Battlesphere Gold (REVIEW) - Atari Jaguar

Battlesphere Gold is the much sought-after elite title for the Atari Jaguar. This game commands prices of $400-$600 on evilbay.
It's up to you if it's worth it or not, but I'm glad I was able to get it (though at a MUCH lower price.)
This game shows partly what the Jaguar can do when a programming team (albeit a small one) learns the secrets of the machine and puts them into practice.
The frame rate is great and the graphics are simply fantastic for a game coming from that time period.
When people say, "The Jaguar wasn't 64-bit -- it could hardly out-power the SNES," well show them this video and they might be astounded.
If more developers in the Jaguar's days put this much time and effort into a game, the Jaguar would not have failed so soon. Of course, if Atari paid them like they were supposed to and gave the developers the needed tools to program efficiently and effectively, it would have helped, too :-/

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• battlesphere
• battle
• sphere
• gold
• atari
• jaguar
• jag

[modewr]

The Jaguar was 16-24 bit....and of course it had to be better graphically than the SNES and Genesis which both came out 2-4 years earlier.

[viMasterJag]

@modewr of all the uneducated remarks i get, that's one of the funniest.

[jose35neg]

whose the rock band that sings @ the beginning,they Kickass!

[viMasterJag]

@jose35neg It's called "Almost Honest" by Megadeth :-)

Thanks for watching.

[deadline27]

@viMasterJag i wonder if megadeth even knows about them using that song... any copyright info on the package???

[viMasterJag]

@deadline27 I don't think it will be a problem.

I put the music in.

[CLeRKSfan4life]

Why the crap does every Jaguar game get compared to fuckin' Starfox. Seriously, Cybermorph, Battlemorph, I-WAR, Battlesphere and I'm sure I saw a comment on a Club Drive video, they get compared to Starfox because they use flat shading or gourad shading and involve a vehicle moving in a 3d environment. It's fuckin' stupid.

[bigmike4758]

is there a difference between the CD-Rom version and cartridge version?

[Antonyv1982]

this doesn't actually look too bad, and I'm amazed to hear/see that it had network capabillities, how did that work? I see no modem socket on the back. or did it just require loads of jags in a room with loads of tvs and link cables?

[AKIDPRODUCTION09]

"Kids this is what daddy plays.. Fuck your call of duty bullshit this is a classic!"

[3gdosrsfs]

@AtomicSkull: Actually you forget to mention the most important FACTS which is the OPL and the Blitter, THE REAL workhorses of the Jaguar are 100% 64 bit's wide. The only issue of the Jaguar and it's typical game title lineup, is that the tools for it sucked hairy moose and most programmers could not leave the 68000 alone. Given a dev kit similar too and as well thought out as the Sony had, the games would be much more superior. It did not even have a decent C compiler for it's two risc chips.

[Atomicskull]

@modewr Actually is was a hybrid of 16, 32 and 64 bit. the 68000 was 16 bit the other chips in the system were a combination of 16-bit and 32-bit internally and used a 64-bit memory buss. The 64-bit wide memory buss was so they could use cheap slow RAM without sacrificing speed, they just doubled the width of the buss. Most of the Jaguar technology was actually designed by Flare and was purchased by Atari look up Konix Multisystem on Wikipedia it's a facinating story.

[phrixil]

Now if THIS game were the pack in game with the Atari Jaguar at launch instead of Cybermorph, I think people would've taken Atari more seriously when they said "do the math".

This game looks almost as good as Colony Wars on the Sony Playstation. Very impressed.

[j2e2c]

This looks like a great game... reminds me of X-wing VS Tie Fighter! :)

[saturndual32]

I hope this great engine is put to use again at some point, Scatologic did an incredible job coding it. It would be just sad if it was never used again.

[theelusiveone]

@Sypran You can download a Jaguar emulator and this game for free. Chances are your computer can run it perfect. If you want to play the greatest space sim ever in my opinion than you can either buy FreeSpace 1 & 2 at gog.com for $5.95 usa money or you can even download the FreeSpace 1&2 torrent from pirate bay and download it for free. If you go the piratebay route than make sure you download the good old games (gog) FreeSpace torrent because it works perfectly. Hope you get this msg.