"On the one hand, the Jag would wind up being Atari's second-most appealing console for third-parties, with 10 different companies releasing games without Atari Corporation itself co-publishing. On the other hand... we've already seen the end of Ocean, Virgin, & Williams' support for the console, and aside from Telegames... all other third-party publishers we'll be seeing in this series will literally only release a single game for the Jaguar, with only one exception that will publish two. It's only early April, & already things aren't looking much better for the Jaguar..."
The year 1995 continues on into its second quarter, following a quintet of third-party releases, something that the Jag desperately needed. With the first ever Electronics Entertainment Expo on the horizon, Atari Corporation has some things ready to showcase at the show & needs all the help it can get in making sure that the Jaguar looks appealing when compared to the incoming Sega Saturn & Sony PlayStation, both of which were already out in Japan but were planned for release later in September abroad & were ready to be showcased at E3. Luckily, two more games would see release for the Jaguar sometime in April, roughly a month before E3, so let's start this second of a five-part look into the Atari Jaguar's 1995 with Atari Corp's first release of the year!
While the Atari that currently exists no longer actually owns the rights to it, after Rebellion bought them during the 2013 bankruptcy proceedings, Battlezone was arguably one of Atari's most iconic games, right up there with Pong, Breakout, & Missile Command. Therefore, it's not shocking at all that a new Battlezone was one of the very first games that was greenlit & announced for the Atari Jaguar back in 1993, alongside Cybermorph & Tempest 2000. Originally titled "Battlezone 2000" (as that numbering would become a commonality with other Jag-developed updates of classic Atari titles), the game would go through numerous changes over development, so much so that after being showcased during Summer CES 1994, the dev team at Atari Corporation decided to rename it to Hover Strike, partially due to the fact that the traditional tanks of Battlezone had since been changed into hover tanks, among other changes from the original source material. Amusingly enough, Atari Corp's split-apart sister company Atari Games, which by this point was 100% its own completely separate entity, had its own Battlezone knock-off for arcades in 1994's T-MEK, with a Jag port in development that never came out; ports to the 32X & MS-DOS did come out, though. Interestingly, while Hover Strike managed to come out for the Jag in April 1995, a mere six months later, in October, saw the release of Hover Strike: Unconquered Lands, a complete remake released on the ill-fated Jaguar CD, & was even first showcased at E3 mere weeks after the original cartridge version came out; this was almost like the Osbourne effect, but for a game instead of hardware! Regardless, let's check out the original cartridge version of Hover Strike & see how it holds up all this time later.
Hover Strike is an interesting little game for the time, because while the general gameplay is very much an arcade-style experience in how fast paced & straightforward it is, it also tries to implement a bit of a more realistic physics model, which means that it takes a little bit to get used to actually controlling your hover tank. In short, movement is heavily based on momentum, so holding A accelerates your tank forward, but since you're hovering above the ground you can't just simply turn on a dime while accelerating. Instead, momentum will see you continue to move in your old direction for a 2-3 seconds before your tank eventually adjusts to your new direction you're facing. To help with that, holding C activates the brake, which literally has your hover tank simply lower onto the ground & kill momentum, allowing for you to make sharper turns, though at the expense of continual forward movement. After a couple of missions, though, I started to get the hang of it, feathering the A button instead of simply holding it down to make turns more naturally, and using the brake when needed for sharper turns & the like, and it's actually really cool. As for the overall gameplay loop, you have six "levels", with the first five made up of six missions, each in their own location (which repeat for each level), plus a hidden mission to unlock in each. The missions themselves are rather simple & just amount to "Destroy X Amount of a Specific Enemy/Location/Landmark", though luckily you can save after each mission. While you can definitely see the Battlezone influence while playing, Hover Strike is a much faster & more kinetic game, with a general cannon shot that fires as fast as you can mash B, plus some secondary weapons that can be fired using either 1 or 3, as well as pickups you can find that restore your shields, cannon energy, or secondary weapon ammo; it's easy to see why the name got changed over time. Sure, the general gameplay loop is really, really simple (almost too much for its own good, honestly), but it's fun & the interesting momentum-based movement makes it so that you really do have to pay attention to how you're moving around; there's even a co-op mode where the second player can control their own mounted cannon while the the first play drives.
Aside from a slower framerate in general, though usually not something that makes it unplayable by any means, Hover Strike is honestly a rather neat & fun game for the Jaguar, and a solid start to 1995 for Atari Corporation. Maybe one day I'll be able to check out the Jaguar CD version (it's currently not playable via the Jaguar Game Drive, which is what I'm using for this series), because I'm curious if it was improved upon in any way, or simply just "enhanced" in minor ways.
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| The game implements a bit of an extreme black border around three sides of the screen, which I've removed here. |
Up next we have the return of the UK's Sensible Software to the Jag, following an extremely solid port of Cannon Fodder, and this time it's an entry in what was arguably the company's most iconic franchise. Originally released in 1992 for Amiga, Atari ST, & DOS, with an updated version coming out later that same year for PCs & consoles (both home & handheld), Sensible Soccer was the spiritual successor to 1988's MicroProse Soccer (which itself was inspired by 1985's Tekhan World Cup), which was also designed & programmed by Sensible Software; the only difference is that "Sensi" (as fans would sometimes call it) was 100% owned by Sensible Software. The following year, in 1993, Sensible Soccer: International Edition would see release on Amiga, Atari ST, Amiga CD32, SNES, & Mega Drive, and it'd be this release that would later get ported to the Jaguar, now titled International Sensible Soccer (though in-game it still used the OG title), by Renegade Software's Glenn Williams & released by Telegames sometime in April of 1995; while this was Telegames' fourth Jaguar game, it's only the second the company itself published. A little odd that the Jag didn't get a more recent version of the game, which at that point would have been the more iconic Sensible World of Soccer & its updates, but as we've seen in this series previously it's also not really surprising. So let's see how the Jag's first soccer game (of only two) fares, and if Sensible Soccer remains as enjoyable as its reputation claims it to be.
International Sensible Soccer: International Edition is very much a case of "what you see is what you get", and what you get is a very fast paced & straightforward game of soccer distilled into its most basic & pure form. While the keypad does allow for a small amount of bonus features, like engaging instant replay at any time, the game is played using nothing more than the d-pad & three buttons (shoot, short pass, & long pass), with the game handling things like player switching & aiming for you. While you can engage in changing around team player assignments & the like for those who want more of a managerial focus, for straight up gameplay the only main options you have (aside from Friendly, League, or Cup matches) is if you want to play with national teams or club teams, and what kind of pitch you want to play on (normal, dry, icy, random, etc.). The main idea of Sensible Soccer is to provide a fast & simple game of soccer to players, and it definitely does just that. The action is nonstop & the enemy team AI is absolutely relentless, even on the easiest difficulty; switching over to club teams seemed to make things slightly less harsh, but still tough. Simply put, it's next to impossible to leave the ball with a single player for long as opposing players will be one them within seconds, and all it takes to steal the ball is to cross paths with each other, so passing is truly essential, and the game's auto-aiming in that regard is pretty good. If you ever found real-life soccer to be too slow paced then you might actually enjoy this take on the sport, because "slow" is the furthest thing from its mind. In terms of visuals it certainly isn't a looker, but at the same time the simplistic graphics make things extremely easy to parse together instantly, and it's almost impossible to lose track of the ball & who has it. In terms of audio you get a basic theme song for the intro & menus, but get nothing more than simple ambience & crowd noise during gameplay; likely because of this, the 0 button actually doesn't turn any audio off.
Overall, International Sensible Soccer is a fun & kinetic game of soccer, and while I absolutely suck at it I can definitely see why it became such a cult classic back in its day. The Jaguar itself plays a very good game of it, as well, though it obviously isn't anything that you couldn't find on other hardware, especially since both the SNES & Sega CD versions received North American releases by Sony Imagesoft in 1994, under the title Championship Soccer '94. This would actually mark Telegames' last Jaguar release while the console was still somewhat relevant, as we won't see the company appear again until late 1996, a bit after Atari Corporation itself was essentially dead.
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| This is so "Atari Jaguar" it actually hurts just looking at it. |
After the release of both Hover Strike & International Sensible Soccer, what came next was E3, and there's actually a rather extensive amount of footage & information one can find online about what Atari showcased at the show in its first (& only) appearance, so I recommend having some fun & checking it out yourself. The main attractions really were the Jaguar CD add-on, which was announced alongside the console itself back in 1993, as well as showcasing the Jaguar VR headset, which was first announced at Winter CES just a few months prior & was a co-production with Virtuality; while Jaguar CD would eventually come out in September, Jaguar VR would never see release. However, arguably the biggest news of the show came from one of Atari's competitors... and it completely removed any "lead" in hardware Atari could claim. In a move that (in hindsight) would eventually leave to their own exit as a hardware manufacturer, Sega of Japan forced Sega of America to release the Saturn in North America four whole months earlier than originally planned, with SoA CEO Tom Kalinske announcing at E3 that the console was already available for purchase at certain retailers & regions of North America for $399.99, alongside six games. In response, Sony Computer Entertainment of America President Steve Race simply uttered "299" later that same day, indicating the PlayStation's price point later that September; the early launch did nothing but hurt Sega & the Saturn. While the ramifications of this rushed launch would affect Sega for years to come, it now also meant that the Atari Jaguar had actual competition on the market, and (as the marketing itself would say) "It's Out There"; while the Saturn wouldn't perform well in any region except Japan, it still handily outsold the Jaguar.
No games would see release on the Atari Jaguar during the month of May, despite any potential hype that could have been made via E3; that being said, though, it still would have taken time for said hype to spread via gaming magazines. Regardless, the next two Jag titles would see release in June, and we'll start with the one that has a seemingly known release date. Originally released for the Amiga in late 1992, Pinball Fantasies was developed by Digital Illusions, a.k.a. DICE (yes, the Battlefield people), published by 21st Century Entertainment, & was the sequel to Pinball Dreams, which came out earlier that same year. The success of these two games would result in 21st Century focusing primarily on pinball games for PCs, and once DICE left development duties 21st would hire Spidersoft (later Tarantula Studios, now Rockstar Lincoln) to develop new games as well as port some of the older games, and this includes Pinball Fantasies. Spidersoft would port DICE's second pinball game to the Game Boy, SNES, PlayStation, & even the Jaguar, that last one coming out on June 9. While GameTek released the GB & SNES versions in North America (& VAP would release the Japan-exclusive PS1 port), 21st Century would handle publishing duties on Atari's final console (alongside a company called C[omputer] West), being the only game 21st would release on it. Just as with soccer via the previous game, Pinball Fantasies would wind up being the first of only two pinball games released on the Jag, so let's see how came out.
Pinball Fantasies is comprised of four different tables, each with its own theme: The carnival-focused Party Land (which was the table offered in the original shareware release on PCs), the car racing-themed Speed Devils, the game show-styled $Billion Gameshow, & the haunted house that is Stones 'N Bones. Each table has its own primary focus, like hitting specific drop targets, repeatedly hit ramps, lighting up roll overs, etc., and each of them have their own unique layouts that prevent any feeling of simply getting four similar tables, which is great. Personally, I wound up having the most fun with Speed Devils, which challenges you to light up the "PIT" roll overs & then hit a ramp to increase a multiplier, but all of them have their own appeals, depending on what kind of game you prefer in your pinball. As for the other tables, I found Stones 'N Bones' drop targets to get in the way of the ramps too much, $Billion Gameshow has a million-point ramp that is way too easy to continually hit over & over (making it a little too easy to get a high score with practice, which I guess is the point of the table), while Party Land was just OK; I could also just really suck, though. The controls are rather straightforward, though bumping is a single button press with no real nuance, and the ball physics are honestly rather good for the time, though the ball can sometimes still bounce about a little more than you'd prefer. As long as you can adjust to the then-traditional overhead view with a scrolling camera, then Pinball Fantasies remains a great game of video pinball, & the Jaguar handles it without a single hitch; selecting tables & the # of players (up to eight!) is even all done with the keypad, which is honestly clever.
Despite never releasing a port of T-MEK for the console, Time Warner Interactive (which owned Atari Games as a subsidiary by this point) still managed to release one game for the Jaguar. Released sometime in June, Power Drive Rally was developed by UK-based Rage Software & was a semi-sequel to 1994's Power Drive, published by U.S. Gold, which came out on the Amiga, CD32, MS-DOS, Game Gear, SNES, & Mega Drive; an American release for the Genesis was exclusive to the Sega Channel. In comparison, Power Drive Rally (originally titled "Rage Rally" when first shown in 1994) was a Jaguar-exclusive, and the reason why I call it a "semi-sequel" comes down to the fact that Rage actually had developed both Power Drive games at the same time, with the original plan being to simply port the SNES game to the Jag. According to some reports, the game was going to support the barely-used JagLink for multiplayer (as of this point in the timeline, Doom remains the only game to actually support it), but it's unknown whether any functionality was kept in the final release. One last little tidbit is that programmer Peter Johnson revealed that Power Drive Rally actually ran solely off of the Jag's "Tom" chip, namely its Blitter processor, which makes it an interesting outlier from most other Jaguar games, which either used both "Tom" & "Jerry" (as intended) or simply defaulted to the Motorola 68000 (which is why so many games don't look better than most 16-bit games of the time). If it seems like I'm wasting time that's because I am, so let's just finally move on to the game itself.
First impressions are something important, no doubt, but there are moments where they don't immediately showcase what's really beneath the surface, and Power Drive Rally is a perfect example of how the more you play it the more you realize just how good it really is. On the surface, it's an overhead arcade style racing game where you're up against the clock, similar to the likes of Visco's Drift Out, ADK's Thrash Rally, or Zigurat & Gaelco's World Rally (which, ironically enough, Atari Games had released in North American arcades). However, where those games focus primarily on point-to-point courses, PDR is about lap-based courses for the most part. In particular, PDR's main campaign has you race on various courses on a day & week format & come in various forms: Special Stages, which see you drive on your own (minus the co-pilot who warns you of all incoming turns & the like) to "qualify" agains the clock; Rally Cross, where you race against an AI opponent (& the clock); Endurance, where you now do five laps; & Skill Test. That last one is probably where the game falters, in my opinion, as while the concept of having you do a series of tests (stopping on a line, reversing into a spot, etc.) is neat, it feels so at odds with the racing that you mostly do in this game. And when it comes to the racing itself PDR is just excellent, with tight controls & arcade-style gameplay that allows you to focus just on the turns while holding down the accelerator; the only bizarre thing would be the game requiring you to press 2 to turn on your headlights for nighttime courses. Your car also takes damage over time & can be repaired between days with the money you accrue over time, and the money itself also acts as your lifeline, as you need to be able to always pay the entrance fee for every day's challenge, and if you fail you need to pay the fee again; if you can't pay, then it's Game Over, but you can also save after every day, which is nice. There is also a traditional versus mode for two players, and as well as support for up to eight players, which I imagine would be a simple "pass the controller" style mode.
Simply put, Power Drive Rally is a truly excellent racing game in general and winds up being one of the best 100% exclusive games to the Jaguar, which are certainly rare. Currently, that list is just Alien vs. Predator, Iron Soldier, & Power Drive Rally (Tempest 2000 would later get ports, but at the moment could count, too)... but luckily this list will get one title larger almost immediately.
Finally, we end this second part of 1995 with a game that likely came & went with little to no fanfare, but today is now celebrated as one of the most visually impressive games on the console, and by all means is a fun game in its own right. Released on July 5, Super Burnout by Shen Technologies SARL, and co-published by Atari Corp & Virtual Xperience, has an interesting little history behind it. Shen got its start as the demogroup Constellations back in 1989, while VX was founded in France in 1993 as the successor to failed company Retour 2048; VX had three Jaguar games in development that all never saw release. In 1992, after initially considering developing a track & field game, Constellations decided to make a game in the style of Sega's Super Scaler titles (Hang-On, After Burner, OutRun, etc.), and by way of a contact they had over at Virtual Xperience were able to get their hands on a Jaguar dev kit. Seeing as Constellations' members were still in college, they could only borrow the dev kit for weekends at first, but eventually VX gave the team a permanent dev kit after being impressed with the work that had been made. Eventually, Atari Corp was shown a demo & was so impressed that it offered to co-publish the game as a first-party title, alongside VX (which owned the game itself), while the funds that Atari gave Constellations to finish Super Burnout's development allowed the group to establish Shen Technologies. Unfortunately, Shen wouldn't stay around for too long, only developing one more game to completion (Adidas Power Soccer 98 for PS1 & Windows), while Virtual Xperience would eventually be bought out by UK-based Colt Technology Services. So why is Super Burnout so beloved today by those who have played it?
As you can tell from the screenshot above, Super Burnout looks very much like Yu Suzuki's iconic Hang-On or Super Hang-On, but similar to Power Drive Rally before, Shen Technologies' game doesn't rely on a point-to-point system based around racing against the clock. Instead, Super Burnout offers eight courses based on various locations around the world (America, Australia, Germany, Japan, etc.), with you competing against seven other racers in lap-based races that you can determine the length of in the options, from two to seven. In terms of modes, it is an admittedly sparse game in that regard, as all you get are Practice (choose one course & race on it), Record (essentially a time trial), Championship (race on all eight courses & get scored based on your final position on each course), & two-player Versus. However, just because there isn't all that much content doesn't mean that Super Burnout isn't a great game, because it absolutely is. The racing itself is extremely good, with turning being super precise, and taking things like tight turns & hairpins really do require you do things like take proper racing lines, release the accelerator to slow down, or even brake for a split second. Even on the default medium difficulty the AI opponents will force you to do well in order to even place 5th or 6th, let alone anything above 4th; depending on the course I could manage 2nd a couple of times, but never 1st. Beyond the gameplay, though, are the visuals themselves for the game, which are essentially a perfect replication of Super Scaler tech, with insanely fast sprite scaling for the environment around each track, some slight hills & dips, and sharp turns, all of which going by at a rock solid 60 fps, something that was generally considered nigh-impossible on the Jaguar; leave it to a group of ex-demo scene people to truly showcase what (the "original") Atari's final console was capable of. Even the music is rather good, though it's immensely "European" style will most definitely be love it or hate it.
Without a doubt, Super Burnout is one of the finest games ever released on the Atari Jaguar, and though it was pretty much the exact opposite of what most people were looking forward to in gaming at the time by not featuring a single polygon at all, it's an absolute masterpiece of what developers could truly do with the hardware... and the racing game housed within is also really damn good, too!
With this, we have now passed the halfway point of the Atari Jaguar's official catalog & are now into the second half of things, with Super Burnout being (from my count) the 27th game released (of a total 50). While each part of Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog prior to this one has had its fair share of good games, each & every one of them also included at least one game that was abjectly terrible (Trevor McFur, Checkered Flag, Club Drive, Bubsy, Kasumi Ninja, Double Dragon V)... but not this time. In this sixth part of what will be an 11-part series, we finally have a straight run of Jaguar games that are all either good or downright excellent; not a single bad game to be found in this quintet. With the Jag now having actual major competition on the North America market in the form of the Sega Saturn, even with the console experiencing its own rough (& unintended) start, Atari needs more games like this bunch if it wants any chance at being able to stand next to Sega & Sony (as well as Nintendo, though its next console it still a year away) as a legitimate competitor, even if only to a limited extent. Unfortunately, though, we all know how things play out, in that regard...
Next Time: The Sega Saturn's surprise launch would wind up being a massive mistake, giving the Atari Jaguar a chance to act like a proper competitor for the next two months until Sony's PlayStation finally launches in North America. Can Atari Corporation take advantage of Sega's marketing faux pas & fight back, or will the Jag once again toss a brick when given a free throw?
*All in-game screens sourced from AtariAge*
Hover Strike © 1995 Atari, Inc.
International Sensible Soccer © Telegames
Pinball Fantasies © 21st Century Entertainment Ltd. 1995
Power Drive Rally © Time Warner Interactive, Inc. (now Warner Bros. Games)
Super Burnout © 1995 Atari, Inc., Virtual Xperience, & Shen Technologies SARL
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