Posts Tagged ‘jaguar’
Podcast: Do The Math
Fred is joined by Derrick of All Games and Rob “Trees” from EZ Mode Unlocked to talk about Atari, Inc.’s illustrious past in light of the information it is entering Chapter 11 bankruptcy (don’t worry, the company will survive no problem, they’re just restructuring). We discuss the history and origins of Atari and what the company did after splitting off from the games division.
Buying Guide: Jaguar
We all love our retro consoles, but in many cases the consoles we are buying are because they are cheap enough or we have enough money to purchase what we never were able to in our youth. Unfortunately the business of making used retro items available to the masses can at times be a money grubbing market where consumers are deceived by people they will never meet in real life. As an individual who has spent the last decade scouring the local area, conventions, eBay, and the internet as a whole I have learned many valuable lessons. For that reason I present my buying guide series, which is a handy quick guide to knowing what to purchase and what will cost an arm and a leg to replace.
The Atari Jaguar just can’t get a break. Touted as a technological breakthrough of its time, this holiday 1993 console may have been a commercial failure but it was clearly a hardware powerhouse. Sure, it may not have been a true 64-bit console just because the twin Tom and Jerry chips were 32-bit co-processors (more on that in our podcast), but for $250 you were getting a lot for your money (estimates claim the Jaguar cost up to $400 to manufacture). As far as exclusives go there’s not really much to tell. You’ve basically got Aliens vs. Predator, Tempest 2000, Breakout 2000, and Kasumi Ninja – half of which are considered to be crap by most gamers – so finding the games on the Jaguar elsewhere will be easy to do. Couple that with the god awful controllers and the need (at least for me) to purchase all of the console games complete in box with the inserts for the controller (and essentially increasing the price anywhere from three to ten fold) and most people are probably going to walk away. In the event that you aren’t one of those people, just prepare for the fact that you will be spending on the upwards of $100-$200 just on a working console with a couple of controllers and then probably $30-$60 on each game if you want all the inserts and whatnot. What you will receive in return is an impressive experience for not only the exclusives, but also the definitive version of a lot of games that were ported all over the place. Doom, NBA Jam: Tournament Edition, Wolfenstein 3D, Raiden, Flashback, Primal Rage, and Rayman all look as good or better than their original arcade/PC versions and often have enhancements or extra content to justify the re-release on this console. Not only that but titles like Cannon Fodder, Syndicate, and Theme Park are identical to the 3DO versions of those games – which in and of itself was a much more expensive ($700) and disc-based console – so if you want to re-live those halcyon Windows 95 days you either have endless headaches with DOSbox or grabbing these decent controller-ready console ports. At this price point, you want to make sure you know what to get so here’s what you can expect when trying to grab a Jaguar:
Generation Gap Pt. 4: 32-bit (with a dash of 64)
By the time the SNES was dominating and the Sega Genesis was locked in an endless sea of add-ons to save the dying console, electronics manufacturers began to step up and create many of their own consoles. As a result, the market was flooded with overpriced horrendous hardware. They seemed to have everything a gamer wanted: new media format (the cheaply priced cd was preferred by developers to reduce production cost and retail price), impressive graphics and processors, and lets not forget the large numbers like “32” and “64” prominantly displayed on the startup screens. Unfortunately they lacked one important thing: good games. Still, that didn’t prevent many manufacturers from creating a loose version of the video game crash of 1983. Thankfully one lone electronics company entered the foray with the next step in gaming – that company was Sony.
Electronics Companies Go Bananas (or Pre 32-bit Gaming)
JVC’s Xeye
I’m guessing somewhere around the Sega CD, boasting the ability to play your new audio CDs through your television as an added feature, electronic companies started to take notice of gaming systems. As you guide through the progression of consoles the consumer electronics market grows stronger with gamers – let’s face it, they’re the perfect early adoptors. Quickly companies scrambled to enter the gaming market including JVC, Phillips, Panasonic, Pioneer, Sony and even more. Some of these companies licensed existing hardware, like JVC did with the X’Eye, a Sega Genesis/Sega CD hybrid that was re-branded with JVC’s logo. On the other hand, Phillips, Panasonic and Pioneer – imagine keeping these companies straight as a consumer – released their own hardware with a (arguably) library of games. In the end, they all sucked and had ridiculous price tags pushing back the concept of consumer electronics meeting gaming for at least another six years. Below are the early disc-based consoles that failed so horribly.
Gaming History 101 