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Developer Heart: Devkits of the 5th generation of consoles (Part 1)

After the collapse of the gaming market in 1983 and its triumphant revival in 1985, Nintendo’s game world has changed forever. And while Sega and Nintendo fought an irreconcilable struggle to dominate the minds and wallets of gamers, an unstructured conspiracy matured in the depths of competitors. In the midst of 16-bit passions, spanning the whole of 1993, the fifth console revolution took place: FM Towns Marty, Amiga CD32, 3DO Interactive multiplayer, Atari Jaguar began to rock the boat, in which only “big S” and “big N ". The onset of 32 bits was ubiquitous. Growing by leaps and bounds, the fifth generation adopted the 32X, Sega Saturn, PC-FX, Sony PlayStation, Nintendo 64, Apple Pippin, M2 ...

The golden age of computer entertainment was squeamish, giving unlimited immersion in the “virtual” and a completely new gaming experience. Compared to the dying 16-bit world, the 5th generation consoles rightly swung at 3D graphics, open worlds and vivid experience that were previously only available on arcade machines and desktop computers. From now on, powerful hardware and CD-ROM completely untied the hands of game developers. Therefore, the emergence of truly worthwhile and technologically complex games was only a matter of time.



And if the developers with the first 32-bit “swallows” everything was clear: FM Towns Marty and Amiga CD32 were almost identical to their progenitor computers, FM Towns and Amiga 1200, respectively. That programming of games for other consoles began from scratch, with the development of development stations (devkits). The variety of shapes and sizes of these stations still amaze the imagination, and their significance and collection value are all the more worthy of mention out loud.

But first things first.

Atari Jaguar dev-kit

Preparing to deliver a crushing blow to Sega Genesis and Super NES, Atari Jaguar was preparing to dominate the competition. The advanced 64-bit filling of Jaguar instilled confidence in the Atari leadership that he would again have control over the video game market, for returning the former greatness of the company was a matter of honor .

So in 1992, the first devkits called Felix development systemwere sent to developers. The heart of the system was a Felix motherboard stuffed with SIMM memory, a Toshiba chipset, a video card, a signal processor, a stabilizer for debugging data, a card interface for connecting 2 gamepads, and an I / O interface for connecting to a PC or Atari ST / Falcon. The Felix board was located in a standard system unit and was very expensive equipment.



Therefore, soon it was replaced by a simplified and cheaper Rapier motherboard . On board, among other things, was the Jaguar 1.0 chipset (instead of the Toshiba chipset), a board for connecting an external CD-ROM and MIDI interface. Devkit Rapira was still housed in a desktop PC case and was a great pleasure for indie developers and small studios.



The third generation of development systems for Atari Jaguar was Alpine board . In fact, being a smaller version of Rapier and Felix, the Alpine board was compatible with both the PC and the console itself (reminiscent of Sega Genesis DevCard from Western Technologies).



The card contained RAM, a parallel / serial interface, a 3.3V lithium battery, an interface for connecting to a PC or Atari ST, RESET / STOP / WRITE switches and other components. Thus, the game was programmed on a computer, the source code was compiled in the same place, and only after that the code was loaded into the Alpine board for debugging and testing on Atari Jaguar.



But this system was too tough for independent developers. It is logical that later unofficial devkits appeared for the Jaguar. The first of which was called JagServer and connected directly to the console and Atari ST. The cost of the device and the Jaguar OS operating system was 10 times lower than the Alpine board, which finally made the console friendly to third-party developers. The second device, the Behind Jaggy Lines chip , appeared after the sunset of the Atari era and was 20 times cheaper than the JagServer. Behind Jaggy Lines modified the console so that a PC with preinstalled software can contact it directly.



Functional Test Card, . , , .


Unfortunately, despite the extensive toolkit, the developers did not realize the full power of the system, burying Atari's hopes somewhere near the Atari Panther ...

3DO Interactive multiplayer dev-kit

The brainchild of Trip Hawkins, based on the concept of a multimedia standard, was to become real a breakthrough in the industry. And October 1993 showed this clearly. At the time of the start of sales, 3DO Interactive multiplayer was the most technically advanced console, capable of easily working with 3D-graphics, CDDA and FMV sound. That's why the harsh Atari Jaguar, which debuted a little earlier, with its “Cybermorph”, looked extremely ridiculous in comparison with 3DO and its starting game “Crush 'n' burn". Ambition CEO of The 3DO Companywere truly global, to create a single multi-platform format based on 3DO Interactive multiplayer - a kind of Macintosh, but in a console interpretation. And, I must say, this idea had deep roots, because prior to the founding of Electronic Arts Trip Hawkins worked in Apple, where he adopted not only successful business ideas, but also the convenience of the materiel of Apple computers.



Not surprisingly, all 3DO devkits were Macintosh-oriented machines. So the first Network development station , it is also 3DO Network station v. 1.0It was a bulky station occupying an entire system unit. At the same time, the scheme for connecting the devkit to the Macintosh implied the presence of the 3DO NuBus card (or its 3DO Development Card) and the FDDI fiber-optic interface for data exchange in the latter. One of the features of the Network development station was the availability of Ethernet peripherals called Nicky. Together with telecommunications giant US West The 3DO Company was seriously considering launching an interactive online service, seeing this as the future of its console.



Gigantomania and The 3DO Company’s desire for perfectionism soon turned into an even larger devkit - 3DO Station v.4.0. The machine, which barely fit in the system unit, had an enlarged motherboard, as well as MEMORY / DEBUG / ENCRYPTED mode switches.



Own operating system “Opera” was inherited from Network development station and also worked effectively with 3DO software: 3DO Portfolio, 3DO Toolkit, etc. It is noteworthy that the first version of the software was copyrighted by Electronic Arts .



The Panasonic HW102TS-PJ 3DO Testing station deserves special mention.for debugging written games. The station is based on the architecture of the first revision of the FZ-1 console for small differences inside the case and the presence of a switch on the rear panel. The switch actually transfers the console from normal mode to debug mode. Later, the FZ-10 revision also served as the basis for the test station.



Due to the fact that the development environment for the 3DO Interactive multiplayer console was familiar, first of all, to the programmers Electronic Arts and Studio 3DO, the games of these studios came out the most spectacular and interesting. But even this did not save the system from failure under the onslaught of cheaper and attractive consoles from Sega and Sony.

Genesis 32X dev-kit

Speaking about the 5th generation of consoles, many forget that the 32-bit add-on for Sega Genesis is also worth mentioning. The idea of ​​overclocking the 16-bit donor was so revolutionary that they began to work on it in parallel with the creation of Sega Saturn. The completely unique system, although inferior to Saturn in performance, nevertheless, could compete on equal terms with Atari Jaguar and 3DO. And if the libraries of 32X and Atari Jaguar games were comparable in number, then the quality of these games was entirely on the Sega side. Having received a successful Doom port and the best version of Mortal Kombat II, the 32X also unpleasantly surprised the 3DO company, which was “not easy” on the market.

Like Atari Jaguar, the 32X console launched cartridge games. Therefore, the first devkit system called SNASM2in addition to the motherboard, it contained a connection board in the console slot (CardDev - an interface with a capacity of 4 MB), and a SCSI interface for switching with a PC. The devkit looked intimidating, mainly due to countless loops, cables and a general pile of equipment on top of each other.



The subsequent development station Sega 32X Development target acquired a sophisticated and finished look. The motherboard was located in an elegant case that does not require combining directly with the console.



As a result, the system turned out to be an interesting product that could be successful in the market. If not for one thing - Sony PlayStation. The release of this console directly affected the timing of the sale of Sega Saturn, which means that it condemned Sega to wage a console war on 2 fronts. Therefore, the choice was made in favor of the promising Saturn, and 32X instantly remained out of work.

Afterword

Unfortunately, from many interesting and undervalued systems at the time there was nothing more than a couple of footnotes in a monograph on the gaming industry. Therefore, it is gratifying when the passion for retro games and collecting them can somehow rehabilitate the now forgotten consoles of the past.


To be continued soon ...

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