¢ATARI: THE END?¢¢by Daniel 'ODI' Baverstock¢¢24th April 1996¢¢ The following article looks at Atari's suddenly announced merger with disk drive manufacturing giants JTS. Could this spell the end of Atari's production and support for the Jaguar? Is it the end of Atari?¢¢Atari Corp fold¢¢ I first read about the collapse of Atari (and subsequent laying off of most of their employees and executives from their Californian headquarters) in February's issue of Edge magazine. It mentioned that Atari had formed a seperate PC game producing division called Atari Interactive, who managed to produce a PC version of Tempest 2000 before being liquidated. Then I read that Atari was probably merging with a computer components company. So, after over two decades the once gaming giants and often undeserving creators of great Atari hardware have finally collapsed!¢¢ I find it remarkable that they have lasted into the mid 1990s considering their appalling track record for machine and software support.¢¢ Intent of finding out more, I managed to get hold of February's issue of the Jaguar Journal, an American Net magazine (thanks Rob). It revealed Atari's merge with JTS, who are to emerge as the surviving company, founded in 1994! ¢¢ JTS are benefitting from a $60 million infuse of Atari's cash and equivalents, and although the company 'Atari' will no longer exist, Atari have stated software support will be kept up, albeit low profile, until at least the end of 1996.¢¢ Chief financial officer Mr Liguori said "Atari's name would still be used in the computing game environment" and that "we still have a wonderfull game library and many patents associated with games".¢¢ Atari games are still in production, though it's known that many third party developers with Jaguar software production contracts have terminated them. This includes famed Tempest/Defender 2000 programmer and long established Atari enthusiast Jeff Minter.¢¢ What is expected is that the games finished and waiting to be sold and those nearly completed by developers who have invested enough to lose out if they are scraped will be available throughout 1996.¢¢Jaguar, the last chance!¢¢ The events leading up to this stem from the problems of software for the Jaguar 64-bit games console, Atari's last real foot in the gaming world door. Initially 240 pounds on it's release in mid-1994, and packaged off with the half-decent 360 degree arcade simluator Cybermorph, the Jaguar has dropped to as little as 55 pounds. I think this is undoubtidly due to its failure to attract the then Sega and Nintendo 16-bit console owners, than a deliberately controlled marketing strategy.¢¢ High street retailers HMV, Virgin, Dixons, and the now liquidated Rumbelows took the Jaguar onboard upon its release, but with increasing caution based on Atari's consistent commercial failures with most of their products.¢¢ Looking back to the large, yet relatively short lived market for the Atari ST range, and the ridiculously short life span of the 32-bit Falcon which Atari dumped almost within the same year it was released, you can't really blame the retailers. Having said that, I can't help feel the market was never willing to accept Atari from very early on.¢¢ Magazines were very quick to slate the Jaguar and any of its games, especially UK published tiles. Comparing these with American publications gave you a totally different account of a game. Just look back at the American Electronic Games Monthly (EGM) and compare it with the UK's Games Master and Ultimate Future Games magazines. The review scores can be drastically different! Perhaps this could be explained by the greater range of games and availability of the Jaguar and CD-ROM add-on in the USA, which wasn't the case in the UK and Europe, but to my mind this is only a little to blame.¢¢ I am more inclined to blame a combination of factors. The first is that Atari concentrated on the American market firstly, totally understandable considering the postential market and the fact that it's their home territory. Special 'Fun'n'Games' media and gaming industry days were given to promote the games, and Atari did have a presence at major computer shows like ECTS. It's a pity they didn't do the same in the UK and Europe.¢¢ Other factors include Atari's unreliable past reputation, it's early substandard game releases, the lack of a good advertising campaign, lack of the CD-ROM unit, the oncoming rumours of the Saturn, Playstation and Ultra64 alongside the already strongly established 16-bit Nintendo and Sega console market, a prejudiced magazine media, and Atari's overconfidence in nostalgia and the minority of long standing Atari supporters. (Blame everything, don't I?)¢¢The Main Culprit¢¢ I have always felt the biggest let down with Atari's support of the Jaguar was the quality and regularity of software titles. Software support on the Jaguar has been agonisingly slow to gather momentum, and only a few titles have really showed off the system. After the first few average titles (mostly conversions) came the great releases including DOOM, AvP, Iron Soldier and the greatly accalimed (but over-rated) Tempest 2000. Then support reverted back to a trickle of poor titles and revamped conversions.¢¢ For months the gaming media, already critical of Atari, gave poor reviews for nearly every title, while Atari's release dates gave a new meaning to the word 'late'! Furthermore, the price of cartridges were too expensive with conversions of 16-bit favourites like Cannon Fodder and Syndicate priced at 40-50 pounds! ¢¢Atari vs the 16-bits¢¢ From the beginning Atari had maintained its primary intention was to attract 16-bit Sega and Nintendo owners to the 64-bit console market. Attractive sounding quotes in early advertisements boasted of '64-bit power' and the promise of 'astounding virtual gameplay with 360 degree environments'. Yet the majority of games were simply 16-bit conversions of Sega/Nintendo style games, but double the price!¢¢ I can see what Atari were trying to accomplish here. They thought that if they could convert the 16-bit console owners to the Jaguar, they would also be taking Sega and Nintendo's future market away from their new 32-bit consoles. A little too clever, for they were attacking the wrong market. Instead it only served as a benefit to the other console giants, reinforcing the notion that the Jaguar was in the same league as the 16-bit consoles and pathing the way for the "real" next-generation consoles as they were to be known.¢¢ The mere fact that Atari was struggling despite having more than twelve months head start from Sega and console newcomers Sony, was further confirmation of the Jaguar's inability to compete. The Jaguar's unpopularity and subsiquent decline sealed its fate within the first year of release.¢¢Saturn and Playstation released¢¢ Although the Panasonic 3DO and Philips CDi were around, these were not a great threat to Atari. Then came the almost similtanious release in the last quarter of 1995 of the Sega Saturn and Sony PSX (Playstation). Both powerful 32-bit CD-ROM based consoles, each was backed by gimicky campaigns on TV, in magazines and in high street shops.¢¢ The gorgeous 16/24-bit photorealitic screen shots, Full Motion Video (FMV) and promise of popular arcade conversions from both, especially Sega with their Virtua series of games, was a huge blow to Atari.¢¢ The Jaguar was still cartridge based and generally no match for games that were streamed off CD-ROM such as the likes of The Need For Speed or Demolition Derby. Any comparision with the Jaguars' racing or fighting titles against those on the Saturn or PSX was obviously going to make it look bad.¢¢Ultra64 promises¢¢ The second blow came when screen shots for the mysterious and long awaited Nintendo Ultra64, a so called 'True 64-bit console' hit the shores. This was dubbed the first 64-bit console, thus fuelling a huge debate as to the the genuineness of the Jaguar's claim to being 64-bit.¢¢ On the one hand, magazines and rivials accused Atari of false marketing, informing the public that the Jaguar was really 32-bit regarding processing speed, and as the games clearly showed, was inferior to the new Next Generation consoles.¢¢ In reply, Atari insisted that the Jaguar has a 64-bit architecture. Simply put, this means the combination of various microchip processors (of which there are five) give 64-bits of power. ¢¢Jaguar Specifications¢¢ The Jaguar's internal specifictations are as follows:¢¢- A 32-bit Motorala MC68000 main Central Processing Unit, handling the combination of all the processors and generally carrying out the mundane system and joypad functions. Rather like an executive in charge of the general running of a company.¢¢- Two 64-bit RISC chips, so called Tom and Jerry.¢¢ Tom incorporates a blitter chip handling the high speed gouraud shading seen in Cybermorph, and coupled with the 32-bit Graphics Processing Unit deals with the colours and special effects like warping, morphing and texture mapping; a 32-bit Object processor is involved with the 3D polygon architecture seen in Iron Soldier, and the basic structure of Doom & Alien Vs Predator before the texture mapping.¢¢ Jerry incorporates the Digital Sound Processor (DSP) pushing out 16-bit better than CD quality sound, and also deals with other sound aspects.¢¢- The Jaguar's whole system is a combination of 16 and 32-bit processors, working inside 64-bit microchip architecture.¢¢Fast¢¢ In short Atari refuted accusations of false advertising stating that the Jaguar was far from inferior to other machines, it was in fact superior to the next gen consoles (except the Sony PSX which is a little faster in certain areas). Impressive figures like an 850 million pixels per second rendering speed, a 16.8 million colour palette and screen resoulution of 720 X 376 were announced.¢¢ The Joypad's 17 button capacity was another feature used in Atari's marketing ploy, "offering more gameplay options than any other systems around". Magazines tended not to agree, calling it the "House Brick" and branding it unresponsive, cumbersome and generally a hinderance to the gameplay of titles, especally the fighting and point & click strategy games, Katsumi Ninja, Ultra Vortex, Syndicate and Cannon Fodder to name but a few. Thankfully the universally compatible Pro Controller can be used with the Jaguar, and is said to make gameplay far easier.¢¢¢Continued...¢
