Jaguar Game Reviews - A look back

DreamcastRIP · September 17, 2013, 11:07:15 AM

Many thanks for taking the time to post that, RT.Â :1:

While some of us will have no doubt heard of similar sentiments stated by such knowledgeable types as Gorf and Atari Owl it's also great to hear of what commercial Jag games devs were saying in interviews back in the day.

Another thing that struck me in reading those frames per second figures was of how open games devs could be with the media back in those days relative to the videogames industry of today. That said, I suspect the frankness of those statements were not solely due to it being in a different era. I suspect Atari were likely more open about such things relative to the typically secretive nature of Japanese companies such as Sega, Nintendo and Sony.

Rogue Trooper · September 17, 2013, 11:52:30 AM

Quote from: "DreamcastRIP"Many thanks for taking the time to post that, RT.Â

While some of us will have no doubt heard of similar sentiments stated by such knowledgeable types as Gorf and Atari Owl it's also great to hear of what commercial Jag games devs were saying in interviews back in the day.

Another thing that struck me in reading those frames per second figures was of how open games devs could be with the media back in those days relative to the videogames industry of today. That said, I suspect the frankness of those statements were not solely due to it being in a different era. I suspect Atari were likely more open about such things relative to the typically secretive nature of Japanese companies such as Sega, Nintendo and Sony.

I've read 3 interviews with ATD (2 from Edge 3rd from here), yet still would love to know a lot more about their role as bug testers and wether they needed more time or wether Atari just ignored lot of their findings...

Atari were just as bad then (850 Million Pixels per second animation speed?) as it's rivals (640X480 resolution eh 3DO, you mean after hardware has upscaled it and sent that to TV output), but you never saw quite the same degree of utter B.S that followed generation or 2 later, from 75 Million Polys per second to today's most recent climb down by Ms that Ryse in fact is not native 1080p, 30 fps, it's infact 900P upscaled to 1080P, but still looks amazing, they claim...

yeah upscaled 1080p, 30 fps QTE's were the next generation i was looking for...not.

But back on point, a lot of Jaguar and Saturn developers seemed more than happy to talk to the media in a very honest and open manner back then, would say what struggles they'd had, what the hardware did well or better than it's rivals or previous hardware they'd worked on, what it struggled with, nowadays the media seems more cynical (i know..coming from me that's a piss-take) and Jaguar hardware had to be mocked (Edge's later comments about it being just load of 16 Bit chips).Think change in high level staff at various publications over the years to blame..Edge's Ex-editor was 'reduced' to writing as a mystery jurnolist (Red Eye).Media a fickle buisness, espically in this day and age, Editor today, publication pulled from under your feet the next.....

I'd love edge to return to what it once was, as interviews were fantastic, articles on Making of...the same, you could ignore the reviews as it was still delivering stuff you just would'nt find else where.

It's interviews with ATD, David Braben, Core Design, Sega, etc etc just superb.

I did question wether or not to put up the polys per sec figures, as 'fear' was someone visiting here might take them and use them elsewhere in another 'Jaguar was shit' type post look how few polys in was capable of, look at that frame rate, without them having an utter clue just exactly what game was doing.Seems many still fail to understand what Mode 7 was, let alone Z-Buffering and Gouraud shading, bunch of bloody media fluffers....

Actually just looking at edge issue 5:hows this for interviews:

Argonaut Software-where they detail their work on SFX chips and are very open about how dissapointed they were with the 3DO 'it's good at texture mapping, but it's not as fast as a DX2 PC for calculating polygons'

Core Design talking about how MCD hardware made Thunderhawk, Battlecorps+upcoming Soulstar possible.

Big feature on the Jaguar with praise from Ocean's Gary Bracey, Konami's European consumer manager, Peter Stone '..the Jaguar stacks up pretty well again'st the 3DO', Core design (Jeremy Smith) '...The Jaguars far better than anything else on the market and better than anything i've seen in development'.

ATD as i've mentioned, along with Rebellion...

David Braben interview.....