Jagvent Calendar - Day 14
1I hope you are all happy, safe & healthy whatever challenges you are facing right now.
Apologies for the delay in my Jagvent Calendar uploads - had some stuff going on so couldn't make videos. I'll aim to catch up over the next few days hence multiple uploads here :-)
Fans of my channel may remember I did a GameBoy Advent Countdown last year - a different mystery game each day of December. I thought I'd do something similar this year for the much maligned Atari Jaguar. So this is Day 14 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 that's a different matter. Does anyone other than me actually read them?
This is Fight for Life on the Atari Jaguar. Following the success of games like the Virtua Fighter series on Sega Saturn & Tekken & Toh Shin Den on the Sony PlayStation it was obvious Atari needed a 3D polygonal fighter of their own.
Enter Fight for Life. Boasting a programmer who had been involved in the original Virtua Fighter (Francois Yves Bertrand) & a premise similar to Sega's Eternal Champions - fighters trying to win a second chance at life to right a wrong - this was heavily hyped and pushed by Atari. This was their answer to Virtua Fighter & Tekken & Soul Blade etc
The game itself is about the best you could hope for. Chunky 3D Graphics (not sure if I agree with the winning statement from my chosen character here.....), fairly uninspired character design and sluggish controls.
It does try to innovate a bit - with each victory over an opponent you can add 2 of their moves to your character. The problem is that it makes the characters all feel fairly samey.
They try for cinematic presentation with the life bars popping in and out as hits are registered. They also try a bit of that Mortal Kombat vibe with the announcer.
Overall this isn't a good 3D fighter although I have played worse in fairness. It really doesn't stand up to scrutiny & pales when compared to even average releases in the same genre on the PlayStation & Saturn.
If you really want to try it for yourself then it is included as one of the Jaguar games on the recently released Atari 50 for current gen consoles. Its an interesting curio as I think it was the last game developed by Atari for their last home hardware.
This is my original PAL copy from back in the day (one of several boxed games I received as a bonus payment for a days work in the mid 90's) played on my Jaguar console through S-Video (I have the official RGB Scart cable somewhere) through a Retrotink 5X for ease of capture.
I'm slowly digging out my Jaguar carts although there is a box of them somewhere in the loft that I'm yet to find so it may be touch and go if we make it to 24 on the countdown as I think I only have 26 cart games (I have most the CD library but I need to replace the laser on my CD unit as it wasn't functioning when I checked it at the weekend :(
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