Is the Jaguar really that bad?

[HyperTurboFox]

Few months ago,

I'll try out the Jaguar library and man it's bad just as expected.

Most games are unplayable and buggy mess and the controller design sucks.

They called this 64-Bit! More like a 32-Bit computer emulating 16-Bit games.

"WHAT WERE THEY THINKING!"

No wonder Atari exit out of the console race after the Jaguar.

 

[Nebulon_Galaxy]

Some of them are salvageable. Have you tried out some fan games?

 

[HyperTurboFox]

Some of them are salvageable. Have you tried out some fan games?

I hadn't tried out any fan games or yet alone Homebrew titles.

 

[Bonkers225]

Nah. And it had it's ups, it's just that the games that were solid/good were mostly unknown names, so they never were given a chance.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

I thought some games were very decent, but the vast majority are simply poor ports or rushed ideas.

 

[ciro64]

I've been wanting to try Cybermorph for sometime, I'll see if I can get a emulator working soon. There's just something about it that turns me on.

Go ahead, make that green head reference.

 

[Iguana-0]

Yeah absolutely!! But it has Tempest 2000! The only good game i can think of

 

[Stookymalarkey]

I only remember the controller being atrocious. I guess the games I tried didn't really leave an impact on me.

 

[Bakuma1997]

I checked its library out of curiosity

I can say yes

 

[Eclipse14]

It got 99 problems and Atari was all of them.

 

[Iguana-0]

I've been wanting to try Cybermorph for sometime, I'll see if I can get a emulator working soon. There's just something about it that turns me on.

Go ahead, make that green head reference.

Where did you learn to fly?

 

[GeorgieBoysAXE]

I love that dumb system so much & I genuinely want to develop my first game for that platform when I start the process of learning code/development.

 

[Zerpina]

I Can toss some incite on this one, i Actually owned one of these Damned things

Yes, 99% Of the games where Poorly Rushed Trash fires.
The controller... had a Old push-button phone style Pad on the front, which not a lot of the games actually used, Aside like Alien vs. Predator and a couple others.

Kasumi Ninja wasn't a Bad game, nor was AvP. they where fairly Competent games, for the time. it Looked REALLY good for the time to.

Tempest as mentioned above, was Damn good, Cybermorph... well it was a Early 3D Game, so giving it that bit of Leeway... Was hot garbage.

Would i say the System was bad?
No. Absolutely not, for the time it came out, it was pretty powerful

Would i say the Library was hot Garbage,
Yes, for the most part i would

The controller wasn't Awful, just that Stupid 0-9 and #* Thing they did. had it been a PlayStation style controller, 4 shoulder/face start select and D-Pad. it might have actually been Good.

I Traded it not long after, for a Phillips CD-i... but that's another piece of Hot garbage...

 

[bjork]

The 3D stuff made it stand out against SNES/Genesis, but then it looked less than when compared to PS/Saturn. I don't know if it would've fared better had it been any earlier, but maybe? I've only played a handful of games for it but nothing I played felt like an absolute broken mess or anything, just more like multiple proofs of concept that all needed more time before they were released.

I Traded it not long after, for a Phillips CD-i... but that's another piece of Hot garbage...

Oof. Now you're talking. There was a golf game that almost sold my dad on one when they were $700 at Sears, but he was just talking the other day about how he was glad he didn't pull the trigger on that one.

 

[Zerpina]

The 3D stuff made it stand out against SNES/Genesis, but then it looked less than when compared to PS/Saturn. I don't know if it would've fared better had it been any earlier, but maybe? I've only played a handful of games for it but nothing I played felt like an absolute broken mess or anything, just more like multiple proofs of concept that all needed more time before they were released.


Oof. Now you're talking. There was a golf game that almost sold my dad on one when they were $700 at Sears, but he was just talking the other day about how he was glad he didn't pull the trigger on that one.

ya, that thing was a POS. i got it in as i said Trade, had the big ass <i think it was 2 meg> 2 Meg videocard adapter, a Controller, and some odd ends and games.

i bought the 3 Zelda games for it... god where those Steaming piles of...

 

[GeorgieBoysAXE]

No joke, I could name 20 worthwhile retail games that make owning one totally worth it. Like, genuine, Attack of the Mutant Penguins is stupid fun, it had the best version of NBA Jam TE; I-War, Hover Strike, Battle-Morph, Zero5 & so many more were total bangers—& then there are the amazing homebrew games for it.

I'm actively playing Jumping at Shadows right now, & it's a great Celeste clone with some surprisingly impressive graphical effects that add to dystopian atmosphere of the game.

 

[thecrow2313]

Ohh it's bad

 

[HyperTurboFox]

Ohh it's bad

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING!

 

[Ezri_Muldoon]

Rayman was originally a Jaguar exclusive, so no its not inherently bad.
But that could have easily have been a CD32 or 32X exclusive at launch. There was nothing unique about the Jag required to create Rayman.

It's just woefully underpowered console, consider its origins with flare technologies and the chipsets being stuck in the late 80's (The panther starting development in 1988, with an original planned launch for 1991 and the Jaguars chipset being an evolution of whatever flare had cooked up back then) it was always going to be bottlenecked by a processor design lineage that never released.

Sega abandoned its backwards compatibility between the Dreamcast & Saturn when they realised the Naomi was easier to develop for (Let's skip over 3DFX deal falling through) essentially starting from scratch in the hopes of attracting devs.
Nintendo stuck with Power PC for the N64, Gamecube, Wii & Wii U for consistency & familiarity for third party devs. Again, encouraging development.

The Jag was essentially Atari dropping a GameCube and saying "It's built upon the N64!" in a timeline where the N64 never released.

With not a single developer releasing a killer app that used the systems full capabilities, maybe AVP or Iron Soldier?
One game that sacrificed 3D Models for texture mapping whilst the other sacrificed texture mapping for 3D Models. oof.

The Jag, CD32, PC98 were all doomed, the last window for releasing a successful 16bit/None 3D 32bit console was 1991.
Anything released after that was trapped in a pre-1995 generation limbo.

Only the 3DO & Neo Geo MVS (somewhat) escaped that fate by being extremely good at early 3D & perfecting 2D respectively. Despite those being held back by their ludicrous price points they became hits within enthusiasts circles and their sophisticated hardware attracted devs regardless of the small user base.
The Jag? No user base, no attractive hardware, existing hardware was difficult to develop for, no CD capabilities at launch, it was just weird.

 

[SpikeSlania]

I did download the Jaguar library just because of how small it is even though I only want to play a few games from it. If I remember right from the Game Sack comparison the colors in Rayman are nicer than in the other ports. Raiden looks decent as well but there's probably ports of it on other systems. But I am a sucker for Mech games so I do want to give those Iron Soldier games a go. Tempest 2000 and Wolfenstein 3D should also be decent. Not the biggest fan of OG Doom so not sure about that and AVP.

 

[GeorgieBoysAXE]

Honestly, I love the second life that the Jaguar is enjoying with its bustling homebrew scene, & it’ll only be a matter of time before someone(s) drops a dope new 3D title that people still can’t seem to agree on whether or not it’s possible to even do (I’m firmly in the camp of IS possible.)

 

[Adrastia]

I played Jaguar a few times at KB. Not that enjoyable. The controller felt weird and I didn't know what the number pad did.

The cancelled Black Ice, White Noise for the Jaguar CD seemed intriguing though.

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24]

It’s sadly an example of “wasn’t around long enough to show us what it could do”.

Tempest 2000, everybody’s favorite, shows that the console could do some crazy graphical effects! But, it chose to focus on flat shaded and poorly running 3D, handled by developers who had never designed for 3D, who were having to design 3D on a console that was a pain to develop for.

It has a few sick games! Jaguar Doom, Tempest 2000, Alien VS Predator, and some sick ports! But, its library is pathetic in size, so there’s not much room for hidden gems. And, one final time, the hardware design is weird and uncomfortable for kids. As an adult with big hands, I find it more comfortable! But I totally get why it wasn’t going to appeal to the average game player at the time.

 

[Karnik 2.0: reboot]

The Jag, CD32, PC98 were all doomed, the last window for releasing a successful 16bit/None 3D 32bit console was 1991.

Nah, the  PC-98 has nothing to do with this. It was a 16-bit computer (ms-dos system first, then Windows 3.1 etc) primarily oriented towards the world of work and business.
Comparable if anything to 286/386 PCs, not to game consoles.
If you talk about commercial failure and flop of certain devices, in this case you are very wrong.
Anyway, it has a video game library of thousands of titles including point & click, dating sim and hentai visual novel games, whose graphics are still considered excellent and unmatched today. And it continues to have great success, through emulation, even today in the West; this is confirmed by the numerous english translations and back-ported texts from 286/386 to PC-98 developed in recent years by fans.

NEC PC 9801 - Translation archive : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Archive of all NEC PC-9801 fan translated games as of February 2025.02/09/2025- Added Variable Geo (+ SFW hack)02/07/2025-Added Appareden - The Sacrosanct...

archive.org

https://gbatemp.net/threads/my-pc-98-translation-projects.608497/

https://gbatemp.net/threads/pc-98-translations-updates-2023.630855/

And yours truly is one of its most fervent admirers.

 

[DanCalibur]

Nah, the  PC-98 has nothing to do with this. It was a 16-bit computer (ms-dos system first, then Windows 3.1 etc) primarily oriented towards the world of work and business.
Comparable if anything to 286/386 PCs, not to game consoles.
If you talk about commercial failure and flop of certain devices, in this case you are very wrong.
Anyway, it has a video game library of thousands of titles including point & click, dating sim and hentai visual novel games, whose graphics are still considered excellent and unmatched today. And it continues to have great success, through emulation, even today in the West; this is confirmed by the numerous english translations and back-ported texts from 286/386 to PC-98 developed in recent years by fans.

NEC PC 9801 - Translation archive : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Archive of all NEC PC-9801 fan translated games as of February 2025.02/09/2025- Added Variable Geo (+ SFW hack)02/07/2025-Added Appareden - The Sacrosanct...

archive.org

https://gbatemp.net/threads/my-pc-98-translation-projects.608497/

https://gbatemp.net/threads/pc-98-translations-updates-2023.630855/

And yours truly is one of its most fervent admirers.

I think he meant the PC-FX