, even going so far as to say that to buy X units of Jaguars they would have to place an order for Y units of Lynx handhelds. At the time I accepted this as the reason for the small retail presence of the Jaguar.

 

[Mize]

The Lynx, however, was a great handheld.

 

[cthellis42]

as an amiga fan , i would say it sucked

Your being an Amiga fan, I would have to say YOU suck! Oh, that's right...! BURRRRN!!

 

[Danalys]

anyone ever play evolution dino dudes? i particularly liked the high score music. there was also dinolympics on the lynx. they were both based on a game called the humans. anyway i think i got them when shops were practically giving them away.

 

[I.S.T.]

Yeah, because a Marine should totally be able take out an Alien with his fists, and everyone knows that the Aliens in the movies could shoot lasers out of their eyes.

Anyway, everything I've read about the system basically concluded that the thing had way, way too many processors. Hardware bugs aside, it really was just not enough. Most of the 3D games were untextured, having played about half the Jaguar's non-crap library (which is small). Think about it from this perspective: The Saturn and PS1 were only barely able to do passable 3D. They could texture, and they could draw enough polygons to realize some semblance of a recognizable environment. The Jaguar's main CPU ran at half the speed of Saturn's, it had half the memory of either system, and for whatever reason, those multiple graphics subprocessors didn't have nearly the power of the later 3D consoles...meaning the thing was barely able to creak out a few flat-shaded polygons, putting it more on par with the 32X than anything. IMO, they shouldn't have even wasted their time pushing it as a 3D system, but compared it to Neo-Geo or something.

Aliens have long ass arms as well as tails. The tail has exactly the same range as the arms.

Also, if a Marine can punch a demon from hell to death, why couldn't a different Marine punch one of the Aliens to death?

 

[Danalys]

no berserk orbs in aliens.

 

[hey69]

Your being an Amiga fan, I would have to say YOU suck! Oh, that's right...! BURRRRN!!

good old times

 

[Johnny_Physics]

Here's a long promotional video for the Jaguar, it features footage and gameplay from a wide variety of games, it's honestly fun to watch, highly recommended if you have 30-40 minutes to spare.


Part 1 to 5:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y19iAmHg_Wo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0pmtfKLi3A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljou4m7PY08
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHGKj4dU78o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Hsohjvqk0I

Regarding AvP, the tech on that game seemed to float between Wolf 3D and Doom. Kinda like Shadowcaster if my memory serves me correctly, a regular raycaster but with no sector elevation/depression, although with textured floors/ceiling.

The Lynx, however, was a great handheld.

History tells you that it wasn't
The screen and COLORS were great, as was everything else to a tech-struck kid like me, but the battery life was ass and the pricetag combined with the lack of software made me hesitant to buy one. I wanted one, I really did, but there wasn't games enough to convince me to get one so I ended up with a Gameboy playing 'Fortress of Fear' argh.
But now that I sit and remember it, I almost want to get one just to satisfy the memory of the sexy screen filled with all the colors of the rainbow and hackysack on California Games...

 

[I.S.T.]

no berserk orbs in aliens.

I was referring to the pink dudes that snort like bulls(They are actually named "Demon".). You can kill one of those via punching easy enough.

Of course, Doom actually gave you enough ammo, unless you were stupid and wasted it.