Originally known as Native, this was one of the earliest games announced for the Atari Jaguar, beginning production in 1993 by a german coder known as Duranik. One of the more visually impressive Atari Jaguar projects, the game was a 2D R-Type clone that showed quite a bit of promise. By late 1997, a full year after the Jaguar had officially "died," Duranik announced his project as cancelled. In truth, he kept working on the project, choosing instead to embrace the then-underground but surprisingly active Atari Jaguar homebrew scene. By the time 1998's Battlesphere Gold was released for the Jaguar, when Hasbro officially declared the system open and free from all licensing fees, Duranik had made impressive progress on the game, reaching a playable 1-level state.
In the mid 2000's, Duranik explained that the platform for the game had shifted to the Dreamcast, and released his source code for the original Jaguar version along with a mastered 1-level version of the game which was sold through publisher Songbird games (first as a pack-in with the Bootjack Loader to run homebrew, then again as a pack-in with Protector SE):
I actually picked this game up last year and it's pretty good for a work-in-progress build. The game features no sound effects, and no powerups work, but the collision detection is good, and the level design, particularly the visuals, is great. One project on-going to chronicle every Jaguar project out there has footage of a full run of the first level (with cheats enabled so the player doesn't die):
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Atari Jaguar, along with the start of development of this game. On april 24th, the game will finally relaunch on the Sega Dreamcast under a new title:
Those who have REALLY been paying attention will recognize the creature on the above image. It was the original boss shown off in 1993 when the Jaguar was unveiled at CES in 1993. Here is a 4 second clip from the original unveiling of the Jaguar showing off that boss:
Sturmwind will be published by RGCD and will receive a similar run to other post-death dreamcast releases. The game now features a mix of 2D and 3D graphics, and a newer techno-industrial soundtrack. These sorts of Jaguar games always had such incredible soundtracks.
Additionally, given that this is the 20th anniversary of the Jaguar, there have been hints that a group which has been working on finishing the original version of the game since 2004 on the system will also release the Jaguar version of the game this year as well. No new footage of this updated version of Native has been shown off yet.
Do the math!
