Fixed: Atari Jaguar console, but....

[MrFulci]

I was mostly kidding. I had a Jag w/ CD and loved it back when it was new... it was a bitter disappointment to me for the most part. It had tons of potential, but very few games played off its strengths to tap the potential. T2K remains one of my all time favorites to this day.

Vestcoat wanted to stir the pot, so I went ahead with complaints about other systems. It's all goofing around.

It's all a person's taste. I would not say Jaguar sucked, however, I can see why most people do, and have no desire for the system. I played it when someone I knew had it. He had the 3 FPS games (AVP, DOOM, Wolf 3D), and a few others. That stirred my interest, after that I found T2K, etc. When the system was going to disappear, I bought it and some games.

Reading this thread, I didn't know only 250K systems were manufactured, though.


What cost me the most for that system, was the Chaos Reign rotary controller.

[seieienbu]

I tore into it after it arrived and found a blown power regulator; research confirmed it dies a terrible death when a Sega Genesis power adapter is used instead of the proper Jag DC supply.  I am usually a bit better at solder work, this surface mount replacement part went in just slightly crooked.  A fix is a fix and it is electrically sound for now.  I have been playing a bit of Jag Doom. 

Heh, I'm on my second Jaguar losing my first to this very issue.  I bought my first Jaguar for pretty cheap maybe 15 years ago and it came with a Genesis AC adaptor.  I played it a few times but one day soon after I purchased it I flipped the switch on and smelled burning plastic.  I took it back to the store with the included AC adaptor and ended up exchanging it for my second Jaguar so in the end no harm, no foul.

I've got a small stack of games but I think Tempest 2000 and Raiden are the only games I really like on the system.  The FPS games were good enough at the time but I'm not really interested in playing console ports of Doom 1 or whatever anymore...

[MrFulci]

..................

I've got a small stack of games but I think Tempest 2000 and Raiden are the only games I really like on the system.  The FPS games were good enough at the time but I'm not really interested in playing console ports of Doom 1 or whatever anymore...

I forgot about Raiden.

That Missile Command game I also forgot about. NBA Jam on Jaguar was a decent port, I forgot to mention that in an earlier post.

[vexcollects]

Doom
Rayman
AvP
Tempest 2000

I have another 17 or so games, but these are the only ones I typically play. I had the rarer copy of Worms for a while, but it was a really poor port. Sold it.

[ifkz]

I was mostly kidding. I had a Jag w/ CD and loved it back when it was new...

Really?  A Jag CD?  I have always been curious about the add-on.  Even Jag collectors never talk about it, it's like a black hole...curiosity enters, nothing escapes.  Care to share any thoughts on it?

I don't hate the Jag, obviously if I am adding to my small stack of games in 2014.  I think everyone has touched on the good games I still enjoy playing too.

Today I found out about Best Electronics for Atari systems.  Interesting site, and I see refurbished Jag CDs for $150 or so.  I remember one of the AVGN  Youtube Episodes where he bought one two but could not get either to work properly.

[Lost Monkey]

Jaguar trounces PC Engine/Turbo Grafx there. I never saw slow down on a Jaguar cart game! It had 2 controller ports already built-in, also!

 

You haven't played T2K then?  It is FULL of slowdown and frameskipping. 

[MrFulci]

Jaguar trounces PC Engine/Turbo Grafx there. I never saw slow down on a Jaguar cart game! It had 2 controller ports already built-in, also!

 

You haven't played T2K then?  It is FULL of slowdown and frameskipping. 

Slow Down in T2K? Not that I've took much notice of. The Turbo Grafx goes to a crawl on certain games, at certain moments. For me, that just adds to the TG's charm.

Of course, most systems have a better all together library than the Jaguar does, however, I'm OK with the Jaguar system and some of the games. It's why I chose to buy that system instead of a Saturn, years ago.

[vexcollects]

I would agree with most here. I do have a Jag CD at the moment, but I've never owned anything worth playing for the Jag CD. I wanted to get iron soldier 2. I wanted to also play though Highlander and baldies, but I require a memory track.

As a young adult I ordered a Jaguar from a magazine ad, and put more hours into AvP and Doom than I care to share. AvP is still one of the creepiest games I have ever played.

[Necromancer]

The Turbo Grafx goes to a crawl on certain games, at certain moments. For me, that just adds to the TG's charm.

Thank god there's never slow down in Genesis or especially SNES games.

[MrFulci]

I was mostly kidding. I had a Jag w/ CD and loved it back when it was new...

Really?  A Jag CD?  I have always been curious about the add-on.  Even Jag collectors never talk about it, it's like a black hole...curiosity enters, nothing escapes.  Care to share any thoughts on it?

All I recall was being so excited about the possibilities (seeing as how the jump from HuCards to CD was so amazing), but a bit disappointed by the reality.  It came with Vid Grid (number sliding puzzle only with a music video playing on the sliding blocks instead of numbers) and Blue Lightning.  I didn't care for blue lightning at all... and while Vid Grid was a fun little puzzle game, I was hoping for much more WOW factor than "ah, a shitty Lynx game in slightly higher resolution and a puzzle game with 0 replay value."

Despite being underwhelmed, I still looked forward to snagging the new video game magazines each month to scour their pages for new Jag CD games.  I don't recall any specific titles, but there were a few that I was holding my breath for up until the bitter end.  I don't think I ever purchased any CD games for it before selling it off.

Coming on the heels of TTI closing their doors, the Jag/CD experience soured me to the point where I stopped buying consoles for a long time.  The tiny bit of gaming I did after that was mostly on the PC because, dammit, you can't discontinue a PC (and even if you could, it can still be used for pr0n! hah ).

Yeah, the blackhole analogy someone made above about the JAG CD is fitting. That's a console that has some games, but not enough for me to be willing to pick it up. It's actually telling to me, that the most interesting part of that system, for me, is the Light Machine for audio CDs.

If I found one for cheap enough, I'd buy it, but unlike the Jaguar, there aren't any games that draw me to it.

[Lost Monkey]

Yeah, the VLM was the only thing that got me to hang onto the JagCd for so long...

[BigusSchmuck]

.... The damn thing still looks like a toilet. Enough said.

[ultrageranium]

For me there are some similarities between the Jaguar and the SGX (and to some extent a couple more 90s experiments in the field of aborted revolutions):

- I could not afford one when they came out
- They were marketed as disruptive and paradigm shifts in the console scene
- The gaming press/media of the time was regularly giving sneak and obscure previews which contrasted with the omnipresence of other consoles, and helped build some mystery
- They both failed miserably

That's legendary material here, and anyone a bit interested in game console history cannot be insensitive to this level of drama. That's how, I assume that many, myself included, started to build some imaginary about such devices, and also got the need to actually hold and play with this stuff of legend.

However, and this is where personally the parallel stops, the SGX and the Jaguar are not ageing in the same way in their design and functionality. For instance the ridiculously big SGX+SCD2 combo has this retro-futurist look and modularity (PSU chord bridge idea is brilliant) that the bulky cheap plastic Jaguar has not; the SGX has only a few titles but the console is compatible with all the other PCE stuff while the Jaguar stands alone in its own universe of very few worthy games (only one if you ask me). And there is also a more subjective factor, that is the western vs asian game aesthetics and mechanics. The SGX benefited from Hudson's know-how and existing links with game developers obsessed with bringing game centers at home, while Atari was much more isolated in a market that it tried to join too late.

I believe that this makes the Jaguar an interesting piece of hardware for collectors, but not something you'd want to regularly plug and play with.

[esteban]

For me there are some similarities between the Jaguar and the SGX (and to some extent a couple more 90s experiments in the field of aborted revolutions):

- I could not afford one when they came out
- They were marketed as disruptive and paradigm shifts in the console scene
- The gaming press/media of the time was regularly giving sneak and obscure previews which contrasted with the omnipresence of other consoles, and helped build some mystery
- They both failed miserably

That's legendary material here, and anyone a bit interested in game console history cannot be insensitive to this level of drama. That's how, I assume that many, myself included, started to build some imaginary about such devices, and also got the need to actually hold and play with this stuff of legend.

However, and this is where personally the parallel stops, the SGX and the Jaguar are not ageing in the same way in their design and functionality. For instance the ridiculously big SGX+SCD2 combo has this retro-futurist look and modularity (PSU chord bridge idea is brilliant) that the bulky cheap plastic Jaguar has not; the SGX has only a few titles but the console is compatible with all the other PCE stuff while the Jaguar stands alone in its own universe of very few worthy games (only one if you ask me). And there is also a more subjective factor, that is the western vs asian game aesthetics and mechanics. The SGX benefited from Hudson's know-how and existing links with game developers obsessed with bringing game centers at home, while Atari was much more isolated in a market that it tried to join too late.

I believe that this makes the Jaguar an interesting piece of hardware for collectors, but not something you'd want to regularly plug and play with.

I concur about how Jaguar vs. SuperGrafx aged...but SGX really only looks nice SOLO, ha! 


Anyway, I wish I had access to a Jaguar to play games (at a friend's house/yurt), but I don't want to be bothered myself. I have too much already.