Obscusion B-Side: Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog: 1994 (Part 3)

Previously on Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog:

"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?"

It's December of 1994, the end of the Atari Jaguar's first complete calendar year, and things are... mixed, to put it nicely. Out of the 13 games I've covered so far (which averages to just under one new game per month), I'd argue that only four of them are actually must-owns (Tempest 2000, Wolfenstein 3D, Alien vs. Predator, & Doom), while a fifth (Cybermorph) remains the pack-in game, i.e. you're stuck with it; the remaining eight games are either just OK or utterly terrible. Luckily, just in time for the Holiday season, the Jag's got four more games coming out in December, three of which all on the same day as Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales! So let's finish up 1994 & see how exactly the Jag closed out its first calendar year.

"Prepare to Enter the Combat Zone!"... Awww, here it goes!

Even with a catalog of only 50 officially licensed games released on cartridge, there are some Jag-exclusive games that have come to truly "define" the console, i.e. the ones that are almost instantly brought up right away. So far, we've managed to only cover the ones that are excellent (Tempest 2000 [at the time, at least] & AvP), but now we comes to one of the ones that's used to disparage the console: Kasumi Ninja. Developed by UK-based Hand Made Software, which had previously developed games for the Atari Lynx, this December 9 release (though some places also say December 21) was originally codenamed "Ninja Puncher" & was actually one the very first games announced to be in development for the Jaguar. Not just that, but the game itself was very different from the final product, as while it was always intended to be a 2D fighter using digitized actors, in an attempt to replicate the success of Midway's Mortal Kombat, Hand Made Software originally went with a different visual style than the final product & planned on a roster of 20 playable characters. Atari Corporation, though, meddled a lot during development, resulting in the final product only having eight playable characters, partially due to Atari also forcing the game to be shipped on a cart with less memory than originally planned, likely to keep production costs down. However, the final game was on a 4 MB cart, the largest the Jag offered, so how big was going to be, originally? So... is Kasumi Ninja as bad of a Mortal Kombat wannabe as it's generally deemed to be online?

Yes... Yes it is.

The Kasumi Ninja that saw release is a very stiff, very basic, & very brain dead fighting game with little to nothing that's truly special. It's technically a three-button fighter, as per the Jag controller, but there's only two actual attack buttons, one punch & one kick. The third button is used exclusively for special moves & fatalities, which require you to hold the button down (locking you in place) & then perform on the d-pad either a motion or a series of directions, which does result in bizarre motions, like half-circle back-to-forward but via the upper half of the d-pad. However, the combat itself just isn't really there, as everything feels super limited & stiff, and it's not simply because of the Jag's d-pad. It's just very unpolished from all regards, whether it's visuals, controls, audio, & gameplay. Not just that, but you don't even get access to all characters from the start, but rather have to pick between two generic ninja, Habaki & Senzo, who are literally the same exact character in all regards, and as you beat the other enemies you then unlock them for play elsewhere, including the boss of the game, Lord Gyaku... Who's literally just a third ninja clone, except that he can automatically reflect projectiles by just blocking; also, while everyone else is a "Best 2-out-of-3" fight, Gyaku is 3-out-of-5. The enemy AI is also rather dumb, as on "Normal" difficulty all I had to do was make some distance from the opponent & simply spam Habaki's fireball special, and all but Gyaku pretty much let itself fall into an infinite loop until defeat.

Sure, there are some memorable oddities about Kasumi Ninja, like the character select screen being a fully-3D & first-person chamber that you walk around or Angus literally shooting fireballs from his crotch by lifting up his kilt, but as a game itself this just doesn't work. "It's not an unplayable mess" is honestly the best thing I can say about it, but I never want to play it again. Still, the game's general concept & imitative nature managed to make it one of the Jaguar's better selling titles, as by April of 1995 it would sell 24,081 copies, making it the 5th Best-Selling game on the system. Thankfully, things can only get better for the remaining three games for 1994... right?

Can you believe it's taken the Jaguar just over a year to finally receive a "traditional" sports game?! Prior to this, the closest thing was Brutal Sports Football from Telegames, but that wasn't "normal" football, by any means; sure, one could count Checkered Flag, as well, but let's just ignore that game's existence. Anyway, also released on December 9, 1994, Val d'Isère Skiing and Snowboarding by Virtual Studio, formerly Loriciel, is technically a port of SNES game Tommy Moe's Winter Extreme: Skiing & Snowboarding, which came out earlier that same year & was called Val d'Isère Championship in Europe. For those unfamiliar (like myself), Val-d'Isère is a ski resort located in the South French commune of the same name that's near the border with Italy, and therefore it only makes sense that, like in the name of the game, this is a game all about skiing or snowboarding down the mountains that the resort itself calls home. Though this did appear on another console first, the Jaguar game apparently does feature a different map & trails from the SNES game, so I guess that should be enough to deem it worthy of being treated as its own title. This is also the last game to ever be developed by Virtual Studio/Loriciel, as it essentially went into bankruptcy as work was being done for this specific version, so I guess it's also a bit of a miracle that it even got finished & released by Atari Corporation.

That being said... this is actually a pretty fun game, though with some flaws that keep it from being great. As the title indicates, you can select between skiing & snowboarding (though in essence they play exactly the same) & the game comes in three "modes": Freeride, Training, & Compete. Freeride plays shockingly similar to something like Outrun as your goal is to make it to the end of each course within a time limit, and you have checkpoints to add time, as well as a few route splits & even minor power-ups in the later courses; you can actually miss both checkpoints & even the finish line, which is weird. Training & Compete follow the game basic gameplay, which is focused simply on getting to the finish of courses in the best time, & come in either simple downhill, slalom, & "Giant" (essentially slalom, but with larger & more spread out gates) styles; Training lets you pick one course at a time, while Compete puts you through four sets of three events. The Outrun comparison really is proper, though, since it really is ideal to pick a control scheme which puts "Speed Up" on a face button, while jumping & quick turning only play a factor in certain instances, like avoiding dry ground or handling sharp turns. In all honesty, the main thing that brings this game down a bit is the game's camera angle, as while the smooth scrolling & large changes in altitude for hills & dips is impressive, it can often make it nigh-impossible to tell if a sharp turn or a "Giant" gate is coming right after a tall hill, which sucks. Beyond that, the visuals are decent if nothing special, and the same can be said of the music.

Overall, Val d'Isère Skiing and Snowboarding is a surprisingly solid little game, and while it's not exactly the kind of game I'd normally go for, it's certainly nowhere near the worst games that I've had to play on the Jaguar, so far; if the camera angle was just more friendly when it came to big hills, it'd be even better. Still, this kind of game has always been more of a niche title (outside of the more wild & crazy "extreme" stuff that came out in the late 90s & later), so it's not surprising that Val d'Isère only managed to sell a mere 9,751 copies by April of 1995, making it the second-worst selling Jag game at the time; it still sold better than Bubsy, at least.

Much like sports games, the Jag has had a shocking lack of platformers, which were essentially gaming's bread & butter at the time. In fact, the system wouldn't have any platformers until December 9, which saw the release of both Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales & the subject of our next prowl, Zool 2. The original Zool: Ninja of the Nth Dimension by Gremlin Graphics from 1992 was a game that you may not have played if you were gaming at that time, but you still likely heard of it, if only because it was released on 10 different platformers, both PC & console alike, and also because it was actually sponsored by Spanish lollipop brand Chupa Chups. In comparison, Zool 2 didn't see anywhere near as much notoriety, with the Jaguar being the sole (non-Amiga) console home for it, though Chupa Chups are still all over the place. Still, depending on the region, the original Zool was a (mostly) well received title at the time, so let's see if the sequel managed to improve even more so on that.

First & foremost, Zool 2 is essentially the best 2D platformer on the Atari Jaguar as of this point in the chronology by default, simply because its only competition is Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales. By that I mean that Zool 2 is actually playable & enjoyable, though it's definitely a bizarre game in its own right, some of that endearing & some of that to its detriment. It's a very loose feeling game in that everything moves very quickly & it sometimes feels like you get hit with some cheap attacks, but at least you can take five hits before losing a life, and enemies drop health pick ups often enough; the game also lets you turn off inertia, but I really didn't notice much a difference with it off. You also now get the ability to play as either Zool or his girlfriend Zooz, but in reality they play exactly the same, though the idea of offering a female character is at least nice. Really, what doesn't work for me in Zool 2 is the fact that it's essentially a prototype collect-a-thon, but not in a nice way. In short, while you can reach the end of a stage with no problem, you actually can't activate the goal (or even fight a boss, for every third act) before you grab enough of the various collectibles found throughout a stage (or dropped by enemies) until the counter in the bottom left reads 99; naturally, you're picking up candy. The end result is a game that effectively prevents you from playing it the way you want, as the fast-paced gameplay is pretty much at odds with the collect-a-thon-esque requirement. Sure, it encourages searching through each stage, but it really shouldn't be a requirement; you should be rewarded for getting the counter to 99, not forced to do so. Finally, it's just bizarre to see a game which essentially encourages kids to chow down on candy & sweets, right down to having its first boss literally be a giant piece of tofu; the mid-90s, everyone!

Still, as weird as Zool 2 is, and how much I personally felt its speed & pacing clashes with its collect-a-thon style, there's no denying that it has charm to it. I can see why Zool in general found itself a following over in Europe, even getting a modern-day retro reboot just last year, and when Jag owners had to choose between Bubsy & Zool for their platformer fix, there were no tough decisions to be made. Come April of 1995, Zool 2 beat Bubsy with a total 10,358 copies sold, though that still made it the third-worst selling game for the console; even Club Drive outsold it. Unfortunately, the Jag wouldn't receive another platformer for a good long while after Bubsy & Zool 2's releases, so at least one of them is actually decent & kind of fun play.

We now finally leave December 9 behind & head to just a few days shy of Christmas itself for the final Atari Jaguar game to be released in 1994... and I'd argue that it was well worth the wait. Developed by Eclipse Software & conceived by Cybermorph co-producer Sean Patten, Iron Soldier came out on December 22 & was built on three main "pillars", as defined by Eclipse's founder Marc Rosocha: "Heavy property damage, a mech theme and a game that was open world and not on rails", with the "not on rails" part being a request from Atari, as the initial idea was for a Starblade-esque rail shooter; Rosocha almost cut ties with Atari entirely over that, but being allowed to "blow everything up" changed his mind. In some ways, Iron Soldier feels like possibly the most ambitious game to be released on the Atari Jaguar up to this point, so does the game manage to carry that weight, or does it crumble under all of it?

Thankfully, Iron Soldier manages to succeed, is often considered to be one of the best games ever released on the console, & actually does its job in showcasing what the Jag is capable of, from a polygonal perspective. It's also an interesting way of using a rather simple control scheme in a way that can feel more complex. In short, holding down the A button (which, remember, is on the right on a Jag pad) while pressing a direction on the d-pad makes your giant robot move its legs, either forward & backward (which maintains speed after letting go of A, so you have to manually reduce speed to stop, or walk into a building) or turning left & right while moving. When not holding A, you simply turn the upper half of the robot, which allows you to move one direction while looking at another, and while that can result in some confusion at first in getting your bearings, you can actually see your mech's feet when looking down, so you have a visual to help tell where "facing front" is. Meanwhile, holding C allows for quicker turning, while pressing B attacks. As for your weapons, you initially start with only an assault rifle & a fist (or "manipulator", as the game calls it), but searching throughout each stage can result in you finding new weapons, which brings the Jag controller's keypad into play. While pressing the Option button allows for swapping between weapons in each hand, the keypad's buttons allow for quick swapping between weapons you mount to the hands (like guns), hips (like grenades), & shoulders (like rocket launchers), and they are cleverly mapped in a way that makes sense visually, both via the included keypad overlay as well as your on-screen visual of the mech in your HUD. The end result is a surprisingly large amount of control over your mech, arguably the most ever seen on a console at the time.

As for the gameplay itself, you start off with four missions, which can be tackled in any order, & overall all 16 missions revolve primarily around destroying something specific, like buildings, ships, enemy mechs, etc., all in an effort to defeat the Iron Fist Corporation, which has essentially become a dictatorship. After beating those four missions, you unlock another quartet of missions, and only at this point can you actually save your game, which is admittedly probably the biggest flaw in Iron Soldier. I don't know why they restricted saving in this manner, which also saves your limited amount of continues/lives as well, as you can find yourself with a save that's on the last quartet of missions (which must be played in order) & no continues remaining, which isn't ideal. Still, the gameplay itself is extremely solid, the controls work remarkably well considering the limitations of the Jag controller (& the initial learning curve), the polygonal visuals are simple but highly effective (& also reduce notable slow down to only moments where you destroy a building right in front of you), & overall Iron Soldier more than deserves its current status as one of the Jag's finest titles. In fact, it's maintained so much of a cult following that it not only received two sequels (the first of which we'll cover near the end of this entire endeavor), but a beta release of this original game was discovered in 2006 & given a limited print run, before the rom itself was publicly released in 2018, and it contains numerous differences, namely several weapons & defensive mechanics that were scrapped in the final release

Despite its quality as a game, however, Iron Soldier only seemed to reach #8 when it came to best-selling Atari Jaguar games, selling 21,240 copies by April of 1995, right in between Raiden's 22,061 & Checkered Flag's 20,257; this is also the last Jag game that has any sort of sales records that are known. Still, anyone who actually manages to get a chance to play the Atari Jaguar should definitely give Iron Soldier a whirl, as behind its initial learning curve is a mech sim that was unlike most others available outside of PCs at the time, and one of the better technological showpieces for the hardware.

The Jaguar logo on Val d'Isère's cover
features snow on it... Nice touch.

And with that, we finally reach the end of the Atari Jaguar's first calendar year, 1994. While things started off rather barren, even after the nationwide launch in May, things really started to pick up after October, as 9 out of the 13 games released for the Jag in this year all came out in November & December. Sure, not all of them were actually all that great, but I can definitely say that five of them would have been absolute must-haves (the four mentioned at the start, and Iron Soldier), while another three (Brutal Sports Football, Val d'Isère, & Zool 2) were at least fun in their own rights; 8 out of 13 ain't bad, honestly. Regardless of how 1994 panned out, though, 1995 will truly have to be the make-or-break year for the Atari Jaguar, as while it's one thing to compete with the (supposedly) weaker hardware of the Sega Genesis & Super Nintendo, or the fellow also-ran of the 3DO or even the CD-i, it's another thing to compete with brand new 32-bit hardware, namely the upcoming Sony PlayStation & Sega Saturn. By this point, those consoles are both already out in Japan, and with a new-fangled event called the "Electronic Entertainment Expo" in the works for May, Atari will have its first real chance to compete directly with Sony, Sega, Nintendo, & anyone else that'll be at "E3".

Next Time: So far, Atari has almost single-handedly been handling game releases for the Jaguar ever since the test launch in late 1993, with only one title being the exception. With 24 games seeing release on the Atari Jaguar in 1995 alone, it all begins with a quintet of offerings from outside of Atari.

It's... Attack of the Third Parties!

*All in-game screens sourced from AtariAge*

Kasumi Ninja © 1994 Atari, Inc.

Val d'Isère Skiing and Snowboarding © 1994 Virtual Studios

Zool 2 © 1994 Gremlin Interactive © 1994 Atari, Inc.

Iron Soldier © 1994 Atari, Inc.