New Games 919

I'm sure trying to tap into the early '90s fascination with CD-based technology seemed like a safe bet to the Tramiels. After all, computer CD games and the Sega CD had already paved the way into the gaming mainstream. Competitors 3DO and CD-I both made the technology readily available in their products (albeit at a much higher price). Even Nintendo looked eager to introduce CD technology into its home console market, partnering with Sony on a SNES CD add-on project prior to a breakup that would result in the PlayStation a few years later. CD was all the rage.

Unfortunately, at the time, CD just wasn't the right decision. Despite widespread marketing, Sega's CD unit sold very few units relative to the installed base of the Genesis console. Nintendo decided not to go with an add-on, instead focusing on upping the size of its SNES cartridges and pushing 16-bit to its limits (the products of which were the highly successful Star Fox polygonal game and CGI-based Donkey Kong Country). Plus, Atari simply did not have the manufacturing know-how of a Sony, whose PlayStation would be the first truly successful introduction to CD-based console gaming.

Even worse was the idea of an extremely complex, motion-tracking VR headset, much publicized at trade shows but which never surfaced save for incomplete prototypes. Again, the idea itself was novel—in the same way Sega's ill-fated hologram arcade titles seemed novel—but the demand for VR technology wasn't strong enough to account for Atari's research and development focus.

Atari's doomed love affair with relatively high-tech upgrades should have signaled to all companies then and there that risky moves rarely pay off. Still, game companies continued to introduce all sorts of wacky and unnecessary add-ons and gimmicks to the market. Sega's 32X add-on for the Genesis was a tragedy of brand mismanagement and stillborn technology. Nintendo's Virtual Boy was an overpriced and headache-inducing experiment in 3D monochrome graphics. Neo Geo experimented with the release of two CD versions of its console (in single-speed and double-speed drive forms) so as to push its exorbitant software prices down. Microsoft made a deal with Toshiba to introduce the now-defunct HD-DVD technology to the gaming market in the form of an expensive add-on drive. And so on.

Sometimes, almost by serendipity, these experiments turn out well. Most recently, perhaps motivated by the enormous success of the DS's stylus-based controls, Nintendo has made a hit out of its Wii's motion controls, combining inexpensive gyroscopic technology with an inclusive, family-friendly design concept. If the price for the Wii hadn't been just right, it's a technological experiment that could have just as well ended up in a heap next to the unappreciated GameCube.

Nevertheless, Atari's Jaguar serves as a reminder that while safe bets don't always break the bank, they rarely break a company. In the case of Atari, unnecessary risks in technology resulted in an inattention to key problems the company had suffered since the decline of the 2600.

Bits, Bytes, Whatever

The Jaguar's infamous claim to 64-bits worth of processing power is not only laughable; it's perhaps the key reason why we no longer care about "bits" or even the necessity of power in modern gaming.

Whereas the previous 16-bit generation had built its success upon rival claims to hardware power—illusory "blast processing" on the side of Sega and true hardware superiority on the side of Nintendo—and seemingly arbitrary boasts of large cartridge sizes (16mb, 32mb, or even whopping sizes in the hundreds of mbs in the case of Neo Geo games), the Jaguar helped to usher in an era of processing irrelevance.

No one cared that the Jaguar had 64-bits of processing power (which it didn't; it used two 32-bit RISC processors, codenamed "Tom" and "Jerry," concurrently and arguably delivered 64-bits worth of graphics processing), just as no one cared about the 3DO's then-mindblowing 32-bit power or the CD-I's crystal clear delivery of full motion video.

Why? Because 1.) these systems were priced so highly that no one could afford them, and 2.) they simply didn't have the gameplay or exclusive licenses to back up the technological claims. True, the Jaguar featured one of the best and most technologically proficient ports of Doom at the time, but by the time Doom arrived on the Jaguar, it had already run its course of fame and media obsession on the PC, long before PC-centric gamers began to move to consoles.

Unlike the 3DO and CD-I, however, the Jaguar emphasized its processing power in every way it could. Atari commercials asked gamers to "Do the Math," comparing the 16-bit processors of the SNES and Genesis with the Jaguar's supposedly mighty hardware. Once again, Atari put all the emphasis on all the wrong things, and the gaming market's mass rejection of Atari's claims would serve as a harbinger for console wars to come.

Nintendo's N64 marked the last system to make explicit reference to the number of "bits" powering a console, and no evidence shows that the "64" moniker resulted in any distinct preference for Nintendo's cartridge-based system over Sony's 32-bit PlayStation, a console that outsold the N64 over 3:1.

But Nintendo learned its lesson. Today, a relatively underpowered Wii handily outsells Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 hardware. Nintendo's DS stomps the PSP in sales 2:1. When it comes to processing power, David steadily trumps Goliath in 2009... because David tends to be more affordable and better marketed.

Pre-Xbox: The Death of the American Game Console

Even though America is the originator of Computer Space and Pong, and game companies regularly look to Europe and America for their most profitable sales territories, game players and critics alike have a tendency to look to Japan when discussing the roots of modern gaming.

And rightfully so. While the Atari 2600 was the first truly successful home console, it was Japanese companies Nintendo and Sega who revolutionized the business, introducing new technology, game genres, and some of gaming's most hallowed and venerable properties—including Mario, Sonic, Donkey Kong, and Tetris—to households the world over. America invented the RPG; Japan made it a viable game category. America started the arcade and multiplayer crazes; Japan turned gaming into an entire way of life.

So I look back on the death of the Jaguar with a bit of sadness, not just because it represented the death of an American icon, Atari, but because Atari itself represented America's last best chance to be relevant in the video game market. After all, the Jaguar and Lynx featured mostly Western-designed first and third party games from primarily American publishers. Art styles and gameplay types, while often off-kilter (anyone remember Kung Food on the Lynx? Ultra Vortek on the Jaguar?), stood apart from their Japanese counterparts in a way that made one feel like there was still such a thing as an American influence in gaming outside of the PC market.

Today, Microsoft represents the major American presence in gaming, yet it's hardly the same. Game development and publishing has become such a global, ubiquitous enterprise—and Microsoft itself is such a globally diversified force—that you can hardly call the Xbox 360 and its products the mark of a distinctly American viewpoint. It all meshes together... Halo reflects the American tradition of first-person shooters, yes, but the 360 equally relies on Japanese-style platformers, European role-playing games like Fable, and third party titles like Ninja Gaiden II, Resident Evil 5, Dead Rising, and Soul Calibur IV.

If Atari had gone on to survive as a hardware designer, who knows what different sorts of art styles and design viewpoints we would have inherited prior to the true globalizing of the video game?

Of course, such sentiment runs the risk of coming off as too nationalistic or myopic. Let me be clear, however: I am all for multiculturalism and thinking outside one's cultural box. I certainly enjoy the current state of the video game. I simply wonder what kind of intra-cultural sensibilities we have lost along the way.

And... there's nothing wrong with a smidgen of home-team pride.