This aspect:" In ten years' time, half the people in the book may no longer be alive and in twenty years' time, hardly any" cannot be stressed strongly enough.

We have lost so many from the industry as it is and you've only to look at plans for the second Atari book by Marty Goldberg and Curt Vendel, Jack Tramiel passed before they could interview him, putting paid to the book and Curt sadly passed some time after.

We have ghouls like Jane Whittaker fabricating involvement with the likes of:John Hurt, Stan Winston, Mike Singleton, H. R Giger, knowing there's no way they can counter it, having sadly passed.

It's not just about people passing, but clarity when giving accounts, they are being asked about events from 20,30,40 years ago and memories fad.

If things aren't preserved now, they will soon be gone forever

You should be extremely proud of what you've achieved here Paul.

@Guru_Larry Eidos cancelled N64 Fighting Force, but Crave Entertainment purchased the rights from Eidos and released it in North America and Europe in 1999, under the title Fighting Force 64.

Ninja was delayed by a year on PlayStation, completely cancelled on Saturn and PC.

It was never down for N64 as far as i am aware.

Sega weren't much better with their third party developers and the Saturn.

Capcom at one point claimed Sega were deliberately withholding the latest Saturn development Libaries as they wanted in house titles to look superior to third party releases, no idea how true that was, but they were just one of many who complained how difficult it was to get the best from the hardware, as development documentation etc from Sega was so poor.

Not Atari Jaguar levels of poor 😂 but far from what Sony were offering.

@Guru_Larry @Guru_Larry Core Design also had an N64 development kit, but felt the N64 market and Nintendo Products didn't suit their line up of titles (Swagman, Ninja, Shellshock, Thunderhawk, Blam! Machinehead, Tomb Raider etc).

So no, Nintendo hadn't only the dregs by the time of the N64 in terms of attracting development teams.

Well it would be hard to judge publishers/development teams on anything else but the content they went onto create, so I am a little confused as to what criteria you would like them to be judged on.

Capcom's Resident Evil 2 did at least appear on N64, thanks to Angel Studios squeezing a 1.2 GB, two-disc PlayStation game into a tiny 64 MB cartridge without cutting core content.

So N64 owners didn't miss out on a flagship Capcom title, where as Sega Saturn owners did.

Capcom initially considered the N64 unviable due to the console's slower sales performance in Japan compared to North America.

Several key Capcom games that later became major hits on other systems—such as Onimusha, Maximo, and early concepts for Resident Evil Zero—initially started as N64 projects before being moved over, so you can't simply count Capcom out without taking time to understand why they viewed the platform as they did, what their initial plans for it were.

DMA Design were responsible Body Harvest which pioneered open-world gameplay on the N64. Its engine and design laid conceptual groundwork for later open-world titles, including Grand Theft Auto III, so twilight or not and taking into account the games troubled development environment, they came through.

Space Station Silicon Valley was well recieved IGN's Matt Casamassina calling it "maybe the most original game to hit Nintendo 64",and Next Generation named it "one of the very best Nintendo 64 has to offer.

Twlight years or not, they came up with the goods.

Square need to be viewed in the same manner as Capcom, yes they jumped to Playstation due to Nintendo opting to use the cartridge medium, plain and simple.. the bulky drive unit was never going to reverse that decision.

You weren't going to get far with 64MB storage space when your looking to hold the massive data, high-quality audio, and full-motion video cutscenes required for Final Fantasy VII, which itself was a multiple CD affair.

But you can't ignore the fact that Square was initially planning to develop the game for the Nintendo 64, even going so far as to make various tests for the console.

Maybe your unaware of the article in an old Game Machine magazine from November 1st, 1995, where Square announced it was planning to launch a ¥500 million joint venture comprised of itself, Nintendo, and the software developer Justsystems in October 1995 to “develop software for the 64-bit home video system ‘Nintendo 64’”.

The above should help explain why Square and Capcom aren't on the list.Maybe a little more research into them by yourself might of given better insights?

It's not as black and white as you might at first think.

This post is long enough without detailing Konami and the N64 at great length, it's sufficient to mention:

International Superstar Soccer 64: Developed by KCEO, widely praised as one of the best football games on the system.

Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon: Known in Japan as Ganbare Goemon: Neo Momoyama Bakufu no Odori, an ambitious 3D action-adventure utilizing motion capture.

Castlevania (Castlevania 64) and Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness: Konami's transition of the vampire-hunting franchise into 3D.

Hybrid Heaven: An RPG/action hybrid developed by Konami with real-time wrestling-inspired combat mechanics.

Plus NBA In the Zone and Nagano Winter Olympics '98..

@Guru_Larry it's a welcome addition to the limited Jaguar Libary and a great opportunity for Jaguar owners who've never played it in any form before to experience it, but it's not going to impress as it were.

But then i don't believe that was ever the intention, they just wanted to make a great game available to other communities.

As part of history, fantastic to see it being preserved and shared, but as an actual game itself, it doesn't matter what it's pulling off on a technical level, it looks from an art direction and gameplay standpoint, bloody awful.

Amiga Uridium II had a lot more going for it than this and had this been released, the press would of absolutely destroyed it.

@Guru_Larry I would hardly call having the likes of:Rare, DMA Design, Iguana, Lucasarts/Factor 5,Ubisoft etc as having the dregs in terms of software support.

That's a really bizzare claim to make.

@Guru_Larry Given that Ariolaaoft supposedly pulled out out of the UK distrubution deal with Sega for the Master System, because they were unhappy with the prices Sega were looking to charge for 8-bit software, it did great under Virgin with the prices they charged which brought MS games in line with ST and Amiga software, systems which were pushing polygon 3D games way beyond anything the MS could offer.

Atari tried to undercut both the NES and MS by offering cheaper alternatives, but when you've the 2600 Jr, XEGS and 7800 all on sale, all offering somewhat archaic hardware with very dated games, the platforms don't seem VFM at all.

Yes the NES had some eye watering game prices on select titles, but things like ROB didn't appeal to UK Gamers, the MS had some superb TV and magazine advertsing to back it up, to push it, to give it the buzz the more pedestrian NES never had.

The list of Tramiel era vapourware hardware products is immense.

ST console, CDST, 130 and 260 ST's, Panther, Painter, Jag Duo, Jag VR...

Whilst this is a nice curio to see, the concept of the Painter itself was always bizzare, The Falcon was a disaster for Atari, they lacked the resources to support it and launch the Jaguar (and the hardware itself was botched from a design point of view), the Jaguar followed suite.. The Panther had been put on the back burner years before, as they couldn't support it and the Lynx simultaneously..

What on earth did they think they had, resources wise, to make Painter successful.

https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2020/09/strider-2/

The full write up and interview with Paul

As if the fully complete Atari Lynx version wasn't bad enough, a version for Atari's ill-fated Panther console had been green lit.

Atari honestly believing launch titles like this, a conversion of Shadow Of The Beast etc, would of been sufficient for the Panther to take on the SNES and MD

Very late to the party here but this topic came up on a discussion on YT recently.

The point was made here it was unlikely that Sega themselves would of been the ones coding any of the potential Sega titles on the Jaguar.

Given how dire the situation was with Atari and it's third party support..

Rebellion overstretched and working on titles such as Legions Of The Undead, planned for Jaguar, Jaguar CD, PC and PlayStation..
ATD stuck with contractual obligations to finish Battlemorph...
Probe Software who'd started on Mortal Kombat 3 for Jaguar.
Beyond who were in the process of pitching for the contract for AVP II
Jeff Minter lined up to do Major Havoc 2000..

I shudder to think of Sega IP being given to Tiertex or worse still, Imagitec Design who took a 60 fps MD title and reduced it to 30 fps on Jaguar.. Pitfall:Mayan Adventure.

An awful week for news, Parton, Curry and now this.

Very sad news indeed.

Good old Chris Sorrell – He's never been one to hold back.

Probably THE game at the time that convinced me getting a PlayStation 3 had been the wise choice, i loved this game so, so much.

Whilst i enjoyed all the Dark Souls games and their DLC, Sekiro did nothing for me, Elden Ring was a huge dissapointment, but i stuck with it and completed it.

Demon's Souls and Bloodborne remain my all time Favourite From Software games of their generations.

Colin Porch is one of the nicest people within the industry i have ever had the pleasure of talking with.

The more people who get to experience his work, the better..

Just awful news.

The article doesn't mention if anything else was taken, but looking at the physical size and weight of such a collection, this doesn't sound like the work of some random, opportunist buglarly.

It makes me suspect someone knew exactly what was in the house, when the occupant would be away and made preparations to remove everything they could and had a buyer or buyers already lined up.

Even if this wasn't the case, it's just heartbreaking to read such a story, especially with the sentimental aspect attached with it.

One of the best game books i ever bought, simply superb

@Sketcz The problem with a few of the bigger names in the industry these days (and i will happily name Mark Cale, Jez San, Jason Kingsley, R. J Mical for starters, even the late Archer Maclean was guilty of it), is when they do speak, they give you a version of events that is completely at odds with what they'd told people in earlier interviews.

Jez San gives different accounts of how they became SNES developers..lies about failed formats they were developing for...Kingsley how they landed Atari Jaguar development work, RJ Mical talks of Amiga meetings he wasn't present at, contridicts Lynx hardware manuals, Archer has given multiple different accounts of how International Karate came about, which was the lead platform..

They'll take credit for games they never touched, concepts they never came up with etc and they rarely if at all get challenged.

They'll blame others for reasons games got canned, studios went under, rather than admit their previous company went bankrupt, staff went unpaid and the next company followed suit.

I used to love reading Making Of features, listening to and reading developer interviews, but over the years, what you could excuse for understandable hazy memories, has been replaced by cynicism and you reach the point where you want Karl Pilkington's ***** Man to stop them talking in their tracks.

As for the YT channels not giving credit/repeating industry urban myths..

If you dare post a comment, you'll find your comment deleted and you banned from the channel. They won't name sources as they know it risks someone putting their claims to the sources mentioned and discovering what was really said.. or admit they use script writers..

Great to see the involvement of Frank Gasking along with some very familiar Retrogamer magazine writers.

When i was a PS4 Gamer, people were screaming for newer, more powerful hardware, as the then current hardware was holding game development back.

Now, having gotten out of gaming, all i see announcement wise, is these Anniversary Collections..

Is this really where gaming is heading?

@Slider1983:Nobody is trying to be correct as you put it and putting hours in on the same game across 3 different format doesn't make anyone ignorant of anything, it just means it wasn't for them.

This was supposed to be getting a full fan remake for the Jaguar and Dreamcast some years ago, the old Epyx name trying to make a comeback, but that went nowhere, so nice to hear some more positive Atari Barbarian news.

Absolutely fantastic work.

GTW did try and reach out to the coder from Probe who was working on Jaguar MK3 (converted from the Playstation versions code) but never got a response, so to see the original MK running on Jaguar is just wonderful.

Absolutely stunning work.

Ocean France were a really talented studio, i really wish Ocean UK had given them more Arcade Conversion work back in the day.

Never tried this during my time as a MD and SNES owner, as both platforms were really spoilt for choice when it came to games in this genre.

It wasn't intended to be ignorant, i grew up on a mix of home micros and consoles, before going console only (Sinclair ZX81, Atari 2600 and 800XL, 520STFM, Commodore 64) and witnessed, especially in the ST era, a lot of developers trying to mimic what was popular on console and in the Arcades.

Looking at someone like Thalion, incredibly talented, pushed hardware to the very maximum, but their takes on the likes of Ghosts 'n' Goblins, Alien Syndrome, Dragon Spirt etc fell short, gameplay wise of what they were copying.

With Viking Child, Imagitec Design were attempting to mimic Super Wonderboy and again, it fell short.

Some months ago i had the great pleasure of playing Turrican 1 and 2 again, this time on the Playstation 4,but found myself suffering from strict time limits, getting lost within levels..

As a Dreamcast owner, i tried so hard to get into Shadowman, but again the level design was such there were far too many times i found myself wondering where an earth i was supposed to be going.

But there were times i found people did the homages really well, i am a huge fan of The Bitmap Bros game Gods, loved it on ST and again on MD, i will still return to it today, where as Black Tiger i rarely touch.

Around the ST era, I found you really needed a micro and a console, so i ended up buying a Sega Game Gear and later moved onto the MD as there were genres each did so well and if you loved gaming, you didn't want to miss out.

It was an expensive, but rewarding experience.

The problem with something like Centipede is Atari, when reinventing the back story for the home versions, didn't even stick to 1 character. You had Oliver The Elf and his spark firing magic wand on the 2600 version for example, but Lord Motley Bugnuts for the Atari 400/800 version.

If your going to use the flimsy back stories for the basis of a film adaptation, which do you go for?

😊 I should make clear i have given Robocod multiple opportunities to 'click' with my tastes in gaming.

I picked it up second hand on the MD originally, returned to it on PlayStation, again picking it up second hand and finally buying it new on PS3 from the PSN store.

It just never worked for me, but it was given a fair crack.

@slider1983:I was never really a fan of any developer trying to replicate on the home micros at time, what the consoles were doing so well and would of much rather they devoted their resources to making original games instead.

Titles like:Magic Pockets, Viking Child, Zool, Robocod immediately spring to mind, but there were countless others.

They've annouced films based on Atari I. P's a couple of times before and they grabbed headlines for a stage, films never went anywhere, people forgot about it, now here we are once again, if even 50% of the titles get the film treatment, I will be very surprised.

The current Atari reminds me an awful lot of the Tramiel era Atari i grew up with, announcements coming thick and fast in an attempt to grab headlines, maintain a presence etc.

Which is fine as long as the finished products appear and live upto expectations.

The running joke with Tramiel Atari was why buy an Atari product today, when they will only annouce a newer, more powerful one, tommorrow.

@Guru_Larry they did far more than just redesign the levels.

They also removed McVitie's Penguin biscuit branding, replaced character rescue objectives (rescuing elves instead of penguins), and omitted hidden bonus levels

Mark Cale has a proven history of fabricating stories, telling Retrogamer Magazine ST Myth was finished and released, when he knows only too well it wasn't and why it wasn't.

The company tried bringing back Myth and The Last Ninja on the Playstation and failed, now we are being offered up awful Euro trash platforming...

A great addition to the Jaguar's Libary, but whilst technically impressive on the ST, i personally found it suffered the same issues many Thalion games did, they tried to replicate their favourite arcade titles, in this case Dragon Spirt, pushed the host hardware to the max, but the gameplay sadly fell a little short of what it was trying to replicate.

Once again, the Homebrew community astounds me. Fantastic work.

An absolutely amazing time to be just an observer looking in at Homebrew development. Tomb Raider and Mario 64 on 3DO, Unreal on Saturn and now NFS on Jaguar, even if it's only a proof of concept engine.

Jag Racer is shaping up to be exactly the type of title the hardware so badly needed at the time.

They weren't rumours. John Carmack had begun coding Lynx Wolfenstien, but the Tramiel's were late with their first milestone payment to him, so he stopped all work.

I genuinely don't know why people like Larry continue to spread the nonsense about F. B not being paid. F. B has repeatedly spoken of what happened during the games developnent:

"I did work on it for about 19 months,
without any interruption. When the game was presented to the press
for the first time, the graphics weren't done as well as the motion.
Unfortunately, the marketing department gave to the press a set of
cartridges with the sentence 'for review only' instead of 'for preview
only'. All you have heard from there was coming from this mistake. It
is very depressing to have your work screwed like this, but I wasn't
able to do anything at this time. To cover their mistake, they told
the press that the game was going to be rejected and revamped, when
actually the game was just following its normal development schedule."

And:

" When the company starting to lay off people, while trying to find a suitor, the game was not finished. It was not far off but would have needed a few more months to be even better. I was able to negotiate a couple of months (after being laid off myself) to finalize what was finazable. I could have used five, but that’s all I could get. We would have needed that extra time to QA the game a little better, and polish a lot of the things that were still a bit too bare. But at that time, it was either that, or not having the game. Some things got cut, just because of lack of time or resources."

As for Sega looking to sue Atari, that's pure chinese whispers here, why wouldn't they also go after Argonaut for FX Fighter if they were that concerned?

My heartfelt condolences to his friends and family.

A talented writer, sadly taken from us at far too young an age.