• Tag Archives Atari Jaguar

  • Fight For Life (Atari Jaguar)

    Posted on by Azrael 1 Comment


    Fight For Life cover art (Atari, 1996)

    https://darth-azrael.tumblr.com/post/184664657073/theactioneer-fight-for-life-cover-art-atari

    Fight for Life has the (somewhat dubious) distinction of being the very last game released by Atari Corp. It was an Atari Jaguar exclusive fighting game along the same lines as Tekken and Virtua Fighter. Unfortunately, it is not nearly as good as those games.

    Fight for Life was released by Atari in 1996 and while it had a lot of potential, at the end of the day it just didn’t execute very well. Fight for Life had some good qualities like above average visuals for the time and some unique play mechanics like being able to steal moves from other characters. However, it was really the slow pace of the gameplay and slow response to controls that made this a less than pleasurable experience to play. The good news is that the source code was released and the Jaguar is an open source system now so anyone who wants to improve on it can. Any takers?

    If you do want to give this game a try then the Atari Jaguar is your only option. It was exclusive to that system and hasn’t been re-released. While no bargain, original sealed copies of Fight For Life can be had for no more than the original retail price on eBay. Or you can always try it via emulation.



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  • Space Ace (Atari Jaguar CD)

    Posted on by Azrael 1 Comment


    Space Ace – Jaguar CD

    https://darth-azrael.tumblr.com/post/184658586146/techturd-space-ace-jaguar-cd

    Space Ace was the follow-up to Dragon’s Lair and released less than a year after that game in 1984. Both games were originally arcade games and later received various ports over the years, some more true to the arcade than others. What made these games unique for the time was that they were Laser Disc based. Action unfolded on the screen with animation just as good as any animated movie and at various points you would have to make a decision and react quickly and accurately to continue on. These games could be quite difficult but they didn’t have much in the way of replay value.

    Early ports of Space Ace for computers like the Atari ST, Amiga, Apple IIGS and DOS based systems were significantly altered due to memory and especially storage limitations. Any attempt to port this game before CD-ROM drives became popular had to be more limited. The first CD-ROM version was for the Macintosh and it contained most of the scenes from the arcade version but the video was downsampled. Later, CD-i and Sega CD versions came along that were mostly faithful to the arcade version (especially the CD-i version). There have been a number of ports since including the Atari Jaguar version (box cover above) and versions for the Wii among others.

    The Atari Jaguar version gets pretty mediocre to poor reviews but it isn’t so much that the Jaguar version is particularly terrible, it’s that Space Ace is not quite as good as Dragon’s Lair and these types of games really appeal only to a limited audience. If you like these old laserdisc games than the Atari Jaguar CD version is a lot better than most of the older ports. Of course, these days you can emulate the original with Daphne and that’s going to be as good as it gets. Still, the Jaguar version is reasonable trade-off. It can be had relatively inexpensively and if you have a Jaguar it’s more convenient than using Daphne.

    The above images are from the Atari Jaguar version of the game.



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  • Atari Jaguar Ad (1995)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment


    Electronic Gaming Monthly #76, Nov 95

    https://darth-azrael.tumblr.com/post/182040113306/oldgamemags-electronic-gaming-monthly-76-nov-95

    This ad for the Atari Jaguar is from the November 1995 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly. By this point in time, the Jaguar had been out for about 2 years. The price was already dropping considerably (probably because the Saturn and PlayStation had been released by this point). For $300 you could have both the system and the CD add-on.

    The Jaguar beat the PlayStation and Saturn to market by about a year and for that year it was the most powerful system you could buy. With some more effort put into software development, it probably could have kept up a little better too despite those systems being more powerful. However, Atari always seemed mostly stuck in the past when it came to software development.

    There were some good games for the Jaguar but not many and they were no bargain as you can see from this ad. Cartridges made for more expensive games than CDs.




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