Sorry for the late reply, I forgot about this thread

I don't think the Jaguar needs RAM, it has ROM, it'll presumably access the sprite data straight from the cartridge, like the Neo Geo. Jag only has to worry about cartridge cost.

There's more to 2D graphics than sprite numbers, I believe the PS1 was constrained by RAM.

Being a cartridge system the Jaguar could've presumably gone the NEO GEO route (with data compression making them more cost efficient).

What is the source for your thoughts on this?

Most coders I've run into say the Jaguar is 2nd only to the Saturn, and IIRC there are literally no professional examples of 2D games made on this system. Games like Rayman and Raiden run on the 68000 management chip, not the actual primary processor.

Atari pushed for the Jaguar to be released a little too early, its design was actually unfinished and a little buggy.

Even so, from what I understand there are still a lot of trade-offs between Jaguar and 3DO, Jaguar was apparently a 2D powerhouse and was better even than PS1 and N64 in this area, so Jaguar maybe could've done a much better job with Capcom fighting games, possibly having games that were closer to 2D Saturn titles in this area (not sure what the prices of the cartridges would've been like though).

Old school FPS games were also 2D initially (enemies were done with sprites that they increased in size as you got closer and such), so Jaguar would've had pretty good FPS games in the early part of the generation before they moved to 3D. The 3DO was never going to compete with the Jaguar with any first person shooters (and you could kinda' see this coming through in the games at the time).

Apparently it had good raw computational power, so physics and AI in Jaguar games could've been pretty good.

-----------------------

The problem was always with textured polygons really, and that was a big deal for that era, but maybe even more important was the lack of experienced programmers working on the system, most of the games were made by low quality companies or start-ups.

Experienced programmers would've maybe eventually been able to produce something akin to a generation 1 PS1 title.

3DO was better suited to the times but it was very expensive, if Jaguar had been released with the bugs ironed out and proper development tools available from launch it could've been a pretty cost-effective budget machine (certainly moreso than 32X).

Mega Drive/SNES/Amiga was probably the most interesting as each were very different systems and the race was close

PS2/GameCube/Dreamcast/XBox was the worst I lived through by far, that war was totally won by hype, marketing, brand name etc etc. Everybody knew deep down that the PS2 has already won the "war" sometime in 2001, GameCube and XBox weren't even out yet and people were saying it was over, and they were right.

NES/Master System/C64 was actually pretty cool here in Britain, I'd imagine it was crappy in the US though as NES had a monopoly by the late 80s. Here there was a lot of arguing and such.

This video is Resident evil on the Saturn.

No shaky textures due to Zbuffer issues with PSx, sharper/crisper image, and much more content in game.AMD655

Resident Evil looks considerably better on PS1.

• The textures on Saturn are noticeably downgraded.
• The lighting on Saturn is all missing.
• The transparencies are all dithered

There is barely any shaky textures on PS1, because Resident Evil is mainly 2D bar the character models anyway.

Look at how awful the trouser textures, and torso are on the Saturn, very scrappy, very low colour, poorly blended

The 7800 also was test marketed in 85.Yo-SUP

No it wasn't, it was test marketed at the beginning of 1984 and then cancelled indefinitely.

It was then released in 1986 after the successful NES New York release

It was not world wideYo-SUP

Well according to Compute! magazine April 1986 it was worldwide.

the 7800 came out the same year as the NES, there was no NES bandwagon to jump on.Yo-SUP

The NES was was test-marketed sucessfully in 1985, shops then agreed to continue selling it in 1986. During the test market Nintendo had agreed to take all consoles back if they didn't sell, making it completely risk-free for the shops (who refused to sell it otherwise).

We brought back the 7800. We needed software for it, but, of course, this was the period when Nintendo created the market again in the U.S. and Nintendo had a lock on all the hot arcade titles.Michael Katz

Notice that Atari's VP of marketing considered the NES to a have re-created the market

The 2600 sold over a million in 85Yo-SUP

Worldwide, not in the US

The 7800 was re-released to jump on the NES bandwaggon.

Something released due to the NES can't really be given credit for re-igniting the US console industry IMO. This thing came out literally because Nintendo had shown the market to be viable again and Atari wanted a share of the re-immerging market.

Most Atari 2600 sales were during the early to mid 80s, before the NES came out. Sure it carried on selling well through the late 80s as a budget machine but it did not compete on a level with the NES.

Sega of America were tiny during this period, and couldn't market or distribute the Master System properly, most of the 2 million SMS sales happened after Sega had given up, when Tonka Toys had taken over sales of the machine from 1988 onwards.

Fact is, as history went, the NES re-started the US console market single-handedly, simple as.

Now thats not the same as saying it "saved the industry" as I personally think that it was only a matter of time before the US regained interest in consoles (the rest of the world was healthy and doing their own things, afterall), if it hadn't been NES, it would've been Master System, or one of the 4th gen systems IMO.

The NES was also damaging for the US market in some ways, their practices were anti-competitive, and the way they forced companies to buy huge bulk amounts of cartridges (for double price) would've made it difficult for new US start-up companies to get their foot in the door.

Very few games outside of the JRPG and fighter categoriesWiiCubeM1

There are more Racers and Action Adventure games than RPGs, probably more shooters too.