Atari Jaguar - footage of unreleased games from CES 1995

Footage of three unreleased titles are in this video (as well as in development footage of other Jag, SNES and 32X games, some of which have minor differences to the released versions).


The unreleased Jag stuff:
-unreleased Space War 2000 starts at 7:05
-Unreleased beat em up (commonly referred to as "Conan") starts at 11:25
-Hover Hunter (later known as Phase Zero) 23:06

 

Yeah, Conan coulda turned out to be good. Needed a bit more animation tho.

 

There is some pretty clean footage of the SNES version of FX Fighter at 34:17. The hit detection looks a bit clunky, but it could have been decent if they had followed through with it.

 

I like how Neptune is shown flipping off everyone at around 17:15 in the background of Ultra Vortek

 

Star Fox 2 is in here as well right before FX Fighter. -Nice catch on FX Fighter, last I looked there wasn't a lot of content about the snes version in the usual places online. It's actually looking pretty good for the FX chip imo and not far off from the PC version I remember.

 

Holy crap! That version of Starfox 2 is more complete than the available leaked ROM. Look at the map screen, it's translated, it looks totally different, and much more animated. Looks like the intro is even a little different.

This video is awesome, thanks for posting!

 

Pretty sure that the jag version of rayman shown there has different level music.
Closer to what PSX/PC had in some ways.
While it tries to go for a version of a streamed track, it's still clunky and sounds like it's missing some of it's meat, as with the retail tunes.
For reference, a typical music loop could last from 10~40 seconds in the final build, producing some really droning tunes.
Retail version's tunes often just have the drumkit track looping along with some lead sounds here and there.. as in no effort was put in to making them sound good.
This one seems to aim for the full length of the tune, probably for demonstration purposes.

Also the bandland tune doesn't seem familiar to me, possibly unique to the demo. Hard to tell due to the noise.

 

Those health bars look right out of a Capcom brawler, though I don't know about the rest of the game. I remember Conan mostly because it's one of the few original Jaguar games that isn't digitized 2-D or really awkward 3-D.

 

That's because it wasn't using the M68000 chip, rather it was using the Tom and Jerry chips to good effect. At least we know the game exists and the prototype is out there, so who knows we could see a dump of the game someday...

 

Regarding Lost Jaguar game, Conan:

Here is the transcript between Carlo Perconti and myself:


CARLO :“Oh, I can reply to that: We got involved developing on the jaguar after we met some key people at one of the CES show in Las Vegas (I do not recall who exactly). Lyes and I we were impressed by the concept of the GPU Jaguar, an unique list processor which could allow huge sprites to be drawn on screen and which broke the limitation of number of hardware sprites on 1 video line like We used to have back then on the SNES. So at first We decided to develop a new graphic engine based on multiple layer of sprites on PC, then through Arcade Zone We got access to one of the Jaguar Hardware and then We started to port the beginning of a “first possible” level of what We wanted to demonstrate based on a CONAN character (but really it was only to show up the engine, no license was signed yet at that time). For sure, back to that period, We got many inspiration from the Big Coin-Up Arcade titles like Golden Axe and alike and so the main idea was to develop this type of beat-them-all games on Console while trying to take advantage of the processor list of the Jaguar. In our demo, everything was… a sprite, there were not background per say, everything was scrolling at a different speed based on the z depth position. So it was real, our demo was real however We could not make it to a real game because Arcade Zone lost some important financial deal when SONY suddenly stopped to distribute SNES game in EUROPE (yes it was a time where SONY EUROPE was a major distributor of Nintendo game) and so the project got canceled because of lack of funding, unfortunately KickStarter did not exist yet ^^ Voila, this is the little story of a demo that could have been a game but stayed only a demo because of a bad timing.”


MYSELF: can I assume then that all the source code has been lost? And it never got beyond a demo?

Sources claimed anything from 1-2 levels actually finished, but that wasn’t the case by what your telling me?


CARLO:“You are assuming right… source code lost in some 40MB HDD crash (or maybe it was floppy disk LOL hard to remember because we were moving back in forth between PC and Amiga DPaint). It was not even a full 1 level finished, just the beginning like… Conan leaving the house and going into the forest and fighting some enemy waves there…. no big boss implemented, so really only a demo.”

 

Here's a abridged footage of Glenn Percival's WCES 1995 showing Conan. It would be sweet if that flash cart containing the demo would pop up somehow...

 

Did no one make backups back in the day? So many demo/beta jems lost to hardware crash/corruption

A copy must be sitting in a drawer somewhere in the world.

 

We can hope/dream at least. That "conan" game looks like it could have been an awesome golden axe-alike.

 

Take this maybe with a grain of salt but apparently someone has the prototype of Conan/Konan. I'm not going to say his name, 'cause i want to protect his privacy but i'll say that he's a guy from the very old days of the Jaguar scene. Supposedly, he does plan to release the ROM this holiday. Again, you could take this with salt but i hope it's true! I want to play this

 

That would be pretty neat so I hope this comes to be. Any new info that comes in will be appreciated.

 

It looked nice, but those giant sprites seems like they could hinder gameplay...

In any case i hope it surfaces!

 

A friend of mine who did a christmas giveaway last year included as prizes Virtual VCS & Checkered Flag Alpha to name a few. I've spoken to him at Twitter (his name is Clint Thompson BTW) and he told me & another friend of mine that he found more unreleased games for this upcoming christmas giveaway contest (maybe even bigger than last year's prizes!) so look foward to that soon. Here's his FB page to keep noticed https://www.facebook.com/AtariJaguar64/?fref=ts

 

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I was tipped off about this thread containing erroneous information by not 1, not 2, but 8 different people - the most recent being this morning. So I'm just here to set the record straight once and for all since my name is being used or was brought up here.

1. I never intended or had intentions of giving away anything this past holiday for a Christmas giveaway like I had done with the 12-days of Christmas the year before. It proved to be far more than I can chew off and incredibly expensive, even as much as I loved doing it. I was asked a dozen times by different people if I was going to do one, at first I said most likely not and then ultimately not at all. Somehow that got turned into I've found more stuff to give away, which wasn't or isn't going to happen.

2. When you "KGRAMR" use the word friend and reference me as such, you could definitely say that I'm 'friendly' because I've tried to give you the benefit of the doubt and enjoy talking to just about anyone regarding the Jaguar (except for those responsible for banning me on JS3 due to defending Atari.IO and with members constantly threatening absurd lawsuits toward any sort of forward movement with any Jaguar-related project that isn't their own while also spreading lies and misinformation all-around), but I don't personally know you outside of the messages we've exchanged in the past initiated mostly by you seeking information or sharing things you've found that's new to you.

3. I didn't sell any ROMS or unreleased stuff to anyone recently due to money reasons, or any reason at all for that matter. Maybe you're getting me confused with someone else or stories mixed up somehow but I don't think more story ammunition is warranted at this point.

Instead of warning others that this or that should be taken with a grain of salt, maybe stop spreading misinformation or rumors that you don't actually know to be true to begin with.