Guardians of the PaST : Jaguar XJ220


Title Screen		Game starts with a HUGE reflected Jaguar XJ220. No wonder though, the game comes from a former democoder! (1/37)
Splash Screen	Resolution : Low

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Jaguar XJ220 - The Review - marakatti

Jaguar XJ220 - The Review
The early nineties were a very interesting time in ST motorsports. Magnetic Fields and Gremlin had hit the jackpot with their Lotus and Supercars series and it was no surprise that the competition were keen to give Gremlin a hard time. While most came and failed to give the same sense of speed and balance, there was one software house that was up to the challenge. Their pitstop was very busy bringing another racer with full licence to the starting grid. It was another legend in British motorsports history. It was Jaguar XJ220 - Core Design's new baby. ST tuning at it's best While the original Amiga version was programmed in-house, the conversion work for the ST version was given to a very talented programmer, who in the demoscene was known as 'Oberje' of Fingerbobs. This was a blessing, since ST democoders really knew their machines inside out and Jaguar XJ220 really needed a good knowledge of hardware to be able to overtake the mighty Lotus. So the work had begun. The two disk development demo we've seen was dated 29.09.1992 and some optimisation had already been done. Gameplay area was narrowed 16 pixels off each side and it already featured things like fences and trackside scenery. The intro with it's huge scrolling and reflected Jaguar XJ220 car is there, as well as some credits and fastest laptimes screens. This version is also playable - so you can try out all the tracks and finish the race. The game needs 1MB of RAM to run. Floor it! The game is based on the imaginary SCR (Super Car Racing) Challenge Championship spread over 12 different countries. Each of them has three different tracks giving a total of 36 ways to finish the race. Conditions vary from dry and wet tarmac to dusty gravel, fog and night time driving. You compete against 20 other cars including the Corvette ZR1, Ferrari F40, Porsche 959, Lamborghini Countach, Bugatti EB110 and of course the mighty Jaguar XJ220 itself. GFX - Breaking the limits Graphically the game is very strong, probably one of the best looking racers on ST. The feeling of speed is great and in some countries like the USA or Egypt the colour palette use is so excellent we would call it a piece of art. This racer has no 16 color limits! The rasters makes it look good and you get something between 25-45 colours on screen simultaneously. This makes the Lotus series look quite bland in comparison, even if it still runs a bit faster. There is of course a price to be paid for shifting all these graphics and colour rasters and that's the missing backgrounds. Also, much of the trackside scenery and car graphics use only four colours, but you'll really have no time for sightseeing anyway. On STe the palette is enchanced to give even better colour gradient. Music to my ears (or not!) This version is missing all sound and music so nothing to say about it except that we really would love to hear how the engine would have sounded at least in the intro. Playability - 'The need for speed' After the test run we can say that the feeling of going fast is really there! Oberje even found a way to optimize his sprite routine while he was making another version for us, so the latest one is even faster. However, as the game is (and will remain) unfinished, we can't really say how much the gameplay would have evolved from the development demo. At present it's fast, playability is very good with either manual or automatic gears and there are some nice touches present such as other racers driving to the pitlane after they finish the race. On the other hand the game is still very easy compared to the Amiga version. On the Amiga you could overtake most of the cars easily, but from the fifth position upwards things started to get tricky. This is something that didn't made it to ST development version, so you can easily lap 3-5 cars in every race. Also the refuelling is really not needed and ST Jag has much better traction than it's Amiga cousin which is quite noticeable on slippery tracks like Switzerland. Still, it gives a taster of what it would have been like and if you enjoy racing games it tastes good. If you don't we would still suggest you to try it out just to see the great use of colour. Keep your fingerbobs crossed! The fate of this game had been one of the more enduring mysteries of the ST. This is now solved! During the last month it evolved from a single track demo to a game that you can actually play and try out. Thanks to Oberje's hard work we now have something that every racing game fan is thankful for. An excellent piece of ST gaming history that could easily have found it's way to the top 5 sprite based ST racing games on Atari market. Thanks to Core's decision to axe it back in 1992, it is today as rare as the real Jaguar XJ220 car itself. Still, the original source code is still in Oberje's cabable hands so who knows... maybe this won't be the the last roar for this mighty cat. Let's keep our fingerbobs crossed
	marakatti (18th Mar 2009)

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