WTF! -- Sealed copy of Battlesphere Gold for Atari Jaguar!

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PC Engine Fan X!
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WTF! -- Sealed copy of Battlesphere Gold for Atari Jaguar!

Post by PC Engine Fan X! »

Here's a brand new sealed copy of Battlesphere Gold for the Atari Jaguar on eBay right now. The current bid is at $535.00 USD. The seller is captainawesome aka Doug Engel.

Here's the eBay auction for the brand new sealed Battlesphere Gold game: http://cgi.ebay.com/Atari-Jaguar-Rare-B ... dZViewItem

Doug was one of the four programmers (of 4-Play/Scatological fame) who worked on Battlesphere besides Scott Le Grand and his wife Stephanie. The very first public showing of Battlesphere was at the World of Atari '98 Expo held in August of 1998 in Las Vegas. It would not be until February of 2000 that the first copies of Battlesphere would go on sale through Scatological themselves.

-- Updated 5-12-06 -----------

I participated in the 1st Battlesphere competition at the WoA '98 Expo only to get my ass handed to me. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. ^_~

Battlesphere is an awesome game that really shows off what a small group of coders can do if given enough time to properly do a game (even if it's for a dead gaming platform such as the Atari Jaguar). Of course, given four or five years of "off and on" programming development time...that particular game would be best it can be for whatever platform it runs on. There was talk about Scatalogical possibly releasing Battlesphere for the DC platform but that never came to be.
---------------------------------

The rare Duranik produced Atari Jag shmup demo of "Native" was shown on the very last day of the World of Atari '98 Expo. I was invited to try it out. Awesome shmup experience that was not to be missed! I played it on a special Atari Jaguar debugging console (that was different from a standard Atari Jaguar console). ^_~

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~
Last edited by PC Engine Fan X! on Fri May 12, 2006 8:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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SAM
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Re: WTF! -- Sealed copy of Battlesphere Gold for Atari Jagua

Post by SAM »

PC Engine Fan X! wrote:Here's a brand new sealed copy of Battlesphere Gold for the Atari Jaguar on eBay right now. The current bid is at $535.00 USD. The seller is captainawesome aka Doug Engel.
$535.00 USD :shock:
Real costly for a console game. People think we are crazy buying PCB kits... But well...
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benj
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Post by benj »

Scatological? I was about to post something like 'The game looks like shit', but I'm pretty sure that all the stupid jokes imaginable have already been made. Are they still in Business?
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Post by jp »

Battle Sphere Gold cost like... $100-200 upon release if I recall correctly. Thankfully I bought it off their site at the time as a friend of mine and I were really excited about it.


And yes, Battle Sphere is a fucking awesome game. Easily a reason to own a Jaguar. Too bad people hoard copies of it so they can play 16 player matches at conventions. :evil:
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Ceph
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Post by Ceph »

I read that the Battlesphere cart uses EPROMs, don't EPROMs erase themselves after 10-20 years? Hopefully someone has dumped the rom image.
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Post by Arznei »

As interesting as that is, he must have one hell of a time trying to sell it.
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Post by Ceph »

I did some research. The seller "captainawesome" is actually Douglas Engel, one of the three autors of the game. And there is some speculation that the rareness of BattleSphere is artificially created to jack up prices (or should I say, Jag up), that it isn't really sold out and that more copies could be made (or actually are still being made). Which would lead to the simple conclusion that paying $500+ for BattleSphere is moronic.
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Post by benj »

Ceph wrote:I did some research. The seller "captainawesome" is actually Douglas Engel, one of the three autors of the game.
Yeah, I did some research too. I read the first line of the first post.
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Post by Ceph »

LOL, I meant the not being sold out part (I didn't re-read my post before pressing submit, sorry). Engel has apparently been auctioning off single copies for years.
Last edited by Ceph on Sat May 13, 2006 12:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by benj »

Apparently he does it to raise money to fight diabetes, so I guess it's a good thing.

@ PCEFX!: You seem to be knowledgable when it comes to the Jaguar, so please tell me: What exactly is a ScatBox? Sounds rather disturbing.
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Post by Ceph »

Scatbox is a Jaguar network adapter used to connect multiple Jaguars for games like BattleSphere which also features RGB/S-Video and stereo out.

Not sure why it has RGB-out unless the box somehow obstructs the consoles video-out; I have an RGB-Scart cable which can be connected directly to the Jaguar
Last edited by Ceph on Sat May 13, 2006 1:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Scatbox was Scatological's answer to shortage of Catboxes...

Post by PC Engine Fan X! »

The Scatbox was Scatological's answer to the the shortage of ICD's original Catbox device that allows up to 32 Jaguar consoles to linked up (depending on the Jag game that supports such Catbox device which would be only three Jag games: Air Cars, Doom, & of course, Battlesphere). Before the Scatbox was produced, the original Catbox was in scare supply and fetched some insane prices on eBay. Since Scatological wanted more people to enjoy the merits of multi-player Battlesphere, hence the need to make a device similar to the original Catbox and the Scatbox was born. ^_~

Doug Engel touted the merits of the Scatbox and even sold them himself in two different flavors: standard black colored Jag cartridge case enclosed Scatbox and the Limited Edition version with crystal clear Jaguar cartridge case showing the cool electronics + PCB inner workings of the Scatbox. The standard Scatbox was priced at $99.99 USD and the LE Scatbox was priced at $129.99. The Scatbox appears from time to time on eBay.

The Scatbox had all the usual outputs of the original Catbox did:

RCA Composite Video Output

S-Video Output

9-DB pinout for RGB output (still requires signal to amplified to get brighter picture...by going with Japanese RGB or Scart RGB cable directly hooked up to the Jag's A/V output slot, one gets a super crystal clear RGB perfect signal when hooked up to an XRGB upscan convertor device...) ^_~

RS-232 Output

DSP Output for use with Jaguar modem accessory or Jag Link device (Atari did make a few prototype Jag modems for use with testing out the 2-player on-line functionality of Ultra Vortek fighting game...the only catch was that each person had to have a copy of Ultra Vortek, a Jag console & a Jag modem to be able to play head-to-head...Ultra Vortek was the only Jag game to have built-in support for the Jag modem device)

Built-in Connections for linking up other Scatboxes or Catboxes for multi-player Jaguar gaming sessions

Stereo Left & Right Outputs

and lastly,

Stereo Heaphone Jack Output for private listening of BGM tunes & in game sound effects via cartridge or Jag CD-Rom formats

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~
Last edited by PC Engine Fan X! on Sat May 13, 2006 1:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Ceph »

And why does it feature RGB?
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RGB on Catbox & Scatbox is there for completeness...

Post by PC Engine Fan X! »

Both the original Catbox and Scatbox feature RGB output via 9-DB pinout for use with some analog RGB monitors but the picture was considered to dark too be able to play the Jaguar game even if the brightness and/or contrast was turned up to the max.

The best way to get pure RGB from a Jaguar console is to get a custom-made cable, either a Japanese RGB cable or a European Scart cable and with the proper connection interface (one really doesn't need such a Catbox or even a Scatbox for RGB purposes as the RGB signal will be diminished by having to go through additional circuity until it reaches the DB-9 pinout of either a Catbox or Scatbox device -- hence the dark output picture when using such Jaguar networking devices), you won't be disspointed with how much superior the overall graphical presentation of Jaguar's games over the standard RCA composite video or S-Video outputs. You'll be in gamer's heaven with the RGB pureness that it provides. ^_~

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~
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Post by SAM »

jp wrote:And yes, Battle Sphere is a fucking awesome game. Easily a reason to own a Jaguar. Too bad people hoard copies of it so they can play 16 player matches at conventions. :evil:
16 player muli-players game?!?! Sound fun to me. The jaguar could do that? Start to understands for the insane price. :o

But wait, where to find 15 others crazy people who own a copy to play with you?!?! :?
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Post by jp »

SAM wrote:
jp wrote:And yes, Battle Sphere is a fucking awesome game. Easily a reason to own a Jaguar. Too bad people hoard copies of it so they can play 16 player matches at conventions. :evil:

But wait, where to find 15 others crazy people who own a copy to play with you?!?! :?

EXACTLY!!!!!!!


Actually, I believe the game went up to 32 players if I recall correctly. My friend and I each got a copy when it came out because, well, we had been hyped for it since it was announced. We both had multitaps and we had the link-up stuff. We actually did get to play 8 player matches, it was fucking crazy awesome!

But here's the problem:
A lot of people hoarded copies so they could take... 8 copies with them to Atari conventions, link up those copies, and experience 32 player games. Thats why its in such high demand, because of those assholes hoarding it!

I love Battle Sphere. I pray for the day I get to enjoy a 16-32 player match. Its a really fun game and it really makes the Jaguar shine. Sadly, I've since lost contact with my friend who bought a copy as well, so for all I know he sold it or something.

Edit: Up to 16 ships could play. One person piloted and one person aimed. At least I think thats how it went down. Its been a decade or so...
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Post by SAM »

jp wrote:But here's the problem:
A lot of people hoarded copies so they could take... 8 copies with them to Atari conventions, link up those copies, and experience 32 player games. Thats why its in such high demand, because of those assholes hoarding it!
What there are carzy^2 people buying those games in lot of 8?!?! :shock:

*- ^2 means in the power of 2, i.e. crazy x crazy.

Well that would cost... (Sorry my math is bad.)
$525 + $525 = $1,050
$1,050 + $525 = $1,575
....
....
....
$3,675 + $525 = $4,200 :shock: :shock:

These haven't include the cost of the multitaps and Jaguar consoles...

**********************

Well, I have to ammit that I am the crazy cat who own two DCs, two Twinsticks controlers & two copies of Virtual On VOOT. But that cann't compair to this. :lol:
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Post by jp »

I believe most of those people bought the game upon release. So they spent... $800 or so (since I'm pretty sure Battle Sphere Gold was $100 upon release).


And I think Battle Sphere Gold is only going for $500+ right now because its still sealed. An open copy would probably be more in the $350-400 range.
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Post by Ceph »

jp wrote:I believe most of those people bought the game upon release. So they spent... $800 or so (since I'm pretty sure Battle Sphere Gold was $100 upon release).


And I think Battle Sphere Gold is only going for $500+ right now because its still sealed. An open copy would probably be more in the $350-400 range.
And it would go for much less if not for the artificial rareness. :x
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Post by jp »

Ceph wrote:
jp wrote:I believe most of those people bought the game upon release. So they spent... $800 or so (since I'm pretty sure Battle Sphere Gold was $100 upon release).


And I think Battle Sphere Gold is only going for $500+ right now because its still sealed. An open copy would probably be more in the $350-400 range.
And it would go for much less if not for the artificial rareness. :x

This is very true. And this is why I hate most Atari collectors. If more people could have experienced Battle Sphere the Jaguar would have at least a LITTLE bit more respect.
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