For as long as I can remember I have been a gamer. I can’t remember my first trip to a video arcade but I can remember I spent a lot of time in them.
It’s a shame they are so rare these days. I grew up in a small town with about 5000 people. There were no less than 4 “arcades” in town. Every day after school I’d head over to one of them and spend the next few hours rifling in quarters trying to beat the latest high score.
Space Invaders, Asteroids, Pac-man, Pole Position, Tempest, Donkey Kong … All favorites. Even as I write this I’m smiling, remembering my time in arcades with fondness.
When we got our first Atari 2600 I was somewhat disappointed. I could play these great games at home? No cigarette smoke? No quarters? All great pluses. The games just weren’t as visually appealing as their arcade parents. After spending some time playing I got past this, for the most part anyway, because the fun was there.
After the 2600 came the Sega Master System. Wow! What a leap forward it was. Games like Outrun, Wonder Boy, Ghostbusters and After Burner looked truly amazing to my 14 year old self.
After that came the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo. Truly a milestone in the Video Game timeline. The Sega Genesis and Nintendo SNES mark the beginning of a new “Golden Age” for the industry.
Hundreds of games were available for both systems. Home versions of the games were quite close to parity with their arcade counterparts at this time. There are far too many great games for both systems to create a list but Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat were standouts for me. This was also the first time that I owned both competing consoles. I could play any game available and loved every minute of it.
Next was the Panasonic 3DO and the Atari Jaguar. Most don’t remember the 3DO or Jaguar for good reason.
The 3DO was the first 32-bit CD-ROM based system. There were other CD-ROM based systems but they weren’t delivering any good content. 16 bit systems just weren’t able to make good use of CD-ROMs. They were used mostly to create “interactive movie” games or “FMV” games. Go look that one up… It nearly killed the industry a second time.
The 3DO ultimately failed due to its high price. The Sega Genesis and Super Nintento were selling for about $100 and had hundreds of games available. The 3DO was selling for $599 and only had about 13 games available. It was a tough sell.
The Jaguar was Atari’s “last kick at the can”. The company was nearly broke after years of mismanagement and bad choices. The Jaguar was intended to turn the company’s fortunes around.
It was advertised as the first 64 bit game system. It would have a CD-ROM add on available shortly after launch. A VR headset was also promised later in the year.
Now before you go getting upset with me… I know that the Jaguar wasn’t REALLY 64 bit. It used two 32 bit CPUs in parallel. That was enough for 20 year old me to buy in though. It had some memorable games. Tempest 2000, Cybermorph, Iron Soldier and Rayman were all great.
Two games were truly standouts though. Wolfenstein 3D and Alien vs Predator. Both were truly amazing on the Jaguar. Wolfenstein had better graphics and sound than the PC version at the time and AVP was a truly unique game that was only available on the Jaguar. It gave you the ability to play as the Alien or the Predator or the Marine. A first for that franchise.
Ultimately the Jaguar failed. Games were delayed or never released. The promised CD-ROM arrived at the very end of the console’s life and the VR headset never arrived. The two 32 bit chips proved too difficult for game programmers to use properly. 32 bit systems from Nintendo and Sega were just around the corner. The Jaguar… and Atari were both doomed.
I think I’ll pull over here for today. Tomorrow we’ll talk about another, possibly the biggest, milestone in the Video Game industry… The PlayStation.
NoShade's 