JEO 16/46
Jaguar Interactive
Date received: 11/18/97 9:11 from bitsuser2.demon.co.uk (Matthew Gosling)
Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE:^4 My thoughts on you and Zero-5
>Great? Nope.
>
>Thunderbird
>4Play
Jesus, here we go again.
Okay, here's a few things to look out for in Jaguar games that were
developed throughout 1995:
Actually finished? Yup.
Looks like a bad Genesis port? Nope.
Attempts to go some way towards backing up Sam Tramiel's ludicrous
claims that the Jag is "about the same power as the Saturn, and a
little below the Playstation"? Yup.
Look, they're all going to buy Battlesphere, you don't have to keep
kicking Zero 5 in the teeth every 5 minutes. Compromises were made in
order to get the DAMN thing finished - this obviously doesn't mean
much now that the Jaguar is dead and Telegames are milking the few
remaining diehards for $60 a go, but at the time, the concept of
finishing the game while the system was still alive was considered
pretty damn important - for both the game AND the Jaguar.
If a few more people had, like, FINISHED a few products that actually
pushed the Jag's abilities a little (and Atari had actually released
them - SkyHammer springs to mind), maybe things wouldn't have turned
quite so shitty for Jag owners. My point being that a flawed but
technically decent game in early '96 would have been a damn sight more
useful to the Jag than a near-perfect one in '98. Just a thought...
-MG-
Jaguar Interactive
Date received: 12/21/97 10:33 from tinycat.demon.co.uk
Subject: RE: RE: RE: Zero-5 ... What a rush!
Hi,
This is my first posting to this newsgroup.  Can I thank everyone who
posted nice comments about Zero-5.
The comments you made are far more constructive than any Atari gave
us.
The game could have done with a lot more play testing, but it did come
out!
As those of you who follow this newsgroup know, we got paid very
little for the game, and finished it only with our own money, only to
see the game be sold to Telegames, without a penny coming to us!!
There has been a lot said about Zero-5, most I agree with, but, I have
to say, that some of the things said, have I feel, been wrong, simply
because people don't understand what the game is about.
If Caspian Software had been involved in the release of the title, we
would have made it quite clear that Zero-5 was a fast paced
shoot-em-up, which is like no other out there.  It was never intended
to appeal to a mass market.  If you can't play it, or you find the
pace too fast, GOOD, then the team at Caspian and myself produced the
game we wanted.
Most people find Zero-5 impossible at first, but believe me, there
comes a point where like magic, the whole thing, speed, camera,
patterns, etc., falls into place.  At that point you have mastered
Zero-5 and discovered a new dimension in game-play.
Myself and Matthew come from an arcade background, where we used to
insert coin after coin in an attempt to master a game - this is what
Zero-5 is about.
Zero-5 should be played in a dark room, where the full effect of the
colour and lighting effects can be seen.  The game is meant to be
FAST, VERY FAST.  If you have to think about what to do next, you've
lost.
The trench sections are in fact very easy, once you realize that all
of Zero-5's game-play is based upon patterns.  Have a look and you
will start to see things-- 2, 3, 2, as in, 2 walls, turn 180', 3
walls, turn 180', 2 walls.
Can I also point out just how BAD the Jag is to program.  We had to
work around so many bugs in the hardware.  I know some people have
experienced problems with Zero-5 booting when they have a CD unit
connected.  I can't comment on this, apart from the fact that Atari
never supplied us with a CD unit to test the game with.  Also, the
game uses the official Atari boot code which we had to use.  We had
written our own code which worked fine, and was bug free.
In think in the course of the project, we must have received 3
different versions of Atari's boot code, all with bugs.  They simply
did not have a clue about what they were doing.
We also had to fit both the PAL and NTSC versions of the game into a
2MB cart.  There was a lot more we wanted to do, but space would not
allow it.
Compare N64 games with Zero-5, but realize that A, they don't have to
fit both NTSC and PAL versions on the same cart, and B, their carts
are between 32 and 64Mbits, NOT 16 Mbits!!!!
That's me done...
Bye, and thank you all for your support, and I hope all those left
developing on the Jag have an easier time than we did!
Chris Dillon
... -0.8090169943749 The Sine of the Beast
--- JetMail 0.99beta22
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