The Flare technology hardware designs seem unfortunately clever - the Jaguar was "Flare Two", while "Flare One" made it into a few arcade units and the unreleased Konix Multisystem. When the software that runs on that hardware tends to be rushed out for release, the design tends to be underused.
This lesson got relearned a few times by several different console manufacturers. The N64 was too elaborate; so was the PS3. Even the early commercial lifecycle of Amiga games consisted mostly of low quality Atari ST ports - and the Amiga design is much more "assistive" than "dependent" on its coprocessing, with the major features of the custom chips translating mainly to implementations of software functions in hardware, rather than a wholly different programming paradigm.
For a point of comparison, the final evolution of the ST line, the Falcon, had a programmable DSP. Released in the year previous to the Jaguar, this system proved to be capable of rendering Quake 2 levels, decades later. Would it have worked as a console? Probably not(a different cost structure applies to computers and this example was positioned at the high end), but a 1992 system that renders 1997 graphics somewhat competently is an impressive feat; this was the era when the transistor budgets became biased towards higher clockspeeds and the 18-month cycle of Moore's law was putting PC gaming through a "micro-generation" every two years.
Ahh the Falcon, it was cool. It may be able to run quake2 but only at very low resolution and choppy frame rate. Still a feat of engineering.
I owned the machine and the following cheap design decisions bothered me a lot.
The memory bus was 16 bits although the Atari TT had a 32 bit memory bus. The machine was severely limited by the low memory bandwidth to main memory. It was only possible to clear about 6 MB/s to main memory, not copy. As a reference 320*240, 8 bpp, 60 Hz is 4.6 MB/s.
The main CPU should have been clocked at 32 MHz and not 16 MHz, The TT used a 32 MHz CPU released years earlier.
There should have been a chunky 8 bpp graphics mode. It would have been real useful to do things like quake. Only the 16 bpp mode is chunky and very bandwidth intensive because of the above mentioned points.
The DSP was really cool though, and useful. The link between memory (or host CPU) and the DSP was pretty slow though. I don't remember if you could DMA directly from the DSP to main memory or you had to go via the CPU.
I think both Atari and Commodore killed their businesses by not going any decent HW development between 85 and 89. Then it was too late.
This was my favorite game on the Amiga back in the early '90s, even though it installed via only two floppy disks and had a one-way, time limited story line. The intro was one of the coolest of that period and I'd always watch it when starting the game, even though it always played the same content. I read this article and the dedication of the Jaguar fans must be admired. They went to all lengths to make this port happen, long after the console was considered "dead" by the general public.
Modern Vintage Gamer just did a video on the programming of Another World on the Amiga with heavy reference to Fabien's work. The Amiga's architecture really shaped the look of the game that was subsequently ported to many platforms (as Fabien documents as well).
Another World was a beautiful piece of a work, but (for me) a terrible game. It's the sort of thing people might complain about today - wonderful graphics, punishingly bad gameplay - except that we were mostly kids, and so remember it fondly and complain that things aren't like the old days. I suspect it gets additional bonus points for the (much more deserved) sentimental aura of the Amiga, but I've tried replaying it over the years on various other platforms and it all comes flooding back "oh yes, you die here" and "now, which exact pixel was it you had to jump to?"
This lesson got relearned a few times by several different console manufacturers. The N64 was too elaborate; so was the PS3. Even the early commercial lifecycle of Amiga games consisted mostly of low quality Atari ST ports - and the Amiga design is much more "assistive" than "dependent" on its coprocessing, with the major features of the custom chips translating mainly to implementations of software functions in hardware, rather than a wholly different programming paradigm.
For a point of comparison, the final evolution of the ST line, the Falcon, had a programmable DSP. Released in the year previous to the Jaguar, this system proved to be capable of rendering Quake 2 levels, decades later. Would it have worked as a console? Probably not(a different cost structure applies to computers and this example was positioned at the high end), but a 1992 system that renders 1997 graphics somewhat competently is an impressive feat; this was the era when the transistor budgets became biased towards higher clockspeeds and the 18-month cycle of Moore's law was putting PC gaming through a "micro-generation" every two years.