Atari Jaguar #1: Flip Out!

Every time I play Jaguar I get a little depressed, and it's not really because the games are so bad. I remember when this thing came out I thought it might actually save Atari. Even in the early 90s I was a nostalgia junkie who dreamed of all those great old Atari games. When the Jag hit the stores I couldn't be more excited. Sadly nobody wanted to make games for it. I don't know if the thing was just hard to build for or if there was too much competition, but Atari would take just about anything they could get. This led to a slew of extremely odd games that could only have existed on Jaguar. I wish I could say this was because of the high res graphics, but in reality it was because no other home console would take games so weird and difficult to play.

Flip Out is a prime example. It is so weird that I am not even sure how to explain it. On simplest terms it is a puzzle game, but it really isn't about solving puzzles. See you got all these tiles flipping around and you gotta get them in the right places to match the colors. You do this by getting the tiles to switch places by pushing a button. The trick is to always keep one in the air. It is sort of like juggling in that respect. Yes that's it, this game is like juggling.

Of course if it was only a juggling simulator it would only be bad and not Jaguar bad. What gives this game that Jaguar feel more than anything is the setting. Your main levels take place on the Cheese Planet. It is inhabited by little aliens who mostly just get in the way. In between these levels you get to rearrange other things like Easter Island heads and Mt. Rushmore. Try not to get Jefferson and Washington's eyes mixed up! The whole game is set up like a contest, as if these aliens have nothing better to do than to get squished by rotating tiles. They should really be doing some cheese related activities. Anyway, you do this for quite a few levels and then take on King Fluffy. Does this all sound fun to you?

Actually the strangest thing is that this game really isn't too bad. It is certainly unique and challenging. It just seems to be going too far out of its way to make people not like it. Sometimes I wonder if there was a conspiracy against Atari which made everybody purposely ruin their games. A simple color matching action puzzler would've been a refreshing entry into the Jaguar library. It would've been a nice compliment to the excellent Zoop. Unfortunately, it is a confusing game where you are a space juggler on Cheese Planet trying to avoid a bunch of annoying space bugs who keep getting squished. How could this game not be a metaphor for Jaguar's failure? Yep, I think I'll go back to being sad again. I've thought about this game too long.