BMK BMK The Bitmap Kid Presents ------------------------- 2000 and Beyond --------------------- (Formerly known as Jaguar News) Jaguar Released! (05/03/94 rev:15/04/94) ------------------ Well at long, long last the spring is here, (I reckon winter took its time this year), And so Atari's last hope of return, Is sweeping through the US firm. Yes, the time in which Atari said "Jaguar should be in the UK now" has arrived and so you should be able to go to your local branch of Dixons and buy a Jaguar. Well, not quite. Indeed Atari have kept their promise to build up awareness of the Jaguar, but alas it is unlikely that Jaguars will be a high street name until the summer at least - priority is being given to BIG stores, and long- established Atari stockists - local high street shop stocks will have to wait until around July-August or later. Why? Because of those yankee-doodle Americans, that's why. (Again.) In fact the Jaguar's doing well. Too well, and you see, those yanks are just taking every Jaguar being made! Atari wanted 30,000 in the UK for test sales - they got an unconfirmed number between 5,000 and 10,000. Not their fault - those Americans are mad over the machine (honest!), one US magazine (Die-Hard Game Fan) gave the Jaguar's bundle-game, Cybermorph a massive 99% score, and the award-winning advertising that Atari is running is the tops, with full FOUR-page glossy ads appearing. That's the good news. The BAD news is, of course, no real Jaguar support in the UK yet, although this is definitely not what Atari wants. I can honestly say, although keeping their cool externally, Atari UK are, professionally, miffed. Atari Corp say, however, that the UK, and indeed the rest of Europe, WILL have the Jaguars they want. Production of the units (including European PAL systems) is going up all the time (and becoming more efficient), as will the availability of Jaguars here, soon. The first major supplies are expected in June, and we will hopefully be knee-deep in the little dudes by the end of the year. Jaguar development his continued to climb and there are now *at least* 97 software and hardware people on the job with well over a hundred games in the making. Their advertising in the US is going well too, and the Lynx is very much involved, the Lynx print ads consists of a list a bit like: "The Gamegear had 8-bit technology" BUT "The Lynx is 16-bit"... and so on until it goes... "Lynx Kicks Their BUTTS". With the Jaguar print ad copy going: "We're chewing up the competition Byte by Byte"... and more. Why? ------- Yes, I know some of you are wondering why I cover the Jaguar in an adventure mag - if you think it's 'cos I want more K you're mistaken - I've given up my score building but will continue with the reports. The thing is - I should think most of you, if you read SynTax, are interested in computering as well. If you didn't you would probably stick to mags like Dragon and the like. The thing is, the Jaguar is not a "console" like the SNES or Megadrive. You would rarely see an adventure game (of a standard wanted by computer players) on these formats - the big exception being the Dungeon Master release not long ago. But the Jaguar, and yes, other formats like the PS-X are different. They could be called "consoles" but, if so, they are consoles powerful enough to play adventure games on, adventure games of a better quality that Return to Zork on the PC with the Reel Magic FMV card. Aaha! My reports on the 64-bit age are not so pointless in an adventure mag after all. Already, the PC adventure game Doom is nearing completion on the Jaguar, and so you can see with just this fact, that the Jaguar isn't a machine for just playing games like "Sonic" on. Therefore, I have re-named my "Jaguar News" section (as you can see) so I can cover other formats more freely. I aim to look into things like the 3DO, Saturn, Mars, PS-X and Project Reality in the future (not included in this issue due to time reasons). And yes, after some initial scans of the machine, I'll home in more on adventures - happy? See you around. Write to me if you disagree. How am I supposed to change if you dislike such a column if I'm not told? Byeee! BMK BMK - o -