Jaguar CD-ROM drive review

Xav (Mark Crutch)

A flash in the pan?

Xav sees strange swirling patterns emanating from his toilet - on this occasion he can blame it on the Jaguar CD-ROM drive...
The first problem facing anyone who wants to buy a Jag CD unit is finding one. Although they were released last year, they have been spectacularly hard to find. Nevertheless, it is possible to track them down if you try hard enough - and if you're really lucky you might pick up a bargain (some stores have been dumping stock for as little as Ł30 - Ed)
The box sports the usual black and red Jaguar livery, containing the CD unit itself, four free CDs, manuals, and a wall wart style power supply. Yes, you will need a second power socket to use the Jag CD. Before you ask, you can't daisy chain the Jag and CD unit together - trust me, I've tried. On removing the intricate polystyrene sculptures you could be forgiven for thinking you've inadvertently bought some Star Trek merchandise - although as soon as it's fitted to the Jaguar and the lid is flipped open, you'll discover the combination bears more than a passing resemblance to a toilet!
The drive itself plugs into the Jaguar cartridge socket, with a through port for cartridge games - although for some reason my copy of "Fight For Life" will not work with the CD unit in place. Because of the size of the drive and the position of the port, the combined unit can easily overbalance when pushing a cartridge home, although it doesn't take long to get into the habit of supporting it with your other hand. The build quality of the lid and hinge arrangement seems a little on the flimsy side, although with the lid closed everything is sturdy enough. Unfortunately the lip of the drive makes it difficult to press the power button on the Jag with your foot (I'm can't be the only person who does this?), and it is a bit awkward for left handers to operate the door open button.

Let the games begin

First up is Blue Lightning,
a port of an old Lynx game - and it shows .
It is essentially a flight simulator along the lines of Afterburner on the ST, and I'm sorry to say the graphics owe a lot to the same era.
The game begins well, with a number of highly polished movies and sound effects, but unfortunately the game itself appears to be a poorly converted 16 bit program.
Despite its looks, the game still plays quite well. This is straight from the "if it moves, shoot it" stable of game design so don't expect to nip out afterwards and steal a real Harrier jump jet!

In ViD Grid video tiles are rearranged to complete each level
The next CD, Vid Grid, will be familiar to everyone who has played sliding tile puzzles.
In this case the puzzle takes the form of a rock video which must be completed before the video ends. The videos feature artists such as Guns'N'Roses, Ozzy Osbourne and Peter Gabriel (and yes, the video is "Sledgehammer").
Vid Grid starts easily enough, simply rearrange nine tiles into the correct order.
To make matters even easier tiles can be picked up and dropped into any position. ,br> As the game progresses the nine tiles are increased to 16, 25 and ultimately 36 and the luxury of picking up tiles is taken away.
To further frustrate your best efforts the entire image may be flipped upside down and individual tiles flipped left to right - imagine this when trying to get somebody's eye in the correct place. Finally, these effects may be combined.,br> Vid Grid is a fun game which shows off the capabilities of the CD unit nicely. The videos can appear a little grainy at times, but this doesn't detract from the gameplay. The only complaint which can be levelled at this game is the videos soon become boring - so if you're not into rock music forget it!

The next CD is a playable level of Myst, a best seller on the Mac and PC platforms.
In this case the word "playable" is synonymous with "frustrating." The play area is far too small, and probably the best use for this one is its slideshow demo.

The final CD is the soundtrack to Tempest 2000 - famous for its heavy techno music. This would usually be enough to put me off but for some inexplicable reason it has found a permanent home in my collection and can be used to show off the Virtual Light Machine.
Let there be light!

Powering up the Jag with an audio CD in the drive switches into audio playback mode. This includes an on-screen control panel designed loosely around the buttons on a standard CD player. The options include play, pause, skip tracks, fast forward and rewind and can all be selected using standard joypad buttons.
Pressing the joypad [OPTION] button switches control to the more advanced aspects of the CD player. From here the playing order can be randomised, programmed with selections (up to 99 steps), individual tracks repeated and the volume adjusted. Sound comes out of the Jaguar, not the CD unit, so you'll need a separate lead to tap off the audio outputs for optimum quality.
On starting a CD, the Virtual Light Machine (VLM) kicks in. The VLM is a "light synthesiser," programmed by Jeff Minter, which "listens" to your CD, and creates swirling patterns of colour based on the music. Jeff has been experimenting with light synths most of his programming career and the results are the culmination of many years research and certainly make the efforts of some other consoles look poor.
There are 81 different programs to choose from although many seem to prefer music with a degree of dynamic variation such as Pink Floyd - one of Jeff's favourites. A random mode changes the program every twenty seconds but this option can't be stored as the default and doesn't seem to be entirely random! Despite these minor niggles I have spent many hours "watching" my favourite music - the effects are incredibly hypnotic. A large ratio of screen to room size gives the best effect so if you're looking for an excuse to buy a large projection screen TV you've got it.

Conclusion

As an audio CD player which also plays games, the Jag CD is good value, especially considering the clearout prices. It's worth buying one just for the VLM - the screenshots don't do it justice. As a games platform the Jag CD is disappointing - the bundled software and difficulty obtaining Jag games from high street vendors just two obvious reasons.