Moving right along from where the previous episode left off, we find the Nerd playing a selection of Atari Jaguar games. This gives us a good look at what the system had to offer over the course of its life.
The Nerd begins by taking a look at what are probably the best games for the system, Tempest 2000, Alien V.S. Predator, and Doom. While he has overall positive comments for Tempest and AVP, Doom lacks its legendary soundtrack, making the Nerd question why it’s missing from the game. There’s actually a good reason for this — the processor which normally handles music was used to manage other critical parts of the game and thus couldn’t play the in-game music at the same time as gameplay — but the Nerd is unaware of this and is left wondering why? Otherwise it’s a great port of Doom and with the other 2 games looks like a promising start.
Next we move on to the oddball games for the system. Attack of the Mutant Penguins is something else, but looks like a fun game. It’s incredibly convoluted gameplay causes the Nerd to go on wonderful rant about his own absurd game idea. Stupid? Sure, but funny enough.
We move on to Kasumi Ninja, a poor quality Mortal Kombat clone. The controls are terrible, the character select method is absurd (obviously done to “show off” what the console can do in the realm of 3D) and even the aspects of it which you expect to be crazy are just instead strange. It’s a mess.
Lastly we look at Cybermorph, the flying combat game the Nerd compared to Star Fox in the previous episode. Honestly, it doesn’t look half bad to me. Yeah, the 3D graphics aren’t that impressive, but it looks like it could play well. Too bad it doesn’t. There’s not enough draw distance in the play field to really tell where you are going, and when you wreck into something, you can’t really escape — you keep crashing into it, even re-spawning in the same area if you die. It looks frustrating, to say the least, especially with “where did you learn to fly” bothering you every time you touch something!
This is the point where the Nerd needs to take a break… only for insanity to strike. First, the “where did you learn to fly” face appears in the room to annoy him further, leading him to yell at the Jaguar itself for causing him such frustration and headache. The console doesn’t take well to this threat, with the floating Jaguar cube logo from the console’s boot sequence coming out of the TV and attacking him!
In a play coming right out of the Super Mario Bros. 3 episode, the Nerd has multiple gaming accessories at the ready to try to take out the Jaguar cube, all of which have no effect. The Nerd has “Death Kitty” (James’s cat Boo) go on the prowl as the “real Jaguar,” eventually chasing the cube out of the room. The Nerd is safe for now.
After a recap on the multiple games played in the past two episodes, it would appear we’re done with things. That’s, sadly, not true. It turns out, as this was the early 90’s and we were in the middle of the “Multimedia” era of digital entertainment, where everything needed to be on CD-ROM, Atari had a CD add-on for the Jaguar. That’s right, an accessory for a system that already wasn’t selling very well. This can’t end well.
It’s a bastard system, to say the least. Much like the Sega CD, it needs its own power supply. It’s ugly to boot, and worst of all, it doesn’t work. Most Jaguar CD’s don’t work, to a point where the console is sent to another guy in the community who specializes in game consoles. The long and the short of it is presented in a comedic style, but can be summed up as the unit simply refuses to work.
The episode ends in typical nerd style. The Atari Jaguar CD looks like a toilet, so the nerd shits in it. Yep. Real classy. Only the best from Cinemassacre, right? Ah well, you don’t watch this show (or read these reviews) without knowing what’s to come. It’s absurdity for the fun of it.
Final Rating: 4.5/5
The episode certainly continues the energy of the previous one. The Jaguar is looked at in a broad sense with both good and bad games shown from multiple genres and styles, all summarizing quite well James’s experience with the Jaguar at that time in early 2009. He would later get a working Jaguar CD and, to no surprise, it isn’t great.
The episode has great moments and really shines as a highlight of the series, one of many to come through 2009 as The Angry Video Game Nerd reached its greatest point to me, as a fan.