PeterG

Thanks for those scans Gunstar always interesting to read these things. I also enjoyed the german press back in the day and never had the opportunity to read the foreign articles. So thanks for that. Keep them coming :-)

Isgoed, on Wed Sep 21, 2011 10:15 AM, said:

The BS network runs very stable and over long periods of time (especially compared to Doom but that should be a given). Haven't played enough of Aircars in Network but since it has the same underlying code it should be as stable as BS.

I encountered some glitches though in certain circumstances, don't know if it had something to do with linking up a copy of BS classic and one of BSG or if it is triggered by something completly different. One or two times we encountered a ship which would not move, would not be hit and destroyed by fire and would not have any hit detection whatsoever. It was present on one players screen while not be seen by the other. But from what I have seen this seems to be a glitch which doesn't occur on regular basis otherwise probably more people would have talked about it. From my experience the network is as stable as it need to be to have many hours of fun. (Not saying that doom isn't fun, but the constant crahes where rather annoying)

Talking of glitches, I once encountered another glitch in BS in single player and it was pretty cool. Can't remember which wave of gauntlet it was but I had everything destroyed aside of one pilot. Next time I see the pilot flying by it had what looked like the 4Play Starbase around him and it was blinking. So the little pilot was at the centre of the Starbase and flying around ( the bases don't move usually) That was a weird and pretty cool glitch, almost thought it was intentional.

Gunstar, on Fri Sep 9, 2011 8:38 AM, said:

Well the setup itself isn't really difficult aside from getting enough games, consoles and Tvs together in one room.
What is a bit difficult though is that the network has to be started from each console individually and at the same time, so the more consoles you link the more people who might not press the button in time, so you get those sad smileys which tell you about not finding the network or you have just 3 Jaguars connected instead of 6 or whatever. If that hapens you have to restart each console, go back into multiplayer menue and try again.
In the end we always got it to work but in hindsight it would have been cooler to have the possibility to just wait for every node and start multiplayer then instead of having to do it simultanously. Anyway it works and when it works it is stable so it's always a nice experience at Jagfests. I hope that we reach a real big network one day...
I think it is 16 consoles total. (32 people with gunners)

kevincal, on Wed Jun 8, 2011 1:53 PM, said:

The AVGN Videos are pretty recent, sure many people saw his video but the complaints about the CD rom date way back. I even remember a german magazine trying to cover it in a Jaguar special and they weren't able to get it to work. That was over ten years ago and many readers stayed with that in mind.
Still I think that we discuss two different matters in this thread.
One is the fact that the thing isn't built very well so you might get problems (no contact, spindle etc.)
but the other thing is that I feel the CDrom does not break per se, so it is going to work for years and years if only a little care is taken for it and the solutions are pretty simple most of the times.

Really nice to see that RR finally got released although I'm short on funds right now so this will have to wait.
What do people say about the game, haven't really heard a review so far? Still too fresh and new? Is everybody having fun with it so far or does it just go into the collection?

On the topic of the Jag CD Rom I must say that mine works really really well from day one. There are just two issues with it which both do not bother me since I know how to work with it and are partially my own fault.

1) Since the day I accidently let a book fall onto my Jag CD, I have to press the button down to close the lid easily. If I just try to close the lid, you have to force it and it feels as something is going to break although it does close in the end but we don't want to risk breaking it, don't we? :-)

2) Two times it happened to me that after a long time of storage when powering up for the first time, the disc would not start to spin. But after pulling the plug and reinserting it again it works flawlessly and doesn't occur again. Don't know where this comes from.

So to finish this, the unit is obviously designed cheaply but in the end I feel that it works into its favour since there doesn't seem to be something complicated that really breaks the system. I can't talk from my own experience since as I said mine does work well and plays everything but the usual stuff with not making good contact, prying up the spindle and worst case install a new motor isn't that bad in my book.
I remember worse from a friends PSX which would not play games or crash unless it was turned upside down. Was there ever a fix for this?

As a sidenote Marc Rosocha from Eclipse had some really fun stories to tell about the time when Atari designed the CD Rom and would not know exactly how to make the lid. His Dev CDrom was without a lid or even the mounting holes and the CD was just held by a round magnet.