The Wolf Adapter for the ATARI 7800

Have you ever wanted to use your Atari Jaguar controllers on an Atari 7800 well now you can!

There is a new open-source project called The Wolf Adatper which provides a DIY solution to use an Atari Jaguar (or Super Nintendo) controller to emulate a keypad or joystick controller for Atari 2600 and 7800 systems.

As many more homebrew games for the Atari 2600 and 7800 systems require more buttons this project could be the answer gamers and developers are looking for.

As the Atari Jaguar controller has a keypad this could give developers opportunity to add controller overlays which could add collectability to 7800 games in any collection, as personally when playing Atari Jaguar games such as Alien Vs Predator and Doom you can't beat a good keypad overlay to help with your journey such as changing weapons, on-screen map or changing the view point, imagine how useful this could be for RPG based games selecting items/maps/magic for ease of use on your adventure.

Saying that the Atari Jaguar Controller keypad could also help when thinking about porting 8-bit micro-computer games to the Atari 7800 due to replacing/re-mapping the keyboard with the Atari Jaguar keypad. 

This is a positive move making it easier for gamers and developers to play and develop their much loved micro-computer games or new homebrew titles.

Here are links to the project:

https://forums.atariage.com/topic/329817-the-wolf/

https://github.com/Danjovic/Wolf

https://hackaday.io/project/183582-wolf

The source of this information was provided to me from a member of the Atari Age forums to get more and more people aware of this project and get the support it needs.

Being new to this community its great to get a heads up with what is going on in the scene, when I can I will share information here.

Oh if you're wondered why Wolf from the Gladiators UK is featured on the image, that's because whenever I hear the name Wolf I think of remember back to those good old days :) 

Do The Math hit the road - NottsVGE 2022

That's right the team at Do The Math AtariJaguar.co.uk will be at this years Nottingham Video Game Expo (NottsVGE) which is taking place the weekend of 17th & 18th of December 2022.

Tom Charnock will be at The Dreamcast Junkyard table on Saturday the 17th December whilst I, James (DreamcastUK) will have a table setup in the gaming area on Sunday 18th December for ItsMuchMore and Do The Math, there will be an Atari Jaguar with Doom for you all to come along and play.

The Centre of Computing History are also planning to attend and looking at what they like to bring to events, it's likely that they will have an Atari Jaguar there with Tempest 3000.

If that isn't a reason to get yourself a ticket for either of the days we don't know what is, you can find more details about the Nottingham Video Games Expo here.

Atari Jaguar Merch - Do the Math

Now this community is already showing it's true colours and in this case it's a good thing. I've recieved an Atari Jaguar baseball cap, cybermorph controller overlay and some Do the Math stickets which I am extremely happy with and will of course wear this cap on every Atari Jaguar video I do and may even wear it at future gaming events and conventions.

Special thanks to The Lynx Cader for providing me with this great Atari Jaguar merch!

If you want to purcahse this along with other Atari Jaguar and Atari Lynx items visit his store here.

Just got an Atari Jaguar in 2022

Hi there, my name is James and I have just got myself an Atari Jaguar so the normal thing to do is shout about it and look around for forums and communities to be a part of.

So if you're wondered why I'm here instead of Tom, well Tom has kindly let me do some articles for this blog seeing as there hasn't been a post on here since 2016 I thought I could bring some fresh Jag eyes to the arena.

I've worked with Tom in the past with The Dreamcast Junkyard scene and I'm still part of the admin team there, I've done a few videos for their YT channel and can be found retweeting and liking their Twitter posts plus getting involved in all things Dreamcast.

As for the Jaguar, be expected to see lots my posts in relation to my first impressions of the console, reviews of games, discussions on homebrew and ports and also hearing from the community.

I've also joined the AtariAge community and can say I have been welcomed with open arms which is great.

The first game I've purchased to test is checkered flag, yes I know already people may say it's not the best place to start but if I would have purchased the console back in the day this would of been the game I would have picked up early on, as it looks and reminds me of Hard Driving and Virtua Racing by the box art.

Look forward to plenty of good times to come with the new addition to my gaming collection.

JagLink

Most retro consoles have the ability to be linked together for multiplayer purposes, and the Jaguar is no different. If you look on the back of the Jag, you'll notice that there are two exposed circuit board connectors. The longer of the two is used by the Jaguar SCART or S-Video connectors, and the other one is - surprise - used by the JagLink system networking device. I'm going to go out on a limb here are say that there are probably very few Jaguar consoles out there that have ever had anything slotted onto that narrower connector, simply because the JagLink is a pretty uncommon peripheral and only three games actually use it: Doom, Battlesphere and Aircars. As you'd expect, in order to fully make use of the JagLink, you need two Jaguars, two TVs, a willing friend and two copies of whichever game it is you want to play.

The lesser-spotted Network Capable logo

I had pretty much everything on that tick list, apart from the second copy of Doom...but when I bought my JagLink from an eBay seller, I mentioned that I'd also be looking for another copy of Doom and he sent me a brand new (sealed) boxed copy for free! For that completely selfless act of kindness, I'd like to thank eBayer retro_xtreme.

It's actually a little odd that, considering how much of a fan of the Doom series I am, I've never actually played the game in multiplayer; so it was quite apt that my first ever taste of co-op Doom came about using the Jaguar version. Many times over the years I've looked at that gameplay mode option in the menu of Jaguar Doom, and only now have I had the ability to actually select 'co-op' or 'deathmatch' and been able to jump into a game with a second player...and it really does add something extra to a game I thought I had seen every side of (actually, you can only see one side of pretty much everything in the sprite-based engine...but you know what I mean!). To be honest, I was really impressed with the speed at which the JagLink networked my two systems and there was none of the stuttering or freezing up mentioned in the Doom manual (see image below). The only issue I encountered was that my modded 60Hz system does occasionally freeze while running Doom for reasons unbeknown to me, and that's not really anything to do with the JagLink - it does it in single player too.

Game-play experiences aside, the JagLink itself is a nice looking device. It comprises two network adaptor boxes that attach to the back of each system and a network cable that goes between the two. I do also have an unofficial network cable but I've not actually tried it to see if it works simply because the connectors on the ends of it are very wide and I can't connect the SCART and S-Video cables at the same time. If it does indeed work, it makes me wonder why the official version of the JagLink has the little boxes...but I digress.

It's a great little addition to my collection and that it's boxed and in really good condition is a massive bonus; and the free copy of Doom it came with only sweetened the deal.

The Price We Must (Not) Pay

It's no secret that in recent times the cost of absolutely everything to do with retrogaming has gone through the roof. It wasn't too long ago that you could pick older games up for peanuts because they were considered junk by the vast majority. This trend has, until quite recently, not really been an issue for many Jaguar owners and collectors though. Certainly in my experience, the price of Jaguar games and consoles, while not exactly 'dirt cheap,' has remained fairly constant. Some games are almost universally cheap; while others such as Towers II, Iron Soldier 2, Fight For Life, Skyhammer, Gorf, and a couple of other CD-based and unreleased titles have always commanded 'premium' prices for whatever reason; and likewise with the Jaguar CD unit itself.

The reason I've been prompted to write this post though, is that I've recently been looking to purchase another Jaguar console. I do already have two systems, but the one I had modded with a 60Hz switch has decided that it doesn't like running Doom with the Jaglink (more to come on this in a planned post) and so I've been on the hunt for a reasonably-priced console so I might enjoy some co-op and deathmatch Doom without having the game crash every 5 minutes. I have seen a few systems in the wild but they've generally been priced at around £100...which in my opinion at least is a little bit too much to pay for what is essentially going to be a console that will only get played when I can convince somebody to play multiplayer Doom with me. Fair enough I thought - maybe I'll be able to find a cheap and cheerful 'spares and repair' or 'console only - untested' deal online. Wrong. The price of Jaguar consoles appears, in my absence from searching for them, to have gone absolutely stratospheric:

Yep. £580 for a Jag and some games?! £300+ for a boxed one? Who are these people kidding? Now, I'm not one to try to detract from the price of my own collection, but from what these jokers are charging my own Jaguar hoard must be worth about £10,000! Not a chance. So, it seems that the rip-off merchants have finally discovered our little secret and this makes me both sad and angry. How long until we start seeing copies of Cybermorph changing hands for £50 a pop? Hopefully this will not happen, but it's a scary prospect.

My own Jaguar collection, as of about a month ago.

Introducing The Atari PlayOne V2.0

Some time ago we featured the awesome looking all-in-one Jaguar and Jaguar CD system, the Atari PlayOne. This impressive looking beast is the brainchild of system modder 10p6 and features - as stated - a Jaguar cart system, a CD unit and a whole host of outputs in one customised shell. However, Do The Math can reveal that 10p6 is working on an upgrade to the PlayOne - the PlayOne V2.0. It's a work in progress at present, but the video below shows some interesting features, such as a more compact shell and a sliding cover over the cartridge slot. We'll be keeping an eye on the progress of the PlayOne V2.0, and hoping it develops into more than a wireframe model...

Behold The 60Hz Ultra Jag!

There are three types of gamer in this world. There are the ones who just play games they enjoy, and don't really give a toss about stuff like borders and speed and PAL, NTSC and all the other guff that you can get wrapped up in. Then there are the others who like nothing more than discussing the intricacies of an RGB output or the slight differences in frame-rate between one version of a game and another. Then there are people like me who sort of straddle the two. Sure - I play import games occasionally and I do sometimes dabble with a soldering iron and tinker with the innards of various systems...but to be totally honest, I can take or leave all that stuff. As far as I'm concerned, if a game can be played - I'll play it.

This probably stems from just having PAL systems as a kid and not really having the means to investigate the 'superior' 60Hz stuff from exotic places like Japan and America. I had what I was given, and I was happy to play it. Ignorant? You bet. Did I have much of a choice? Nope! Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that the whole 'PAL stuff is crap' thing never really bothered me, and to my untrained eyes, the difference between 50Hz and 60Hz is something I'm just not arsed about.

Recently however, my learned friend and co-writer here at Do The Math (we'll call him 'Andrew') told me that via the medium of arcane magic (also known as electronics) he could add a switch to a Jaguar console that would enable me to effortlessly move hither and thither between the plain old 50Hz I'm accustomed to; and the spangly 60Hz usually reserved for the rich, famous, politically motivated and bourgeois. So I sent one of my cats - that's how I affectionately refer to my Jaguars - off to Andrew in the far, treacherous and leper-ridden North; and nary a week later it was back with me in the South, smelling strongly of coal dust...but with an additional switch festooned upon it's side:

This little nubbin allows me to switch between 50Hz and 60Hz signals. It can't be done 'on the fly' like some other mods I've seen recently (you have to turn the system off before hand) but this isn't really an issue for me. The extra calories burned by moving my hand 30cm from the switch to the on/off button and back again are negligible. Andrew also kindly supplied me with some pictures of the modification process being undertaken:

This is all very good, I'm sure you'll agree. But what about the actual differences this type of modification makes to the operation of the games themselves? Well, I have to be honest here - I wasn't really expecting to see much of a difference because I had been informed that a lot of Jaguar games were programmed by European software houses and as such are optimised for the 50Hz console. And, for a lot of the games I have tried...I have to confirm that this is indeed the case. There are a couple of things that are instantly noticeable though, regardless of the game you're playing - the visible screen is noticeably bigger in 60Hz mode and the boot sequence does run slightly faster...but for the most part with a lot of carts, this is the only real difference. However, this isn't the case with every game. Oh no.

Certain games are improved to the point that the increased speed makes them feel like totally different experiences. Games like Doom and Wolfenstein are examples of this, and Doom in particular moves so much more smoothly than the 50Hz version that it's actually quite stunning. Super Burnout too, feels a little quicker...if that's actually possible. There doesn't seem to be any particular rule at play here - some games benefit massively from the switch to 60Hz, while others (rather disappointingly) do not. One game that I thought might be sped up by the change is AvP...but alas the only difference on display is the increased real estate on the screen. This is probably more to do with the actual game engine than the frequency of the console, but I was hoping for more. That said, this is a really interesting subject and below is a selection of screen shots from various games that illustrate the increased play area if nothing else.

60Hz Vs 50Hz Doom

60Hz Pitfall

50Hz Pitfall

60Hz Boot

50Hz Boot

60Hz AvP

50Hz AvP

All in all, I'm really impressed with the modification that Andrew performed and I pretty much exclusively use the 60Hz Jag now just because of the increased screen size on my TV. It's an operation that's well worth investigating and if you're interested in having this done yourself, drop us a message in the comments section and we'll get you sorted.

Jaguar The Musical

I was browsing the internet t'other day and one of those random adverts popped up in the sidebar of a website. Don't know what I'd been looking at for Google to target Cats the Musical at me...but it did. As I glanced at the advert, I noticed an alarming similarity between it and the logo of another 'thing' involving felines...

Or maybe my affection for the Jaguar has gone just a little bit too far.

Guest Article: Steve Mitchell (Lore Design) Interview

Lore Design was the company responsible for the production of Highlander: The Last Of The McLeods on the Jaguar CD. Released in October 1995 the game was an impressive Alone In The Dark style 3D adventure that used motion-captured characters along side 24-bit true colour backdrops. It was based on the Gaumont Multimedia animated TV series, that was in turn based on the film starring Christopher Lambert. A further two games were planned but never released. Here, freelance games journalist Kieren Hawken interviews Steve Mitchell, the owner of Lore Design and producer on all three Highlander games.

What are the origins of Lore Design in the video game industry?

The company was founded to do the Computer Moderated Play By Mail game Lore Lords of Britain, which ran for most of the life of the business. Whilst in a gap year I did the BBC Micro ports of the James Bond game License to Kill and Atari arcade game Return Of The Jedi for Domark with my college friend Chris Lowe.

Around the time I graduated I completed Kung Food for the Atari Lynx with Paul Johnson, Tim Harper and Christian Urquhart (who is famous for being employed by Ocean Software in the 80s while still at school). Working with Christian taught me a lot about gameplay and Paul was an inspired artist who could script whole games himself and proved to be a good at business too.

Can you tell us a little bit about how Highlander came about?

Atari licensed the Highlander animated series for a Jaguar CD game. They picked Lore to develop it as we had completed several Lynx games and Dave Worton, who worked with me on some of them, had started working with 3D Studio on a pre-rendered Z buffered backdrop that allowed for the limited polygon characters that were needed for the Jaguar system and the Alone in The Dark style perspective that Atari had picked for the game. Atari also paid for state of the art motion capture studio to be built at our development studio. They paid for all the original voice actors to be flown over and provided footage from the cartoon series for us to use. Sadly this was the last game completed by Lore as a dispute with the then Atari Corp on future titles resulted in the insolvency and ultimately the voluntary receivership of the business in around 1997.

It has long been rumoured that both Highlander II and III were completed, what can you tell us about the sequels?

There was a PC version of Highlander and the sequels were in production but unreleased, as they were licensed games and those licenses had expired. I can't imagine there being any official versions released however. But it is not impossible that either from QA (testing), Atari or an ex-Lore member that something may be out there. So I can't squash the rumour, though I'd be very surprised if it was a final version.

What was the Jaguar like to work with?

Personally I much preferred the Lynx over the Jaguar for development. Generally cartridge consoles had not only RAM but also ROM to work from directly. Adding the CD meant reads had to be cached into your RAM instead of just sitting in the ROM making the CD system less potent that the straight cartridge system.

The PlayStation was a much nicer console to develop for than the Jaguar with better tools, eight times more effective RAM and it could do basic texture mapping. Despite the lack of experience they also offered excellent support, something Atari and the Jaguar didn’t have.

What happened to the members of Lore Design and what have you all done since?

Many of the team stayed in the northwest and joined Magenta Software (who also worked on Highlander but still survive as a business to this day). Paul was a founder of Magenta and still runs it today developing console games for major publishers.

I myself had just got married and started a family back in 96/97 and so left Lore and become Development Manager (Internal) at SCEE in London. Whilst I was there I produced Total NBA ‘97 and NBA Shootout ‘97 before returning north and starting Diamond Apple Ltd. I still run Diamond Apple today making games, accessories and other game technologies.

I work with and see many of the people from the Lore period on a regular basis. For example our original producer on Highlander, who worked for Atari Corp at the time, is visiting the UK right now from the US. Some of the people on my team now were with me back at Lore or during my time at SCEE afterwards.

Are there any funny stories you can tell us about your time at Lore Design?

Whilst visiting Atari Corp in the mid 90s I was invited to a meal with Jeff Minter and some Atari QA guys, this was around the time Jeff was making the seminal Jaguar title Tempest 2000.  Jeff had taken us to a curry house he'd found near the Sunnyvale Atari offices in the Bay Area at which he had persuaded the proprietors to serve vindaloo strength curry to the Atari employees. I distinctly recall him telling the testers, at some point before the meal, to "Put the Bog Roll in the Fridge..." or similar such words followed by a wry smile. Jeff's time in California was legendary amongst the Atari Corp team at the time but I can only confirm this one anecdote from personal experience. The curry was good! I do not know if the QA guys took his advice though!

Do you have happy memories of your time as first party producer for Atari?

I personally loved making Lynx games and would still code for it if I had a development kit!

The Jaguar not so much!


Interview by Kieren Hawken. Special thanks to Steve Mitchell.

Read a full article on the history of Lore Design in issue 128 of Retro Gamer magazine.

Guest Article: Why Did The Jaguar Fail?

In this second guest article, freelance games journalist Kieren Hawken looks at some of the reasons the Jaguar failed to take the market by storm, and relates back to his own personal experiences from the launch of the system. The following is an adaptation of an article originally printed in Atari User magazine.

One question you see asked again and again on the Atari forums and social media pages is “Why did the Jaguar fail?” Now I know what you're all thinking, this subject has been flogged to death on these very sites over the years and always seems to get the same answers. Atari didn’t have the money, the games were not good enough, it wasn’t advertised, Sony killed it and so on. Well I personally have always had a viewpoint very close to home on this subject that sees things from another angle altogether. I thought this would be something I could share with others and see what you think!

Back in 1993 I remember seeing the first previews for the new 64-bit Atari console that would be called the Jaguar. Like many Atari fans I was so excited about this and was dreaming about a return to greatness that just wasn’t to be. I pre-ordered my console from Telegames UK who, as well as being a mail order company, were also an official Atari developer having released games for both the 2600 and Lynx. As the release date got closer the number of consoles available seemed to get smaller and Atari cancelled many of big release events around the world, most notably Paris, simply because they just didn’t have enough consoles to go round. This shortage was down to manufacturing problems at the IBM plant building the Jaguar, something Atari stated was beyond their control. But was it? Was IBM really the only answer to building the Jaguar and did people really care about the system being made in the USA? As it turned out, no they didn’t. Atari did end up still doing the planned London release at toy store Hamleys but on a much smaller scale than intended as only 1000 consoles made it to England, of them a small number went Telegames. So I was lucky enough to get mine and enjoyed playing Cybermorph for along time before I got my second game – Crescent Galaxy.

Now fast forward to Christmas 1994 and I had a seasonal job working for Game, the largest seller of video games in the UK. And this is really where my story and my theory begins. In the year that had passed we still only had a trickle of games but interest in the machine was still high going into Xmas and surely in that last year Atari had sorted out the supply problems? And of course the answer is no! In our store alone we had a massive waiting list of people who wanted a Jaguar and had put their name down to reserve one. But as each delivery arrived at the store we were lucky to get 5 consoles! I distinctly remember our really big Xmas week delivery where all the staff had to come in at 6 am to unload the lorry and get the store ready for our busiest weekend of the year. On that lorry we got 7 Jaguars, yes SEVEN. Even worse we had tons of games, more than we knew what to do with, just no machines. The consoles were not even going on the shelves as each morning we rang the next few names on the pre-order list and they came and took them away. I know for a fact that we could have sold hundreds of consoles had we had them to sell. I always felt so bad for the people who came in asking for the Jaguar and having to send them away disappointed, especially as I had one at home myself and wanted the console to do well so badly.

Now this for me was Atari’s biggest own goal, they only had 1993 and 1994 to get a firm hold on the market before the PlayStation came along to take over the market and in the UK they certainly had the demand for it. In fact the boss of Atari in the UK Darryl Still was quoted as saying he thinks they could have sold over 20 times the units they did in 1994 alone had they had the stock to sell. The UK and Europe were always strong markets for Atari. The 2600 lasted well into the nineties, the ST was a massive success outselling the Amiga for many years and the Lynx sold over 1 million units alone in the UK and France respectively. In fact we were still selling them when I was working at Game in 1994. Atari didn’t have the bad name they had in the US and we hadn’t been affected by the North American video games crash either. The ST and Lynx were both still going strong when the Jaguar arrived and many Atari fans were ready to snap Atari’s new console up. Had Atari delivered in the UK and Europe, even at the expense of the US, would we be telling a different story today? Sure, you can try to say that without the US and Japan a console can’t be a success but go tell that to Sega and the Master System . . .

Guest Article: Jack's Last Word

This article was written by freelance games journalist Kieren Hawken in April 2012 to commemorate the life and times of former Atari President Jack Tramiel, who sadly passed away on the 8th day of that month. It was originally due to be published in issue 4 of Pixel Nation magazine but the publisher was put into receivership before the issue was published. Kieren kindly forwarded it to Do The Math for publication online, and here you can read it in its original form.

The influence of Jack Tramiel on the video game industry simply cannot be underestimated. From the Commodore VIC-20 to the Atari Jaguar he released a string of powerful games machines that had a profound impact on many of our lives. Sadly April 8th 2012 marked the death of the Polish holocaust surviving computer entrepreneur but his legacy lives on. In this article we look at the very last machine released under his management before he retired from the industry – the Jaguar CD, a machine that might not have been worth owning in 1995 but is more alive than ever in 2012.

The date was September the 11th 1995 and the long promised Jaguar CD finally hit the market at a price of $149.99 (£129.99 in the UK). An add-on for Atari’s already failing 64-bit Jaguar console that they hoped would help turn the tide on the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation. It featured a double speed CD-ROM drive using a unique system that gave up to 790 Megabytes of storage. This was far more than other CD-ROM systems of the time. While it helped combat piracy it also made it more prone to disc reading errors. The unit was manufactured by Philips and used mostly standard parts to keep the cost down. The only extra hardware was a chip called Butch that interfaced it with the main unit and added Cinepak for full motion video. The initial production of 20,000 units sold out within 2 weeks and a second batch was then ordered. However it is unknown if that second batch even went into production or what the size of it was as Atari went into the reverse merger with JTS only months later liquidating all Jaguar stock. Many people who worked for the company believe that the original 20,000 units were the only ones ever made and this would certainly explain why the system is now so rare.

Sadly it was just too little too late to save the system, people had already lost all faith in Atari to deliver after the terrible launch of the Jaguar. The slow supply of games, many of which were downright terrible, and ports of titles already found on the 16-bit systems of the time helped put the nails in the Jaguar’s coffin. The Jaguar badly needed more titles the quality of the highly acclaimed Alien Vs. Predator, Tempest 2000 and Missile Command 3D. They promised the Jaguar CD would deliver them but the announced line-up of games were less than stellar. In fact half the games that appeared on the box for the Jaguar CD didn’t even get released at all! The one big thing it did have that got people talking was the Virtual Light Machine or VLM for short. Written by the legendary Jeff Minter this was built into every unit and was used when music CDs were played on it. An evolution of his Trip A Tron light synthesiser for the Atari ST it used complex algorithms to display graphics on screen that moved along with the music. The keypad on the Jaguar controller could be used to select different graphical styles or to make your own sequences, most people just stuck it on random and enjoyed the show. The system also came bundled with a demo of the game Myst and 2 complete games. The first of these - Blue Lightning - was a sequel to the famous Atari Lynx launch title but failed to impress as much as its original iteration did. The other game, Vid-Grid was a quite unique and highly enjoyable CD title that crossed a puzzle game with FMV music videos, and was later ported to the PC. The other item released for the Jaguar CD at launch was the Memory Track cartridge. This plugs into the cartridge slot on the unit and uses flash memory for saving up to 250 different games.

Only 11 titles were released for the Jaguar CD, several of which were 3rd party titles. It also received 2 after market releases from Telegames in 1997 - Iron Soldier 2 and World Tour Racing, both games were originally meant to be released by Atari. There were over 50 games that were announced and in various stages of development before being canned due to the demise of the system. Some of these have since seen release such as Brett Hull NHL Hockey, Varuna’s Forces starring Michael Clarke Duncan from the Green Mile and the fairly recent release of Silmarils’ Robinson’s Requiem (May 2011) by Songbird Productions. There is also highly regarded Jaguar CD version of Soul Star by Core Design. An update of the highly acclaimed Sega Mega CD game it has ended up being copied and shared in secret by the community after the owners of the game (Eidos and then Square Enix) repeatedly refused to allow a legal release for some reason. The real star of the original games was Battlemorph, a brilliant sequel to Cybermorph – the game that originally came bundled with the Jaguar. Some 17 years later unreleased prototypes continue to turn up, Highlander II has been recently confirmed as existing, Country Grid and Kid Grid are in the hands of a collector and 3 titles from Elite Systems were recently confirmed including the FPS game Virtuoso. Hopefully all of these will see an official release sooner rather than later.

Commercial Jaguar CD Games

• Dragon’s Lair – By Readysoft
• Myst – By Cyan Inc. / Sunsoft
• Battlemorph – By Attention To Detail / Atari
• Baldies – By Creative Edge / Atari
• Highlander – By Lore Design / Atari
• Hover Strike: Unconquered Lands – By Atari
• Space Ace – By Readysoft
• Iron Soldier II – By Eclipse / Telegames
• Primal Rage – By Time Warner Interactive
• World Tour Racing – By Teque / Telegames
• Braindead 13 – By Readysoft
• Vid Grid – By Geffen / Jasmine Multimedia
• Blue Lightning – By Attention To Detail / Atari

Released Jaguar CD Prototypes

• Varuna’s Forces (early beta)
• Robinson’s Requiem (complete)
• Caves Of Fear (early beta)
• American Hero (early beta)
• Soul Star (complete)
• Native (1 level demo)
• Demolition Man (FMV only)
• Brett Hull NHL Hockey (near complete)
• Dragon’s Lair II (demo)
• Commander Blood (FMV only)
• Thea Realm Fighters (early beta)
• Jeff Minter Collection (tech demos)

In the year 2012 the Jaguar is a highly sort after machine that is increasing in value all the time. The CD unit is even more prized and regularly goes for £150+ on eBay, more than its original retail price! This is partly down to its rarity and also because there are many broken units out there, although the reputation that the Jaguar has for being unreliable is totally unfounded the most common fault is simply a pushed down spindle. The main reason for the machine’s current popularity though is its vibrant homebrew scene. This story starts in 1999 when Hasbro, as the then owners of the Atari brand, released all rights to the Jaguar and its encryption key into the public domain. This meant that anyone could develop and release games for the system without needing a license. However it was still expensive to produce cartridges and many of the early homebrews used the BJL set-up, this streamed code into a modded Jaguar via the second controller port. This was a very long a laborious process so the Jag CD was soon seen as an alternative. The problem was that while the encryption key for the Jaguar had been released the one for the Jaguar CD had been lost. A bypass cartridge was released to get round this that you plugged into the cartridge port in order to use self-burned homebrew games. Eventually the encryption code was found and that is when homebrew for the Jaguar really took off with people like MD Games, Reboot, Stormworks Interactive, Sinister Developments, Jagware and 3D Stooges all producing new games to play on the Jaguar CD. Many more simple titles have even been made available for free so you can burn them to CDR yourself and play them!

The Jaguar CD may have been a failure in its commercial life but it’s now a massive hit in its afterlife, and this is all down to the wonderful homebrew community. There isn’t another CD system out there with a scene as vibrant or as interesting (although the Dreamcast has it's fair share of homebrew/indie projects in 2014! - Tom). This makes the Jaguar CD a must have machine for serious retro gamers these days and it will be supported for a long time to come if the current output is anything to go by. Jack Tramiel will be looking down with a big smile knowing his last word was now so important!

Once again, massive thanks to Kieren Hawken for allowing Do The Math to publish this article.

Total Recall

When I first got my Jaguar CD unit, the subject of saving my progress in any CD-based games I subsequently purchased was the furthest thing from my mind. I never thought I'd ever own a Jaguar CD, so the finer details were an irrelevance at the time - the mere fact that I was in possession of the add-on was good enough for me. After the initial glow of wonder had worn off though, it quickly became apparent that there was no built in storage capacity in the Jaguar CD, and every time I turned a game off my progress was wiped from existence. This isn't really a problem with titles like Vid Grid or Blue Lightning as they're good for a quick blast every now and then regardless of whether you can save your progress...but games like Battlemorph and Myst are pretty much redundant without some way of saving your adventure's status. I did a little bit of research and discovered the existence of the Memory Track - a memory module designed specifically for the Jaguar CD. I also discovered just how rare and expensive the things were, and once again resigned myself to never owning one and being destined to forever play the first few missions of a CD game before turning off.

This all changed recently, however. I was minding my own business on Facebook when a friend shared an image of a load of boxed Jaguar games that retro-gaming retailer Level Up Games had just acquired. I quickly glanced at the image and was about to just scroll past it (I already had 99% of the games pictured) when up in the corner I noticed something oddly familiar - a boxed Memory Track! I quickly messaged Level Up about the item and asked how much they were selling it for. The answer came back: £35. Now, this may sound like a lot of money for what is essentially just a memory card, but these things can fetch double that on eBay and the like, so I bit the bullet and decided the time was right for me to own one. I paid the fee and a few days later, the Memory Track dropped through the letter box:

As you would imagine, the Memory Track doesn't really do a lot other than save your progress in compatible games. Contrary to this though, the back of the box lists the following 'exciting' things you can do with your new purchase:

• Store high scores - break your own record
• Store game progress to a specific point or level - pick up where you left off
• Store specific character configurations - save the characters you created
• Store particular levels or worlds - use them later

The third point there is a little puzzling - I can't think of any Jaguar CD games that allow you to create your own characters. Maybe the leftovers from a title that was planned for the system and then dropped?

I was a little perplexed that there is no obvious way to access a menu through the Jaguar CD - indeed the system doesn't even acknowledge the presence of the Memory Track until it prompts you to save your progress in whichever game it is that you're playing. Out of curiosity, I took the CD unit off the top of my Jag and put the Memory Track directly into the base system...and was confronted by this:

So there you have it. The Memory Track is a functional and pretty essential piece of kit if you have a Jaguar CD. I do like that it is styled after t regular game cartridge, but this was probably just down to ease of manufacture. I'm still a little bemused at the lack of at least a small amount of internal memory in the Jaguar CD unit itself...but I'm happy with the purchase and even happier that I can now save my progress in my CD games.

Thanks again to Level Up Games for the fast postage and great customer service. Be sure to check them out on Facebook.

A Tale of Two Cybermorphs

It's not a commonly known fact, but there are two different versions of Cybermorph. The original version was released in 1993 and was a pack-in game with the Jaguar console, and it comes on a 2MB cartridge. On firing up the 1993 version of the game (you can tell which version you have by either looking at the date on the title screen or the date/serial number in the bottom right of the cartridge label), players are greeted by a short introductory sequence, 'morphing' title screen images and a pretty nice theme tune. The later 1994 cart however, features none of this - it literally goes from static title screen, to the level select and then straight to the game...all in total silence. Tellingly, the 1994 version of Cybermorph comes on a smaller 1MB cart, so this aesthetic detail was obviously cut to squeeze the game onto the smaller media.

The main game doesn't really differ - although there is apparently less speech in the later variant. I understand that the original version of the game is slightly rarer than the 1994 re-issue, but neither game is worth much so don't get too excited if you have the 93 iteration...just sit back and enjoy that menu music.

I've made a little video showing the minor differences between the two versions below:

Autograph Hunting

Over the last few months, I have been privileged enough to have been allowed to attend some pretty amazing gaming events as part of the RetroCollect team. My duties at these events have mainly been to help man the stand, speak to gamers about the site and generally just have fun whilst encouraging people to come and play some games and compete in challenges. Naturally, there's also been a lot of wandering around these events, meeting people who I speak to on Twitter and also the purchasing of lots of cool games and gaming hardware. The most recent event I attended was the massive Play Expo at Manchester's Event City.

I attended last year's event as a member of the public and it was at that event that I first met the creator of Tempest 2000 and TxK (amongst others), Jeff Minter. He was in attendance again at this year's event and I managed to speak to him before the doors opened to the public. He's a really nice guy and has a lot of time for fans of his games - I even got to have a quick go on the Occulus Rift version of TxK and had the cool as hell 'debug' mode demonstrated to me first hand. The debug mode allows players to pause the action and then wander around within the game world, while the Occulus lets you gawp at the monsters crawling up the web in full 3D. It's very impressive. Naturally, expecting Mr Minter to be at Play, I came fully prepared - I had my copy of Tempest 2000 with me and asked him to sign it...which he did. I also scored a copy of Llamasoft's lesser spotted original Amiga light synth, Trip-A-Tron on floppy disk. I don't own an Amiga of any flavour (yet), but it was a nice little extra and even cooler that I got it off the man who actually created it.

Earlier in the year, I attended Revival 2014 at Wolverhampton Racecourse. Unlike Play Expo, Revival is purely a retrogaming event and was one of the best exhibitions I've yet attended. Pretty much every console you could care to think of was either available to be played on, available to buy or at the very least, on display. It was at Revival that I finally managed to meet Kieren 'Laird' Hawken in person. Kieren is very probably the most knowledgeable Jaguar collector I know of - indeed it was his article on the Jaguar that was published in Retro Gamer Magazine and he was a guest on the RetroCollect podcast we did on the Jag. I must say that while I obviously love the Jag and lament at the missed opportunity it represents, Kieren's fondness for the system goes far beyond my own. It was cool to finally meet the guy and also play some of his rarer Jaguar games; Kieren had a little display and had his Jaguar Pro Controller as well as Rayman and Sky Hammer carts available for the public to sample. I'd never played either of these titles prior to attending Revival and I was pretty stunned by the quality of Rayman's colourful cartoony visuals and outstanding animation - it certainly looks better than the PlayStation version I own.

The real show-stopper however, was Sky Hammer. I'd never seen the game in motion before and actually playing it was a real eye-opener: this game looks incredible. Furthermore, the fluidity of the game engine is unrivalled on the system and really proves just how good Jag games can look if programmed properly. For those who don't know anything about Sky Hammer, it was a late release and plays a lot like Descent or Forsaken in that you have full 360 degree movement in a futuristic cityscape and must fly around between the towering, neon-lit buildings shooting enemies and completing various mission parameters. I remember reading a review of Sky Hammer in a copy of Games Master Magazine way back when, and the story of it's eventual release is an interesting one. It is worth seeking out if you can afford it, although it is quite highly-priced so it may be one for my wish list.

Worms was also on display

Revival was a really great event and the highlight for me was meeting one of my all-time gaming heroes, John Romero. I absolutely love the Doom series and own pretty much every version of the game for consoles, as well as the other id Software titles that came either before or after; so meeting the man responsible was an incredible experience. It was even more incredible because he was such a genuinely nice man. I got to meet and chat with Mr Romero before the event was actually open to the public and he told me a few cool stories about the development of 32X Doom. One thing I'm kicking myself for not asking was the truth about Jaguar Quake and whether it was ever on the cards. That would have put the whole thing to bed there and then. Alas, I totally forgot to enquire. It wasn't all bad though - he posed for a photo and also signed my copy of Doom for the Jag. Once the doors opened and the public streamed into the event, Romero was absolutely mobbed by fans and he just stood there posing for photos, signing memorabilia and just generally chatting with people. He was a really cool guy and it was an honour to have finally met him.

Tempest signed by Minter, Doom by Romero. 

So, two amazing events done and dusted and some really cool people from the history and present of the Jaguar met in person. Can't really complain!