Jagvent Calendar - Day 1

Channel:

Grey Fox

Subscribers:

647

Published on December 1, 2022 11:07:41 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY2VTLFtPLI

Game:

Doom (1993)

Duration: 9:48

30 views

1

I hope you are all happy, safe & healthy whatever challenges you are facing right now.

Fans of my channel may remember I did a GameBoy Advent Countdown last year - a different mystery game each day of December. I tohught I'd do something similar this year for the much maligned Atari Jaguar. So this is Day 1 of my Jagvent Calendar :-)

First some credit though - I used a snippet of Kevin Macleod's version of Jingle Bells to set the tone at the start of the video details below:
Music Used: Jingle Bells by Kevin MacLeod | https://incompetech.com/
Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/
Creative Commons CC BY 3.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/


The Atari Jaguar gets a lot of stick but I got mine back in the mid 90's purely for Tempest 2000 & the port of Doom & then picked up cheap games after that. To be fair I actually got my Jaguar by trading a few PAL Saturn games I had Japanese versions of (I got my Jag CD as part payment for clearing my bosses spare room - pro rata probably the most I've been paid for a single days work :) - so I didn't pay for either console in real terms

I won't reveal the game in the Title until the next day but in the Description.......well thats a different matter. Does anyone other than me actually read them?

I thought I'd start with Cybermorph. This was packed in with consoles & was ported from the cancelled Atari Panther system. It gets a bit of a kicking & suffers in comparison to Nintendo's Star Fox however it is doing a lot more in many ways - smooth free roaming 3D as opposed to being on rails at a smooth frame rate (if it stutters in this video it may be because when captured it has the odd frame rate of 27.01 frames per second so I'm not sure it will play back smoothly on video)

The game does lack focus though. It really needs some set pieces to liven up what can at times be a somewhat leisurely collect-a-thon. 360 freedom also means you can get hit without seeing where you are being attacked from. It does feel a lot like an early game or actually more like a Tech Demo/Game Engine in search of a focussed game design. It's both old school Atari in its design but also ambitious at the same time. At least it tries to use the console to provide something beyond a lazy 16bit port.

It is infamous for the James Rolfe AVGN episode where he gets fed up with being asked "Where did you learn to fly?"

If you want to try it for yourself you don't need an original copy and console anymore - it is included on Atari 50 - the recent compilation for XBOX, PS4 & Nintendo Switch. Give it a chance and be patient - it takes a while to adapt to.

This is my original PAL copy from back in the day played on my Jaguar console through S-Video (I have the official RGB Scart cable somewhere) through a Retrotink 5X for ease of capture. It's the first time I've played it in years so forgive the slightly erratic gameplay but it should give you the idea. I play a couple of the easier planets before getting killed by an unavoidable enemy :-)

As always if you enjoy this video let me know. As always this is running on original hardware. Also let me know if there are particular games or systems you'd like to see.

As always this is uploaded under the Fair Use Policy - no money is being made from this video.

Stay strong, stay safe and stay healthy - Grey Fox

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