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Tuesday, July 9, 2024

Obscusion B-Side: Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog: 1996 (Part 1)

Previously on Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog:
"While 1995 was easily the Jaguar's most prolific year in terms of releases, and in all honesty most of it was either excellent, good, or even just decent, the final four games released for Atari's flagging console in this year wound up being a pretty lackluster send off... but there's still another 12 games left to cover, and while 1996 won't exactly be anywhere near as prolific as 1995 was, it's going to be a bumpy ride, nonetheless."

The original Atari, Inc. was founded on June 27, 1972 by Nolan Bushnell & Ted Dabney. On May 17, 1984, ex-Commodore co-founder Jack Tramiel founded Tramiel Technology solely for the purpose of buying the home console & computer division of Atari, Inc. from current owner Warner Communications, renaming the company Atari Corporation on July 1. Over the course of the next 12 years Atari Corp. tried its best to stay relevant in the gaming industry, whether it was the various Atari 8-bit computers during most of the 80s, the Atari 7800 to combat the NES & Sega Master System (plus reviving the iconic 2600 as a budget-priced alternative), the Atari Lynx to combat Nintendo's Game Boy, and finally the Atari Jaguar to combat the Super Nintendo & Sega Genesis. It is now the start of 1996, and Atari Corp. is finally making its first public showing that it's leaving hardware behind entirely. Namely, during Winter CES, Atari Corp. announced the formation of Atari Interactive, a division which would focus on PC software, with ports of Tempest 2000, Highlander: The Last of the MacLeods, Baldies (an RTS game by Creative Edge Software that actually first launched on the Jaguar CD on January 3, the day after this announcement) and FlipOut! planned as the first releases from the division, while further releases were planned to include Missile Command 3D, Return to Crystal Castles, Interactive Rocky Horror Show, and Virtual War, the last three of which were games that had not been previously released before. Unfortunately, due to a certain event that we'll get to in a bit, Atari Interactive never actually released anything, though the name of the division itself would see actual use a couple of years later.

But none of this is about the Atari Jaguar, which still has some games scheduled for release, despite Atari Corp. being essentially done with the console by this point! Luckily, a week after Winter CES happened two new Jag games would see release... and, believe it or not, they're both ports of good games!


There are only two pairs of games released for the Jaguar left that saw release on the same day, and both happened in 1996. The first pair came out on January 10, so let's start with the obvious bigger name of the two: NBA Jam: Tournament Edition. Released in April of 1993, NBA Jam was an arcade cabinet developed & distributed by Midway that acted as a spiritual successor to 1989's Arch Rivals. Both were 2-on-2 full-court basketball games that emphasized rough play & wild action, but Jam differed by being a properly licensed NBA product, so it featured all of the teams seen in the 1992-1993 NBA season, though some major names were not included due to licensing rights, namely Michael Jordan & Gary Peyton (though Midway produced special cabs for those two that featured them as their own team), and after the initial arcade release Shaquille O'Neal, Dražen Petrović & Reggie Lewis were also removed, the former due to Shaq following Jordan's lead with licensing, while the latter two sadly passed away after the initial arcade cabs went out. NBA Jam would go on to be a massive success, becoming the most popular arcade machine that year & even outperforming Jurassic Park's box office. The game also singlehandedly turned voice actor Tim Kitzrow into a legend through his iconic announcing heard throughout. In February 1995 Midway released NBA Jam: T.E., which added in updated rosters & new ballers (including five "rookies" from the 1994 NBA draft, including future legends Jason Kidd & Grant Hill), some minor new mechanics (substitutions & more baller attributes), & the titular "Tournament Mode", among other things; I can't even go into any detail regarding the hidden characters, because it's just insane. Jam saw release on pretty much any console hardware it could at the time (with few exceptions, like the 3DO & Neo Geo), with the Jaguar port by High Voltage Software (the studio's final Jaguar game to see release) being one of the very last, alongside the PC port. How does it hold up, and does it at least start off the Jag's 1996 on a good note?

For many, NBA Jam: T.E. is the pinnacle of the entire franchise, as while later entries like NBA Hangtime, NBA Showtime, & even the reboot in 2010 are all considered excellent games in their own rights, none of them truly hit the zeitgeist like T.E. did. For those unfamiliar, Jam is a three-button game (Pass/Steal, Turbo, & Shoot/Block), and there are no fouls to be found at all, except for goal tending & the traditional 24-second shot clock. Because of this the game actively encourages players to do things like shove your opponent to make them drop the ball (Pass+Turbo) when on defense, while on offense you can play all sorts of mind games by faking out your opponent with fake shots, quick passes, & (if you time it just right) wild & crazy dunks from the free throw line. Combine all of this with fast-paced, nearly-nonstop action and the end result is an instantly charming & enjoyable game that can be played by pretty much anyone on a basic level, but still allows for some higher level gameplay if you really want to sink your teeth into it. However, it's still an arcade game, so the game is still programmed to keep things as close as possible, with shot percentages varying depending on who's in the lead (& by how much), the chances of a ball being fumbled during a shove can feel random at points, and there will always be moments that make you think "What the hell? Come on, game!"; the Jag port maintains this feel, though I'm sure it's adjusted from the arcade. Even with all of that, though, it's still just so much fun that you want to play another game right afterwards, because the gameplay is just that damn good. In all regards the Jag plays an excellent game of Jam and it's easily the best of the cartridge-based releases, really only lagging behind the PS1 & Saturn versions, overall. However, as revealed in an excellent, nearly two-hour documentary by Pandamonium, the best version  of T.E. at home is actually the Japanese PS1 version, which came out in May of 1996 & saw some tweaks to the AI to make it less overtly aggressive & more like the Saturn version, while still featuring the PS1-exclusive visual flourishes.

Obviously, the Jaguar port of NBA Jam: Tournament Edition has its limitations, both in visuals & audio, when compared to the PS1, Saturn, & even PC ports. However, it's still superior to its fellow cartridge-based ports, even if only in minor ways (Kitzrow does say everyone's name during gameplay in this port, for example), and in the end it's still NBA Jam, so there's really nothing more to say other than "this game rocks". It's also the only other Jaguar game that's compatible with the Team Tap for 4-player gameplay, and by this point I think Jag owners at the time more than deserved a release as good as this. I mean, White Men Can't Jump wasn't anything special to begin with, but when compared to this game it's definitely the inferior basketball title on the console.


Releasing alongside NBA Jam: T.E. on January 10 would be Zoop, which was self-proclaimed by its publisher Viacom New Media as "America's Largest Killer of Time!™"; yes, Viacom literally trademarked that phrase. In reality, Zoop was a single-screen puzzle game developed by Hookstone, a short-lived UK studio formed by ex-Twilight staff whose only other notable title was 1998 cult-classic Sentinel Returns (which actually had legendary film director John Carpenter compose the musical score for!), & it's gameplay bared some similarity to Taito's 1989 arcade game Plotting/Flipull, which itself was very similar to Taito's other 1989 arcade game Puzznic, though Zoop played in real-time. First coming out on the Genesis in June 1995, Viacom wanted Zoop to be available on as many pieces of hardware as possible, so over time would see ports to the SNES, MS-DOS, Mac, Game Boy, Game Gear, & PlayStation, all that very same year; Zoop was even used for Blockbuster World Video Game Championship II, which happened prior to its release. In fact, this Jag port by Electric Spectacle Productions (the only project from the studio to ever see release) wouldn't even be the final version of Zoop, as the Japan-only Saturn port from Media Quest wouldn't come out until November 1996! Unfortunately, Zoop did not become the new puzzle phenomenon that Viacom New Media was hoping it'd be, though it's maintained some small popularity as a cult favorite, and after 1996 the company would get absorbed into Virgin Interactive Entertainment, which at the time was a Viacom subsidiary through Spelling Entertainment. It just gets messy after that, though it's possible that Interplay may be the current owner of all of Viacom New Media's IP, including Zoop, as the company acquired all of Virgin Interactive's IP after purchasing Titus in 2005, which itself had purchased VIE in 2001. It's also worth noting, though, that Hookstone also had copyright over the "Original Game Concept" for Zoop, so who knows who owns those rights today. However, let's just ignore the matryoshka doll of ownership that Zoop seems to be housed in today & instead just focus on the game itself and how it fares on the Jaguar. After all, this is the third & final puzzle game ever officially released on the console, so maybe it'll wind up being the best one.

On a basic level Zoop is most closely akin to a tile-matching puzzle game. You play as a triangle in the center square of the field & can move anywhere within the 4x4 area of that square. Meanwhile, four different types of colored figures (red, blue, green, & purple) can appear at seemingly random in one of the four lines that lead to each side of your square, so there are 16 lines to keep track of. Whenever a figure appears in a line already occupied by another figure it moves that prior figure toward the square by one space, and your goal is to prevent any figures from making their way into your square. You do this by "zooping" (i.e. removing) a figure by matching your triangle's color to that of the figure you're shooting, and if you shoot a figure of a different color the triangle & figure swap colors. Naturally, if you shoot your triangle into a line that has multiple figures of the same color in a row you get a chain which gives you more points and you clear more figures at once, with the objective being survival, though after a certain number of cleared figures you advance one level, which increases the rate a new figure appears & makes it tougher to keep up. To help out there are four power-ups, which can either remove all of the same color figures in a quad of lines as the one you shoot, remove an entire line regardless of color, erase a 3x3 area regardless of color, & finally one that can clear the entire screen but requires you to get five of first. And, really, that's all there is to Zoop. Aside from choosing between "Continual" or "Level" (i.e. play until you lose or aim to clear a single stage, & both modes allow you to start at Levels 1 to 9 & choose the Difficulty from 0 to 4 (which determines how filled the screen is when starting), there's really nothing else to do in the Jaguar version; even the Options menu is barren, only allowing to turn on or off the music or sound effects. There isn't even a multiplayer mode (which would wind up only being a thing on the Game Boy version), though the game does keep track of a leaderboard.

On the one hand, Zoop on the Jaguar is a rather simple puzzle game, & arguably too simple for its own good, especially when it comes to the lack of modes, options, or even multiplayer. On the other hand, though, Zoop is also a very good puzzle game, as it's simple core mechanics make it easy to pick up & play, and even when starting on Level 1 at Difficulty 0 the game's speed & challenge ramps up at a very good pace, resulting in you wanting to give it another go after inevitably getting a game over, if only so that you can get a higher score & make it to later levels. It was even advertised as using "Opti-Challenge" backgrounds, which simply means that later levels would utilize more intricate background elements, color schemes, & even asymmetry to try to mess with the player. Sure, Zoop by no means was ever worthy of the moniker Viacom New Media trademarked for it, but it is a very good puzzle game that is still fun to play today, and it's easily the best puzzle game that got officially released on the Atari Jaguar. As for Hookstone, while the studio didn't survive for long some people from that studio would then found Möbius Entertainment in late 1997, which would then get acquired by Take-Two Interactive in 2004 & become Rockstar Leeds, which is still around to this day.


Meanwhile, thousands of miles away...

Just a few days after the first two of the Jaguar's 1996 lineup saw release, another console saw release in North America... after a really long delay. Namely, on January 15, 1996 SNK Corporation of America would finally release the Neo Geo CD, which converted its catalog of Neo Geo games to a format that would allow for much cheaper pricing (~$50 for a CD release, instead of the $300+ that AES carts went for), though the single-speed CD-ROM drive would result in notoriously long load times for the larger games that were already coming out, by this point. Unfortunately, though, North America wound up being extremely late to the party for the NGCD, as it had already been out in Japan, Europe, & Australasia since late 1994, and just a month prior to this belated launch Japan received the Neo Geo CDZ, which added a double-speed drive for decreased load times, though even there they could still be pretty long. Ironically, the reason for the long delay was because SNK had wanted to put in a double-speed drive for the North American release, like it would for the CDZ in Japan, but SNK wound up producing an excess of single-speed drives & would eventually realize that modifying the North American units for double-speed drives would be more expensive than simply using the excess stock. Needless to say, the Neo Geo CD would be a notorious failure, with only 570,000 consoles sold worldwide by March 1997 (still better than the Jag, though!), and at least it shows that it wasn't just Atari Corporation that was tripping over itself during this time, as even Japanese companies weren't immune to dumb decisions; I mean, the Neo Geo CD was only actively sold in America a little over a year.

Ten days later, on January 25, another Jaguar CD game would see release: Space Ace. A port of the 1984 laserdisc arcade game that followed up Dragon's Lair, this was the second & last of Don Bluth & Co.'s collaborations with with Rick Dyer that resulted in beautifully animated interactive movies, but were only really possible for accurate home release a decade-plus later. Unfortunately, despite having a trailer included on ReadySoft's Jag CD releases, Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp wouldn't see release on Jaguar CD, with its only proper home console conversion at the time being for the CD-i (of all consoles!) back in 1994, leaving the "Dragon's Lair Trilogy" unfinished on the Jag CD. Personally, I've always been more of a fan of Dragon's Lair's straightforward simplicity, as I feel Space Ace went a little overboard with the required inputs to make it through certain scenes (& doubly so for Dragon's Lair II), but I can certainly see why some actually prefer Space Ace.


A month after NBA Jam: T.E. & Zoop, the Jaguar would get its third release of 1996 & it would mark the return (& farewell, for this console) of the studio that delivered one of the best games on the console, in general. Namely, it was Tempest 2000's Llamasoft & Jeff Minter, though this time they were reviving an iconic Williams property with Defender 2000, which came out on February 9. For those unfamiliar, 1981's Defender was the creation of Eugene Jarvis & Larry DeMar & was one of the earliest scrolling shooters as players would move throughout levels shooting down enemy alien craft, all while trying to "defend" helpless human civilians from being beamed up by the aliens; this was also one of the earliest video games to utilize a real-time radar/map system, alongside fellow 1981 arcade classics Wizard of Wor & Bosconian. Defender 2000 was intended to be part of a larger initiative between Atari Corp. & Williams that would have remade other classic arcade games for both PC & console, but unfortunately that deal didn't go any further than this game, though there would be one last arcade remake for the Jaguar using the "2000" nomenclature; we'll get to that one next time. It was Jeff Minter himself who suggested remaking Defender to Atari, and it was a smart game to go with, since the 2600 port of Defender by Bob Polaro that came out in 1982, despite playing notably different from the arcade original, wound up being the seventh-best-selling game for the console, selling just over 3 million copies. So far the "2000 series" on Jaguar has generally been positive, with Tempest 2000 remaining an all-time classic & Missile Command 3D (which was originally going to have the number in its title) being very good on the whole (minus that one mode made for VR), so here's hoping that Defender 2000 can carry on that momentum.

Similar to Missile Command 3D, Defender 2000 has three modes to choose from. First up is Classic Defender, which is straight up what it says by offering a conversion of the 1981 original, though it's not emulating the arcade game, but seemingly rather an actual port, as seen with the HUD being different. However, the gameplay is exactly the same, right down to requiring a separate button to change direction when using the 6-button Pro Controller; overall, what you see is what you get & that's a very good game of the original Defender. After that is Defender Plus, which updates the gameplay slightly so that you can turn around simply by pressing the opposite direction when not firing (otherwise you move backwards while still shooting in the direction you're facing), but the visuals are updated with some updated sprites for the aliens, "humanoids" you're protecting, & your ship (which is honestly kind of gigantic in this mode), as well as a heavy implementation of psychedelic color usage for the ground; beyond that, though, it's still the same Defender as before, only modified slightly. Finally, as seen above, there's the titular Defender 2000. This takes the same basic gameplay of Defender & adds in things like an actual musical score, updated pre-rendered visuals, new enemy units, powers ups (like an option that simply plows through foes physically), & much more on-screen text to either warn you of humanoids being taken away or poke fun at you when you do something wrong or die; this also happens in Plus, but it's much more prevalent here. There's even a Cybermorph reference when you Game Over, as sometimes the game will show the line "Where did YOU learn to fly?", so this was a known meme long before the AVGN turned it into one in the 00s. Unfortunately, while Classic & Plus are solid games, Defender 2000's titular gameplay mode is kind of ruined by one simple thing: It moves way too fast. While Defender's gameplay is meant to be fast-paced & things can go awry quickly, it's taken to an absurd extreme in the 2000 mode simply because your ship zips by instantly (it's seriously like "0 to 60 in two seconds"), and it's all too easy to move around so fast that you simply crash into enemies before you shoot them, even when you know they're coming via the radar. Also, simply put, the reworked visuals & music aren't really all that appealing, and while Plus' psychedelic style does kind of feel forced in it at least matches Llamasoft's usual aesthetic.

Just as with its predecessor on the Jaguar, Defender 2000 is a mixed bag but overall a solid title, though it's biggest flaw is the mode that was obviously meant to be the main attraction. I will fully admit that Defender isn't exactly one of my favorite arcade games (it's fun, but I tend to lose interest in it quickly), but while I had some fun with the "Classic" & "Plus" modes, the titular "2000" mode here is just underwhelming, messing with what felt like a solid balance in the original game's speed, and visually has just aged so poorly when compared to how well Tempest 2000 & even Missile Command 3D honestly hold up today. When taken for the time of its release, though, Defender 2000 was still another good game that Jaguar owners could still find a lot of fun with, but primarily in the first two modes.


Unfortunately, only four days after Defender 2000's release, the beginning of the end finally happened. On February 13, 1996, barely a month after the Atari Interactive announcement at Winter CES, Atari Corporation announced that it would be entering a reverse-merger with JT Storage, a company founded in 1994 by Sirjang Lal "Jugi" Tandon (creator of the double-sided floppy disk drive) that made & sold inexpensive IDE hard drives. Ironically, the merger was generally looked at as convenient to both sides, as JT Storage had products people would (in theory) buy, but had little actual money to properly run as a business, while Atari Corp. had money via successful lawsuits & good investments outside of gaming, but products no one (in reality) wanted to buy; win-win, I guess? While the merger itself was announced on this date it wouldn't become official & finalized until July 30, but (needless to say) JT Storage wouldn't really be the new steward of Atari for long. What this means for early 1996, though, is that Atari Corporation, one half of what was the original Atari formed back in 1972, is now on the verge of being well & truly dead.

Meanwhile, Atari Games (the other half that Warner held on to in 1974 & continued making arcade games through) is currently in hibernation after being absorbed into the Time Warner Interactive label back in mid-1994, but in a couple of months would get revived after being sold off to WMS Industries, then-owner of Williams & Midway; ironic that one half of "the original Atari" would return to life around the same time the other half is on death's door. Elsewhere in gaming, February 23, 1996 would mark the release of the final official release for the Sega/Mega CD, the Japan-exclusive Shadowrun, which was done by Compile & featured character designs by mangaka Satoshi Shiki. For those curious, the last American & European Sega/Mega CD games were Demolition Man & The Adventures of Batman & Robin in November & December of 1995, respectively. Finally, a couple of weeks later on March 10 the PalmPilot 1000 (& its accompanying Palm OS) came out in North America. The PalmPilot series of PDAs would become the first truly popular handheld computer & today is often cited as the technological precursor to the modern smartphone that's since become ubiquitous.


Finally, we end the antepenultimate part of Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog with the penultimate game released prior to Atari Corporation becoming nothing more than a memory: Attack of the Mutant Penguins. Released on March 15, 1996, though it apparently came out in Europe first back in December, this was a collaborative effort of a game, with primary development by Leeds-based Sunrise Games, audio engine development by Attention to Detail, & sound effects by Cogent Productions. This was the result of Atari Corp.'s European development center, which was founded with the aim of working with independent developers in order to produce more Jaguar games, similar to how games like Super Burnout & Atari Karts got put into production; this initiative would also result in at least one more finished release, but it wouldn't come out until 1997. The focus behind the development of Attack of the Mutant Penguins was simply to create an "original & playable experience", rather than try to showcase what the Jaguar hardware was capable of (Wow, what a concept!), with Sunrise founder Wayne Smithson finding the Jag's hardware to actually be most similar to that of the Atari ST line of computers, which is why the studio went with a 2D game in the end. While Atari Interactive had planned to release a PC port, that would wind up going to GameTek, which would release it for MS-DOS as simply Mutant Penguins, & today the rights to the game are with Piko Interactive, which re-released the DOS version via Steam in 2021. Piko also works with Stone Age Gamer to include the Jag original as a rom, alongside Evolution: Dino Dudes & some Atari ST ports, for those who buy the Jaguar GameDrive from that storefront. Attack of the Mutant Penguins would be one of the first titles graphic artist Dan Hunter ever worked on, and since then has worked on titles like Dark Sector & BioShock 2, while producer Daryl Still would later recall it being one of his favorite projects & described it as being ahead of its time; well... it's certainly different, that's for sure.

At its core, Attack of the Mutant Penguins is an example of a tower defense game, a subgenre of strategy games where the goal is the prevent enemy forces from reaching an endpoint on a map, usually by placing down defensive placements, with the final result usually being survival, either by defeating all enemies or at least by preventing a certain amount from making their way through your defenses intact. However, actually playing Mutant Penguins is where the utter bizarreness of it all "shines", though once you actually give it a go it makes sense. Choosing from two playable characters (Bernard or Rodney), your goal for each of the 20 stages (30 on PC) is to kill a certain amount of penguins before enough of them make it to the "Doomscale", which results in an instant Game Over; there's also "Pandemonium", which is simply a survival mode. In order to kill penguins you need a weapon, which you can only access by finding the three letters of each character's weapon (a pan or bat, respectively) in the treasure chests that they're hidden in; also hidden in chests are one-time-use special items, like dynamite or a samurai sword to instantly kill penguins, or glue traps to halt penguins. However, in order to open the chests (& also use use environmental traps to kill penguins) you need to gather together blue creatures called "gremlins", and while just one is enough to open a chest or activate a trap, the more you use the faster it opens or activates. Finally, once you've gotten a weapon, you first need to power it up by whacking penguins with your weapon, which unleash power orbs, and picking up five without using your weapon will allow you to swing a limited amount of penguin-killing blows; also, penguins that wear hats are evil, while hatless ones are good penguins that fight the evil penguins. Yes, it all sounds absolutely insane, but the overall gameplay loop actually flow rather well, and the lack of any music during gameplay honestly gives the game a sort of eerie mood to it, especially since you always hear the Doomscale essentially breathing heavily in the background, beneath all of the various sound effects. In the end, Attack of the Mutant Penguins is seriously one of the most unique & interesting games on the Jaguar, and while tower defense games usually aren't my thing I still had some good fun with this one. Yes, it almost feels indescribable, & the old AVGN gag regarding its gameplay loop is 100% accurate, but you also won't ever forget it, either.

Since we're in March 1996 let's quickly go over what else happened during this month, both in relation to the Jaguar & notable console finales. Namely, March 22 would see the release of the final Virtual Boy game, the North American-exclusive 3D Tetris (not to be confused with the Japan-exclusive V-Tetris), while on (or around) March 25 Sega would release the final game for the ill-fated 32X, the North American-exclusive Spider-Man: Web of Fire; fitting that both Sega & Nintendo would see the ends of their most notorious failures in the same month with American exclusives, right? Finally, March 25 would also see the release of Brain Dead 13, ReadySoft's own original animated FMV title, on the Jag CD. This would wind up being the final Atari Jaguar CD game to see release prior to Atari Corporation's merger/death in July, and it would take nearly an entire year for the next Jag CD game to see release; it's only been six months since it launched & already the Jaguar CD is effectively dead after only 11 games.


When you look at everything surrounding these four games released on the Atari Jaguar in the first three months of 1996 it's really only natural to wind up thinking negatively. Atari Corporation started the year already defeated, and I imagine the only reason these games (plus the one final pre-merger title we'll get to next time) even saw release was because they were already so far down the pipeline that the costs of producing cartridges & distributing them were already paid for; better to ship them out & maybe get some money back from sales, right? Luckily, the titles that Atari Corp. were putting out in these final days are honestly really good to solid games... and that includes Attack of the Mutant Penguins, but at least you have to give the devs props for doing something wholly unique there. I'll go over this when I do a final overview after I finish up this entire series (only two more parts to go!), but for as much flak that the Atari Jaguar has gotten in the decades since its release back in late 1993 the actual official catalog of games that came out on it has surprisingly veered more on the side of "good-to-great" than being absolute crud, and even this late into the console's short life (officially) this remains true.

Regardless, though, there's no doubt that even by the end of March of 1996 Atari Corp. was essentially a dead man walking, the Atari Jaguar was being dragged along by said walking corpse, and there wasn't really anybody around to bemoan & eulogize what remained of the OG video game company that, at one point, defined the entire industry. Simply put, what remained of the (comparatively) miniscule Jaguar market had mostly moved on by this point... but those who still believed would start to get rewarded in due time; they just had to wait.

Next Time: There's one last game Atari Corporation has planned for release for its final console, this one developed in-house & featuring the talents of someone who worked on Virtua Fighter! After that, however, is a long, long, loooooooooooooooong stretch of nothing, not helped by the literal death of Atari Corp. via the merger with JT Storage. However, despite the death of its creator, the Jaguar continues to fight on with official releases, buoyed by an old ally not seen since April of 1995... Telegames!!

*All in-game screens sourced from AtariAge*

NBA Jam: Tournament Edition © 1995 NBA Properties
Zoop © 1995 Viacom International (now Interplay?), Original Game Concept © 1995 Hookstone (now defunct)
Defender 2000 © 1995 Williams Electronics Games (now Warner Bros. Games)
Attack of the Mutant Penguins © Piko Interactive (previously Sunrise Games)

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