New Atari Jaguar Game Running $1,225 on eBay 191
Bill Kendrick writes, "The long-awaited Atari Jaguar game Battle Sphere has finally been released. A special signed copy of the game is running on eBay for $1,225. After the auction is over, the game will start being sold for about $80 a cartridge. All proceeds from the auction will go to diabetes research."
thats amazing! (Score:1)
But on another topic , what person will buy a game for 80 bucks , for a system that was arguably one of the worst sytems ever.
Who needs games when u got GL enhanced Xscreensaver..
just kidding.
What?! (Score:1)
Although Tempest 2000 was the best game ever. I remember Kay-Bee Toy Store was selling new jaguars for $35 bucks, with any game of your choice. I should I have bought one then.
Damit.
Re:FIRST MEGA SCROLL POST! (Score:1)
Ever thought about patenting it? Or otherwise, Open Source it. One of those two happens to every useless idea.
What the hell's a Jaguar? heheh (Score:1)
-Earthman
Does anyone actually own a Jaguar? (Score:2)
Ok...now what?! (Score:2)
I had all of three games for the Jaguar, I can't even remember the exact names because once I bought it, it sat in a corner while I played Wild Arms and FF7 for PSX.
I even had the store where I got it from (Software Etc.) order me a Jaguar CD-ROM drive from a different store, but I chickened out when I saw the $75 price tag.
My Atari "64-bit" Jaguar now sits dismantled (I had my way with my trusty Phillips), broken, abused, and shattered in a dusty corner of the closet in my computer room.
I hadn't even thought about it until Slashdot posted this article (Damn you Slashdot :). The rest of my 5 minutes thinking about this worthless piece of 68K+Tom+Jerry crap is ruined! The fact that someone released a *NEW* game for it, when we now have true 128-bit consoles is...
I'm a budding console programmer (currently with my PSX), and even though I'm not a professional, I know that all games have a time and a place - as previous posters mentioned, Jaguar's place was in 1993-94, not 2000 (how in God's name did it make it this far?!).
Marcus
64 bit jaguar... (Score:1)
The marketing claimed 64 bits but it was merely two 32 bit chips that I remember. If the other companies took to claims like that, maybe PS1 would be 128+ bits, same with the N64, as it seems both of them have extra hardware processors for specific tasks.
And would those mega-scroll asses please stop!
I love my Jag. (Score:1)
Then, about a year and a half ago, I found a Jaguar in a toy liquidation store for like $30. Sold. Hit eBay, bought up as many of the games as I could find for a reasonable price (still missing a few cool ones, like Atari Karts), and played Tempest 2000 and Flip-Out! like mad.
Most of the games for the Jaguar were fairly half-assed and didn't begin to take advantage of its impressive (especially for its time) power. It was this, the lack of available titles, and a slightly high price tag that killed the Jaguar. But now that you can pick one up for cheap, it's a great system for a gamer's collection.
Atari always been a step behind (Score:2)
Now atari released the jag and I was really impressed, but it uses cartridges (I do believe there's a CD Ad-on) which make it limited. The reason I don't know too much about it would have to be the key fact that it's not popular. I'm sure people have one, but not as many as Dreamcasts, N64, and PlayStations. And with the release of PS2 comming out I don't know how much more time Atari actually has.
Did everyone forget about the Black Box that Microsoft is coming out with. Or the fact that PS2 can browse the web and play DVD's ... heck PS2 might even bring competition to WebTV and standard DVD players along with companies like Atari.
And a special thanks to all the lamers who managed to make this forum look all that more childish. Nice maturity guys.
Re:Ok...now what?! (Score:1)
Granted, *I* wouldn't be developing for the Jag or VB now, were I a console programmer...
Re:thats amazing! (Score:1)
-------------------------------------------
Re:64 bit jaguar... actually (Score:4)
If the CPU is demoted to tasks like controlling I/O and keeping the other chips in line - and those chips are 64-bit -- I don't think it's unreasonable to call it 64-bit.
Of course, another way to draw the line is how the code is compiled... in this case 32-bit. But it's kind of interesting to think about this when we get to the point that CPU's don't matter.
CPU's only matter in today's architecture because ** INTEL SUCKS ** and they want everything tied in such a way that the system can't scale without upgrading the CPU. Well designed (in this respect) systems are Solaris, Alpha boxes, and even PowerMacintosh. For better or for worse though the market says that bad designs will win because of economies of scale.
On a different note, I had *really* hoped Atari would regain their glory with this system. A cartridge system could have scored big if Atari got this out on time. As it was, 18 months too late, CD rom was the only way to go. Atari later made a CD Rom expansion, but those type of expansions *always* fail because you fragment your market (just like Microsoft... LOL)
Hardware issues (Score:1)
Battlesphere?? (Score:1)
Why is this game so important that it took 6 years to develop and cost over $1000 on ebay?? I can't possibly imagine, from the old screenshots, that it could be that good.
-Julius X
Missing The Point (Score:3)
I bet there's a hell of a story behind the development of this game.
Re:Does anyone actually own a Jaguar? (Score:1)
Re:Hardware issues (Score:2)
Re:What?! (Score:2)
| development?
It wouldn't be unheard of. Would you be surprised to learn that there are still people out there developing Atari 2600 games and Vectrex games?
What's surprising to me about this game, though, is that it actually got released. It's been in the vaporware category for *years*.
When does the Amiga version come out? (Score:4)
Intellivision (Score:2)
What a time trip! I was very young when the IntelliVision was popular, and my oldest brother and I wasted *many* hours on their sports games like Baseball and Football. In many ways, the Intellivision was ahead of its time, and the multiplayer games were the best for the era. We had the IntelliSpeech module (B-17 bomber was awesome!) and most of the big games.
The CD is great. It contains an emulator and ROM images for many of the classic games (AstroSmash, etc..) some games that were never released, and all kinds of information on the development of the IntelliVision and the internal politics at Mattel and the rise and fall of the system.
Some of the old developers put the CD together, so it's much more interesting than the typical "100 classic games on a CD!" type packages.
It's too bad the software industry came down so hard on the emulation scene. Stuff like the intellivisionlives project is critical in providing a context and history for computer gaming. Without deep background like this, console developers and game developers will keep making the same mistakes over and over.
-Twid
Re:Hardware issues (Score:3)
You can use a JagLink cable hooked up to the DSP port on the back to link two jaguars together, or use CatBox [holyoak.com] units to link up to 32 systems together.
Definitive geek news: DeCSS, Amiga, Battlesphere (Score:2)
thats damn cool (Score:1)
oh well
--jay
Humor. Me. (Score:1)
Suppose the game will never be sold if we keep bidding up the auctioned cartridge indefinitely? But we individually don't have an infinite amount of money...
Re:Slow day? (Score:1)
--jay
Re:Why? (Score:1)
--jay
Jaguar platform opened and other new games coming (Score:4)
Hasbro Interactive acquired rights to many Atari properties, including the legendary Centipede, Missile Command, and Pong games, in a March 1998 acquisition from JTS Corporation.
This announcement will allow software developers to create and publish software for the Jaguar system without having to obtain a licensing agreement with Hasbro Interactive for such platform development. Hasbro Interactive cautioned, however, that the developers should not use the Atari trademark or logo in connection with their games or present the games as authorized or approved by Hasbro Interactive.
"Hasbro Interactive is strictly focused on developing and publishing entertainment software for the PC and the next generation game consoles," said Richard Cleveland, Head of Marketing for Hasbro Interactive's Atari Business Unit. "We realize there is a passionate audience of diehard Atari fans who want to keep the Jaguar system alive, and we don't want to prevent them from doing that. We will not interfere with the efforts of software developers to create software for the Jaguar system."
Excuse me, but Atari has not ALWAYS been behind... (Score:2)
Re:Definitive geek news: DeCSS, Amiga, Battlespher (Score:2)
thing under Linux
1994.
Scott Le Grand
Lead Coder
BattleSphere
Uh, hello? Clue? (Score:2)
The features of a given console are irrelevant - what's important is the quality of the games it has. The current generation of consoles has a long way to go to live up to the greatness of some of the earlier ones.
If somebody were to release a new Atari 2600 or Colecovision game today, I would be likely to buy it simply because it would be cool to see someone supporting a classic system. If it were actually a good game (as many 2600 games were), so much the better.
Re:Missing The Point (Score:5)
4play/scatalogic has no intention of "making a profit" off this game. The programming of the game has actually been finished for years.
Shortly after the coding of the game was finished, atari stopped the production of the jag, and sold everything to JTS and then Hasboro. During this time, the encryption key needed to encrypt games put into jaguar cart roms was lost! Jaguar carts have to be encrypted -- this was how Atari prevented unlicensed 3rd parties from making Jaguar carts.
4play/scatalogic ran a brute-force key cracker on an array of Jaguar development systems for months in order to find the key needed to encrypt the cart. Then they went out and created packaging, a manual, etc. with as high a quality as any big game shop delivers to retail shelves. Pretty damn impressive for only 3 people and a few hundered cartridges.
They finished battlesphere and drudged through it's production and delivery because they are devoted to the art of video game making; not just the profits, and because there are a bunch of jaguar devotees who *really* wanted to see the game released -- as is evidenced by the auction price on eBay for the first commercial cart.
frankly, i wish there were more game companies as devoted to their product and as tenacious scatalogic has been -- most of them just take the money and run.
More BattleSphere Links (Score:3)
The BattleSphere Shrine [fortunecity.com]
The BattleSphere FAQ [fortunecity.com]
Next Generation's Preview/Review [google.com]
Enjoy...
Re:thats amazing! (Score:4)
The Jaguar has five 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 68000, and used as a coprocessor. Tom and
Jerry are built using an 0.5 micron silicon process. With proper
programming, all five processors can run in parallel.
- "Tom"
- 750,000 transistors, 208 pins
- Graphics Processing Unit (processor #1)
- 32-bit RISC architecture (32/64 processor)
- 64 registers of 32 bits wide
- Has access to all 64 bits of the system bus
- Can read 64 bits of data in one instruction
- Rated at 26.591 MIPS (million instructions per second)
- Runs at 26.591 MHz
- 4K bytes of zero wait-state internal SRAM
- Performs a wide range of high-speed graphic effects
- Programmable
- Object processor (processor #2)
- 64-bit RISC architecture
- 64-bit wide registers
- 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-bit RISC architecture
- 64-bit wide registers
- Performs high-speed logical operations
- Hardware support for Z-buffering and Gouraud shading
- DRAM memory controller
- 64 bits
- Accesses the DRAM directly
- "Jerry"
- 600,000 transistors, 144 pins
- Digital Signal Processor (processor #4)
- 32 bits (32-bit registers)
- Rated at 26.6 MIPS (million instructions per second)
- Runs at 26.6 MHz
- Same RISC core as the Graphics Processing Unit
- Not limited to sound generation
- 8K bytes of zero wait-state internal SRAM
- CD-quality sound (16-bit stereo)
- Number of sound channels limited by software
- 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
- Joystick control
- Motorola 68000 (processor #5)
- Runs at 13.295MHz
- General purpose control processor
Communication is performed with a high speed 64-bit data bus, rated at
106.364 megabytes/second. The 68000 is only able to access 16 bits of this
bus at a time.
The Jaguar contains two megabytes (16 megabits) of fast page-mode DRAM,
in four chips with 512 K each. Game cartridges can support up to six
megabytes (48 megabits) of information, and can contain an EEPROM
(electrically erasable/programmable read-only memory) chip to save game
information and settings. Up to 100,000 writes can be performed with the
EEPROM; after that, future writes may not be saved (performance varies
widely, but 100,000 is a guaranteed minimum). Depending on use, this limit
should take from 10 to 50 years to reach.
The Jaguar uses 24-bit addressing, and is reportedly capable of accessing
data as follows:
Six megabytes cartridge ROM
Eight megabytes DRAM
Two megabytes miscellaneous/expansion
All of the processors can access the main DRAM memory area directly. The
Digital Signal Processor and the Graphics Processor can execute code out of
either their internal caches, or out of main memory. The only limitations
are that
Slashdotted the best.com link (Score:1)
"500 Server Error
The hard access limit for this user has been reached"
Tee hee
Re:Humor. Me. (Score:1)
Re:64 bit jaguar... actually (Score:1)
Re:Hardware issues (Score:1)
impression that it would be the first networkable
console. At least that's what Atari was saying
at the time and we were a lot more naive back
then.
As things turned out, there was a HORRIBLE
bug in the Jaguar's UART and we had to design
our own proprietary networking hardware and
software to get around it. Unfortunately, Atari
suffered from NIH syndrome so they poopooed the
thing at the time. This hardware was one of
the components of the CatBox. A CatBox allows
one to link up to 32 jaguars. Atari released
the Jaglink which allowed the connection of
two jaguars and they were working on a voice
modem with similar capacity except over phone
lines.
In a sad twist of fate, after a successful first
batch, the maker of the CatBox, took a lot of
money from a lot of people for a second batch and
never delivered product to them as far as I know.
Scott Le Grand
Lead Coder
BattleSphere
Re:Slashdotted... and a few words about the charit (Score:2)
Thanks for following through on this! (Score:1)
Those who are interpreting this as an attempt to ressurect the Jaguar are missing the point. All I can say to them at this point is "your loss." I'll definitely be ordering a copy as soon as it is available.
Thanks for all of your work. By the way, are you guys going to be at CGE2K [cgexpo.com]?
Misrepresentation? (Score:1)
[look at the icon, sheesh]
Not Bruce Perens (Score:1)
Slashdotted... (Score:1)
Re:thats amazing! (Score:1)
Q. Was the Jaguar really a 64-bit system?
A. The question is hard to resolve, largely because the definition of what constitutes an "N-bit" system has not been set. Of the five processors in the Jaguar, only the object processor and the blitter are "true" 64-bit components. Because the blitter and the object processor are in the Tom chip, by extension Tom is a 64-bit chip. Furthermore, the Jaguar also used a 64-bit memory architecture, according to Jez San of Argonaut Software.
Some say the Jaguar should be considered a 32-bit system, as that is the maximum register size in the programmable processors (the 68000, the graphics processor, and the DMA sound processor). Others say the Jaguar can be considered a 64-bit system, because 64-bit components are used, and the GPU can access 64 bits of data if required. Again, the lack of an agreed-upon definition serves to complicate the issue.
According to Jaguar designer John Mathieson, "Jaguar has a 64-bit memory interface to get a high bandwidth out of cheap DRAM.
"Jaguar has the data shifting power of a 64 bit system, which is what matters for games, so can reasonably be considered a 64 bit system. But that doesn't mean it has to be 64 bits throughout."
For the record, the opinion of most third party developers and observers is that the Jaguar is indeed a 64-bit system. The emphasis is on the word "system"; while not every component is 64 bits, the Jaguar architecture, as a COMPLETE SYSTEM, is.
Re:Does anyone actually own a Jaguar? (Score:2)
Actually, a lot of it is due to good oldfashioned engineering decisions: cartriges, while smaller and more expensive than cds, are frankly still much faster. To compensate, you can put more ram in the cd-based console, but that translates into more expensive consoles. Obviously the market has declared Sony the victor for the time being, however....
Re:Does anyone actually own a Jaguar? (Score:1)
Re:Ok...now what?! (Score:1)
the real reason the proceeds go to diabetes .... (Score:1)
This game's prolly so damn good, the average player will consume at least 50 litres of fizzy drink trying to get past the 7th level, dammit.
Statistically, that gives you an increase in the possibility of developing diabetes - and if multiplied over the whole population who play this game, there's a good chance someone will develop this disease as a direct result of playing too much of this game.
Thus, the proceeds will better aid those less-fortunate friends who developed diabetes from drinking too much coke (and pizza.)!
There's a reason behind everything
some people just don't get it. (Score:3)
Re:yeah right (Score:1)
I don't know what's available on the Playstation, but I can show you a few chess programs for my PC that are MUCH harder to beat and will teach you MUCH more about the game than the average human player most people are likely to come across.
Better technology doesn't make a better game.
No more so than better instruments make better musicians...but a truely talented person with superior tools to work with will create spectacular stuff.
Jaguar more secure than DVDs...LOL (Score:1)
---
Matt
"REPENT HARELQUIN! Said the TicktockMan."
Re:Does anyone actually own a Jaguar? (Score:1)
I've played games like Colony Wars [colonywars.com] & CW: Vengance [psygnosis.com] for the PlayStation, but was disappointed by their predictability. There's lots of stuff in the two games, but you always end up doing the same thing every time you start over...
BattleSphere sounds like it will have just enough randomness. And, since it's multiplayer, that makes it even more dynamic.
* Star Raiders [sonic.net] was, I believe, the very first 3D space action/stragety game. It came out in 1979 for the Atari 400/800 computers, and later for the 2600 and 5200 game systems.
Re:Ok...now what?! (Score:1)
I just picked up a copy of Raiden [telegames.com] for the Atari Lynx. I got Protector [atari.net] for the Jaguar when it came out back in December. Sure, the game is a few
years old, but after a while, the genre of games that are popular on the PSX/N64/etc. just get boring...
(Speaking of Lynx, I wish Hasbro would re-release it... It kicks Game Boy's ass... from what I've seen, kicks Game Boy Color's ass, too... And it's already got dozens of really nice games for it.)
Re:I love my Jag. (Score:1)
How about Twisted Metal vs. Twisted Metal 4 for the PSX?
Jaguar was only produced for 3 years, so most of the games out for it are first-generation quality. Later titles look a lot better. (Iron Soldier 2 vs. Iron Soldier, for example.)
What was my point? Oh - the quality didn't necessarily kill the Jaguar. It was Atari, the company... Bad marketing ("If it's good, people will buy it- no need to advertise!")... Morons.
Re:Does anyone actually own a Jaguar? (Score:2)
Damn Cylon cruisers!
Re:Atari always been a step behind (Score:2)
Also, in case you didn't know, the other Atari, "Atari Games" is still alive and kicking. It has been for, what, 15 years maybe? See here. [agames.com]
(They did Gauntlet, Road Blasters, Tetris (arcade), S.T.U.N. Runner, Area 51, SF Rush, and tons others.) (I had a chance to work there a few years ago, too... but picked my girlfriend over Silicon Valley.)
Re:Hardware issues (Score:1)
BS is 3D, as was Iron Soldier & IS2 (which, BTW, looks a lot nicer and has better music), as was many, many Jaguar games.
BTW, you can play networked Doom on the Jag.
Re:Quality over Quantity (Score:1)
I still haven't gotten into AvP... my friends laugh at it, and I get a little lost in the mazes.
As for Defender 2000, I say - get your hands on Protector [atari.net]. MUCH more playable. Not quite as silly, but still as pretty.
Ah, the Jaguar... (Score:5)
Unfortunately, it turned out that I had lost the C compiler that I had retargeted to the jaguar RISC engines, so DOOM was no longer buildable.
There is something noble about developing on a dead platform -- it is so completely for the joy of the development, without any commercial motivation.
The quick recap on the jaguar:
The memory, bus, blitter and video processor were 64 bits wide, but the processors (68k and two custom risc processors) were 32 bit.
The blitter could do basic texture mapping of horizontal and vertical spans, but because there wasn't any caching involved, every pixel caused two ram page misses and only used 1/4 of the 64 bit bus. Two 64 bit buffers would have easily trippled texture mapping performance. Unfortunate.
It could make better use of the 64 bit bus with Z buffered, shaded triangles, but that didn't make for compelling games.
It offered a usefull color space option that allowed you to do lighting effects based on a single channel, isntead of RGB.
The video compositing engine was the most innovative part of the console. All of the characters in Wolf3D were done with just the back end scalar instead of blitting. Still, the experience with the limitations and hard failure cases of that gave me good amunition to rail against microsoft's (thankfully aborted) talisman project.
The little risc engined were decent processors. I was surprised that they didn't use off the shelf designs, but they basically worked ok. They had some design hazards (write after write) that didn't get fixed, but the only thing truly wrong with them was that they had scratchpad memory instead of caches, and couldn't execute code from main memory. I had to chunk the DOOM renderer into nine sequentially loaded overlays to get it working (with hindsight, I would have done it differently in about three...).
The 68k was slow. This was the primary problem of the system. You options were either taking it easy, running everything on the 68k, and going slow, or sweating over lots of overlayed parallel asm chunks to make something go fast on the risc processors.
That is why playstation kicked so much ass for development -- it was programmed like a single serial processor with a single fast accelerator.
If the jaguar had dumped the 68k and offered a dynamic cache on the risc processors and had a tiny bit of buffering on the blitter, it could have put up a reasonable fight against sony.
Now the LYNX, on the other hand, was very much The Right Thing from a programming standpoint. A fast little processor (for its niche), a good color bitmapped display, and a general purpose blitter.
Price and form factor weighed too heavily against it.
John Carmack
Anyone know where to find? (Score:1)
Re:Jaguar more secure than DVDs...LOL (Score:1)
(In too much of a hurry to track down the actual facts...)
Way off topic, but I'm curious since it's "you" (Score:1)
Re:Ah, the Jaguar... (Score:1)
He's been trying to come up with a revival of the DOOM code with another fellow.
Carl is the guy who's been publishing an additional 4 "complete but never published" Jaguar titles which someone else here already mentioned.
The problem you mention with the Jaguar being unable to run from system RAM was actually a bug in the memory controller. It was intended to be able to run from main RAM. There were quite a number of these (fairly crippling) bugs in the hardware, and we had to work around them to get BattleSphere completed. The fact that it runs at all is pretty amazing... (I'm not sure if this is something to be proud of or not.)
Doug "Thunderbird" Engel BattleSphere Assistant Coder & Lead Artist Scatologic
Re:Ah, the Jaguar... (Score:2)
Heh, sorry... I just assumed all jaguar development was coming from a single crazy group.
Even if the memory controller hadn't been broken, performance would still have sucked really bad without a cache.
The jaguar was definately significantly hampered by its technical flaws, which kept me from ever being too big of a jaguar booster. I was proud of my work on Wolf and DOOM (more so than just about any of the other console work Id has been involved in until just recently), but in the end, the better consoles won the war.
John Carmack
Re:Way off topic, but I'm curious since it's "you" (Score:3)
Re:Misrepresentation? (Score:1)
Re:Scatologic? (Score:1)
(And if you think THAT's sweet, just wait a few days when we unveil our company logo!)
Doug "Thunderbird" Engel BattleSphere Assistant Coder / Lead Artist Scatologic
Where's the Lynx version? & The toilet CD-Rom (Score:1)
BTW, the CD-Rom add-on for the Jag was pretty cool because it made the thing look like a toilet! How's that for forshadowing? Destined for the crapper...
Re:Jaguar more secure than DVDs...LOL (Score:1)
Re:I love my Jag. (Score:1)
Fanatics, zealotry, and dead platforms (Score:2)
Re:Fanatics, zealotry, and dead platforms (Score:3)
I certainly don't mean to imply that all Amiga users are fanatics, just that the advocates that made it to my mailbox were less well mannered than those for many other platforms. You are right, it did color my response.
So, to give you a somewhat better answer:
The Amiga's success was in demonstrating the large benefits of specialized graphics coprocessors for personal computers, and providing close to a workstation like environment while the PC was still struggling with segment registers in dos.
It wouldn't have been obvious at the time, but the Amiga was basically fated to go the way of a console generation, rather than evolve as the PC or mac did.
The reliance on low level hardware knowledge and programming provided the obvious visual superiority, but also locked it in to a very ungracefull evolution.
John Carmack
Re:Way off topic, but I'm curious since it's "you" (Score:1)
The Lynx's main Achilles heel (IMO) was the relatively short battery life, which meant mainly action games, and few adventure games (ala Mario-whatever). Still, I have a couple of "Handys", and enjoy playing multi-player carts. It still impresses those who have never heard of it ("Wow! Is this new?")
Thanks (Score:1)
Re:uhmmm (Score:1)
Re:Atari always been a step behind (Score:1)
Doug "Thunderbird" Engel
BattleSphere Assistant Coder / Lead Artist
Scatologic
Slashdot effect! (Score:1)
Atari Lynx (Score:2)
I played with one of these back in the day. If I remember correctly the Sega GameGear and the Nintendo GameBoy were already established. (The GameGear may have already been in decline.) This kid at "Geek Camp" [siu.edu] had one. What I remember about it was not only that it was quick, but that it's color screenm unlike the GameGear was crisp. (Playing Sonic on the GameGears was very much like playing with your eyes closed. The pixels simply didn't refresh fast enough, so all you got was a blur.)
Price and form factor weighed too heavily against it.
I don't remember it being that big. Maybe a bit bigger than the GameGear, but nothing absurd. It was quite expensive wasn't it.
I'll have to see if I can track down one of these things to purchase some time. It's by far my favorite piece of failed hardware.
Re:Thanks (more Amiga comparisons) (Score:1)
http://sls.mcs.usu.edu/~kurto/lynx/faq.html [usu.edu]
Other notable Amiga-derived features include:
- palette of 4096 colors (16 per line, I think, using Amiga "Copper"-like tricks.)
- Blitter w/ logical ops and scaling features (more powerful than Amiga)
- Previously mentioned sprite hardware (much more powerful than Amiga)
- Sound specs suspiciously similar to Amiga
Basically, the idea and implementation of the helper chips (including a special hardware multiply, and graphics and sound processors) evolved directly from much of Jay Miner's work, although Needle & Mical certainly innovated on their own. Their Sprite hardware engine (as I said before) was quite a powerful feature. STUN Runner showed this off quite well.The next step was moving away from integer ops and sprites, into true 3D. Hence the 3D0 (the next RJ Mical, Dave Needle (and David Morse(?)) collaboration).
Star Raiders (Score:1)
#define X(x,y) x##y
Re:Battlesphere Shipped Before Daikatana (Score:2)
Hmmm - I have to disagree with you on that last point - I spent way too much time playing that game when I was little, that was one of my favorite games on that system...
Re:Does anyone actually own a Jaguar? (Score:1)
Oh yeah. (Score:1)
I grew up on the Atari 520 ST personal computer.
I loved that thing. But give me a break...the company is called "Scatologic"? this sounds more like a joke than anything else.
Re:yeah right (Score:1)
Please tell me what game from "the earlier ones" is "great," I would really like to know
I could mention some of my favorite games for the various classic consoles, but that's beside the point.
I'm saying that glitz and glamor do not a game make. Technology advances allow us to prettify games by adding better sound and graphics, but I don't play games for their sound and graphics. I play a game for the game part of it.
If you believe that good graphics make a good game, then in your world there are lots of great games and they're getting better all the time.
I don't agree. All that matters to me is playability and replayability. Originality is good too. All three qualities are becoming less prevalent in the game industry today, possibly because the industry recognizes that most of its customers are like you, willing to relax their purse strings for some eye'n'ear candy.
Re:the real reason the proceeds go to diabetes ... (Score:4)
Don't further the myth that eating sugar causes diabetes. It's no more true than saying that thinking gives you Alzheimer's disease.
Diabetes is actually one of two diseases:
Type I (formerly "juvenile diabetes") is caused by an autoimmune response that destroys most or all of the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas (actual cause unknown, viral infection suspected), and requires that the person take insulin shots regularly for the rest of their life, barring medical breakthroughs. This is the type of diabetes I have.
Type II (formerly "adult-onset diabetes") is caused by a desensitizing of the body's cells' insulin receptors, and is often associated with aging and obesity. It can often be treated with changes in diet and exercise habits and oral medication, but occasionally requires supplemental insulin if these therapies fail. My father recently developed this form of diabetes. It's more common than Type I at about a 9:1 ratio.
(There's also 'gestational diabetes,' which is a cousin of Type II....)
Eating sugar has nothing to do with the onset of either of these diseases. I only go out on a limb and talk about this because public misinformation about what diabetes is, and how it works, could potentially kill me (see the movie "Con Air" for a REALLY REALLY bad example of horrible diametrically-opposite incorrect possibly-fatal misconceptions about diabetes).
And, to be moderately on-topic, it's ASTOUNDINGLY cool that the authors are giving this money to diabetes research; diabetes is the nations's fourth-largest killer disease, and largely goes undiagnosed for over 50% of the people who have it. Get your blood sugar checked if ANYTHING seems weird in your health. It can't hurt, and might save your life.
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Re:Fanatics, zealotry, and dead platforms (Score:1)
Looking at the Amiga market from the Commodore Banckruptcy onwards, you can see the prevelance of applications which supported the ageing ECS chipset specs, when the more advanced AGA chipset was available. Why? No published specs for AGA!
It's taken years for the Amiga Community to realise that, and unfortunately killed the platform. I think it's only been for about 2 or 3 years where people have been seriously programming for hardware-independant interfaces like WarpUP and Warp3D, like OpenGL, actually using the OS to do tricks rather than banging the ancient custom hardware.
Then again, it's only been in the past 2 or 3 years that we've had machines hit mainstream that have been powerful enough to facilitate that..
I'll be glad when we get a new set of machines either by Amiga via Tao and their intent product, or from the QNX Neutrino movement. At least a fresh start (and with Quake 3 Arena already ported* ;) would encourage people to program independantly of hardware in environments that really are "processorm agnostic".
And a question for John Carmack - have you seen the QNX Neutrino port of Quake 3 at all?
Re:Fanatics, zealotry, and dead platforms (Score:1)
Re:the real reason the proceeds go to diabetes ... (Score:1)
please forgive me for what seems to be an ignorance of diabetes - I apologise for my previous post for those who are offended by it's misinformation.
Thanks for the correction, I now stand better educated, and I revoke my previous comments.
I apologise to all that this post may have offended.
Ian.
Re:Ah, the Jaguar... (Score:1)
Actually, you could execute code out of main memory. You merely had to be careful about crossing page boundaries because the instruction pointer wouldn't update properly. I'd say the biggest problem with the processors was Atari & Brainstorm's documentation. =)
We manually paged pieces in for NBA Jams, White Men Can't Jump and Ruiner Pinball. Vid Grid sat entirely in one chunk on either RISC with the 68000 just facilitating major modes. (And you thought 64k games were gone!)
For Dactyl Joust, we were using an automatic memory paging system which was started with Ruiner. This worked by augmenting function calls to load in each function in 256-byte chunks, as many as needed, and doing address fixups. Rarely called support routines remained in main store, specially tagged to avoid being loaded in. (See above re: running from main RAM and crossing page boundaries. The addresses had to be guaranteed by creating a million sections in the link file. Can you say link file nightmare?) In the end though, C and eventually C++ use became pretty invisible (read easy and efficient) even on the GPU RISC processor.
Going back and looking at Jaguar code again when I did Tempest/X3 for Playstation was a total trip. Even just a couple years later, I'd forgotten how fun/weird/ugly that beastie was. I honestly miss it though. I really do. For all its quirks (especially because of its quirks!) It was a great little box.
Re:Atari always been a step behind (Score:1)
The name of the hardware was "CoJag", so a search for info on that name should yield some info.
Doug "Thunderbird" Engel
BattleSphere Assistant Coder / Lead Artist
Scatologic
Re:Ah, the Jaguar... (Score:1)
I thought that was one of those "Jaguar Urban Legends" (a.k.a. marketing hype / vaporware) like MKII and Tiny Toons Adventures....
Did Dactyl Joust Really exist? Are there any remains of this game left?
Doug "Thunderbird" Engel
BattleSphere Assistant Coder / Lead Artist
Scatologic
Re:Battlesphere Shipped Before Daikatana (Score:1)
Actually, it was the other way around: Atari took the code for Last Starfighter and converted it to Star Raiders II.
This does raise an interesting point - look back at the original Star Raiders. It required a 10K OS, 8K program, and 8K data, including screen display. Could anyone put together a neat hack like that today in 26k?
Re:Ok...now what?! (Score:1)
You know what else I can't believe?
All those people still using paintbrushes to make pictures in this day and age! I mean, come on people! Live in the NOW! Get a copy of Illustrator for God's sake!
Amiga->Lynx.. don't forget Atari->Amiga (Score:1)
John Carmack mentioned that the Amiga was destined to go the way of the consoles. Atari did that first, too.
If you're bored, grab a copy of "Atari800" (for Unix/Linux) or "Atari800Win" or some other Atari 8-bit emulator, and try running some of the really kick-ass demos created in the European demo-scene in the past 10 years.
Consider that the hardware's capabilities have been the same since the late '70's / early '80's, and wonder why Apple II's were so popular.
Re:Way off topic, but I'm curious since it's "you" (Score:2)
Completely Off Topic - Kiwis (Score:1)
If the Jaguar had gone the way of the Kiwi, it would still be being manufactured. Kiwis are alive and well and breeding in the wild.
I suggest you use dodos or moas when you need to use an extinct flightless bird as a metaphor.
I had an Atari Lynx for a while. Nice little machine with some rather cute games. I remember trying so hard to get the maximum rotations (4 or 5? "Awesome!") on that surfing game.
Re:Thanks (more Amiga comparisons) (Score:1)
BTW, there's a new Lynx game coming out based on BattleWheels' 3D engine, called CyberVirus [ign.com]...
VidGrid (Score:1)
One of its other cool features will be a Virtual Light Machine mode so you can play MP3's and MOD's and slide around a visual representation of the sound.
Re:Ah, the Jaguar... (Score:2)
Re:What?! (Score:2)
Re:Atari Lynx (Score:2)
It's very small.
It's very cheap.
There are 151753018537 games for it.