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JagFest '98 Report
-Kevin Manne's Take So, the second Atari Jaguar Fest was a success, or so I'd say. Most probably didn't think there'd be another, but I'd set my mind to it and went for it....and I think it went over well. The day started off early for me, getting up and packing up the car full of TV's and Jaguar-related items. I headed off to the Fire hall to find Dave Bell waiting there for us. We opened up the doors and started setting up...things were off to a good start. Soon after we opened the doors, Scott Walters showed up and we set up his BJL Jaguar with a program he had written to display some JagFest artwork Wes had done, along with playing a midi file. I was certainly impressed, and it made a great display for people arriving at the door. We set up a head-to-head Doom network early, and began setting Jags and Monitors on the north wall of the fire hall. Things didn't really get going, though, until Guy Dupre arrived in his Camaro loaded with monitors and Jags. I'm still amazed by how much stuff he had packed in there...now that's skill! BattleSphere was definitley the biggest attraction at the Fest. Most seemed genuinely impressed with it's "polished" look and high fun factor. The BS experience was heightened even more by being hooked up in RGB, with some great speakers & a subwoofer that Guy brought with him. I even got to try out the game in a Scuba VR headset. What a rush! The tournaments actually happened this year,
which was a great thing considering how much fun people had with
them. I actually enjoyed the Ultra Vortek tournament the best,
even thought I got eliminated in the first round. Everyone was
really into that one, which made it the most Gorf 2000 made a good showing, even though there were only some 3d demos and models to show. The MOD files were definitely rockin, and the classic mode was already up and running on the Jag, albeit incomplete. Steve really seems to know what's up, and with Terance doing some killer artwork for him, I'm sure nothing but good things can come of this. Dark Knight Games brought a prototype EXTREME Rotary Controller. The rotary control on it was very nice, thanks to the optical encoder. But the Joystick seemed too stiff and poorly-placed on the casing. The option and pause buttons were a bit cheesy and the case could use to be screwed together :-) But, this was only a prototype, so some of these things could change (hopefully) before the final release. Definitely keep the rotary the same, though. The Lynx had a new game showing, a Bomberman clone entitled "TNT Terry". Even in it's early state, the graphics look amazingly similar to other versions of Bomberman, but the enemy AI was nearly non-existent (they just ran back and forth), and the game would just lock up after you cleared out all the baddies. But, it's off to a great start. I look forward to the final release. Overall, I'd say the Fest was a great time.
I even bought a few of the Dentec games to almost finish off my
Jag collection there :-). It seems that everyone that came out
had fun, and for that I have no regrets for putting together JagFest
'98. You guys made it great, and without you, -Wes' Take First off, I have to mention the day before the Fest. Kev and I went down to the Fire Hall to set up some tables and chairs, along with a few posters and stuff. The tables went smooth, but when it came to setting up the chairs, Kev's teamwork dropped off a cliff. As I continually packed out chairs 4 and 6 at a time, Kev was "setting up some classic stuff"...Okay, I thought that was cool. As I continue to pack chairs out, I look over to see Kevin having a grand ol' time playing Moon Patrol, Missile Command and some other games. Oh well...it was cool =) Then we went outside to put the letters on the sign outside. Kevin and I were trying to get both sides to look identical. When we finished up, we stood back to take a look at our work. We were satisfied! So we took some pics of us standing in front of the sign. The next day as we were driving by the Fire Hall, Kev notices that I had misspelled the freakin' sign. I had "Jagaur" instead of the proper spelling. Everyone insisted on making fun of my little error, but they didn't understand that I was concentrating on the alignment of the letters instead of the spelling. Oh well, it made for some great pictures...hehehe! (Kevin's Note: You'll be seeing some scans of the infamous signs soon, when we get them scanned in. Wes was crying about it we were picking on him so much. hehe) So, the day of the Fest finally came around.
It's wierd when you've been planning for something and looking
forward to it for so long and then it's finally about to happen
-- sorta like BattleSphere. Scott Walters (great guy) had his
BJL modified Jag there running some server As more people started coming in, the games really started to get rolling. I even got a chance to sit down and play some Ruiner pinball for about an hour. I had one of the best games I've ever played on it, ending up with a final score of 1,140,00,000 !! People were having a lot of fun trying out the games they hadn't tried before, I could tell. Of course, I was constantly looking over at the BattleSphere setup to see if anyone was having a tough time getting started out. The tournaments were a lot of fun! First game
was Ultra Vortek. The toughest part about this tournament was
that you couldn't use the same character twice. This made the
character selection tough, considering that I needed to save Buzzsaw
for the final round (Yes, I was confident that I'd get that far...hehe)...Scott
Walters seemed to know his stuff, so he's who I faced in the final.
It was a good fight. I'm glad I won tho...I won a couple of games
that I already |
