Obscusion B-Side: Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog: 1993

The Atari Jaguar, the final console produced by (anything that even remotely resembles) the company that had produced the Atari 2600 way back in 1977, is undeniably one of the most infamous failures in video game history. Originally part of a two-console project lead by Flare Technology, the Jaguar was Atari's attempt to rise back up from the "it'll do" performances of the 7800 & Lynx, but a variety of reasons (unfinished & overly complicated hardware, Atari's lack of real support for it, blatantly false advertising, becoming outdated within a year, Atari's death, etc.) resulted in it becoming one of the least-selling game consoles of all time. From its test market release at the end of 1993 to the bulk of its inventory being liquidated at the end of 1996, no more than 225,000 consoles were ever actually produced (100,000 of which were unsold by the end of 1995), and up until Hasbro (which had purchased Atari & all of its properties in 1998) declared the console an open platform in 1999 only 50 games ever saw officially licensed release. Even a CD-drive add-on released in late 1995 did nothing to help things, with only a paltry 20,000 units apparently only ever being produced.

Without a doubt, the Atari Jaguar was an unmitigated mess. Still, the console has managed to have a surprising post-Atari life.

The box art for the console was seriously awesome, though.

After being declared an open platform, the console has seen a shockingly healthy continued life via releases from the likes of AtariAge, Songbird Productions, & Piko Interactive, which have released a mix of unreleased games originally planned & developed back in the 90s as well as ports of games from other consoles, while a variety of homebrew developers have made a wide variety of original titles. However, what I have been interested in for a while is taking a look at what came out on the Jaguar officially, specifically those 50 cartridge releases. Unfortunately, almost anything Jaguar-related has since become absurdly expensive, but now that RetroHQ's Jaguar GameDrive flash cart has come out in a more readily-available fashion, I can now get started on this endeavor; trust me, ~$180 to play the entire Jaguar library (& more) is an amazing deal. So welcome to Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog, an 11-part series that will cover the 50 official games released for (the original) Atari's final console in the (more or less) order they came out in back in the day, as this was still before the time where exact release dates were guaranteed; the best you can find for some is just the month & year. I'll be covering 4 or 5 games at a time, and I'll also be bringing up notable events in gaming that happened throughout, namely other console releases, so as to point out how "The Jag" would quickly become more & more outdated over time. Also, due to the GameDrive's lack of easy Jaguar CD support (it does support them, but only by way of converting them to a proprietary format, which I can't get working), I won't be covering the 13 CD games; maybe by the time I finish this series things will have changed, though. I'll also bring up some idea of sales figures for some games, which goes off of this document that tracked sales up through April 1, 1995, but only for games released in 1993 & 1994, i.e. it's not definitive by any means, but it's the best we've got.

Finally, don't expect any sort of consistent schedule to this series, though I will try to make sure that this doesn't wind up becoming an unfinished concept. With all that out of the way, let's see what the Atari Jaguar had to offer in 1993, i.e. the barely-over-a-month it was on the (test) market.

The day is November 23, 1993. The previous month (October 4, to be precise) saw the North American launch of the 3DO REAL Interactive Player, a wildly expensive but respectably powerful 32-bit console that could do things that the Sega Genesis & Super Nintendo could only dream of (without extra hardware, at least). However, now it's time for Atari to return to the console market, but for now it's taking things cautiously, with a test release in two markets: New York City & San Francisco. For those who live in or near those two cities they have the chance to purchase a Jaguar for $250 MSRP (~$462, in 2021), and with it you get a game cartridge bundled within. Said game is Cybermorph, a polygonal free-movement space ship shooter developed by Attention to Detail, which had previously developed PC games for Lucasfilm Games/LucasArts. The main objective is to complete the eight planets within each sector (of which there are five) by gathering most of the "Pods" found throughout each stage. At first, Pods are easy to see on the ground, but as you play more they wind up being hidden in buildings, stolen by various enemies, & so on. Your ship, the T(ransmo)Griffon, has unlimited ammo, but destroying certain enemies will drop icons that can refill health, upgrade your shots for a limited time, or give you access to bombs that can destroy all around the TGriffon.

Simpy put, Cybermorph is a tech demo-type of game, existing mainly to showcase what the system it's packed with is capable of, similar to something like Altered Beast on the Genesis or Wii Play on the Wii; it doesn't have to push the console, but just merely show it off. In that regard, Cybermorph is honestly not that bad & back at the time was actually somewhat impressive. Yes, there is some notable slowdown when environments get a bit more complicated, but this still plays generally smoother than Star Fox on the SNES, which had come out earlier that same year. You also have multiple viewing angles, selectable via the gamepad's (often maligned) keypad, & I will admit that first-person view (6) worked the best for me. Unfortunately, though, the game is a bit too simple for its own good & does not justify its sheer length by any means. With 40 stages (plus a boss stage for sector), you honestly get tired of it by the end of the first sector, and when combined with the fact that you only get three lives to complete a sector, which is the only way to get a password to save your progress, it does grind on you fairly quickly; being able to select stages freely per sector only does so much. Also, the lack of any music at all during gameplay doesn't help. The following year Cybermorph would get a retail release, though it was reduced in size from a 2 MB cart to a 1 MB cart, with the only difference being the removal of the intro & ending animations, as well as fewer voice clips from the on-board AI Skylar ("Where did YOU learn to fly?"); this retail version would sell only 1,813 copies by April 1, 1995. As for Attention to Detail, the studio would go on to develop Blue Lightning & Battlemorph (the sequel to this game) for the Jaguar CD, both of which would be received fairly well, especially the latter, and would go on to stay in business until 2003.

In the end, Cybermorph isn't anywhere near as bad as you might have heard it being online, but it truly is nothing more than a tech demo that quickly wears out its welcome. As a pack-in, though, it honestly works just fine.

For those who want more than just one game to play on their brand new Atari Jaguar, though, then there's the only other game available at test launch on November 23, Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy. Developed internally at Atari & Flare Technology, the game is a side-scrolling 2D shoot-em-up in which you control the titular anthropomorphic jaguar's space ship as he fights against the mysterious Odd-It's forces, with the main goal being to take out the four moon bases surrounding the planet Cosmolite, which houses Odd-It's main base. Each moon has two stages (space & the moon itself, each with a boss), giving the game a solid nine stages in total, and you have the ability to choose the order to tackle each moon. Unfortunately, this is one of the most overbearingly generic & boring shoot-em-ups I have ever played. The pre-rendered visuals have no charm to them, the enemies are pretty much a random collection of figures semi-related to the environment of each moon (or are literally just shapes when in space), there's little real feeling of when you can get power-ups (so if you lose a life & revert back to zero, you might be stuck that way for a good while), and again we have a lack of any in-game music, which when combined with the absolutely basic sound effects creates an utterly joyless experience; also, the music you do hear in the menus is embarrassingly poor. If there's anything positive I can say, it's that there are only two interesting special weapons you can pick up: One is a magnet that attracts all on-screen enemies as you shoot it across the screen, & the other brings out Trevor's partner Cutter to help shoot at stuff for a little bit. The boss of the desert moon is cool too, I guess (hence why it's the screenshot on the cover). Beyond that, this is all crap.

Simply put, you should never play Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy, and the fact that this was literally the only game new Jaguar owners could even buy at (test) launch is an embarrassment. However, it still wound up selling 23,829 units by April 1, 1995, making it the Jag's fifth best-selling game of all time by that point; I lower my head in shame.

However, this is a perfect time to bring up the infamous "Do the Math" ads that Atari produced for the Jaguar. Because of the unique dual-CPU architecture, based around the "Tom" & "Jerry" 32-bit co-processors, Atari argued that the Jaguar was the first 64-bit video game console, & Next Generation magazine actually agreed, arguing that "the data path from the DRAM to the CPU and Tom and Jerry chips is 64 bits wide"; I should point out that this came from a negative review for the console itself, so this wasn't pandering. Unfortunately, the dual-processor concept was not easily accepted yet at this point (see: the Sega Saturn), and when combined with unfinished documentation & buggy hardware for developers, many wound up simply relying on the Motorola 68000 CPU that was intended to "manage" Tom & Jerry, but could also simply be used as the main CPU. I bring this up because many feel that Trevor McFur was originally developed for the Atari Panther, the 32-bit console that was originally being made alongside the Jaguar, only to get cancelled when its "64-bit" sibling was much further along; Cybermorph is also rumored to be another Panther expat. You see, the Panther was going to use the 68000 as its main CPU, so porting a game being designed around that system to the Jaguar would be relatively simple, if not utilizing any of the Jag's specific hardware in any way. That being said, Trevor McFur would also have been a bad game on the Panther, but at least this helps explain its existence a little bit.

The next two games for the Jaguar both came out sometime in December of 1993 & are both ports of games found on other hardware. Considering that the previous two games were shooters, lets mix things up & first cover Evolution: Dino Dudes, a port of Imagitec Design's puzzle/platformer game The Humans from the year prior. Similar to DMA Design's iconic game Lemmings, you're tasked with getting your (more or less) hapless cavemen to accomplish a mission, like getting a weapon, finding your way to the finish, or killing a dinosaur, and you only really need one caveman to accomplish a goal to succeed; to help, you have items like spears & wheels, depending on the stage. Unlike Lemmings, however, you have complete control over your cavemen, and can swap between them using the keypad, either selecting one directly with a number (though it's kind of impossible to remember who is who, since they all look the same) or by going through them in order with * and #. 0 on the keypad, meanwhile, turns on & off in-game music (yes, this is the first Jaguar game to include in-game music!), and this is pretty much a universal function for all Jaguar games. Across the 80 levels, you have access from anywhere between three to eight cavemen, while you have a total number in your tribe, with any cavemen deaths resulting in another from the tribe taking that spot, until you run of out reserves; get all cavemen dead without any reserves & it's game over.

To be perfectly honest, Evolution: Dino Dudes is just not the kind of game I would normally play, as even the few times I ever played Lemmings I had more fun just making them all blow up. Really, it's the slow-paced nature of games like this, as your "dudes" are rather easy to kill (you can even accidentally have one kill another when all you meant to do is throw a spear for them to use) & it can sometimes be really easy to get yourself into an unwinnable situation fast, that keeps me from playing this kind of game for long. That said, however, I can absolutely see the appeal in this game, and it is without a doubt a very well designed & programmed title. While it did take a little bit for me to understand how certain things are used, as you have to select them from nothing but (slightly vague) visual cues at the bottom of the screen, it is a rather intuitive system that allows for one to pick up & play rather quickly. Also, in comparison to Lemmings' lack of direct control & sometimes very strict success requirements, I do appreciate that this game gives you more absolute control over your characters & is much more lenient on how you succeed; if you mess up in this game, it's (mostly) all your own fault. Finally, 80 levels (saved via a password system) is way more than enough content to keep you playing for a good while. It's no surprise that The Humans would receive two sequels in 1992 & 1995, & Deep Silver would even revive it for a fourth game in 2009.

As for the Jaguar, Evolution: Dino Dudes is a welcome third game for the catalog that differs very much from the two shooters that launched with the console, though that sadly didn't exactly equate to sales. By April 1, 1995, the game had only sold 18,771 units, making it the 10th best-selling game out of the 14 that had any real numbers, and would wind up being the worst seller that originally came out in 1993.

Finally, we have the last game to come out for the Atari Jaguar in 1993, and while it's indeed another shooter (overhead, so it's at least a third different perspective), it's also another port of a well received game, this time from the arcade. Originally released in 1990 & developed by Seibu Kaihatsu, Raiden quickly became a massive hit for the time, and more than made up for its very existence simply being to make up for Dynamite Duke's lackluster sales. By the time it came out for the Jag, Raiden had already seen ports (in order) to the Sega Genesis, TurboGrafx-16, Super Nintendo, FM Towns, & PC-Engine CD, & would even eventually see a port to the Atari Lynx in 1997. This specific port was published by Atari, with development handled by Imagitec Design, which would become a consistent supporting developer for the console throughout most of its life. As for the game itself, it's overall the same 8-stage overhead shooter in which you take on The Crystal in order to rescue Earth from alien control, and by picking up power-ups when they appear on screen you can switch between two primary forms of attack: The wide-spread, but weaker, Red Vulcan or straight-forward, but stronger, Blue Laser; sorry, but the iconic Purple Laser didn't debut until Raiden II. You can also pick up & use bombs when in a pinch, though these only cover a portion of the screen, as well as score-increasing medals, the Miclus from 1985's Wiz, & super-hidden fairies that will unleash power-ups upon your next death.

As indicated, this Jaguar port of Raiden had a lot to compare itself to by the time of its release, but the overall end result is honestly really solid; it's also the rumored third game originally in development for the Panther. While only playing at 30 fps instead of 60, which would become a rather common thing to see with the Jag, the gameplay is still extremely solid, and while the original Raiden is admittedly a very simple shooter compared to the occasional new game today, it's easy to see why it's so beloved. The action ebbs & flows between slow and fast regularly, requiring you to keep your reflexes at the ready, because while the bullets don't come in the heaps that you'd find in any bullet hell, they still come at you with a regular pace. Another interesting aspect about the first Raiden game is that while it utilizes the vertical-oriented "tate" screen layout, it still features some scrolling on each side, revealing both possible escape routes from a hail of bullets, but also enemies that you didn't know of ready to shoot at you. This port maintains this scrolling, but it does feel like there's just way too much of it, making you feel like you might be missing out on some scoring opportunities more often than not. Also, while I do appreciate that Imagitec included a sidebar to maintain that tate aesthetic, I think the game would have honestly been for the better without it & just putting pertinent info on the playing screen itself; the fact that the sidebar slides off the screen at the end of each stage feels like a tease. Then there's the music, which is decently done, while the sound effects are admittedly a bit weak sounding. Other than that, the only major complaint I have about this port is that I wish it had more of a rapid-fire option, as while both B & A shoot & allow you to hold down for continual firing, you need to continue tapping for any real effectiveness; that being said, simple button mashing really doesn't do much to improve your shots at all.

All that being said, the Atari Jaguar port of Raiden is still really good & could possibly be the best port on a console for the time, though it'd be handily outdone a little over a year later with The Raiden Project on PS1, which offered nearly arcade-perfect ports of both Raiden & Raiden II. Still, there's no doubt that this is easily the best game available on the Jag by the end of 1993, and I mean that in the best way possible. This is also reflected in sales, as Raiden would sell 22,061 units by April 1, 1995, making it the sixth best-selling game for the Jaguar, right behind... Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy. Damn it.

Come the end of 1993, the Atari Jaguar was still only being sold in the New York City & San Francisco test markets, with four games available, three of which via retail. Of them, Cybermorph is the pack-in, so all owners would have it regardless, but it's at least a decent early showcase for the hardware, if a bit simple in execution. However, Raiden is a legit great game & well worth owning, while Evolution: Dino Dudes is really good if you want something other than simply shooting at stuff & are up for some slower puzzle solving. As for Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy... Well, there's Raiden! Overall, the Atari Jaguar's starting line-up isn't spectacular, but at the same time it is just a test launch. I'm sure better games will be available by the time the nationwide launch happens the next year.

Next Time: The year 1994 begins as we get one more release during the test market window, before Atari unleashes the Jag to the United States at large, with the majority of Europe not far behind! While the release schedule isn't great, & real competition starts making waves in Japan, the next five games (for the most part) at least look to be really promising.

*All in-game screens sourced from AtariAge*

Cybermorph © 1993 Atari, Inc.

Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy © 1993 Atari, Inc.

Evolution: Dino Dudes © 1993 Atari, Inc.

Raiden © 1990 Seibu Kaihatsu, Inc.