An explanation of what's going on here can be found in the intro post.
Last time we were with the Saturn as we closed out June '96 with Shockwave Assault, Shining Wisdom, Golden Axe: The Duel, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, and Worms.
Last time with the Jaguar, we looked at their first batch of games in 1994 with Tempest 2000, Wolfenstein 3D, Brutal Sports Football, and Alien vs. Predator.
Now, we continue through that year with our next batch of games, Checkered Flag, Club Drive, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, and Doom.
**This post is also featured on my site, fifthgengaming.blog, and can be found here.**
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Checkered Flag
Developer: Rebellion Developments
Publisher: Atari
Release Date: 11/28/1994
Time to We Have Virtua Racing At Home: 24 Minutes
Every console launch needs at least one racing game. This was an unwritten law for decades and it's telling that it took Atari a full year to get one on shelves. What they wound up releasing is a basic polygonal 3D racing game made as an "homage" to Virtua Racing. I'm torn by how technically impressive it is for this style of racer to have come in at 2MB and the fact that the game itself is bad.
The original Checkered Flag was a Scaler Racing game released on the Atari Lynx back in 1991. It seems to have reviewed very well and from what little I've poked at it; I would say it's probably the best handheld racing game of its time. Whatever cache that would have earned the Checkered Flag name would have been the reason for Atari licensing it to Rebellion to get a racing game on the Jag. Rebellion wasn't a big studio, so it seems crazy to me that they were responsible for back-to-back major releases for this system. That coincidence is both ominous for the console and an explanation for how this end product turned out.
This thing has the bare minimum feature set to qualify as a racing game. The game launches straight into a race option menu, where you can select car color, track, mode, and other standard options. From there you're sent straight into the race or practice with little to no fanfare. The racing is straightforward, though the handling feels really bad. There's a kind of momentum on the turning that is reminiscent of scaler racers, but without the kind of framerate you would need to make that work. Not that it chugs too badly, running at a mostly consistent 20-ish FPS. The Ai isn't particularly bright and serves mostly to get in the way. Actually, the more I describe this thing the more I realize it's literally just a scaler racer with polygons. It isn't even as good a one of those as its '91 namesake.
The need to utilize 3D processing is what really kneecaps this game. There isn't much you can do polygonally on a 2Mb cartridge, meaning that not only does it look primitive and run under 30 FPS but also lacks most visual anything you would want, going as far as to rely on basic Gouraud shading instead of textures on the environment. The sound design is also heavily scaled back as well, relying on short and simple MIDI loops that get old almost immediately. There are also even fewer tracks here than in the Lynx game. If anything, Checkered Flag works as a tech demo for the Jaguar's processor and nothing more. This thing hitting North American shelves at full price less than a year before Ridge Racer is dire, to say the least. I can see how Rebellion would have wanted to put more effort into getting Alien vs. Predator ready, and I don't blame them.
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Club Drive
Developer: Atari
Publisher: Atari
Release Date: 11/28/1994
Time to The Worst Levelord Maps: 15 Minutes
Now onto whatever in the Sam Hell this is supposed to be. Best as I can tell, Club Drive is even more of a tech demo non-game than Checkered Flag, which at least had the advantage of copying the format of a three-year-old handheld release. If you were able to see my face, you would be able to tell that I'm stumped. Let's go through a description and see what we can arrive at.
On paper, this is a 3D Racing game in open maps and geared towards multiplayer. The thing is, there isn't really any racing to be done. Yes, there's technically a checkpoint racing mode, but without AI opponents or any sense of direction. In the game's four levels, you mostly just drive around collecting glowing pick-ups with the session ending after gathering a pre-determined amount. Everything's polygonal and basic looking. Two of the levels are kinda large, the house and the skatepark, and two are absurdly small and simple, the parking garage and the old west town. The driving itself has a squirrely RC-car feel that is likely intentional, and there are way more camera options than are necessary. That's it. That's the game. I can see how this could work in a local multiplayer setting, with my mind going to the arena modes in the Mario Kart games. But those modes wouldn't work as standalone, full-priced titles.
I can't escape the tech demo aspect of this thing. Not only is it fully polygonal and open zone, but it was apparently the first Jaguar game to run in next gen 480p resolution. Story even has it that there's online multiplayer code buried in it which was never used because the Jaguar internet modem got cancelled. It probably demoed well in convention settings, and it should have been left in that context. Yet, I can see why it was packaged for release, with Atari needing everything they could get their hands on for the console's wide release in late '94. Still, despite the circumstances this is still a cartridge that people could have bought. As such, there is maybe five minutes of moderate fun and then absolutely nothing else. While that makes Club Drive a bottom-feeder, it still isn't the worst experience this system has to offer.
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Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story
Developer: Virgin Interactive
Publisher: Atari
Release Date: 11/28/1994
Time to Entering The Dragon: 20 Minutes
Man, that was a great segue, because this next game is a real stinker. Setting aside all of the other baggage involved with this thing, it is on its face a trash tier pseudo-Fighting game with no redeeming value. Yet, when you do consider everything, this is an incredibly bizarre cultural relic that is worth brief consideration.
Getting the game itself out of the way, this is supposed to be a cross between a Fighting game and a Beat 'Em Up. You progress through a fight ladder/stage progression with combat that seems like Fighting game combat on its surface, but actually functions like a simple brawler. The moveset is limited, the controls feel terrible, and the whole thing is generally kind of ugly. There is no redeeming value to this gameplay. There's also not much of anything at all going on around the edges of that gameplay either, so there isn't anything within the package itself to latch onto. Yet, the context of this thing is kind of insane.
So, before playing this game, I hadn't heard of the 1993 movie, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. It was a dramatized biopic about Lee and was apparently well-received at the time. I guess it also played a large role in building the mythology around him. Those kinds of movies can be kinda sketchy depending on how involved or approving the person's family is of the end product. Fortunately, that doesn't seem to be a concern since Lee's widow, Linda, was involved in the production. The other thing that makes it potentially sketchy is the fact that it was originally released two months after the death of Brandon Lee, Bruce's son. Yet, again, Linda gave her approval, and the film was dedicated to Brandon. For something released in such a bizarre and morbid context, the movie isn't particularly problematic.
What is problematic is this stupid fucking game. You don’t see many games based on biopics, a genre not known for action, yet here we are. The stages in the game are taken from every possible instance in the movie where a punch is thrown with no context in-between. The team at Virgin also weren't able to decide whether they wanted a Fighting or Beat' Em Up game, which is how we got this end product. Also, this Jaguar release is a full 18 months after the movie hit theaters, so it wasn't exactly a marketing tie-in. That’s somewhat unfair. The game was originally released for the Mega Drive in Europe only 12 months after the movie came out. While that film isn't disrespectful despite the context, this game is disrespectful for no other reason than for being crap. Ugh.
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Doom
Developer: Id Software
Publisher: Atari
Release Date: 12/2/1994
Time to Wondering If MyHouse Can Run On A Jaguar: 27 Minutes
And here we are at last. Every fifth-generation console had a Doom on it, and the Jag got it before any of the others. It’s also somehow the most faithful console port of Doom until 2003. This is the gold standard that all of the other ports were based on during this generation. Though, that doesn't mean it's a perfect conversion by any stretch of the imagination.
This thing came out during the initial wave of Doom ports, chronologically nestled between the 32X and SNES versions. It's a more complete representation of the original Doom episodes than any of the concurrent console versions, but still not 1:1. There are a few levels missing, the remaining levels have had some tightening up, the boss fights have been reworked, but most importantly, almost all music has been removed. Even though the Jag hardware was completely capable of running the wads, the 3Mb cartridge limit really hamstrung what could be done. Still, this visual representation of the Doom experience would give the PS1 version a run for its money, which is saying something.
Yet, the lack of any and all music during the levels is weird and uncomfortable. At least half the aesthetic came from the sound design, and that's severely handicapped in this version. Also, being a faithful port, the 60mph movement is faithfully implemented. That sounds great, but in practice the d-pad with button strafing controls isn’t as responsive or easy to use as the old keyboard set-up. This makes the game harder to manage than it should be when at speed. Now that I'm looking back at it, slowing down the pace of the later PS1 port seems more like a correct decision. This all leaves the Jag version of Doom in a slightly awkward impasse of being slightly too faithful in some respects and not faithful enough in others.
Still, the final product works well enough to be one of the bast games ever released on the Jaguar (spoiler). In fact, this was good enough to serve as the design basis of later console ports. The 3DO version is a half-assed implementation of this port, the PS1 version builds on this one by adding a bunch of Doom II levels, and the Saturn port is a half-assed implementation of that PS1 version. Turns out Doom was a really good game, who would have known. Though, I still think the more deliberate pace of Wolfenstein 3D works better with the limitations of the Jaguar, though that might just be me.
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Somehow, we're 2/3rds of the way through '94, which also puts us 1/5th of the way through the entire Jaguar catalog. You knew this was going to get dire before you even started reading. Let's cram these into the Ranking of all Jaguar Games and rip and tear our way out of here.
1. Wolfenstein 3D
…
3. Doom
6. Checkered Flag
8. Club Drive
10. Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story
…
12. Evolution: Dino Dudes
I've accumulated a bit of a backlog, so the next post will be on FromSoft, and the time after that we'll go back over to look at our journey with the Saturn in the first half of '96. There were 48 games, and they need to be considered before proceeding into the back half of the year.
Next time with the Jaguar, we're going to close out '94 in the worst way possible when we look at Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales, Kasumi Ninja, Val d'Isère Skiing and Snowboarding, Zool 2, and Iron Soldier.
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I stream twice a week over on my twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/fifthgenerationgaming. We're diving into the forgotten depths of Saturn and Jaguar games and tilting at every FromSoft windmill.
The stream archive of myself playing these games can be watched below.
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