#atari jaguar

Atari Jaguar CD

Atari Jaguar

Atari Jaguar

Atari Jaguar

Club Drive is the worst kind of bad, one that feels deeply personal... at least for me. Probably not for you, for you this is a lot more likely to be just your regular everyday brand of bad. Anyway.

Right off the bat, the races have no CPU. It's either split screen with someone else or you going from point A to point B all by yourself. No CPU. The high-scores are hilariously bad too so it's not even like you can work towards reaching an arbitrary goal to compensate for the lack of real opponents, attempting to outdo your personal bests until you get bored is all you have. On top of the high-scores you're also given personal rankings at the end of each race, sometimes i'm ranked Cabbie, sometimes Insurance Risk, sometimes Good Hand. What in the world is any of that supposed to mean? Is a Cabbie better than a Good Hand? When i get told i'm a Rookie i assume it means i didn't do well... but did i do worse than an Insurance Risk? Is being an Insurance Risk good or bad? Someone please answer my appeals to sanity and decor.

But regular races aren't the only thing you do in this game. Alongside the pitiful 4 available tracks there exists a variant for each of them made to host a collectathon mode, where you have to pick up the selected amount of power cells before your opponent does. Not much thought went into designing both tracks and spawn points, but there is an actual CPU opponent in here. It's so bad that it might as well not exist, and the only real difficulty spike it might offer is when you accidentally bump into him while trying to figure out the terrible camera. In a better game something like this could have been a fun diversion, Jak X has something that plays similar if i remember correctly. Rankings are here too and they're just as confusing. A Tag mode is here too but this one is multiplayer only. Assuming it is exactly what it sounds like and they didn't find a way to ruin it, and also assuming that you have a friend desperate enough to play Club Drive with you, AND also assuming that rankings are given out, this might be the best mode available, and i can't play it.

The manual implies that this game takes place a century in the future in a big dedicated racing theme park and cars used to be illegal because they're too dangerous, but not anymore because some scientist figured out the perfect algorithm for... something. It's not made clear. I mean. I've certainly never heard that one before. Nothing is said about whether someone ranked Hog Wild is better than someone who scored Wheelin' n Dealin', which i find to be an unacceptable oversight.

I'll give Club Drive some sorely needed praise for actually having a passable frame-rate and a solid drawing distance compared to any 3D game i've played for Atari consoles so far, but that's only because the graphics lack any actual texture and the geometry looks like the work of someone who tinkered with a pirated version of Sketchup for a couple hours and thought he could call himself a modeler.

Grateful for the opportunity to cover the 3rd comeback of one of gaming’s most famous mascots.

On a serious note, It’s actually a blast to speed through its levels. Bubsy plays like the cat suit Mario power-up but permanently.

Read here: https://nintendowire.com/reviews/bubsy-4d-on-switch-2/

In the documentary section of the Atari 50 Collection there is a brief summary of the company's short lived pinball division, and reading it sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. You don't see people critically analyze pinball machines the same way they'd do with videogames or other forms of entertainment, at least nowadays. And it's so surreal to be reminded that this used to be not only a proper industry back in the 70's, but one that utilized what was at the time cutting edge technology, comprised of many companies trying to one up each others with all sorts of gimmicks and innovations... It saddened me a bit to realize how nowadays all most people would take in consideration when looking at a pinball machine is whether it's plastered with Lord of the Rings branding or not. When i was a kid i used to really like playing with this UFO themed pinball machine they had at the place my dad works at, brought back memories of lucking my way into a really high score and being super hyped about it.

And this will inevitably beg the question: what that makes a pinball machine good? What are the mechanisms that would make you prefer one machine over another? Many talented engineers and programmers had to ask themselves these questions back in the day in order to create a compelling product, and yet all the tweaks, subversions and gambles happening in that prolific short window of time which went on to shape the pinball meta as we know it today are given for granted. Maybe i will find a concrete answer within Ruiner Pinball. Or maybe not.

Ruiner Pinball isn't just a no-thrills simulator, of course. It takes a lot of liberties with the concept that wouldn't be possible in real life, like making one of its tables abnormally long and having the other one take up two separate fields sitting next to each others; there's also a lot of moving objects whenever you hit certain triggers that would be impossible to replicate on an actual table. The ball physics may be a bit jittery once in a while, but generally i thought they behaved realistically enough for a game that is this old. When it comes to the aesthetics, both tables are impressively detailed and colorfoul, perfectly nailing the theming they're going for, unfortunately the soundtrack doesn't match this level of effort and is rather forgettable. I wish there was a more visually helpful way to keep track of the score increases, maybe adding a little number next to the ball every time it hits something. Having to look up every time you're curious to see how you're doing can be distracting.

🎮 Checkered Flag (Atari Jaguar) Longplay