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Post by _jash on Feb 12, 2019 19:57:58 GMT
Jag was an interesting console in it's time, and even today. Can't say I really fell in love with any games in particular, but it's a cool conversation piece.
When I first saw it in '94, I was pretty underwhelmed with what the Sega CD/Gens, Turbo and SNES were doing in comparison. Cybermorph was about as bad a pack in title imaginable, lol
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Post by spenoza on Feb 12, 2019 20:04:19 GMT
The hardware wasn't just hard to develop for, it was actually buggy. Not buggy like the Saturn, where isn't not actually buggy but the interactions are too complex for some people to fully understand the nature of the limitations, but Pentium multiplication error buggy. That's interesting. I remember hearing that the dev kit they sent out was legitimately bugged, is that what you're referring to? Or even after the fix they rolled out? From The Owl Project: The Jaguar also has a UART bug that's easy to find info on on Google. And here's a great write-up which, in addition to lots of other helpful info for would-be developers, includes a number of other bugs in Jaguar hardware. Upon review, none of these bugs are fatal, and most aren't too bad as long as you know about them and are prepared to use workarounds, but the Jaguar is already a complex system (not quite as complex as the Saturn, but similar ballpark) that had poor documentation and dev tools, and if you wanted to make something optimized and impressive you were probably going to have to go it alone. The bugs were just icing on the cake. And the bugs seem like the sort most likely to trouble folks engaging in optimization, so insult to injury and so forth.
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Post by lukester on Feb 12, 2019 20:11:32 GMT
I always did find that the very high exclusive to multiplat ratio on the Jaguar is rather interesting...
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Post by Galahad on Feb 12, 2019 22:32:19 GMT
Off topic,I owned the 3DO and the Jaguar around the time they were both released in Canada,I honestly played the Jaguar more.
Jaguar: Doom,Theme Park,Raiden,Power Drive,Cannon Fodder,Kasumi Ninja(ya,ya whatever,I liked it),Ultra Vortek,Wolfenstein 3D,Alien vs Predator,Tempest 2000.
3DO: Start Wars Rebel Assault,Total Eclipse,Off World Interceptor,Dragons Lair.
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Post by Black_Tiger on Feb 13, 2019 1:39:51 GMT
I did think of the 32X and two other systems,CDI and Amiga CD32 but like the sega 32X I didn't think anyone would remember them.If we go by sales the 3D0 beat all of them. The biggest problem for the Jaguar is that it was hard to find. The 3DO was a completely different business model and different manufacturers had different distribution avenues. The 32X was successful but immediately killed off by its biggest competitor: Sega/the Saturn. Add in the lack of Japanese software support for the Jaguar and it wouldn't have mattered if it had Dreamcast hardware inside. Anyway, when it comes to the potential of the hardware, I've seen tech experts explain a few times how, like most consoles, it has everything in place to do some amazing things well beyond what we've seen... but it's stuck behind a design flaw/bottleneck.
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Post by Galahad on Feb 13, 2019 1:50:31 GMT
Is there any 32X homebrew?I recall someone mentioned it had a frame buffer but I don't remember if there was any mention of programming it.
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Post by Black_Tiger on Feb 13, 2019 2:47:37 GMT
Is there any 32X homebrew?I recall someone mentioned it had a frame buffer but I don't remember if there was any mention of programming it. chillywilly ported Wolfenstein 3D and was at one time planning to do a much better version of Doom. He ported the Yeti 3D engine and released a demo of it. youtu.be/ahISpH1eMzg
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Post by spenoza on Feb 13, 2019 3:39:33 GMT
The nature of the 32x frame buffer limits frame rate, much like the 3do. Frame buffers were just not up to 60 FPS gaming at the time. I think the 32x and 3do couldn’t push more than 30 FPS for frame buffer output. DF Retro has some videos that go into more detail on the subject.
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Post by Black_Tiger on Feb 13, 2019 6:12:38 GMT
The nature of the 32x frame buffer limits frame rate, much like the 3do. Frame buffers were just not up to 60 FPS gaming at the time. I think the 32x and 3do couldn’t push more than 30 FPS for frame buffer output. DF Retro has some videos that go into more detail on the subject. That's what I thought as well up until recently. Apparently there is much more flexibility. The unreleased 32X version of Pinnochio is supposed to run at 60fps for all layers.
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Post by dragonmasterdan on Feb 13, 2019 12:49:11 GMT
The biggest problem for the Jaguar is that it was hard to find. The 3DO was a completely different business model and different manufacturers had different distribution avenues. The 32X was successful but immediately killed off by its biggest competitor: Sega/the Saturn. Add in the lack of Japanese software support for the Jaguar and it wouldn't have mattered if it had Dreamcast hardware inside. Anyway, when it comes to the potential of the hardware, I've seen tech experts explain a few times how, like most consoles, it has everything in place to do some amazing things well beyond what we've seen... but it's stuck behind a design flaw/bottleneck. While distribution was certainly an issue, if you wanted to find one through a specialty shop they were certainly readily available by Fall of 1994 with no major shortages and in fact an excess of unsold stock that was still sitting in Atari warehouses in 1996.
The lack of Software support in general was the real problem for the Jaguar. The vast majority of the games that came out on it were little more than 16-bit games with improved color palettes as most developers just wrote directly for the X68K processor rather than to Tom and Jerry as the documentation was lacking and too much effort was required to get performance out of it that consumers buying a "64-bit" console would expect.
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KingDrool
Punkic Cyborg
jlued686 or John F**KED, if you're nasty.
Posts: 245
Fave PCE Shooter: Lords of Thunder
Fave PCE Platformer: Bonk's Adventure
Fave PCE Game Overall: Bonk's Adventure
Fave PCE RPG: Cosmic Fantasy 2
Currently Playing: Red Dead Redemption 2
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Post by KingDrool on Feb 13, 2019 15:18:25 GMT
All those were certainly factors. But the biggest thing that factored into the Jaguars doom was simple: It sucked. From top to bottom, garbage. Bad games, bad hardware, silly controller. They could've distributed to this thing to every store, gas station, and lemonade stand in the world. It wouldn't have changed the fact that the Jaguar was a terrible console with terrible games*.
*Except Tempest 2000
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Post by spenoza on Feb 13, 2019 15:26:56 GMT
The nature of the 32x frame buffer limits frame rate, much like the 3do. Frame buffers were just not up to 60 FPS gaming at the time. I think the 32x and 3do couldn’t push more than 30 FPS for frame buffer output. DF Retro has some videos that go into more detail on the subject. That's what I thought as well up until recently. Apparently there is much more flexibility. The unreleased 32X version of Pinnochio is supposed to run at 60fps for all layers. I found the thread where someone told you just that, but I don't know who that forumite is and what their credentials are to make that claim. It must not have been simple or easy or other developers, Sega included, would have been doing it. That suggests there's some trickery involved, and perhaps something operating out of spec or in unexpected ways.
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Post by Galahad on Feb 13, 2019 15:35:14 GMT
I'm assuming that thread is on sega 16?
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Post by Black_Tiger on Feb 13, 2019 18:38:53 GMT
The biggest problem for the Jaguar is that it was hard to find. The 3DO was a completely different business model and different manufacturers had different distribution avenues. The 32X was successful but immediately killed off by its biggest competitor: Sega/the Saturn. Add in the lack of Japanese software support for the Jaguar and it wouldn't have mattered if it had Dreamcast hardware inside. Anyway, when it comes to the potential of the hardware, I've seen tech experts explain a few times how, like most consoles, it has everything in place to do some amazing things well beyond what we've seen... but it's stuck behind a design flaw/bottleneck. While distribution was certainly an issue, if you wanted to find one through a specialty shop they were certainly readily available by Fall of 1994 with no major shortages and in fact an excess of unsold stock that was still sitting in Atari warehouses in 1996.
The lack of Software support in general was the real problem for the Jaguar. The vast majority of the games that came out on it were little more than 16-bit games with improved color palettes as most developers just wrote directly for the X68K processor rather than to Tom and Jerry as the documentation was lacking and too much effort was required to get performance out of it that consumers buying a "64-bit" console would expect.
My hometown was extra hardcore for video games from everything I've read online over the years. We had massive stock of SMS games around to buy and rent, lots of Famicom games, rental stores had imports from Europe, Japan and the U.S. We got different models of 3DO hardware and games to buy and rent, multiple stores sold the Turbo-CD and I bought PCE CD games in town. There were so many arcade games... but the Jaguar was never available. When I moved to Vancouver it was a big city version pf this with the most obscure games and harsware all over the place. But the only place I found that had Jaguar besides EB was a record store chain. Lots of 3DO and 32X everywhere though. Maybe it was different in the U.S. for Jaguar, but from what people have said over the years, we had it better than almost everywhere in the U.S. for all other console gaming.
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Post by Black_Tiger on Feb 13, 2019 18:44:35 GMT
That's what I thought as well up until recently. Apparently there is much more flexibility. The unreleased 32X version of Pinnochio is supposed to run at 60fps for all layers. I found the thread where someone told you just that, but I don't know who that forumite is and what their credentials are to make that claim. It must not have been simple or easy or other developers, Sega included, would have been doing it. That suggests there's some trickery involved, and perhaps something operating out of spec or in unexpected ways. I figured that he'd know if it's true since he has made several Mega Drive game hacks. I don't doubt that it would have been uncommon knowledge at the time, but stuff like that gets figured out by devs as they become familiar with new hardware. In the case of the 32X, no one had that opportunity. Some of the 2D homebrew looks like it runs at 60fps in videos. .
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