The strange tales of Atari's Checkered Flag and FightForLife

[Jmustang1968]

for an Atari Jaguar collector like me, thank you for a great article of this two (ahem) jaguar games.

I own Checkered Flag and i'm still looking to own Fight for Life somewhere down the road.

keep up the great write ups. i enjoy reading them.

Ahem, Hobie and I have one for sale!

[Krejlooc]

for an Atari Jaguar collector like me, thank you for a great article of this two (ahem) jaguar games.

I own Checkered Flag and i'm still looking to own Fight for Life somewhere down the road.

keep up the great write ups. i enjoy reading them.

Ahem, Hobie and I have one for sale!

The JS2 LE beta, or the normal version?

[Hobie-wan]

The JS2 LE beta, or the normal version?

Just normal.

[Krejlooc]

I'd like to add to this topic that, while most of Atari's early Goraud-shaded 3D stuff was very rough around the edges (especially cybermorph, Checkered Flag, Club Drive) and the textured stuff from later on is usually abysmal (Fight for Life, Super Cross 3D, Hover strike), there are some excellent 3D titles for the Jaguar.

The stand out would have to be, of course, Tempest 2000, which sort of flies in the face of conventional Jaguar game design. It's built entirely backwards, straight to the metal of the hardware, using everything "improperly" according to atari and not at all the way they had intended. Jeff Minter, for example, said in an interview how he wrote the entire game in m68k assembler instead of writing it for the Tom and Jerry processors, and how he completely ignored all texture mapping and shading hardware and used their address registers to directly manipulate pixels, thus achieving his exploding pixel scaling routine, melt-o-vision, and his much vaunted Virtual Light Machine effects (which powered Tempest 2000, Defender 2000, and the Jaguar CD's VLM Virtualizer). Thus, you're not going to find many examples of 3D games on the Jaguar that look like Tempest 2000, because Tempest 2000 isn't made like a Jaguar game to begin with.

More in-line with what the Jaguar could typically do, but still great in execution are games like Iron Soldier, Iron Soldier 2, Zero5, Battlemorph, Missile Command 3D, Battlesphere Gold, and Skyhammer. I can attest that all these games look a fair deal closer to something you'd expect on a 3DO than the Super FX-looking stuff you see in Cybermorph. Zero5 and Skyhammer in particular look outstanding:





The Jaguar should have launched with games like that. Those, unsurprisingly, are among the last Jaguar releases, that had some of the longest development cycles, and came from experienced teams. Atari wound up being their own worst enemy by rushing garbage to the market.

[CRTGAMER]

Great article! For the Front Page published article are you planning on expanding it to include the additional info in your Replies? You have a lot of insight in the Jaguar and the Jack Tramiel involvement with Atari. Maybe throw in a full history of how the consoles were pushed aside in favor of computers including the Atari ST. I always thought it was interesting that when the NES came out the canceled 7800 was finally released in desperation, though too late.

Speaking of Jack's Atari ST, I saw an interesting making of music in the Moulin Rouge movie DVD. Turns out Fatboy Slim used an old Atari ST for programming his sequencer. Nice to see an older system that is not a PC or Mac still being utilized professionally like that.

[Krejlooc]

Great article! For the Front Page published article are you planning on expanding it to include the additional info in your Replies? You have a lot of insight in the Jaguar and the Jack Tramiel involvement with Atari. Maybe throw in a full history of how the consoles were pushed aside in favor of computers including the Atari ST. I always thought it was interesting that when the NES came out the canceled 7800 was finally released in desperation, though too late.

Speaking of Jack's Atari ST, I saw an interesting making of music in the Moulin Rouge movie DVD. Turns out Fatboy Slim used an old Atari ST for programming his sequencer. Nice to see an older system that is not a PC or Mac still being utilized professionally like that.

Ah, this isn't really my article or what it'll be about per-say. This is just a topic I started because I've found it interesting. I might touch on tidbits of this in my article, but my article is intended to be a primer guide to all of atari gaming, not just jaguar stuff. I'm covering everything atari ever did, sort of like a much expanded, much more in-depth sister guide to my Amiga guide that got put up. I plan on covering the entire history of Atari, especially the Jaguar and the Tramiels.

[nightrnr]

Enjoyed the write-ups.

Also enjoyed Fight for Life (official release), but I also get some kind of twisted satisfaction from bad fighting games.

I DO wish that I knew about the "Limited Edition" version before I bought it though. The game would really benefit from a little extra speed.
I wonder if there are individual endings in that one other than the cheap "Life Sucks, and then you die, and life still sucks" ending.

[Krejlooc]

Enjoyed the write-ups.

Also enjoyed Fight for Life (official release), but I also get some kind of twisted satisfaction from bad fighting games.

I DO wish that I knew about the "Limited Edition" version before I bought it though. The game would really benefit from a little extra speed.
I wonder if there are individual endings in that one other than the cheap "Life Sucks, and then you die, and life still sucks" ending.

You know, I'm actually not sure. I'll try and beat the game tonight to see - I normally only go a few rounds before shutting it off.

There are a ton of differences, though. It's still technically the same game, but everything from the models to the controls to the gameplay is different. It's sort of like the difference between the SNES port of Street Fighter II, and the C64 port. It really is that drastic.

One odd change is that the X, Y, and Z buttons no longer work. The trigger buttons do, but those shortcut buttons are gone. I guess they realized that nobody owned a damn pro controller and tried to go back to 3-button controls? Also, you can't jump forward or backwards, only straight up. This is because jumping forward is actually somebody's move, and you have to steal it from them to add it to your arsenal

[nightrnr]

You know, I'm actually not sure. I'll try and beat the game tonight to see - I normally only go a few rounds before shutting it off.

There are a ton of differences, though. It's still technically the same game, but everything from the models to the controls to the gameplay is different. It's sort of like the difference between the SNES port of Street Fighter II, and the C64 port. It really is that drastic.

One odd change is that the X, Y, and Z buttons no longer work. The trigger buttons do, but those shortcut buttons are gone. I guess they realized that nobody owned a damn pro controller and tried to go back to 3-button controls? Also, you can't jump forward or backwards, only straight up. This is because jumping forward is actually somebody's move, and you have to steal it from them to add it to your arsenal

Intriguing..., thanks for the extra info.
I guess I don't mind having the basic release then, if they really are that different. I usually really like seeing the evolution of a series though, so I'll have to keep an eye out for the LE release (though I doubt I'll agree to asking costs).

Anyways, I kind of like experiencing the version that most people have the chance to play and relate to. So I really don't regret the purchase.

[nightrnr]

Sooo...

Apparently, Telegames has been doing re-releases of several Atari games (for a couple years now?).
I have no idea if my copy of Fight for Life is from this particular release (possible and even likely, as it was still sealed).
However, is this release based on the Beta, the retail release, or the Final Build (Limited Edition)? And how do I definitively identify which one I own?

I need an itemized difference chart between the 3 different versions, or something. I'm not sure I'll ever get it straight.
I do still like the game I have (and don't remember 10 minute fights, although it is a bit slow), but my curiosity of their differences grows every year.

I also see that Telegames offers Towers II: Plight of the Stargazer. That's pretty neat, but I ordered the PC version a while back and might just stick with that (not sure if $100+ is worth it if it's not an exclusive). I do wish the PC version had keyboard movement as an option though (uses the mouse to move). It does seem like a better fit for PC otherwise.