JagFest
UK 2003 Aftershock
Text by TXG Photos
by Fox-1
I liked the review
about JagFestUK but I'd like to tell my version
as well. On Friday we travelled from the Netherlands
to the UK. In the morning at 09:30 the Demming
brothers arrived and we drank some coffee before
we left. Then we drove to Calais. After 25 km
of driving we had some bad luck, something happened
and we were standing still on the highway. I
decided to drive to the centre of the city to
get to the other side of Breda and get on another
highway but it seemed lots of people also did
that. Finally we were on this other highway
and already lost one hour. We had to be
at Calais by about 14:30, but everything
else was fine so we arrived there about 13:30.
Robert Demming had ordered the tickets so he
had to get them, this was the reason we had
to be in Calais together, otherwise we wouldn't
have a ticket.
When we were
there we ate something and then the journey
to the UK could really start and we drove in
the train that would bring us to the other side.
![[Photo: Car driving onto train]](images/jf1.jpg)
The trip was
about 35 minutes and really quick and relaxed.
I think this is a nice way to travel. In the
UK we drove directly on the highway and my first
test of driving left was going well. I thought
it would more be difficult.
About one hour
later we arrived at the hotel and met
some people there. We put our stuff
in the room with the pool table and before we
unpacked I put the two flags and the Jaguar
banner
on the wall just to feel more at home.
Then we drank
a Dutch beer with Nick and the others before
we connected all the Atari computers we brought.
![[Photo: Drinking Dutch beer]](images/jf2.jpg)
Robert Demming
brought his Jaguar development system with
his Alpine board and his brother the Samsung
Nuon 504 DVD player with games like Merlin Racing
and Tempest 3000. Later that evening after connecting
everthing I played some games on the Jaguar
like Tempest 2000, one of my favorite games.
![[Photo: TXG playing Tempest 2000]](images/jf3.jpg)
|
Alhough I don't
have a rotary controller I managed to get a
pretty good high score.
|
![[Photo: Jaguar kiosk]](images/jf4.jpg)
|
In this same
room there was this original Jaguar display
it was really nice but sadly not for sale.
|
More and more
people arrived and I was impressed how many
people were there. It just started with one
simple question on AtariAge.
I visited Nick
of 16/32 Systems to see what items he had
for sale. To make my Jaguar game collection
complete I bought Worms and Iron Soldier 2
CD and I played these games, of course.
Nick had a nice place and lots of cool Atari
items for sale like Jaguar CD-ROM players, Jaguar
consoles, Jaguar games but also ST and Lynx
stuff.
![[Photo: Japanese Jaguars at 16/32]](images/jf5.jpg)
|
Nick even had
some Japanese Jaguars and Alpine developer boards
for sale.
|
While we saw
more and more people there I saw one person
who developed this cool hardware to attach a
PC joystick to the Jaguar. He gave a little
demonstration and it works cool.
![[Photo: JagStick interface]](images/jf6.jpg)
|
I hope the schematic
and more information will be available in the near
future.
|
On Saturday
morning
the rooms filled very well and more people
came in, like some people
of the MyAtari team.
![[Photo: Two Matthews and Shiuming unloading car]](images/jf7.jpg)
They had their
own section where they wrote
the latest articles. In this part of the room
you could also find some ST users.
![[Photo: Two Matthews, LinkoVitch and Robert Demming]](images/jf8.jpg)
Meanwhile,
LinkoVitch (Jaguar coder) also arrived
and we had some time to speak with him. In our room there
was the Jaguar with the rotary controllers and
a Tempest 2000 competition. Most people took
this competition very seriously!
![[Photo: Tempest players]](images/jf9.jpg)
Other people
were playing Tempest 3000 on the Nuon 504 DVD
player, this game is even more colorful than
the Jaguar version and much harder to play,
but
you can see it's made by Yak, the person who
wrote Tempest 2000 and Defender 2000 for
the Jaguar.
![[Photo: Nico Hofer playing Tempest 3000]](images/jf10.jpg)
Later that evening
we went to a restaurant to eat something and
played some games until about 02:00 then we went to bed...
The next morning
most people where already awake and the atmosphere
was already very good.
![[Photo: Two Matthews]](images/jf11.jpg)
|
Some people of
the MyAtari team say thumbs-up for this event!
|
People from different
countries were there, even some people from
Switzerland. It was nice to meet them again,
this would make this JagFestUK meeting a success
already.
![[Photo: Robert Demming's Jaguar CD development system]](images/jf12.jpg)
The most interesting
thing
that day was to see Robert Demming with his
developer Jaguar and Alpine board. He showed
some new software and showed me how powerful
this development kit was.
![[Photo: Jukebox 2.4 software]](images/jf13.jpg)
On this development
kit he showed the latest software that is being
developed for the Jaguar. It makes it possible
to create a menu on a CD and load program ROMs
into the Jaguar with a menu selection. At this
point it only runs on development systems but
the goal is to make it possible to run it on
non-modified Jaguars.
![[Photo: Robert Demming]](images/jf14.jpg)
Robert also told
me about his own Jaguar CD-creator project.
A PC program that will make it easier to
create Jaguar CDs. This has a lot of potential
because making cartridges is very expensive.
CD-ROMs are cheap and a perfect medium for
home-brew game developers to release their products.
After this conversation
I decided to get myself such a development
system soon.
I walked around
and saw Nick was happy because so many people
were there.
![[Photo: Nick Harlow selling lots of stuff]](images/jf15.jpg)
In this room
I went to LinkoVitch and watched the little
program demo he had written on the Jaguar. He
also tested my Jaguar with BJL ROM and it turned
out my cable was defective. I was very happy
because the Jaguar was not broken.
![[Photo: LinokVitch]](images/jf16.jpg)
I had a very
good talk with him and asked him a lot about
the Jaguar. He explained some things and
answered some technical questions I had about
some coding on the Jaguar. I was very happy
to see he enjoyed this event.
Then it was my
time to play Tempest 2000 on the Jaguar. It
was a match between two members of the Dutch
MNX team! I played against Fox-1 and it was
a close finish but Fox-1 seems to be just a
little better player than I.
![[Photo: Fox-1 and TXG battle on Tempest 2000]](images/jf17.jpg)
Then it was time
to build the Air Cars network. Eight Jaguars were
connected to each other with a ScatBox or CatBox
interface. It seemed to be a little hard to get
it running because not all players seemed to connect
to the network.
![[Photo: Gary Taylor configuring Air Cars]](images/jf18.jpg)
But after some
tries and looking at the wires we managed to
connect eight players in a working network. This
was the first time I played Air Cars this way.
![[Photo: Air Cars running at last]](images/jf19.jpg)
We used the same
network later to play BattleSphere but with
only
eight players, next time we need to make a 16-player
network with BattleSphere, I think, this is also
a very nice game but I need to practice because I didn't know how to use the controls
in this game.
Then after losing
very badly at the Worms competion, a game that
I never played before, I bought this game from
Nick. Then I start to play it together with
three other people and it seems to be a very
cool fun game and very addictive.
![[Photo: MNX playing Worms]](images/jf20.jpg)
The rest of the
time we had a lot of fun and talked to people. I had a very good time but we did play Worms
a lot.
Then we bought tickets from Nick and could win some great
prizes like an Alpine board. I liked this
so I bought some tickets to get a chance
of winning this piece of hardware.
![[Photo: Raffle prizes]](images/jf21.jpg)
The second and third prizes were also very cool.
Fox-1 was lucky
and won the fourth prize, the Robinson's Requiem
CD-ROM game for the Falcon, he was very happy with it
and told everyone that he now will buy a Falcon030
system to play this game...
This was just
a small impression of the complete event it
was so cool that it is hard to write everything
down.
The next Jaguar events
I will try to visit are:
- JagFest 2nd edition
in France 25 - 26 October 2003.
- Euro-JagFest 2003
in Germany 22 November 2003.
Another event
is the ABBUC JHV meeting
(8-bit), 25 October 2003.
txg@myatari.net
|