1996 Reverse Logic
Platform: Commodore Amiga
Following on from our recent addition to the archives of Fatal Mission, we add yet another title that was being worked on by Ola Zandelin.
This time, instead of a 2D platformer, Ola decided to jump into the challenge of trying to write a texture mapped 3D game for the Commodore Amiga. One of the attempts was a 3D driving game called Truxz, which would be created by both Ola and Rodrigo Perez on both code and graphics.
André Zandelin would provide electric guitar samples, which would be used by Ola, who also created all the music and audio for the game as a whole.
The title would promise around 9 different types of weapons, many different tracks across different terrains, raytraced graphics, a shop and the usual promise of “superb gameplay” like most people do.
Unfortunately the game was never to be. Ola stated on his web page on the game that the Amiga had a slow CPU and didn’t have the chunky-pixel mode that the PC did (which was very useful for the new wave of textured 3D games). The game was far too slow, and so it was scrapped.
It isn’t quite clear just how far the game had got, though one of the screenshots suggests that a preview was produced – though we’re not sure if anything actually ever made it out. There doesn’t seem to be anything playable online.
It is hoped to learn more from Ola and Rodrigo about the title, and maybe see if anything could be shared in a playable form.
With thanks to Grzegorz Antosiewicz for the heads up about the title.
Gallery
The Jaguar would be a system worth considering to port the game over.
Today’s development tools today are excellent with Reboot’s ever-improving JagStudio/Raptor A.P.I, and Richard Whitehouse’s excellent Jaguar emulator BigPEmu, Noesis, and superb Jaguar debugger adding to a growing list of modern Jaguar developer resources that exceed that which were available during the retail life of the Jaguar.
Much more is known about the Jaguar’s arhcitecture today than during the system’s.commercial relevance.
If the game’s optimised to take advantage of the Jaguar’s technology correctly then decent performance can be achieved.
The visuals can be ehanced further using the Jaguar’s hardware scaling and rotation, multi-layered parallax, 16 million colours, lighting and transparancy, particle effects, etc.
There’s many excellent games in development for the Jaguar in 2023.
ATARI themselves are looking to explore the Jaguar system for new game content after receiving positive feedback for the Jaguar content featured on ATARI 50.
November 28th is the Jaguar’s 30th birthday,and it’s expected that ATARI Will do something to celebrate.
It might be worth reaching-out to ATARI to see if they’d be interested in supporting the game on developers@atari.com.
The game could be released across several mediums:
Jaguar cart.
Multi-platform under BigPEmu emulation with support for o.g Jaguar controllers using u.s.b adapters.
downloadable roms for Gamedrive and Skunkboard users.
BigPEmu allows for H.D upscaling, Modern V.R for Missile Command 3D and Dr Typo’s shoot-’em-up 3D, online gaming for all Jaguar multiplayer games, and can add features not found, nor possible, on original Jaguar hardware.
eJagfest will be a landmark event this Oct 21st, with many new games being revealed released, and announced.