Atari Jaguar

[MN12BIRD]

Wow I actually thought Wolf3D was based on the Mac port, and I also thought it was amazing on the Jag!

Doom is also amazing if you can get past the fact it has no music. It was the first console port of Doom, runs full screen and smoother than the 32X, SNES or 3DO ports that followed.

[stalepie]

The Doom port was done in-house at id.

[Chilly Willy]

Amiga's never achieved much popularity in the US so it's unlikely that Cannon Fodder or an actual Amiga to play it on for that matter are particularly widespread and cheap there.

Don't know what "US" you're referring to, but the Amiga was UBER popular in the United States of America. It led the 16 bit game market over PC market until the early 90's. It took the combination of the 486, VGA cards, and Sound Blaster cards shipping in mainstream PCs to topple the Amiga's hold on the game scene. That pretty much coincided with DOOM coming out. That the PC could run DOOM while the Amiga couldn't pretty much finally ended the Amiga's reign as King of Gaming.

[gamevet]

Really? I had read that the Jaguar version was better than the PS1 and Saturn versions even when it came to the music. I can't remember where I read it, if it was in a mag or what. Were the people who wrote that on crack?

I own the Saturn and Jag versions of Tempest 2000. The Saturn version is nearly identical in the graphics department, but the voice samples are somewhat muffled. The Saturn version has a crisper soundtrack, thanks to the CD audio.

[Tanegashima]

Eh, its a moot point anyway. I simply cannot afford one...especially since I'm looking to buy one of these soon:




That's gonna be $300+ for me...with my discounts...

[acdc]

that thing was dead on arrivel here

not the gun

[Phantar]

Don't know what "US" you're referring to, but the Amiga was UBER popular in the United States of America. It led the 16 bit game market over PC market until the early 90's. It took the combination of the 486, VGA cards, and Sound Blaster cards shipping in mainstream PCs to topple the Amiga's hold on the game scene. That pretty much coincided with DOOM coming out. That the PC could run DOOM while the Amiga couldn't pretty much finally ended the Amiga's reign as King of Gaming.

Well, you CAN run Doom on the Amiga, but that was'nt until years later when official support of the computer had almost ceased, and you could only do it after using additional third-party-hardware, so only the most dedicated of Amiga fans stuck around long enough to witness that.

I thought the PC overtook the Amiga a bit earlier on when it became painfully apparent that games like Wing Commander were lightyears ahead on the PC when it came to playability (iMO even the SNES-Port of Wing Commander plays better than the Amiga version).


Back on topic: Getting a Jaguar in order to play Tempest 2000 and Cannonfodder? That's a bit disproportionate, isn't it? AS for Alien Vs. Predator, well I've never played the console shooter. I've only heard that it's supposed to be one of the best games for the Jaguar; which, considering it's library of games, isn't really saying much. I'd say it isn't wort getting a Jaguar for.

[gamevet]

Alien VS. Predator is an over-rated game. It has a piss-poor frame rate and you'll end up with motion sickness because of it. It would probably be okay on a small television, but the gameplay isn't anything to get excited about.

[tomaitheous]

Alien VS. Predator is an over-rated game. It has a piss-poor frame rate and you'll end up with motion sickness because of it. It would probably be okay on a small television, but the gameplay isn't anything to get excited about.

Quoted for the truth.

Don't know what "US" you're referring to, but the Amiga was UBER popular in the United States of America.

I only know of one person that had an Amiga (and not one that had an ST). We had one latter on in '93-94 (A500), but PC's were everywhere. It might not have had the horsepower early on, but it did have VGA in '88 (for the lucky few who could afford the new vga required monitor and card upgrade that early on). I remember in '90 the Amiga space in the software stores was pretty small in comparison to PC and consoles. VGA was the start of the downfall for the Amiga in the US.

[nonner242]

I will stick up for the Jag here, cuz its one of my complete systems, I have played/own every game on it.

Cannon Fodder is a good game, not as good as the Amiga version but very close..and you dont have to wait for the disk loading..BIG PLUS!

AVP not visually stunning but the sound and overall atmosphere of the game had me jump straight outta my skin..a few times while playing it.

Tempest 2000 on Jag is the best version of it I have played on any system..The music even tho not on CD is far better than the cheesy uninspired remixed stuff from saturn & PS1. If you wanna play another hi-rez version of tempest go download Typhoon 2001 it even uses the Jaguars version of the music in it...dont get me wrong about the remixes tho, I do own the tempest 2000 sound track CD for the Jag CD it good. BUT NOTHING can beat this Carts soundtrack.

Now on good games for Jag most were only released on the Jag so good luck playing them somewhere else some are pretty hard to get, but really rock are:

Tempest 2000,AVP,Rayman,Cannon Fodder,Flasback,Gorf,Missle Command 3-D,Rayman,Battlesphere(the bomb in multiplayer space battle games...with nice 60fps animation.)Iron Soldier,Iron Soldier 2,Defender 2000,Primal Rage,Protector SE, Sky Hammer, I -War,Syndicate(thank god for the 15+button keypad here) Total Carnage,Worms and Ill even throw in Kasumi Ninja just cuz it so funny to to a POOALITY instead of a FATALITY and the characters are just about as weird as hell.

Best of all there are still games being made by homebrewers on it, I love collecting this system cuz of the great Jaguar community keeps it fairly updated with new software and hardware yearly. Im getting a skunkboard for mine that lets you plug a PC into your Jag to transfer data to the board to either play games or develope games for it. That is a project that has just been release this year.

[jesus.arnold]

Don't know what "US" you're referring to, but the Amiga was UBER popular in the United States of America. It led the 16 bit game market over PC market until the early 90's. It took the combination of the 486, VGA cards, and Sound Blaster cards shipping in mainstream PCs to topple the Amiga's hold on the game scene. That pretty much coincided with DOOM coming out. That the PC could run DOOM while the Amiga couldn't pretty much finally ended the Amiga's reign as King of Gaming.

It's all about context, for you 650,000 odd lifetime sales in the US means "UBER popular" I however live in the UK where the Amiga sold close to a million more than that even though the US has five times the population of Britain, I don't see that as reflecting well on the Amiga's US sales.

According to some graphs of US computer sales figures I've looked through the Amiga was actually being outsold by IBM PC's and clones from 1986 onwards in the states and the PC took more and more of the market share as the years went by, however in the UK and much of Europe the Amiga really was the dominant computer up until a good few years into the 90s.

[j_factor]

The Amiga 500/2000 was very popular in the US, but its popularity kind of ends there. The 3000 had some popularity for professional use. Commodore seriously misfired with the ECS and few people bought a 600. By the time the 1200 came out, it was kind of "too late" for the Amiga, as their presence in stores was greatly reduced by that point. But the 1200 did do somewhat reasonably.

However, it's true that Amigas aren't particularly widespread and cheap. That's mainly because in general, old computers in the US aren't nearly as commonly on the market as old game systems. Even the Commodore 64, which is the #1 computer of all time (and can basically be used as a console), isn't seen very often -- even unpopular consoles like the Master System are more commonly seen. Games for C64/amiga/st/whatever are very hard to find outside of the internet. I gather it's different in Europe.

Not sure where you got those numbers Mr. Arnold, but 1986 isn't a good point of reference, since the A500 wasn't out yet. The Amiga 1000 was never very popular, and was outsold by the ST.

In any case, fuck Jaguar. Every game listed in the OP except for Alien vs. Predator is available better elsewhere. Cannon Fodder is on about 12 different systems. If you're going to buy a new console just for Cannon Fodder, get a CD32.

[jesus.arnold]

Not sure where you got those numbers Mr. Arnold, but 1986 isn't a good point of reference, since the A500 wasn't out yet. The Amiga 1000 was never very popular, and was outsold by the ST.

During 86' (Amiga 1000 era) the IBM PC was relatively at the begginning of it's upward climb.

By the time the 500 came out the PC had pretty much cornered most of the market so though the Amiga 500 had increased sales over the 1000 the IBM PC had a substantially higher increase in sales during that same period of time.

[Chilly Willy]

Well, you CAN run Doom on the Amiga, but that was'nt until years later when official support of the computer had almost ceased, and you could only do it after using additional third-party-hardware, so only the most dedicated of Amiga fans stuck around long enough to witness that.

Yes, I know. Peter did a great job of converting the linux code id released to the 680x0. I then made the conversion to the PowerUP PPC accelerator. Between us, Peter and I fixed most of the endian bugs in Doom (Doom started with almost no endian macros to convert between little-endian to big endian) as well as doing the majority of the work in making Doom work with high resolution displays. I fixed the low detail code as that was handy for people running on the 68020 or slow 030 cards. I also wrote a library for the Amiga to play the music and sound effects that was used by nearly every Doom conversion on the Amiga, as well as several other games. All of this was well after CBM went under.

I thought the PC overtook the Amiga a bit earlier on when it became painfully apparent that games like Wing Commander were lightyears ahead on the PC when it came to playability (iMO even the SNES-Port of Wing Commander plays better than the Amiga version).

It had caught up before Doom, but the market was still with the Amiga mostly due to momentum. Doom pretty much killed any momentum it had... that and CBM going belly up.

[nonner242]

I only knew of 1 person that had an Atari ST, afew tandys, Lots of 64 owners...And even ore Amiga owners...
Most ppl I knew didnt even own a IBM PC till 91ish.
I still own my original Amigas 1000,500,3000,4000
I love them all.