Breath of Thunder - A JRPG could be heading to the Atari Jaguar!

A Kickstarter campaign has begun for the game to appear on a collection of modern and legacy consoles/handhelds.

It's nice to see developers also look at legacy consoles and handhelds when developing their games and if this appears on the Atari Jaguar it would be an impressive achievement.

Looking at the goal needed to get a Jaguar release there needs to be alot of backers and I've seen a number of gaming social outlets cover this news already so hopefully if enough eyes see it the developer can reach his goal.

Sadly doesn't look like a phyical release for this game on the Jagaur so I wouldn't at this month in time be able to play the game as I've not got any way to play roms etc but I'll keep an eye on the development of this.

Words below are taken from the Kickstarter project page:

Breath of Thunder is a turn based JRPG created specifically for people who long for a classic RPG experience free of modern complications. There is no obtuse, convoluted storyline, no buttonmashy battle system, and no boring, pointless filler content. Breath of Thunder will remind us all what made us fall in love with this genre in the first place; interesting characters we care about, engaging storylines, vibrant worlds full of fascinating lore, and beautiful music.

Featuring a unique visual aesthetic hand-crafted to tap into that old magic that captured our hearts in the 90s, while bringing something new and unique to RPG fans around the world. The soundtrack uses genuine soundfonts from the Super Nintendo hardware, blending in seamlessly with franchises such as Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire, Dragon Quest (or Warrior if you roll that way), and Secret of Mana.

Physical Versions for Legacy Consoles

We have received many requests for physical versions for consoles like Dreamcast, Saturn, Jaguar, and more. Our Stretch Goals targets currently only account for development time and costs. We do not factor in costs for physical production. When taking on such an ambitious endeavor, it is important to take one step at a time and focus on completing what is within your expertise. We can discuss physical versions of games with the community on a per-platform basis after each version of the game is completed and launched. Currently, we are able to produce GameBoy, GameBoy Color, and GameBoy Advance physical cartridges in-house and can sell physical versions for those games on demand.

Words from Kickstarter - Full information about the project visit here

Doom : Slayer Edition - Atari Jaguar

 

If like me you're a fan of the classic FPS game DOOM and when playing it on the Atari Jaguar you noticed one major thing missing, that's right there is no rockin' background music to keep your adrenaline pumping well that's all about to change!

Over at ZeroPage Homebrew they will be showcasing the World Premire of Doom : Slayer Edition which boasts a completely revamped version of the classic game. With in game music an added cheat menu and now being able to support the Pro-Controller.

Many people have said version of Doom the Jaguar owers got was one of the best ports/versions out there and now with these and much more content being included in Doom : Slayer Edition this looks to even better itself

WATCH LIVE on TWITCH: https://www.twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew/

WATCH LATER on YOUTUBE: https://youtube.com/zeropagehomebrew/

Credits:

Doom: Slayer Edition by WelshWorrier / Rik Day  / Lawrence Staveley  / Saturn  / Matt Smith 

For more information visit the Atari Age link here

Hammer of the Gods : First Look

Announced back in April of 2022, Hammer of the Gods is a side scrolling beat em up programmed by phoboz with the art, music and SFX being created by Eternal-Krauser.

Being fairly new to the Jaguar scene and also the homebrew scene, after a short while scrolling through the Atari Age Forums I came across this title, as I'm a fan of those arcade scrolling beat em up this has been compared to games such as Knights of the Round and Rastan Saga III to name a few, Golden Axe was clearly also thrown into this mix, like this Hammer of the Gods has impressive art style, colour translucency which can be seen in levels were light shines through a window/opening and music which drew me in from the get go.

Phoboz inspiration for this game was Moonstone for the Amiga however, phoboz means that the combat of Moonstone isn't suitable and the controls are more similar to Golden Axe with the added dash/running direction combo which they've mentioned they would like to expand it to be a little more advanced. There has also been a discussion about adding RPG elements to Hammer of the Gods which could give the characters experience points to help improve the characters abilities.

They chose a specific art direction for the game as they wanted to have a post 16-bit look to it, Eternal-Krauser also had similar impressions on some of the animations when he saw them in action. 

Phoboz mentions that "Hammer of the Gods is a mix of pre-rendered characters, and digitized graphics for the backgrounds"

"We experimented with a lot of different renderers, and none of them initially performed well on low resolutions. Because either significant parts of the models disappeared, or the image looked very pixelated due to the high level of detail in a small area. Eventually Krauser found the renderer we are using now, which made the characters look a little bit cartoonish, but at the same time a little bit more realistic than pure hand drawn cartoon characters. 

So we both felt thrilled that we had found the look we wanted for our game. Of course it's a matter of taste, but I think more people have praised the look compared to the people that thought it could improve."

Looking through the rest of the development through the Atari Age forum Eternal-Krauser has shared some incredible screenshots of WIP level designs , enemies and different player combat attacks/movements.

I've kindly been given an early early WIP demo version of the game which is for two players however, it was just me here to test it so I added the same controls for a second player just to see how the game runs.

Phoboz mentions "The demo supports 2 players, a Knight and an Archer. Both must move for the screen to scroll. The demo is limited to the first 3 scenes, as only these are considered somewhat playable for now. The enemy formations are not final yet.

Note that the game runs in BigPEmu, but it may crash (even if it doesn't crash on real hardware)"

First Impressions

I went into this thinking the hit detection would be way off as Phoboz mentioned it was an early early (yep double early) WIP demo, but clearly it wasn't too bad as you can see from the video below I was able to hit enemies and also take hit by them. In the past I've played finished games that had worse hit detection than this, so I was pleased that I could actually play the game for starters.

The sprites I feel are just the right size to match both the background and the on screen characters, with nice use of colours throughout on the level designs to the character themselves.

Normally repeated sound effects for swinging a weapon or hitting an enemy would annoy me but thankfully the background music overpowered them which set the scene for the epic adventure which (When the game is finished) awaited me.

I've only tested this for a little while, as I reached to what looked like a mid or end of level boss, at this point my two characters had fallen in battle or taken heavy damage to get here so if there is anything beyond this point I've yet to see it.

I'm looking forward to read about further developments and updates when they happen, I'll keep a close eye on the Atari Age forums and also Phoboz's YouTube channel - It is also great to see the community comparing this game to other games they loved plus also praising the work both Phoboz and Eternal-Krauser have done, providing them with feedback, ideas and suggestions.

There are other videos on Phoboz's YouTube channel that showcase previous and further developement of Hammer of the Gods plus other games which are being or have been worked on, go check them out here.

Features:

- Up to 3 layers of high colour parallax scrolling backgrounds

- Transparent shadows, lightening effects in CRY colour mode

- Large sprites

- Individual palette fades per game character

I used the emulator BigPEmu to showcase this game.

The Wolf Adapter for the ATARI 7800

Have you ever wanted to use your Atari Jaguar controllers on an Atari 7800 well now you can!

There is a new open-source project called The Wolf Adatper which provides a DIY solution to use an Atari Jaguar (or Super Nintendo) controller to emulate a keypad or joystick controller for Atari 2600 and 7800 systems.

As many more homebrew games for the Atari 2600 and 7800 systems require more buttons this project could be the answer gamers and developers are looking for.

As the Atari Jaguar controller has a keypad this could give developers opportunity to add controller overlays which could add collectability to 7800 games in any collection, as personally when playing Atari Jaguar games such as Alien Vs Predator and Doom you can't beat a good keypad overlay to help with your journey such as changing weapons, on-screen map or changing the view point, imagine how useful this could be for RPG based games selecting items/maps/magic for ease of use on your adventure.

Saying that the Atari Jaguar Controller keypad could also help when thinking about porting 8-bit micro-computer games to the Atari 7800 due to replacing/re-mapping the keyboard with the Atari Jaguar keypad. 

This is a positive move making it easier for gamers and developers to play and develop their much loved micro-computer games or new homebrew titles.

Here are links to the project:

https://forums.atariage.com/topic/329817-the-wolf/

https://github.com/Danjovic/Wolf

https://hackaday.io/project/183582-wolf

The source of this information was provided to me from a member of the Atari Age forums to get more and more people aware of this project and get the support it needs.

Being new to this community its great to get a heads up with what is going on in the scene, when I can I will share information here.

Oh if you're wondered why Wolf from the Gladiators UK is featured on the image, that's because whenever I hear the name Wolf I think of remember back to those good old days :) 

Do The Math hit the road - NottsVGE 2022

That's right the team at Do The Math AtariJaguar.co.uk will be at this years Nottingham Video Game Expo (NottsVGE) which is taking place the weekend of 17th & 18th of December 2022.

Tom Charnock will be at The Dreamcast Junkyard table on Saturday the 17th December whilst I, James (DreamcastUK) will have a table setup in the gaming area on Sunday 18th December for ItsMuchMore and Do The Math, there will be an Atari Jaguar with Doom for you all to come along and play.

The Centre of Computing History are also planning to attend and looking at what they like to bring to events, it's likely that they will have an Atari Jaguar there with Tempest 3000.

If that isn't a reason to get yourself a ticket for either of the days we don't know what is, you can find more details about the Nottingham Video Games Expo here.

Xeno Crisis For the Atari Jaguar?! It could happen

There has been quite alot of talk in regards to games being ported onto the Atari Jaguar of the years and Xeno Crisis seems to crop up more often than not or simlar games to it.

So we know that Bitmap Bureau's Xeno Crisis has appeared on the Evercade, Mega Drive, Neo Geo and the Sega Dreamcast so if the game can run on the 16-bit Sega Mega Drive then why not have it on the Atari 64-bit console.

The AtariAge forums have mentioned that this could be done if a dev has knowledge of Sega's 32X as it is quite simlar when developing games so wouldn't it be great to have another incredible title appearing on the Atari Jaguar.

When it comes to ports and homebrews, I'm always interested to see how they play and also what games they can get to run on systems that we could never of thought they would of been released on.

On the Atari Age forums there are some great work showing Atari ST games being ported over so the community is still looking at ways to bring games that never appeared on the Jaguar over to the console.

Would you buy a copy of Xeno Crisis if it made it's way to the Atari Jaguar do you think it could happen or even run at all? Let us know in the comments your thoughts.

Atari Jaguar Merch - Do the Math

Now this community is already showing it's true colours and in this case it's a good thing. I've recieved an Atari Jaguar baseball cap, cybermorph controller overlay and some Do the Math stickets which I am extremely happy with and will of course wear this cap on every Atari Jaguar video I do and may even wear it at future gaming events and conventions.

Special thanks to The Lynx Cader for providing me with this great Atari Jaguar merch!

If you want to purcahse this along with other Atari Jaguar and Atari Lynx items visit his store here.