Atari Jaguar

After an absence from the videogame console market since the demise of the 7800 system in 1991, Atarimade its return with the Jaguar. The system was released in 1993 in San Francisco and in 1994 for the rest of America and Europe. Unfortunately, the Jaguar was a commercial failure that left the company financially crippled. It was the last console Atari produced.

Atari advertised the Jaguar aggressively in the press with its "Do the Math" campaign; boasting about its technical superiority over the 16-bit platforms, and claiming to be the first 64-bit home console on the market. While the Jaguar was certainly more powerful than the Super Nintendo and Genesis in most respects, these claims caused some controversy.

Many technically knowledgeable industry insiders and gamers claimed that the Jaguar was not a true 64-bit platform, because the Jaguar’s Motorola 68000 CPU chip was only 32-bit, and the primary GPU delivered a 32-bit instruction set. The complaint is similar to the earlier argument that the TurboGrafx-16 was actually an 8-bit system, since it was based around an 8-bit CPU (but with 16-bit video chips), and equally gray.A major contributor to this issue was the industry's desire to use "bits" as a concrete measure of subjective "impressiveness." With Sega and Nintendo promoting 16-bit systems as vastly superior to previous 8-bit systems, gamers naturally expected a similar, obvious jump in quality with the Jaguar. In theory, 64-bit games should have been 4x as impressive as 16-bit systems (as frequently cited when the Jaguar is compared to the Nintendo 64). In reality, this is misunderstanding the meaning of "bits," and applying some wishful thinking toward rating a console's performance by a simple number.Ultimately, due to Jaguar's chip set architecture and processing methods, there was just enough to backup Atari’s 64-bit claim. The design, if always followed as intended, would indeed utilise 64-bit graphical processing and buck claims of the Jaguar being simply "two 32-bit chips glued together."

Unfortunately, developers did not fully understand how to program for the console (and the unique requirements made porting games difficult - similar to complaints about the Playstation 3), and the games frequently failed to match up with any technological potential.Jaguar programming enthusiasts looking over dumped code from retail titles have suggested many companies treated the Motorola CPU as the main processing unit, instead of as a controller for the 64-bit Tom and Jerry "workhorse" chips as Atari intended. This would artificially limit the machine's capabilities, and has been cited as the primary reason for choppy performance in some games ( Checkered Flag is a specific example). It is unclear as to how frequently this occurred, and if it was due to poor documentation from Atari, or simply that developers were more familiar with the common 68000 chip.The Jaguar platform did have a few excellent titles for it, including Alien VS Predator, Doom and Tempest 2000, but most the games released did not look much better than 16 bit games.

Indeed, a large number of them were ports of games released on the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo systems.The Atari Jaguar was a powerful system for its time, with many of the units being sold to the loyal and dedicated Atari fan base that had built up since the early 1980‘s. Many clever and innovative ideas for the system were in the pipeline, most of which never made it past the prototype phase because of poor sales and short life span of the console.The Jaguar’s success was hindered by a number of contributing factors, such as a limited game library, third party software development issues, and fierce competitors in the form of Sony’s PlayStation and Sega’s Saturn which finally finished off the Jaguar by mid-1996.In the late 1990’s Hasbro interactive bought out all Atari properties and declared the Jaguar an open platform for homebrew development. Today the Atari Jaguar has a loyal cult following, who use the console for all sorts of development, including utilizing the COM Lynx and "CatBox" device for the networking of up to 32 Jaguar consoles.

Nintendo LEAPS OFF THE SCREEN! And straight into the dumpster :'(

The 1990s was really the decade where the personal computer had taken the world by storm. Everyone knew what a computer was, and what they could do. From the early 1980s and into the 90s the popular vision of the future was a completely digital one. Great digital worlds where we'd fly around on light cycles, and be affectionately refereed to as "Users". Or smuggle top secret data for the black market with a chip that could only hold one gig implanted in your head, or Mankind's consciousnesses is enslaved by massive robots using us for energy. In any scenario computers had a big role in altering our reality.

With the exponential growth of technology and know how for programming in basic polygonal shapes by the early 90s games were going "3D". However the 3D isn't REALLY 3 dimensions, but a pretty sophisticated polygon mesh that may actually be 3D in the computer space, but is displayed on a 2D monitor, I know because every time I try to punch Guy Fieri when he's on tv I end up hitting glass.

True 3D however was and is a feature that many electronic producers see as a holy grail of sorts, which is why Nintendo developed the Virtual Boy.

The Virtual Boy is a 32-bit system released in 1995. The 3D images produced are impressive, though it also acts as a crutch since the only colors it generates are hues of red and black. The 3D effects are a result of two 1x224 linear arrays, each one directed to an eye that are presented to the player through oscillating mirrors that cause the Virtual Boy to emit a murmur.

The basic concept was a cool idea, you'd stick you eyes into the view port and Link could throw his boomerang RIGHT AT YOU! Or Mario would LEAP OFF THE SCREEN! Continuing to blur the line between reality and virtual reality, it's too bad it turned out to be the worst console Nintendo has ever produced.

The 3D effect can cause trauma in the eyes, in fact, Nintendo urged parents not to let children under the age of seven to play the system since it had the potential to damage their eyes. I'd say that was a good idea,

telling pretty much the entire base for your business model to not by your product. I mean that's what I'd do, then again I try to punch people I've never met through my TV so what do I know?

Some critics questioned Nintendo's use of red colors in all of its Virtual Boys. This choice was both monetary and functional, though at the same time was not entirely appealing to the consumer. Nintendo claimed that colors other than red were more expensive and drained the battery much faster than it already did.

On top of that the console had pretty much no third party support. Most developers were focusing on the major consoles that were going to be released the next year. Even Nintendo didn't support the console that far past launch basically giving up on it to support their new box, the Nintendo 64.

The real tragedy to this was the fate of the Virtual Boy's veteran designer Gunpei Yokoi

. The creator of the Game Boy and Game and Watch, inventor of the modern day D-pad, a design that nearly all video game controllers use today, and producer of several long-running and critically acclaimed video game franchises, had to fall on the proverbial sword once the Virtual Boy had crashed and burned horribly.

It really is a shame that someone who is arguably just as important to Nintendo's success as Shigeru Miyamoto had to leave the company in this way. His idea may have just been a victim of execution and timing however, the 3D concept is alive and well in Nintendo's most recent handheld the 3DS. In the cases that I have seen, most failures are simply the right idea at entirely the wrong time.

Jet Set Radio grinded it's way into everyone's hearts...But not their wallets :'(

Jet Set Radio was a 3D platformer for the Sega Dreamcast, developed by Smilebit a first party Sega developer Jet Set Radio was without a doubt the most unique game that had come out in 2000. It was one of the first games to openly embrace Graffiti art, hip-hop music, rollerblades, and was the first game to implement the well know cell-shading style of graphics.

The game takes place in a futuristic, super bright, super hip-hop, super crazy Tokyo called Tokyo-To, you play one of 3 gang members who fight rival gangs for control of the cities turf. Now being a boy who grew up in the 90's and was raised on a healthy diet of action movies, Time Crisis, and practicing suplexes with my older brother, I assumed that this little corral would be settled with some good old fashion shootouts and beat downs. HOWEVER, they decide that the best way to settle this is by tagging the holy hell out of the rival gang's turf. So off you go tagging and skating all the while you are being chased by the police and cartoonish rival gang members. As the story progresses you add new members to your crew and the stakes are raised as you uncover a deeper conspiracy behind Tokyo-To's corporations.

Critics praised the game for its unique approach and design, everyone was pulling for this Neon Tony Hawk to do very well, but the problem with almost anything too unique is that it ends up flying over people's heads. Now I don't feel that I was completely honest before when describing the key points of this game, so I'm going to Jet Set the record straight (see what I did there?.... Jet Set.Ra... I'll move on.) the game doesn't have hip-hop, it has Japanese hip-hop which is an entirely different, more potent form of hip-hop. Most people who enjoy conventional American music would probably classify this game's sound track much like their parent's would classify their personal tastes, a bunch of noise. All of the music was made in Japan specifically for this game, matching the graphics it was light, energetic and bubbly, definitely not in line with the average 25 year old who just wanted a "cold one" and a Madden roster update.

Another looming problem wasn't entirely the game's fault, but the Dreamcast's. You see the Dreamcast didn't have a second analog stick, so instead the left trigger snaps the camera behind the character; which is a real bummer when you're trying to navigate fairly complex multi-leveled 3D environments. I personally remember several nights of wanting to throw my controller through my screen due to the camera, and I'm the one who specifically hunted down a copy of this game for only about 15 bucks, I can't even imagine how frustrated someone would be after dropping 50!

Now these aren't all game killing issues, but I'm talking about the mainstream, and if I know one thing about this game, it's not mainstream. With all its Japanese flair it can't help itself but turn away the average consumer.

Jet Set Radio did do a lot of good for the industry, it's use of cell-shaded graphics paved the way for tons of other games like Lucky 13, Grabbed by the Goonies, and about a billion Dragon Ball Z titles, and the Graffiti aspect of the game was one of the main inspirations for Marc Ecko's Getting up: Contents under Pressure. A game that heavily drew from Graffiti as and art and a lifestyle.

Most people that even remember Jet Set Radio remember it as an extremely important and unique game for a console that had a just as fitting description, but was just too different to grab a foothold in the mainstream western market, those people are still right.