27 years later - Atari Jaguar’s ONLY rpg gets INSANE upgrades

Towers II: Enhanced Stargazer Edition is here for the Atari Jaguar! The RPG was released for the Jaguar in late 1996 and rereleased in 2023 with double the ROM size and massive quality of life upgrades.
Check out the game ‪@SongbirdPro‬
songbird-productions.com/2023...
Video covering more differences:
• Towers II Standard vs....
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#Atari #atarijaguar #RPG #TowersII #retrogaming #gaming

[@KRcanondaisa]

INSANE that of all systems, an Atari Jaguar game got a re-release in 2023. incredible

[@rars0n]

I love the graphics of this game. I think it's a genuinely good Jaguar game, even the original version, so it's great to see these significant improvements see the light of day. I applaud them for the work and I'm tempted to buy a copy myself even though I don't own a Jaguar. Man, it sure would be nice if Analogue or some other company could make an FPGA Jaguar that supports original peripherals and carts that only costs about $200 or so...

[@SongbirdPro]

Thanks for the video! Good perspective on then vs. now. Glad you enjoyed Towers II Enhanced!

[@rars0n]

Holy crap, I can't believe you guys aren't at 100k subs yet. Criminally underrated channel!

[@hard4games]

Thanks for the kind words!

[@rustymixer2886]

​@hard4games awesome video, this game puts it over 32x avp, doom, towers 2 new, fight for life, super bike, nba jam, wolfenstien, iron soldier, ultra vortex, tempest 2000, etc

[@rustymixer2886]

@@hard4games fix the fixed steering rom checkered flag

[@SonicBoone56]

I always say this

[@raeesrichards6786]

They're at 96K! So soon...!

[@TeeroyHammermill]

The enemy wondering off after being attacked is not bad A.I or a glitch. It's actually them fleeing from being attacked just as you would. They'll no longer attack until you attack them again. It's actually very good A.I

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

From the developers themselves... All behavior is set by a group of conditions. Speed, moral, mood, etc.. Example, if you hit someone enough, they might run based on their moral, some won't run at all.

[@BuzzsawGaming]

Looks like a cool update on Towers II. Glad Songbird has supported the Jaguar so much.

[@SonicBoone56]

Amazing that the Jaguar is getting well-deserved love. These sorts of enhanced re-releases are a very welcome addition imo. Also love your shirt!

[@sambajane]

"guessing man's RPG" is the perfect description

[@Soulintent95]

Honestly this game is pretty cool. Its like tes arena if it was just dungeons. Love these older "3d" rpgs.

[@F0nkyNinja]

Wow, this is basically Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall for the Atari Jaguar. Very cool and impressive!

[@harrinieminen1512]

Nice you guys review this one! I think Towers 2 Enhanced deserve all attention what it gets. I have beaten this 2 times now. I think game goes really interesting after beat level 4. Great game!

[@SongbirdPro]

Thanks, appreciate the support!

[@TheHandheldGamer]

Great coverage and review of this game , looks interesting. I'm sure you'll reach your sub goals after this video.

[@robotortoise]

Talk about a passion project, wow! It's amazing they saved the source code and assets for so many years and wanted to re-release it so many years later. It's also kind of wild they didn't port it to PC and release on Steam - you'd think that'd be the next logical step! Maybe after this version simmers a bit?

[@williamgregg8062]

I’m pretty sure it was ported to the Atari ST

[@jh5124]

There is a PC port from way back then.

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

​@@williamgregg8062The Atari Falcon version was the original version, the Jaguar had an enhanced version put on it.

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

​@@jh5124Think if you had a P166 you got (over the Jag version) better wall textures, better frame rate (39 fps+), talking NPC's and more transparency effects

[@Synth_Dragon]

I'm impressed as hell about this. I never played the original but that amount of dedication is insane.

[@A31Chris]

Try BigPemu. You can play almost all original retail releases.

[@PuffDaMunkey]

It's nice seeing a Jaguar homebrew/re-release that doesn't look like 30 year old shareware or is literally a repackaged ST game but that price is way to steep.

[@jh5124]

Yes Songbird is a bit steep. You buy like one a year. Save up and buy a title. However this is a new title from a pro developer who has went on to do things like James Bond Nightfire on the GBA. Look it up if you haven't seen that one. But if the Jaguar sales bring enough interest, we never know.... Yeah price is steep but unfortunately the alternative is 90s shareware or ST rewraps if stuff like this isn't supported. Some of the re-wraps are around $70. And thrown together in a weeks time I'm told.

[@A31Chris]

Unfortunately this is the community's fault. PIKO Interactive had a from source port of Jim Power in the works for the Jag. For whatever reason they cancelled that apparently. The fans didn't like that. I posted a link to the video of the NES version that Piko had commission done and suggested that people hop in there in the comments and request that the Jaguar version continue or be restarted. No one did anything. 1 person's excuse for not doing anything- I don't have time to watch a video. Well genius you don't have to watch a video you just have to make a quick comment Rich Whitehouse want to port Duke Nuke'm and/or Castlevania Symphony of the Night to the Jag. Despire the generated interest. No-one does anything. Not a peep. Not a show of support for that or even a comment on his videos. An absolutely apathetic community. So the community brings this on itself with all the cheap freewear quality knockoffs from the 90s and ST rewraps so grifters can make a quick buck. So enjoy this release from actual professional developers. Probably be the last interesting thing we'll see until Xproger starts working on Openlara again.

[@atarijaguarsgarage8873]

Rich Whitehouse us hugely Supported by the community. Where did he say he wanted to port Duke Nukem or Castlevanua? The issue with his Emu is that its not hardware accurate enough for developing. Look what happened to the MK port, the dev had to restructure his engine to get it running on real hw.

[@atarijaguarsgarage8873]

​@@jh5124the ST ports require much more work than you could imagine. However, an original game needs 1 to 2 years time to develope. Anyway, your claim is ridiculous.

[@A31Chris]

@@atarijaguarsgarage8873 there ya go you weren't paying attention.

[@josephb4086]

The Jaguar could support games as good as the Saturn basically. It would be great to see newly developed games in different genres released for it that maximize its hardware/software potential. It could easily run fps games from the time, like heretic, duke 3d etc. The Jag could have been known for its great fps games but sadly it didn't happen.

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

There was an unreleased GBC version which had the following improvements.. Approximately 6 minutes of vocal conversations. A brand new FMV intro for the title screen. A co-op mode. Larger view screen. Approximately 15 levels to delve and explore through. Towers II: Plight of the Stargazer was completely finished, playtested, ESRB-rated, and ready for manufacturing before it was cancelled. Publisher Vatical Entertainment was having financial difficulties at the time and wasn’t able to secure distribution for the game. It was shelved soon after.

[@A31Chris]

On both versions you can leave stats open while swapping items in and out of inventory to see the stat difference. The computer controlled opponents run away during melee because they get SCARED. Cutting out half the actual game content because not enough texture variety would lead to a richer experience is kinda nuts.

[@joseavalos9988]

the old Jaguar needs more love!

[@arzak1]

Great review. Thanks as always!

[@danestegman155]

Good video! And comparison of the earlier version and the newer of Towers 2. I like the newer version, I only played it for a little while! I will go back to it again!

[@Spoon97]

The equivalent of McDonald's making a gameboy color game in 2023

[@custardpie69]

Its great when an old console gets another game

[@alexsantos3100]

Gameplay reminds me of Baroque on Sega Saturn

[@neoclassic09]

Reminds me of wizardry for NES. Would love to play this. Not a fan of health bars though

[@brojoe44]

hard4games bro u guys never age, you guys look great tbh

[@Freshbrood]

What? I want to play this.

[@zaxchannel2834]

The original was only 2MB? I'm pretty sure the SNES/Genesis capped out at 4MB, I initially assumed the Jaguar went beyond that

[@SongbirdPro]

Yep, all 1990s-era Jaguar games were 4MB or less. Nowadays with flash / bank-switching the limit is much higher, but in practice 4MB is still very common.

[@3dmarth]

Yeah, that's kind of ridiculous for a next-gen system to have smaller carts than some SNES/Genesis games. (Tales of Phantasia and Star Ocean on SNES were both 6MB, and Super Street Fighter II on Genesis was 5MB.) Meanwhile, Mario Kart 64 came out at the same time as Towers II, and it was 12MB!

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

The memory map of the Jaguar is wird. They have 16 MB address space ( max what the 68k can address ). Half of this is ROM and half is RAM. But to reduce cost only one RAM bank is occupied and only with half size chips. So 8 MB ROM, where 2 MB are taken by the built in ROM. Why did they not make this more flexible and allowed 8 MB ROM for the cartridge. Same count of address pins as for the implemented 6 MB. To save costs developers were urged to compress ROMS. So really a serial interface would have sufficed. A Huffman decoder in JRISC could slowly stream from ROM and then write to 64 bit RAM.

[@AMDRADEONRUBY]

Nice it's Tony time ! Just in time for my breakfast! Love your stuff and no one's can say first now it's annoying too. Tony for president

[@thatdutchguy89]

Looks freaky.... i like it.

[@Chibi1986]

Why does this remind me so much of Bloodwings: Pumpkinhead's Revenge?

[@stevew8513]

Honestly, I'm impressed that you lasted any length of time in the original Towers II. I bought the game back in the day and was almost instantly put off by the gameplay. Plus, the original game was ugly as hell. I like the idea of a new updated release, I can't justify buying it though since I never found any enjoyment in the first one.

[@unRealityFPV]

I swear KZbin has just decided to bury this channel and not let it gain traction. I honestly think if this channel was relaunched new it would have 100x the views at least.

[@BigMacOrange]

I'm hungry for bananas. 🍌

[@ChrisWY27]

Did the price double to $199 now?

[@ssj6bejeeta]

That's what it's showing for me too

[@SongbirdPro]

@@ssj6bejeeta No, Towers II Enhanced is $99.95. You are probably looking at the original 1996 release of Towers II, which is a much higher price.

[@videostash413]

thank you for not showing your chest hair

[@raymxslappedyall1891]

is your one avatar flea?

[@autumn_rain]

ONLY INSANE

[@rustymixer2886]

They made a fix steering checkered flag decade ago BUT somebody needs to re fix it. I have code but im not programmer.

[@Freshbrood]

Looks like Daggerfall

[@MarquisDeSang]

That game is 200$ with shipping, that is crazy.

[@gurujoe75]

remade it once again and now with doom Jag engine.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

Doom cannot slide the doors, nor can a candle light the wall next to it. And it is lower resolution.

[@gurujoe75]

@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt Three times a question mark appeared over my head. The Doom engine is significantly more advanced than that Jag game. Doom ran at 320x200, it was preferred back then because 320x240 was non-standard VGA resolution (ModeX ), flickery with some monitors. The Doom game is flooded with moving doors or elevators, platforms. The Jag game with the torch doesn't illuminate the wall behind it, it's just a baked texture of light. It's neither a secondary lightmap nor a pixel/vertex lighting.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

Doom could use letterbox to be playable on contemporary PCs. On Jaguar and SNES there was a mode available to reduce horizontal resolution to 160 which Doom used. Notice how Doom on Jaguar switches back to 320 on the first scanline of the status display. @@gurujoe75 We still look forward to a faster Doom on 3do. On both PSX and 3do doom draws single pixel wide lines as on PC. PSX has a fast CPU like a PC and can do this. PSX Quake did away with this and still doesn't morph too bad. So we really want some adaptive subdivision for the walls in the 3do. Then turn of the floor aggressively like on the SNES or draw the floor tiles before the walls. Don't draw tiles which would stick out of their sector. At least either cut their U or V. Just live with those glitches. FPS is more important.

[@jh5124]

@@gurujoe75 What? Doom for thhe Jag did not run at 320x200. This engine appears to use actual polygons based on the texture warping. That surprised me when someone pointed it out. The lighting are actually dynamic according to the devs. They're not baked in. it's true CRY lighting effects. At least in this remake.

[@gurujoe75]

@@jh5124 DOOM runs on JAG in 160x200px - visible game window. At 320x200 I'm talking about the 1:1px ratio fullscreen DOS PC version. DOOM engine is significantly more advanced than Towers II. Towers II is actually a simple strictly orthogonal Wolfenstein class engine with very small draw distance running optically at 10 fps. It has 100% no realtime vertex lighting and the torches are handled as a texture with a "light" effect. DOOM programmed TODAY for Jaguar could be done even MUCH better !

[@camrongraziano1254]

Sadly this isn't my kind of game...or even a platform I'd give the time of day. That said, I'm very impressed with all the upgrades and improvements. Like could you imagine someone going back and redoing Mario 64 for N64 or redoing Burning Rangers on Saturn to just make the original that much better, refined or tweaked with modern understanding of programing and tech. Like imagine how much better even PS1 or Dreamcast games could be with modern touch ups for original hardwear.

[@hard4games]

Fair enough, the Jag isn't for everyone. That said, Mario 64 has had a ton of updates and mods you should check out. New worlds, improved polygon counts, improved FPS, etc, etc! :)

[@camrongraziano1254]

@@hard4games The render 96 I believe it's called is wild. The graphics and ray tracing. But apparently doesn't run on WiiU or OG Xbox 😅 wich is all I got. But I'll look into it since that source code means the mods I want probably are out there somewhere. Maybe. 😁 Thank you for showing this off. I love you guys at Hard4Games.

[@yubl10]

This looks like a really cool and fun game, but unfortunately, it's for a now very rare and extremely expensive failed console.

[@jh5124]

You can play the original for free with BigPemu.

[@MarquisDeSang]

There will never be another true 64 bit console like the Jaguar.

[@fatfurie]

im sorry did that say 99 dollars... is there a non psychical copy lol

[@ssj6bejeeta]

It did but its 199 now if you check their site.

[@jh5124]

@@ssj6bejeeta No that is the original at $200. Not the new one.

[@chrisd6287]

100$?? Cmon now

[@Sthng1789]

W

[@MrFungi69]

wow the mic sounds much better in the first review.. lately can hear every click in your mouth