Looking at the Jaguar in a new way....

[ReaXan]

Even though the Jaguar has a ton of negativity around it. I am starting to look at it as a nice stopgap between The SNES and the Playstation. I have deemed it a true 24 bit system

look at it this way...

it was the most logical choice if you couldn't afford a 3DO and didnt have a Genesis and were waiting on the PSOne

It had alot of crappy games, but had 5 good/decent ones that had good graphics compared to a PC, which were still like 1,000 dollars in 94.

Doom
Wolfenstein 3D
Alien vs. Predator
Flashback
Atari Carts
---------

If I had the system with those 5 games and still continued to play my SNES as a child I think it would appease my graphics fix for certain games.

If I could redo my gaming history it would be as follows
NES
SNES
JAGUAR
PSONE
PS2
PS3

[Pantechnicon]

It had alot of crappy games, but had 5 good/decent ones that had good graphics compared to a PC, which were still like 1,000 dollars in 94.

Doom
Wolfenstein 3D
Alien vs. Predator
Flashback
Atari Carts

No love for Iron Soldier, Hover Strike, ...Tempest 2000?!

[vivaeljason]

Yeah...first of all, Tempest 2000 is like the only truly great Jag game and should be mentioned.

it was the most logical choice if you couldn't afford a 3DO and didnt have a Genesis and were waiting on the PSOne

Second, the most logical choice if you couldn't afford a 3DO (not that I wanted one) and were waiting on a PSOne would be to wait for the PSOne, save your money, and buy more games for it. That's what I did as a kid, and I don't think I was alone.

It had alot of crappy games, but had 5 good/decent ones that had good graphics compared to a PC, which were still like 1,000 dollars in 94.

Third, I might have been cheap as a kid, but it was going to take a LOT more than five games for me to shell out the money for a system.

[Baloo]

Tempest 2000 and Rayman are pretty much it for the Jaguar, and even the latter one is much better on Playstation and Saturn.

3D0 was a glorified Sega CD really.

[Kid Ice]

3D0 was a glorified Sega CD really.

How many 3DO games have you played?

[Vectorman0]

Tempest 2000 and Rayman are pretty much it for the Jaguar, and even the latter one is much better on Playstation and Saturn.

3D0 was a glorified Sega CD really.

Sure, if you say so.

[ryborg]

3D0 was a glorified Sega CD really.

Yes, much in the same way the GBA was a glorified game.com

[Sonicwolf]

Doom
Wolfenstein 3D
Alien vs. Predator
Flashback
Atari Carts

The problem with that is that most of those were availiable on other platforms at the time. Its hard to defend a system with cross-console ports...

[Koa Zo]

Baloo should really think before he posts.

[Ze_ro]

I have deemed it a true 24 bit system

Haha, what? Are you just making up numbers here? I get what you mean here, but "bits" means nothing. If you want to say it was a stopgap between the 4th generation systems and the 5th generation, that would make more sense... there are actually a lot of systems that can sort of be stuck in there, such as the 3DO, CD-i, CD32, etc. Once the PlayStation came out, basically all these lesser systems got swept out the door pretty fast.

it was the most logical choice if you couldn't afford a 3DO and didnt have a Genesis and were waiting on the PSOne

Honestly, the better choice was to just pass on it and save up the money for a PlayStation. The Jaguar really wasn't a whole lot cheaper. Especially when you could probably get a SNES for a decent price... it might have been older with more hardware limitations, but the number of good games for it was much higher.

Doom
Wolfenstein 3D
Alien vs. Predator
Flashback
Atari Carts

When it came out, the Jaguar version of Doom was the best you could get outside of a PC... but it was still missing a LOT of stuff, such as in-game music, all the dynamic lighting, the Blur artifact, and several enemies, including the bosses. Wolfenstein, however, remains the best version of the game in my opinion.

Alien vs. Predator was excellent back then, but really hasn't aged well. The game engine wasn't much better than Wolfenstein (and far behind Doom), and there wasn't a lot of variety in enemies. The spooky atmosphere and three playable characters really made the game good though

Flashback was available on just about every system ever made, and the Jaguar version wasn't really any better than the others (though it was still a good game).

Atari Karts is vastly inferior to Mario Kart. The graphics are slightly better, but there is no battle mode, almost no powerups (and the ones that ARE there are crummy), and the characters have no personality.

I bought a Jaguar when it first came out, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I still own it, and I've gradually amassed an almost complete library of games for it... but I can't honestly say it was great choice for anyone really. There are plenty of fun games, including stuff like Raiden (still the best home version of the game in my opinion), Tempest 2000, Power Drive Rally, Battlemorph, and other games people have already mentioned.

Unfortunately, the library of games gets really thin when you look into it. Very few 3rd parties made games for it, especially important ones like Konami, Capcom, EA, Square, etc. Important multi-console releases like Earthworm Jim, Mortal Kombat, and Street Fighter also never hit the Jaguar... instead we got ports of awful games like Dragon, Double Dragon V, etc.

There are several important genres that are severely underrepresented; There are no RPG's (with the exception of Towers II, which was a very late release, and is really not very good). There are only a handful of sports games, most of which are awful (NBA Jam TE is the only good one). There are a number of fighting games, but they all have crippling problems (Ultra Vortek has poor gameplay, Kasumi Ninja has awful controls, Fight For Life is too slow and choppy, and none of the combos from the arcade version (or any combos at all, for that matter) of Primal Rage worked on the Jaguar version).

Atari's marketing was terrible at the time, and most people didn't trust what they said, and didn't believe they had a real chance anymore. Everyone realized that there were three important systems still on the way from Nintendo, Sega, and Sony, and it would be just better to wait it out and see what happened. Meanwhile, there were still plenty of good games being released for the Genesis and SNES.

--Zero

[tom]

. I have deemed it a true 24 bit system

Jaguar was 3 years ahead of its time, unfortunately Atari wasn't.