Jaguar
Connexion 2003
by Nick Harlow
and Richard Stevens
Talk about Lost
in France (hit single for Bonnie Tyler for
those who don't know), this was set in rural, I mean
very rural Ile de France, or was it Picardy,
or
was it Champagne? I didn’t know, both
my navigator (Richard Stevens) and I were lost.
We had merrily
set out to catch the 02:00 ferry to Calais and
a have a nice gentle drive down to Paris, then turn
east and viola we should have been there. Needless
to say while we came off on the right junction
of the A4, I took the wrong turning off it.
After driving around for a while we were tempted
to ask for directions as the whole of the region
was covered in very dense fog, which was slowing
our journey and making road signs difficult
to read. But after spotting two locals with
bloody big guns we decided to move on. Shades
of The Hills Have Eyes or what.
Anyway we found
the place and well sited it was too, the village
can't have more than 250 people living in it,
but the hall was really well designed and had easy
loading access. Pocket (organizer) helped
and arranged the unloading of the Tardis (some
of you who know me, know what I mean).
Just at the entrance
was a bench showing off several games mags edited
fully or in part by Pocket and very interesting
they looked, too. I wonder if they would be worthwhile
translating into English?
![[Photo: French Atari magazines]](images/connex1.jpg)
On display
were two (yes count 'em) CT60s. Not bad out of only
150 made. One lucky person owning one
is Jean-Paul Mata, also known as ProToS. It
seems after talking to both Jean-Paul and his
friend Lucas they have had a interesting time
getting the CT60 compatible. Jean-Paul has
a 72 MHz CT60 and can't seem to run MiNT but Lucas
has an accelerated 100 MHz CT60 and can run MiNT.
![[Photo: CT60 tower]](images/connex2.jpg)
![[Photo: CT60 at 100 MHz]](images/connex3.jpg)
Other little problems have arisen but on the
positive side running MP3 and DivX has to be
seen to be believed. Also for programs like
Inshape and Neon, extremely fast performance.
I think both gentlemen are very happy with their
purchases and are spending a lot of time finding
out what does and doesn't run. For example, MetaDOS
will not run unless you remove TT RAM flags
but hey that's half the fun of owning the CT60.
You will get dirty (metaphorically) getting
to know the quirks of your baby. The baby is
always growing with new patches and fixes from
a host of loving parents. This baby (OK last
time for that metaphor) is going to grow, let's
keep watching. So keeping this in mind I played
a very impressive Quake on his CT60 with frame
rates between 8 and 22 frames per second. Nice!
![[Photo: Quake on CT60]](images/connex4.jpg)
For For those
with Jaguar and Alpine interest, we had a couple
of programmers showing their demos and ideas
which included a very nice texture mapped 3D
floating environment just begging for some sprites
and action as a background. More demo stuff
was shown and hopefully we might see some results
commercially at a later date.
Of course, Jaguar games were in abundance and
most popular seemed to be Power Drive Rally
and Cannon Fodder.
![[Photo: Jaguar development with Alpine board]](images/connex5.jpg)
Falcons were
in evidence but apart from one constantly formatting
a hard disk I didn't see too much of them.
![[Photo: Falcon030]](images/connex6.jpg)
A Lynx
table also allowed you to play solo or networked
practically any Lynx game you could think of.
Also by the side
of the hall was a very interesting display of
Atari style goodies from the 2600 up to
800 and ST and Lynx and Jaguar. A couple of
very interesting boxed items caught my eye, an
original boxed 2600 and a specialist joystick
(flight, I think).
![[Photo: Loadsa Atari goodies!]](images/connex7.jpg)
Unfortunately
I wasn't able to check this out more closely
as the display went on Sunday. Should have been
quicker. But I did see a nice display of Lynx
badges displayed, plus some interesting
CDs on Atari game music.
![[Photo: Lynx badges]](images/connex8.jpg)
![[Photo: Atari game music]](images/connex9.jpg)
A modified (OK,
hacked) Xbox with practically every game environment
you know was claiming a lot of attention and
I discovered a sneaking liking for Puzzle
Fighter, which I am still trying to work out.
The game didn't look difficult maybe one for
the Reservoir Gods to look at for the Falcon.
![[Photo: Battletris competition]](images/connex10.jpg)
Competitions
included Battletris, which had a
strong competitive field lead by Kad and I... if I stayed longer it probably would
have been us in the final especially since we
both had highest scores. Less worthy
of mention from an English point of view was
Warlords, one person slaughtered and I came second
in my group, didn't continue with this as I
felt somewhat outclassed. We did have Nuon games,
and 2600 classic games as well, in fact anything
you fancied could be played. The most attended
game was Samba De Amigo on a Dreamcast played at
02:00 showed the rhythm of the
night in a way I don't really want to remember.
![[Photo: Dreamcast gaming]](images/connex11.jpg)
![[Photo: Dreamcast gaming]](images/connex12.jpg)
Highlight for
me was finally meeting Jean Marie Rocque, founder
of Silmarils. We talked for a little while and
he explained French bankruptcy law to me. Gave
me a couple of ideas which I will talk about
to relevant people later and maybe, just maybe
we might have some Jaguar/Atari news.
![[Photo: Silmarils]](images/connex13.jpg)
I must mention
the hard work done by the organizers of the show,
especially Arethius who organized the food.
It was superb, we had a buffet lunch with salami, meats, vegetables and fresh bread and
for dinner at 22:00 we had an absolutely unbelievable
mixture of beef, rice and vegetables (I
wonder if this was in honour of Les Rost Bif,
who were visiting? No I didn't think so),
the show has given me some ideas for
JagFest UK. Thanks guys.
![[Photo: Food]](images/connex14.jpg)
![[Photo: More food]](images/connex15.jpg)
The trip home,
we set out late but made up some time on the
toll roads and then about 150 miles out of Calais
I got stopped on the A4 for speeding. Not too
much in the way of defence, 180 km/h in a 130
zone. But the nice officer mentioned cent
trente km/h and let me on my way. Result or
what!
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