Obscusion B-Side: Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog: 1994 (Part 2)

Previously on Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog:

"It should really say something that, despite launching nationwide in the US in May, followed by other regions over the next few months, the Atari Jaguar only saw a paltry three new releases over the next six months (plus one more that came out during the test market run)…Still, with actual next-gen competition now coming out in Japan, it's only a matter of time until Atari can no longer rely on marketing talk regarding 'Doing the Math'. Simply put, the games need to deliver."

(The original) Atari's final console was entering its first proper holiday season (i.e. not a test run) come the end of 1994, but prior to November 28 only had a mere eight games to its name, one of which was a pack-in. Luckily, things would change in literally the final 34 days of the year, as nine games would see release by the end of 1994, a little over doubling the Jaguar's total catalog to 17 games. Since we already covered Checkered Flag last time, that leaves eight games left to cover for 1994, so we'll be splitting them up. First up are the remaining two games that came out on November 28, as well as one that released later that same week on December 2, and the first of four games that came out the following week on December 9. Admittedly, the games we've covered so far have honestly been decent-at-worst & outstanding-at-best, for the most part, with only two that I can honestly say are just utter crap (Trevor McFur & Checkered Flag). So what do we have on the docket this time around?

*checks chronological list of Atari Jaguar games*

#$@!%

This game is so boring to look at via stills,
so here's an image from the intro.

Releasing alongside Checkered Flag on November 28, Club Drive is usually credited as having been developed internally at Atari Corporation, but from all accounts was actually developed by a lot of the same staff over at Rebellion Developments who worked on Alien vs. Predator; we won't see a true, 100% Atari-developed Jaguar game for a while still. Club Drive does seem to be a sort of spiritual successor to arcade games Hard Drivin' & Race Drivin' from 1989 & 1990, though those titles were from Atari Games, the other half of the original Atari, Inc. that Atari Corporation also spawned from. It should be noted that, despite having the same overall name & coming from the same overall company, Atari Games & Atari Corporation were two completely different entities with completely different owners come late 1994 (Time Warner & the Tramiel Family, respectively); yes, Atari had been an utter mess since the mid-80s. Regardless, I only bring up the Drivin' Series because Club Drive follows in a somewhat similar vein, i.e. a focus on driving a car (primarily from a first-person perspective) in a fully polygonal 3D environment. In terms of gameplay, you're given three modes: Collect, where you're tasked with collecting "Powerballs" as fast as you can (or the first to collect the quota, in multiplayer); Racing, where you have to reach checkpoints in order to fulfill a specific number of laps; & Tag, a multiplayer-only mode in which one player is "it" and the winner must avoid being "it" for the specified amount of time.

I'd argue that none of this really matters, though, because Club Drive is rather terrible... Though shockingly not as bad as I was expecting.

To be fair (& start off positive), this is a fully polygonal game, complete with various camera angles to select from on the fly via the keypad, and it actually runs better than similar offerings found on the Genesis or SNES, even when they used the SVP or Super FX chips, & split screen maintains the frame rate decently; this game doesn't have a "great" frame rate, but it's actually rather playable. Also, each of the four environments (Jerome's Pad, The Old West, Velocity Park, & San Francisco) come in two forms: An open-ish environment for Collect & Tag modes, while Racing gets its own set of course environments. Finally, the controls are surprisingly tight & responsive, for the most part. Unfortunately, that's all the good I have to say, because Club Drive seriously feels like it was just a tech demo that Atari decided to throw out to market, in an attempt to sell just one more game for the Jaguar. The visuals are extremely bland, and while you can generally make things out while driving, you will very often find yourself getting caught in the environment, and something as simple as falling off a ledge or crashing into another car can result in your car going all over the place. For example, I once crashed into a car in San Francisco during Collect mode (which uses a two-floor parking deck), and I somehow wound up teleporting from ground floor to second floor! Racing mode is also straight-up unplayable, as it's very easy to find yourself either lost (the arrow in your HUD is both small & useless) or spun around to the point where you can't remember which way you were going. The music also literally just sounds like the sound team used the infamous GEMS sound driver that was often used on the Sega Genesis (to usually subpar, if not terrible, results), with the end result being pretty poor, yet annoying mind-wormy. How the hell people are able to speedrun this game is mind blowing...

While I called pack-in game Cybermorph a tech demo, that game at least still had some manner of actual gameplay to it, and worked just fine as a pack-in title. Club Drive, though, is a tech demo that truly has little-to-no real gameplay to be found in it, and I truly feel for anyone who actually bought this game back when the Jaguar was being supported; I especially feel for anyone who got this game as a gift for the Holidays. Thankfully, few seemed to fall for Club Drive back in the day, as by April of 1995 it only sold a paltry 13,994 copies, making it the fifth-worst-selling game for the console by that point (fourth, if you don't count the rare, non-pack-in version of Cybermorph). While I won't call Club Drive the worst game for the Jaguar so far, as I'd still play this over Trevor McFur or Checkered Flag, it's definitely down there.

The final game released on November 28 was the Jag's second game based on a licensed property. Originally released on May 7, 1993, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story was a movie that told a semi-fictionalized account of the life of legendary Chinese actor/martial artist Bruce Lee, based primarily off of the biography written by Lee's wife, Linda Lee Caldwell. It was generally well received at the time, with praise given to Jason Scott Lee for his portrayal of Bruce Lee (no relation). Virgin Interactive Entertainment would then develop & release a video game adaptation of the movie, though it didn't actually come out until 1994, and initially only for the Sega Genesis, Master System, & Game Gear, and only in Europe; Acclaim would handle North American publishing for Genesis, Game Gear, & later the SNES. Interestingly enough, the first version of Dragon's video game to actually see release outside of Europe was in fact the Atari Jaguar version, which came out the same day in North America & Europe; in true Jag fashion, though, Atari co-published this version with Virgin. The movie itself is honestly a good one, though the amount of embellishments seen it (as intended by the director) might be a turn off for some, but how's the game?

Well, compared to something like Club Drive, it's not too bad & performs well, on a technical level. Appropriately enough, the Dragon game is a fighter (making this the first fighting game for the Jaguar, though it'll be the only one for barely over a week), and aside from a standard "Battle Mode" there is also a "Story Mode" that sees the player control Bruce Lee himself across 10 fights that match scenes seen in the movie, like the at Lantern Festival, the San Francisco college, the Los Angeles Karate Tournament, & finishing up with Bruce fighting the "Demon" that haunts his mind at points in the film. Not just that, but you can also play this game via co-op with another player (down from the three on the Genesis & SNES), both in Story & Battle Mode. Unfortunately, the first problem comes down to the fact that only Bruce is actually playable here, and while it is amusing to think of clone twins of Bruce Lee beating people up in co-op, it really does limit versus play. The bigger problem, though, comes down to the fact that the gameplay itself is intensely limited, even for a fighting game of the era. While Bruce does have three different stances (Mantis, Fighter, & Nunchaku), the latter two can only be accessed when you Ki gauge gets to a high enough point (50% & 75%, respectively), which takes a while to actually happen (it carries over between fights in Story Mode). Regardless, though, the fighting itself is very stiff, combos are more or less impossible to execute, and worst of all for the Jag version is the fact that, due to the controller only having three face buttons, you have to press Option to switch between Hard Punch & Hard Kick; meanwhile, the Genesis version not only supports the 6-button pad, but also uses the Mode button!

Overall, the easiest way to describe the video game adaptation of Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story is to just play as Fei-Long in Super Street Fighter II Turbo, because it's both far more accurate to the man himself, and a much better fighting game, in general. Dragon isn't crap by any means, but it's immensely mediocre in every way, at best. In terms of sales, Dragon on the Jag sold 19,274 copies by April of 1995, putting it on the lower end of the pack. However, looking ahead for a second, the remaining four fighting games for the Jaguar are honestly all rather infamous for a variety of reasons, so there's a chance that Dragon simply being "meh" might actually make it the best fighter for the console!

It's kind of crazy to think, but just four months after the outstanding port of Wolfenstein 3D, Atari Jaguar owners then received a console port of id Software's proper follow up, 1993's Doom, on December 2; there are indications that this was also a November 28 release, but that doesn't really change chronology. In fact, while the 32X was technically the first console to receive a port of Doom just a week prior, the Jaguar port is actually one of the most important versions of Doom ever made. It's the only console port to actually be fully developed in-house over at id (John Carmack assisted with 32X Doom, but that was done primarily by Sega), and the modifications made to the stages to accommodate hardware restrictions would be carried over to the wide majority of other home consoles, including the 32X port, all the way until the Xbox 360 port in 2006; the only real exception would be the SNES port in 1995. So, all this time later, does Jag Doom still hold up?

Absolutely.

Sure, there's little to no reason to play this port of such an iconic game today for anything other than the novelty, but it's no exaggeration to say that id's in-house port of Doom for the Atari Jaguar was easily the best way to play the game at the time of its release, outside of the PC original, and would actually only be outright bested on console until the "Custom PlayStation Edition" released an entire year later in November of 1995; even then, the Jag port would remain the #2 console port until the 360 release. Sure, the frame rate can chug during some of the most intense firefights, but it still plays better than the 32X port, and would wind up being leagues better than the later ports to the SNES, 3DO, Saturn, & even GBA. The Jag port even allowed for enemies to be drawn via multiple angles, allowing for sneak attacks by the player & infighting between monsters, something that some console ports didn't have. The Jaguar's unique CRY color format, which was focused on chroma/luma & shading to pure black, also matches Doom's dreary, dank, & bleak mood perfectly, resulting in a unique version of the game, visually. Even the controller worked well, with the keypad allowing for instant weapon selection, and the game autosaved after each stage, allowing the player to start where they left off at. Not just that, but Doom for the Jaguar also marked the first game to support a new accessory for the console, the JagLink, which allowed two Jaguar consoles to be connected via an RJ-11 telephone cable for both co-op & deathmatch. Unfortunately, the JagLink would only ever be officially supported by two other games in the Jag's life, but we'll get to those eventually.

Really, the only notable flaw with Jag Doom is the fact that music doesn't play during gameplay, due to the Jerry co-processor (which handles the "CD-quality sound") being used to help display the visuals, which results in a very hollow sounding game, since all you hear are sound effects. The Jag's take on the music gets played after each stage during the results, though, & fans have been working on finding a way to reliably get the music patched back in for years. Regardless, Doom was exactly the kind of game the Atari Jaguar needed for the Holiday 1994 season, and in some ways it definitely paid off, as by April of 1995 it sold 33,102 copies, putting it just above Wolfenstein 3D & becoming the third-best-selling game for the console, just behind Alien vs. Predator & Tempest 2000 (which beat Doom by literally only 291 copies).

A day after Doom for the Jaguar came out, though, was a day that was honestly just filled with console launches. On December 3, 1994, SNK's Neo Geo CD came out in Europe (after launching in Japan about a month or so earlier), the 3DO came out in South Korea (a region that'd eventually see its own exclusive variant!), and in Japan Sega's 32X finally came out under the "Super 32X" name. Oh, and the Sony PlayStation would also come out the very same day in Japan, which when combined with the Sega Saturn immediately started to make Atari's console look extremely weak, in comparison. Atari's response? Launch the Jaguar in Japan five days later on December 8 via partner company Mumin Corporation, which had previously handled the Lynx in Japan, & sell it exclusively via the Messe Sanoh line of game stores, since that was the only company that actually bothered to import it; brilliant! In the end, only about 3,000 Atari Jaguar consoles actually got sold in Japan, while only about 28 games actually managed to see release in the country; it didn't even last an entire year over there.

But all of that comes later on, and we still have one more game to cover in this part... I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

Yes, we have come to this... Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales, which came out on December 9. The third game in Accolade's thrown hat into the mascot platformer craze of the 90s, this wound up being the only release of what was originally a planned five-game deal between Accolade & Atari, and in fact was originally planned & advertised as an enhanced port of the first game, Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind. Instead, we received a true-blue Jaguar exclusive game in the series, this time themed around fairy tales that have been corrupted. While Bubsy 2 had already come out a couple of months prior, though, Fractured Furry Tales is instead based on the source code of the original game; to be fair, the first game is generally agreed to be the better game. This game also marks the return of Imagitec Design, previously seen in the 1993 test launch with Evolution: Dino Dudes & Raiden (i.e. the better of the original four games), so did this studio manage to do a better job with Bubsy than Accolade ever did?

To little surprise, the simple answer is "No", though deep down you can honestly find a 2D platformer that could have been interesting. The game's 15 levels are split up across five different worlds, each one based on a different story: Alice in Wonderland, Jack & the Beanstalk, 1,001 Nights (namely Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp and Ali Baba & the Forty Thieves), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Hansel & Gretel. The levels are also rather large & involve taking Bubsy up, down, left & right, giving each one a sense of exploration in order to find the way to the exit, usually blocked off by puzzles to solve (like finding icons that take down barriers). The problem, though, is in how this game handles momentum, which is sadly one or two major issues carried over from the first game. Similar to Sonic the Hedgehog, Bubsy can go rather fast, but this also results in the "lovable" bobcat being caught up in his own momentum, making landing on platforms tricky at points, and the fact that he can only defeat enemies by jumping directly on top on them is made all the tougher; his glide helps in this, but only so much. The other issue carried over is the fact that Bubsy dies in a single hit, which in turn makes actually moving fast kind of pointless, since it will likely just result in fast deaths, and you'll wind up running out of all nine lives in no time, if you aren't careful; Bubsy 2 changed things so that it took three hits to kill Bubsy. The end result, unfortunately, is a game that seemingly actively fights you at every turn, which turns into anything but a fun time.

However, the more you do play of Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales results in you seeing that, if the momentum was fixed & you didn't die in a single hit, this actually could have been a much better game. Maybe not a "great" game, mind you, but at least one that could have been decently enjoyable. In the end, Bubsy's third game (& final 2D entry, overall) would only sell a paltry 8,788 copies by April of 1995, making it the worst-selling "traditionally sold" Atari Jaguar game up to that point, with only Cybermorph's extremely rare retail release selling worse than it; can't tell if it's the worst-selling Jaguar game ever, but I bet it's down there.

There's no nice way to put it this time around... This selection of Atari Jaguar games was mostly not good at all. With the sole exception of an excellent port of Doom, the Jag entered its Holiday 1994 season with a rather poor selection of new titles for those who actually did buy the console to play. When the main competition at the time, the Sega Genesis & Super Nintendo, were offering the likes of The Lion King, Mickey Mania, Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure, & (exclusive to the SNES) a little game called Donkey Kong Country during this very same end-of-year time frame, these new games so far on the Jag just weren't doing it, chief; Doom can only do so much on its own. Can the second half of the Holiday roster pull up the rear?

*looks ahead in the chronology*

Oh... Oh dear.

Next Time: The Atari Jaguar ends its first complete calendar year with four more games, all coming out in December. With the 16-bit console war about to see the tides turn in Nintendo's favor, & the lingering shadow of the Saturn & PlayStation looming ahead, can Atari Corporation start to fight back... or will it start to get summarily executed in "The Combat Zone"?

*All in-game screens sourced from AtariAge*

Club Drive © 1994 Atari, Inc.

Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story © 1994 Universal City Studios, Inc., Game Code © 1994 Virgin Interactive Entertainment (Europe) Ltd.

Doom © 1994 id Software, Inc.

Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales © 1991, 1994 Atari, Inc.