Jabbin' With Jeff
by Robert A. Jung, April 1995
Jabbin' With Jeff
In April 1995, Atari was running a series of "retail promotions" in California, where Atari personnel and volunteers gave hands-on presentations of the Jaguar at various stores. Following a public message from Jeff "The Yak" Minter (creator of Tempest 2000) about when he'd be appearing, I hiked down to one of the nearby stops, both to rub elbows with a celebrity and to get peeks at some new Jaguar titles. Here's the report of that encounter...
Well, as per Mr. Minter's instructions, I hie'd myself down to the Woodland Hills Toys 'R Us today to get a sneak peek at Defender 2000 and generally soak up all sorts of Jaguar-related news. And as Las Vegas predicted easily enough, here's an account of my experiences...
General
Jeff Minter and Garry Tramiel had a table set up in the middle of
the TRU video-games aisle. Jeff's development Jaguar was hooked up to a nice
large color TV with the RGB cable; they were showing off existing and
upcoming Jaguar games, and handing out free Jaguar T-shirts (large or extra
large only) and free copies of the Tempest 2000 soundtrack CD. I got a copy of the CD signed by Jeff (*yay*), and a few other net.jag.enthusiasts (sorry, I didn't catch names) brought their Jaguar consoles in for Jeff to sign (*gee!*). I got some spiffy pictures of Jeff signing the Jags, and Jeff playing Tempest 2000 as well...
{See the picture of Jeff autographing a Jaguar.}
It was very informal. Mostly Jeff was showing off games, either playing them himself or letting eager volunteers take a crack at things. Garry was answering questions and generally promoting the Jag while handing out freebies. A very direct sales pitch; if someone was curious about (say) Alien vs. Predator, Garry and Jeff would be glad to let them take a shot at it and see how they think. During the time I was there, they sold three Jaguars and 7 or 8 games (out of Toys 'R Us' stock).
Garry Tramiel
Fairly loose and informal, at least as informal as a high-level company exec could be in a public outing (I'm sure he's a blast at parties, though *Grin*). Only managed to weasel a few tidbits out of him...
Jeff Minter
A fun guy in person. Soft-spoken, friendly as you can get, and
clearly enthusiastic about playing games. I can't picture Jeff enjoying a
board meeting in a suit and tie, but I can sure picture him plugging away at
a Defender machine. The kind of guy you want to spend a Saturday evening with, eating pizza and drinking beeer and then blowing several bucks at the arcade...
The Games
Okay, okay. On to the important stuff already. I won't cover
the released stuff, except to say that there was a lot of them. Not just
Atari's carts, but also games from Williams and Telegames as well. Garry
had a small box full 'o EEPROMs with him; about half were of games already
released, but the other half is where the fun begins. In no particular order:
Defender 2000. Have no fear, folks, this game is coming along just great. "Classic" and "Plus" modes are almost done, barring a few minor tweaks here and there, and trivial changes to the text screens (currently there are messages like "How many players? One, sheep of my dreams. Two, o you beautiful llama you." *Grin*)
"Classic" is a 98.44% perfect adaptation of the original arcade machine. My only nit is that the lasers don't stay on the screen as long as they do in the original, and that's being really nitpicky. *Grin* Same sounds, same graphics, same gameplay -- nostalgia city. And running at 60 fps, you know it's smoooooooooooth...
"Plus" is, like "Tempest Plus" on T2K {Tempest 2000}, a hybrid of the original game and the full-blown "2000" mode. Your ship's now fully rendered, banking and flying beautifully with two (optional) helpers along the way. New large enemies to make your life miserable, the llightning llaser to help kick butt, and the stargate (with warp option) too. As you would expect, the graphics go overboard here -- flowing, color-cycling pattern fills on the mountains, animated humanoids, fast and smooth scrolling (60 fps again), a spiffy "aurora borealis" effect over the planetary horizon, and a truckload of on-screen Pixelshatter-esque explosions everywhere. The CD techno-rave soundtrack wasn't there (this was an EEPROM, after all), but the number of explosions and weapons fire more than made up for that. Jeff demonstrated the "Flossie" hack, where you fly Flossie the Prettiest Sheep in the World(tm) and save llovely llamas from the aliens. A minor bug after that reverted Flossie back to a spaceship, but left the humanoids as llamas instead. *Grin*
"Defender 2000" is still very early. All of the enemies are from "Plus" mode, and collision detection was off; all you could do was fly around and shoot at things at this point. The battlefield is now one-and-a-half screens tall, and the backgrounds will be multi-layered parallaxed all the way. The current placeholder graphic was a simple cityscape of rectangles and cylinders, but it's a start. 30 fps is the goal here, and I doubt Jeff will compromise that come hell or high water.
Expect 20+ soundtracks, an interview with Eugene Jarvis (possibly multimedia), and lots of hidden games and Easter eggs. There will probably also be the obligatory FMV canned rendered intro, too. Everything's "right on schedule," and a September-October '95 release looks very good. If Jeff keeps the rest of the game as great as what he's already got down, this will be another blockbuster from Llamasoft all right...
{Read the review. Again, Defender 2000 was ultimately released on cartridge, not CD, which required paring down the number of soundtracks, and removing the hidden games and the Eugene Jarvis multimedia interview.}
Battlesphere.
Actually, this was a no-show; everyone was hoping 4Play would drop by, but they didn't while I was there. Jeff Minter did see it Friday night, however, and was really enthusiastic about it. That's enough of an endorsement for me... *Grin* Expect to see the original Star Raiders photon launch sound to make a cameo, too.
{I finally got to see Battlesphere at the E3 show a month later, and it was worthy of Jeff's endorsement. The man knows his games.}
Pinball Fantasies.
A straightforward port of the Amiga game. If you like your pinball games hyper-real (with video features, as in Devil's Crush), give this a pass. As a fan of realistic pinballs, I thought it was about average; the boards seemed a little simplistic. Maybe I'm spoiled by more complex video pinball games like Crystal Caliburn...
Conan.
A side-scrolling fighting game (like Final Fight) with a
barbarian theme. Only the first level was playable. The graphics are not digitized as originally reported, but are instead detailed hand-drawn sprites. Visually, reminded me a lot of Capcom's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons arcade game. Grab weapons, keys, gems, and food as you beat up enemy guards, giant dogs, and other nasties -- nothing too complex, just a nice arcade-quality travelling figher game. Two player cooperative. Nobody was sure if Conan is a licensed property or a working title (the name for Player 1's character was "Carlo").
{Conan was never released.}
Rage Rally.
Best way to think of this is as an updated version of
Super Sprint. Like Conan, it's not a complicated game; just drive around and try to outrace the other car while grabbing goodies. Some early sounds -- most notable were a voice that announces upcoming curves ("hard left," "hairpin right," etc.), and an engine that sounds like a go-kart (hmmm). Scrolling is smooth and fast, and there are lots of little touches, like the track marks you leave behind when you go off the road. A variety of weather conditions (night, rain, and snow were the ones I saw) that noticably affect your car's handling.
{Rage Rally was released under the name Power Drive Rally.}
Rayman.
Hmmm, what to say here? This version was probably close to
complete; there wasn't an opening sequence of any kind, but the graphics
and sounds seemed complete. Graphically awesome -- very smooth animation, luscious graphics, several layers of foreground and background parallax scrolling. There were lots of "decorative" animated background items on the first level: fluttering butterflies everywhere, mushrooms that hopped and danced, etc. Sounds and music were appropriate but unobtrusive.
Gameplay-wise, this is a pretty "mellow" game. There's a good dose of places to explore and things to see, but it's not like Mario or Sonic where there's a disaster you have to deal with every five seconds. On the other hand, I don't know if this changes in the later levels. You start with no abilities except the basics: walk, climb, and jump. But soon you run into a fairy godmother (voice missing, to be supplied later) who gives you a flying punch power. Then you run into more bad guys to punch, along with power-ups to increase your abilities. Should be interesting to see how the final game is like.
{Read the review. The release of Rayman will always be a bone of contention among Jaguar enthusiasts. The game was originally scheduled for release in December 1994. Then Ubi-Soft (the developer) announced that the game would also be ported to the as-yet-unreleased Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation consoles. Almost simultaneously, the release date for the Jaguar version was moved to an indefinite time, supposedly due to technical problems. Rumors that Sony had paid Ubi Soft to delay the release of the Jaguar version -- to prevent the early Jaguar release from undercutting sales of the as-yet-unreleased Sony PlayStation -- appeared, but were never verified.
However, it's worth noting that the Jaguar version of Rayman was released less than a week after the Playstation version was out. This despite the huge differences in time needed to produce a Jaguar cartridge and a Playstation CD (two months versus one week). It's either an unusual coincidence or proof of a Sony-paid delay -- and given how much the video-game industry runs on money, I'm inclined to vote for the latter...}
Flip Out!
Some sort of puzzle game; unfortunately, nobody could figure out just what you were supposed to do. Assorted aliens walk on a 5 x 5 grid. You select one of the squares with the joypad, then press a button to flip the piece. For some reason, any piece I flipped gave a "game over!" message afterwards. Only other thing to note is that the aliens look like digitized clay figures, as in Clay Fighter 2.
Ultra Vortek.
Version 0.94 -- not quite complete, but close. It only lets you fight one match, and always against Lucious (not sure if that's a bug or a deliberate design, requiring you to fight opponents in order as with Virtua Fighter). All of the fighters and their special moves were available. Figuring out the controls took a little time (Lucious insisted on pounding players into the dirt instead of letting them dope out the controls *Grin*), but after that, it was fun to play. Detailed, animated backgrounds, a number of head-bangin' tunes, solid controller response; what else do I need to say? The frame rate was a little low (I'd guess around 18-20 fps), but that's a small matter, since it didn't affect the game any. Oh, and instead of Mortal Kombat's "Finish him!", UV has "Annihilation time!"...
{Read the review.}
Anyway, that's the lowdown from me. If I remember anything else, I'll
bounce it along. As always, if you have any questions or comments, feel free
to send them to me, too...