My friend Anna Hegedus recently bought an Atari Jaguar. Don’t worry, she already apologized. It was one of the few remaining holes in her classic console collection, which already included legendary duds like the 3D0 and the Phillips CDi. So she was pretty hardcore about tracking one down. She was so hardcore that she paid…well I’m not going to say what she paid, it was a lot…for a Jaguar-themed bundle on eBay.
The box of suck included an Atari Jaguar (still in box) and an Atari CD add-on (very hard to find). It also included several games, including copies of Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace that were signed by Don Bluth.
With baited breath Anna and I hooked up the Jaguar today for a test drive (sorry, bad pun) and we quickly plowed through the batch of horrendous suckfests that were the Atari Jaguar software library. We bore witness to a horrendous port of Doom, the shitty space shooter Cybermorph, and the Jaguar CD’s horrendous port of Blue Lightening, an Afterburner rip-off that was actually a sweet Lynx title. We even booted up the pinnacle of shit, the movie-based White Men Can’t Jump, which played and looked like NBA Jam covered in about 50 tons of raw sewage.
However, there was one diamond in the shit-stained rough; Tempest 2000.
Tempest 2000 is a remake of the original Tempest, an arcade classic from 1981 and it kicks eight different kinds of ass. It’s the most frantic and fast-paced shooter you’ll ever play and it’s crazy psychedelic explosions made the game an acid trip in cart form. There were other versions of the game released on other systems but the Atari Jaguar version remains the best.
And not only did Anna’s box of Atari ass contain the original Tempest 2000 (in the box, complete with instructions to boot) but it also included one more bit of Tempest-related goodness…
Tempest 2000: The Soundtrack
The Tempest 2000 soundtrack KICKS ASS, and it’s one of the reasons why the Jaguar version remains the definitive release. It’s an amazing collection of acid house inspired techno and entirely original. It’s a bit derivative and definitely silly as hell, but so was most “legit” electronic music at the time. If you like old-school Moby, The KLF or FSOL then you need to listen to this soundtrack, it’s the best techno album you never heard.
Now if you visit Amazon you can buy this soundtrack, and many of you probably know that I try not to post music that’s in print and easily available. However, I’m making an exception this time around, and for various reasons:
1. This technically isn’t available at Amazon, it’s being sold by an independent retailer through Amazon’s site.
2. The retailer himself says that the soundtrack is out of print.
3. This soundtrack was released by Atari, and they no longer exist
Does that make me a hypocrite who’s over-rationalizing? Maybe. But I don’t care. The fact remains that this album is out of print, it kicks ass and you should listen to it right now!
Also go visit Anna Hegedus’ amazing site, where she’ll show you how to fix your NES, make your 360 full of pretty lights and much more!
Also, if you like Tempest 2000 then check out this excellent lecture by Jeff Minter, the crazy motherfucker behind it all.
No llamas were harmed the in making of this post.
good, i like it
I just want to take this moment to apologize to gamers everywhere. And yes, the Jaguar CD attachment looks like a toilet.
Dear Lost Turntable DJ,
It's really ok if you accidentally mislabel a song as "Side A" when it is in fact, "Side B". (Heck, you can label it "Side C with a side of gravy" for all I care, baby!)
And it don't bother me none if you claim a song is "Rare" or "Medium-Rare" (as long as it remains "Well-Done" at all times!)
If some day you feel like going crazy and posting nothing but…gasp! "popular" & "not rare at all" songs, I will keep listen' / readin' no matter what, baby!
Blog whatcha wanna blog!
Let the chips fall where they may!
Live dangerously!
Groovily Yours,
Laura
My mate – Glen – worked on the Aliens vs Predator Atari Jaguar game (he did a lot of the 3d scrolling code). I hadn't seen him for a while at the time but he invited me round to his mom's where he was holed up in the spare room coding. He showed me a version that he was working on – all the scrolling and environment were in place and you could move around the environment but there were no characters yet. He wasn't involved with the characters. At the time, it totally blew me away. The Jaguar was way off being released at the time.
He went on to supply music for the Tempest 2000 soundtrack (which he also had showed me a demo of), worked on the player stats in the Sensible Soccer port (which bored him to hell doing) and finally was involved with the awful Rise of The Robots port (which he hated so much he officially bankrupted his own company just to get out of the contract).
Haven't seen him in about 14 or 15 years now at least. He gave up the games coding and stuck to music, heading off and signing for MoWax and never being heard of again…
Other music he did back then (93/94-ish) was (the un-named main mover of) Mother "All Funked Up" and he was the "NDX" in the Neds Atomic Dustbin NAD vs NDX remixes (the "Not sleeping around" NAD vs NDX = nsa remix being especially good). Being from Stourbridge Glen was pretty thick with the Stourbridge Mafia back then.
So there you go, a little bit of Jaguar (and stuff) trivia.
Hope you don't mind. I'm not sure Glen would – he liked to keep pretty anonymous.
Regards
Takk (sorry – no identity…)