26 replies to this topic

[Tempest]

Here's a link to a cool interview with one of the creators of the Jaguar:

http://www.chez.com/...s/mathieson.htm

I just wish I knew French.

Tempest

[atarifan49]

Tempest said:

Here's a link to a cool interview with one of the creators of the Jaguar:

http://www.chez.com/...s/mathieson.htm

I just wish I knew French.

Tempest

Just page down. The actual interview is in english.


Here is a computer translation of the first passage:

Being an unconditional fan of Atari (it is not new for you I hope; -)) and being an owner of the Jaguar since 1994 (I was among first happy French to have the deer), I always wished to discuss with somebody Atari in connection with my mark fetish and my preferred console. And if, moreover, this person proves to be the father of the Jaguar, it is the extase.

And well, young people, I announce it to you without more waiting: I made the interview of John Mathieson, the father of the Jaguar (in fact and especially father of TOM and JERRY - the two monsters 64 bit RISC which animate the deer - and of the Jaguar concept) by email. I will not say to you how I obtained his email (and besides do not ask me to give it to you, I promised to him not to diffuse it; and then in any event, I thus respect the private life of people it will remain "secret signal") but I obtained it.

I really wished to carry out his interview for Toxic-Mag (it is an exclusiveness for the mag!), to supplement an article on Jack Tramiel (and thus Atari) which I wanted to carry out for the newspaper of my old school and also and especially for my personal culture. And then, I adore the Jaguar: the machine always made me dream! Aaahhh, Alien Vs Predator, what a play! ! !

Besides I make a point of cordially thanking John Mathieson for his kindness, his availability and to have agreed to answer my questions (which, for some, contained spelling mistakes, bouh shame! I realized some too late… But good, I have an excuse: that was to be the emotion… Bein yes, it should be included/understood: you would have to see my head because I opened my limps mall and that I discovered an email of John Mathieson in response to the mien and in which it agreed to answer my questions: -).

Ok, I thus smell you impatient pass to sharp from the subject: the interview: -) Not wanting too to misuse his time, I condensed the questions. Those are besides the questions that all Ataristes and the fans of the Jaguar are posed in connection with the machine. There is even information on Jaguar II and the successors of TOM and JERRY!

If not, I benefit from it to pass a small word to my comrade Stéphane (Strider): one should not only one is planted with "Tycoon Computer" while leaving a play naze: John Mathieson agreed to be "beta tester"!!! : -)

And then, with the fact comrade, when do you buy to you a Jaguar for your collection?


And a translation of the final passage:

Here, I hope that this interview will have interested you as much as me. Still thank you in John Mathieson to have agreed to play the game of the questions/answers.

For all the fans of Atari and deer, will know that the Jaguar saw being born several kits from development. With regard to official technical documentation and the tools to program it, they are available in downloading on the excellent following site:
http://www.atari-jaguar64.de

John Mathieson took part itself besides in the update of one of the technical documents available on the site for his diffusion near the fans which wish to develop on the Jaguar.

I also remind to you that Hasbro, at the time where they were the owners of Atari, put the Jaguar in "public domain". Adaptations of plays (Quake!!) or of would the demonstrations on Jaguar, that be brilliant, not? In any case, if Jaguar developers read this article, will know that we wish that our play "Computer Tycoon", once finalized, be adapted on all the possible and unimaginable supports and especially on the machines Atari (Falcon 030 and the Jaguar more particularly)! Do not hesitate to contact us Stéphane (Strider) and me!

By hoping that this interview will have as interested you as me, I say to you with next in the columns of Toxic-Mag!

And do not forget: "Do the Math"! : -)


Both very rough translations. But there's enough there to get a feel for what they were saying.

Glenn

[gusbucket13]

I would just like to point out for any that may be put off by the thought of "Aargh its all in french" - the actual interview and questions are reproduced in English.

I particularly was interested in the Jag II info on the oberon and titania chips successors to tom and jerry and the fact that he has somewhere a manual for oberon - wonder if that will ever see the light of day?

Cheers
Chris C

[Tempest]

Yeah I read the questions, I was just curious as to what the intro and end said. Now I know.

Tempest

[patters98]

I'm bilingual with English/French - here's a translation of the first bit on the page. It should be a lot better than a Babel Fish job:

Being an unconditional Atari fan (not news to you I hope ) and having owned a Jaguar since 1994 (I was among the first happy french people to get the big cat), I always wanted to chat with someone from Atari about my favourite brand and console. And, should that person also happen to be the creator of the Jaguar, then it would be nothing short of pure joy.

Well then young people, I announce to you with out further ado that I have email-interviewed John Mathieson, father of the Jaguar (and moreover father of Tom and Jerry - the two 64bit RISC beasts that bring the big cat to life) - and of the whole Jaguar concept). I won't tell you how I got his email address but I did (and don't ask, I promised him that I wouldn't pass it on. I respect people's right to privacy so it will stay secret).

I wanted really to do the interview for the Toxic-Mag (it's an exclusive for the mag!), to complete an article about Jack Tramiel (and therefore Atari) which I wanted to carry out for my old school newspaper and also for myself. And what's more I love the Jaguar: the machine has always bowled me over! Ahhh, Alien Vs Predator - what a game!!!

I should cordially thank John Mathieson for his kindness, his availability and for having accepted to answer my questions (some of which contained spelling mistakes, the shame! I only noticed when it was too late... But I have an excuse: it was the emotion... You have to undestand, you should have seen my face when I opened my inbox and saw the reply from John Mathieson in which he agreed to answer my questions :-).

OK, I sense your impatience so let's move onto the matter in hand: the interview. :-) Not wishing to take too much of his time I condensed the questions. These are the very same questions that all Atari-ists and Jaguar fans ask themselves about the machine. There is even info about the Jaguar II and the successors to Tom and Jerry!

Also I'll take this opportunity to give a shout to my buddy Stéphane (Strider): we don't have to screw up with "Computer Tycoon" by releasing a crap game - John Mathieson has offered to be a beta tester!!! :-)

And, in fact buddy, when will you buy a Jaguar for your collection?

[patters98]

The game those guys are making sounds a bit like a very old Sinclair ZX Spectum game I had on a magazine cover tape called Software House. You had to sign developers, decide whether the game would be a movie tie in/simulation/adventure etc, decide how much to spend on artwork and advertising and try and make money with your portfolio of games. Simple but fun. Ironic, since Mathieson used to work for Sinclair Research...

[Punisher5.0]

Thats some interesting stuff. I dont agree with him though on DOOM being the game that pushed the Jaguar to the limits. Clint has a Jaguar II and I wonder if he ever got the system to work?

[Starcat]

Hi !

I really like the inetrview :-)

Quote

I dont agree with him though on DOOM being the game that pushed the Jaguar to the limits.

HA HA. I have always wondered if John Matthieson is gonna comment on the Jag abilities (he must know it fore sure, he designed it)one day and the Jag fans saying, no you are wrong it can do more.

I think John is more able to estimate the abilities of the Jag than ANYBODY else. He designed it.

Quote

Clint has a Jaguar II and I wonder if he ever got the system to work?

He sold his Jag 2, because he never got it to work.

Regards, Lars.

[Punisher5.0]

Quote

HA HA. I have always wondered if John Matthieson is gonna comment on the Jag abilities (he must know it fore sure, he designed it)one day and the Jag fans saying, no you are wrong it can do more.  

I think John is more able to estimate the abilities of the Jag than ANYBODY else. He designed it.  

Yea you are right Starcat. He should know what game pushes the Jaguar the most. But I dont think he knows about BattleSphere . Do you think that DOOM was the game that pushed the Jaguar to the limits? Dont get me wrong, id did an excellent job with the game and really showed that the Jaguar was the most powerful system .

[gusbucket13]

Clint told me that he sold it to a collector with a whole development team on hand to get it working - thats mega bucks on any Jag forum $3000 + Id guess, and goes against what has been so far put out on the net about it working but only playing current jag games without any noticeable improvements, it was defunct - and currently remains defunct, Oberon without Titania aint no play at all, = current state of play. Whoever put it around that it was working was A) Very idealistic B) Misleading people. Clint would you care to elaborate?

A lot of people have dead-ended Atari prototype development kit into their collections in the well founded but greedy assumption that it will be worth something in the future, This speculative investment is a TOTAL loss to the Jaguar community and the sooner active Jag community members recognise this the better.

Out there somewhere is all the stuff we need to bring Atari Jag back to life
Gusbucket 13

[Starcat]

Hi !
[quote="Punisher5.0"][quote]

Yea you are right Starcat. He should know what game pushes the Jaguar the most. But I dont think he knows about BattleSphere . Do you think that DOOM was the game that pushed the Jaguar to the limits? Dont get me wrong, id did an excellent job with the game and really showed that the Jaguar was the most powerful system .[/quote]

Why THE game that pushed it to its limits... There can be several games that push the Jag to its limits. I think Doom is one of those. But Iron Solider 2, BS, FFL etc. are also some games that push the Jag to its limits.

Btw, I'm quite sure John knows about BS, it was announced and sown on atari shows long before the Jag died. Although maybe he doesn't know that it's finished now.

Regards, Lars.

[PeterG]

[Btw, I'm quite sure John knows about BS, it was announced and sown on atari shows long before the Jag died. Although maybe he doesn't know that it's finished now.

Regards, Lars.[/quote]



I´m pretty sure that he knows about the game since the Scatologic guys thank him for support or something.
I guess he helped them out on several technical questions about the Jag.
So i believe they informed him about the staus of the game anyway.
Peter

[Starcat]

Hi Peter !

Yes, I think so as well.

Regards, Lars.

[JagChris]

Starcat, on Tue Sep 17, 2002 11:15 PM, said:

Hi !

I really like the inetrview :-)

Quote

I dont agree with him though on DOOM being the game that pushed the Jaguar to the limits.

HA HA. I have always wondered if John Matthieson is gonna comment on the Jag abilities (he must know it fore sure, he designed it)one day and the Jag fans saying, no you are wrong it can do more.

I think John is more able to estimate the abilities of the Jag than ANYBODY else. He designed it.

Regards, Lars.

Well we now know that JM should of known the abilities of the Jag but apparently didnt as its a well known fact now that not even Carmack thinks the Jags limit was anywhere near pushed with Doom. And he programmed it.

OLDEST THREAD RESURRECTION EEVAARRR!!!

What do I win?

[Shamus]

And since the main link for this interview is toast, I managed to track down a copy and am attaching it here. Nothing quite as irritating as seeing an old thread with dead links... And since the introduction has already been translated above, it's not being repeated here. So, for those who never got a chance to read it, enjoy.

(L’interview date du 22-23 Août 2002 et elle a été réalisée par email)

1) When and why did you decide the creation of Jaguar (and more especially the two main chips : TOM and Jerry) ?

The concept for Jaguar started in about 1990 with investigation of 3D rendering pipelines, and colour space. The early design work was all about the graphics engines. The video output path was based on an earlier project called Panther that got cancelled as Jaguar was making such good progress. Panther was the ultimate 2D graphics engine. Jaguar added the GPU and blitter which gave it its 3D graphics capabilities. Later when we wanted a solution for audio we added another GPU for sound, as it is a good general purpose DSP.

2) Why did you choose Atari as the manufacturer of Jaguar ?

We sold the idea of Jaguar to Atari as a concept, and they funded its development. We were looking for a manufacturer with some muscle to be involved in the project from the beginning, as we felt that was one of the reasons for failure of the previous project, Flare One.

3) What can you tell us about Flare One?

Flare One was designed after we left Sinclair in 1986. It was intended to be cheaper and better than the Amiga. It was licensed to a company called Konix, who were going to sell it as the Konix Multi System, but they ran out of money. It was also used in the UK by a company called Bell Fruit for pub quiz machines.

4) In your opinion, what's the best game for Jaguar ? In your opinion, what's the percentage of the power of Jaguar which is used by this game?

The games that pushed Jaguar hardest was either Doom or Iron Soldier 2. Both of these took the machine to its limit. The Doom port took a lot of personal involvement from John Carmack. The best game is of course Tempest 2000.

5) Before your answer, I thought AvP and Fight for Life were the games which pushed Jaguar to its limits. However, AvP seems to be the most popular game on Jaguar. Do you like it or do you prefer Doom (I know it is an old passionate debate :-)) ?

AVP was pretty cool as a demo, but the game was much slower. They spent too much time using the 68000 to track activity on the levels and not enough time on animation. The original demo version was much smoother, but had no game play Fight for Life pushed quite hard, but the programmer, whose name escapes me, was not all that good.

6) Some people told it was very hard to code on Jaguar. As the creator of the machine, what do you think about this affirmation?

Its a fair criticism. The hardware was quite limited. They say the same about PS2...

7) A lot of people think if Jaguar had got a CDROM in its standard version, the games would be more "impressive" (in comparaison with Playstation and Saturn games which used this support for add not interactive but beautiful video or precalculate animation) and thus the success of the machine would be more important. Do you think the absence of a CDROM unit in the standard version of Jaguar was a real handicap?

Not at the time. It would have added about $100 to the cost at launch. Jaguar's handicap was the lack of games, or serious marketing. The CD would not have helped with these.

8 ) According to several videogames magazines, the reserve of Jack Tramiel about the CDROM (because it is very slow) was the main reason why Jaguar only used cartridge in standard. Is it true?

No. It was purely a cost issue. It made the console cheaper as I mentioned.

9) Do you know how many Jaguar were sold around the world?

I think it was around 250,000. Not certain of that.

10) Several Atari zealots think Jaguar was the Atari most impressive machine. I suppose that pleases to you :-)

Of course.

11) What about Jaguar II? Can you tell us if some prototypes exist or if it is a myth?

The replacement for Tom was fabricated and worked, it was called Oberon. The blitter was upgraded to a full triangle engine, and on-chip texture caches were added. It did anti-aliased texturing at full bus speed (i.e. same fill rate as Gouraud shading on Tom) and looked gorgeous. The companion chip, called Titania, which was Jerry plus another GPU with cache to act as CPU was never fabricated.

12) Taking into account that a part of Jaguar II was created (Oberon), do you know if any "real" uncompleted (without Titania) prototype of Jaguar II was created ?

There were 2 or 3 boards build with Oberon and Jerry.

13) If you know someone who owns a "real" Jaguar II uncompleted prototype, could you give me his address ? ( I will steal the Jaguar II for my collection of Atari machines! :-) )

I suspect they were scrapped when Atari went down. I don't know any more than that. Sorry.

14) To go back over " Oberon " and " Titania ", is there any patent, technical documentation or " real " chip(s) (given that Oberon was produced) somewhere ? I think the Jaguar zealots would like to see something about them (Jaguar II is become a mythical machine)

I will see if I can find the programmer's reference manual for it and send it to you.

15) What are your biggest regrets about Jaguar (technology, games...)? If you can back to the past (with a time machine for example :-), will you change anything about Jaguar (and what) ?

It should have been able to run C, and do texture mapping. When we started all games were written in assembly, and Gouraud shading seemed enough. We were wrong on both those assumptions. I am not sure what we could have done differently, given the limitations of chips at the time, but there would have been a different emphasis.

16) How do you imagine the videogame systems in 10 years?

Mindblowingly realistic, but probably very similar games. Nothing much changes in video games...

17) Hasbro put Jaguar in « public domain » and some development kits are creating around the world by the Jaguar zealots to develop games on Jaguar. There is a real enthusiasm for Jaguar in 2002. What do you think about this phenomenon ?

Amazing! Its great that there is access to a game console for people who want this.

18) You created the first 64-bit videogame system but are you a gamer ? What's your favorite game?

I am not much of a gamer, I don't have enough time. My favorite current game is Crazy Taxi on Dreamcast. I will probably go and get an Xbox soon, given where I work (nVidia).

19) What's your favorite machine (videogame system or computer)? Why?

The game machine I had the most fun with was a Sega Megadrive (Genesis), where I spent hours playing Sonic; also the Sinclair Spectrum which was the first computer I worked on.

20) What's your curriculum (studies) ? What have you been doing since you left Atari? What's you job today?

I have a degree in Computer Science. I spent most of the last 6 years at a company called VM Labs producing a technology called NUON which made DVD players into game machines. I have worked at nVidia for the last 9 months.

21) What do you think about the purchase of Atari by Hasbro and by Infogrammes?

Well, they did not buy it for Jaguar, did they

22) We are creating a "business computer game" in "open source". This business game is based on a game we (some mates and myself) made in the 90s on Atari ST and which won some prizes. Now, we are starting to develop it on PC on the principle of open source (and we hope it will be adapted on Falcon 030 and Jaguar). The game principle is focused on the videogame industry and the computer business with a lot of R&D. The objective is to create a very realistic business game. When we will have a playable version of the game, would you accept to play it and give us your feedback about it?

OK.

Thank you very much for your answers Mr Mathieson. We wish you all the best for the future. And we won’t forget you agreed to test our game : you will the first person in the world to receive the playable version :-)

[JagChris]

Thanks Shamus.

Hopefully this will irritate ZB to no end.

[Punisher5.0]

Heh.... pretty interesting you bumped this thread Chris because I was just thinking about it a couple of days ago.

[JagChris]

John is an odd man. He says in the interview that T2K is the best game but Minter said that John came up to him after he finished it and took him aside and basically bashed the game.

Also several of his statements about what maxed the jag seem not to stand the test of time.

Also I'm not sure if with statements like this

Quote

It should have been able to run C,

whether he is saying it can't run a C compiler at all for the GPU? Or that they should of made one. It obviously can do C. As we know Carmack and HVS both had C compilers. Its almost as if he's somewhat clueless about his own machine. I dunno. Maybe I'm reading it wrong.

[Sauron]

JagChris, on Mon Apr 30, 2012 6:06 PM, said:

Thanks Shamus.

Hopefully this will irritate ZB to no end.

I surely hope you are not bumping ancient threads for the purpose of irritating specific people on here. That would not be kosher.

[JagChris]

Sauron, on Mon Apr 30, 2012 9:49 PM, said:

JagChris, on Mon Apr 30, 2012 6:06 PM, said:

Thanks Shamus.

Hopefully this will irritate ZB to no end.

I surely hope you are not bumping ancient threads for the purpose of irritating specific people on here. That would not be kosher.

Of course not. The fact that it irritated him was just a bonus.

[Zerosquare]

JagChris, on Mon Apr 30, 2012 8:39 PM, said:

John is an odd man. He says in the interview that T2K is the best game but Minter said that John came up to him after he finished it and took him aside and basically bashed the game.

I'm not sure he really "bashed" the game, as I recall he was disagreeing with some technical choices Minter made.

And note that he did say "best game", not "most technically advanced game", that's not the same thing. Plus the interview was several years after the release of the game, that's plenty of time to change your mind ; at launch, even Jeff Minter thought Tempest 2000 may not be good enough compared to other games !

JagChris, on Mon Apr 30, 2012 8:39 PM, said:

whether he is saying it can't run a C compiler at all for the GPU? Or that they should of made one. It obviously can do C. As we know Carmack and HVS both had C compilers. Its almost as if he's somewhat clueless about his own machine. I dunno. Maybe I'm reading it wrong.

With all due respect, I'm pretty sure that he knows much more about his own machine that you do
The GPU and the DSP can run C code, sure ; C compilers exist for the vast majority of processors. But they were designed to be programmed in assembler (it evens says so right in the documentation) ; creating a C compiler for them is not easy, and the performance suffers, whereas some other processors are designed from the beginning to be "C-friendly".

Edited by Zerosquare, Tue May 1, 2012 6:19 AM.

[kevincal]

its cool he made the jag but i cant help it but to think he could have done a better job to make the system easier to develope for... =/ he should have pressured atari into releasing it as a cd system from the get go. surely they were seeing the benefits of the sega cd and turbografx cd at the time the jag was being developed... oh well. just imagine the 3rd party support the jag would have got had it been cd from day 1.. just imagine the games the jag could have had by 1995! easily able to compete with saturn and ps1. all because the simply mistake of making jag cart and not cd, not to mention again that it should have been easier to develop for. same with the nintendo 64, the simple mistake of not going cd killed its chances of competing agains ps1.

[JagChris]

Zerosquare, on Tue May 1, 2012 6:18 AM, said:

JagChris, on Mon Apr 30, 2012 8:39 PM, said:

John is an odd man. He says in the interview that T2K is the best game but Minter said that John came up to him after he finished it and took him aside and basically bashed the game.

I'm not sure he really "bashed" the game, as I recall he was disagreeing with some technical choices Minter made.

And note that he did say "best game", not "most technically advanced game", that's not the same thing. Plus the interview was several years after the release of the game, that's plenty of time to change your mind ; at launch, even Jeff Minter thought Tempest 2000 may not be good enough compared to other games !

JagChris, on Mon Apr 30, 2012 8:39 PM, said:

whether he is saying it can't run a C compiler at all for the GPU? Or that they should of made one. It obviously can do C. As we know Carmack and HVS both had C compilers. Its almost as if he's somewhat clueless about his own machine. I dunno. Maybe I'm reading it wrong.

With all due respect, I'm pretty sure that he knows much more about his own machine that you do
The GPU and the DSP can run C code, sure ; C compilers exist for the vast majority of processors. But they were designed to be programmed in assembler (it evens says so right in the documentation) ; creating a C compiler for them is not easy, and the performance suffers, whereas some other processors are designed from the beginning to be "C-friendly".

Hey I'm just trying to relieve the boredom and start a conversation.

See you guys in a few days.

[Fygar13]

Here are my thoughts on the Jaguar: People were still buying 16 bit games at the time Jaguar came out and others were holding out for the PlayStation and Saturn. Also, the controller was terrible. IGN named Jaguar's controller the worst ever made. I think that if Atari had redesigned the controller, made it easier for third party companies to make games for it, and had used a better CPU and UART, then it could have done better. It also would have helped if Atari had marketed the system properly. Atari claimed that the Jaguar was a true 64-bit system. However, the system had a 32-bit Motorola 68000 CPU, and both the CPU and GPU executed in a 32-bit instruction set.

[Punisher5.0]

I really don't want to lock an oldie but goodie thread so please no more of the grade school playground posts.