 |
|
Profile Atarian: Kevin Manne |
Well, where to begin? Atari has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember.
Growing up in the rinky-dink town of Darien, NY leaves much to be desired as far as things to do for kids, so I remember playing my dad's Atari 2600 a ton. My brother and his friends all had
games we would trade and we thought they were the best (and they were!). I always remember playing
RealSports Baseball with a chewed up (literally - we were kids and they were chewy) 2600 joysticks. One was missing the rubber joystick totally! Ahh, those were the days. Enter the Jaguar
I can remember taking a very early EGM article about the "64-bit Jaguar" into shop class one day and showing this kid who'd just gotten a Sega CD and was constantly bragging about it. He could not be convinced that a 64-Bit system was even possible - it was mind boggling. But we all know the mighty Jaguar roared to life, and while I was not an early adopter (didn't have $250 at that point in my life), a different kid from school did get one. Luckily once the Saturn came out and he got one of those (can you say SPOILED?) he no longer had any interest in his Jaguar with
AvP, Cybermorph and Kasumi Ninja. I ended up getting the system off of him in a trade and I was instantly hooked.
Surprisingly, though, I did not take to AvP but rather Kasumi
Ninja. Laugh as you may, but I played that game so much it wasn't funny. Ok you can stop laughing now :-)
Jaguar Interactive
It was about that time that I was getting more and more into the 'net, and I began searching around for info on new Jaguar games coming down the pipe. My searches lead me to the good old Redsun Jaguar pages hosted by Christian Svenson which included a
message board called "Jaguar Interactive." Back then all I had was a 2400 baud connection using Lynx (not the Atari Lynx :-), so all I got was Text. But that's all I needed...JI was a great place to communicate with fellow Jaguar owners and continues to be thanks to Magicalfox and now AGH for hosting the site after Sven moved on to bigger and better things at NGO.
A Massive Collection
Since those early days of Jaguar gaming I've come to be quite the collector of the system, and a general Jagu-holic. I've amassed an insane amount of items for and relating to the system including all the released games (which has increased lately thanks to Songbird Productions!), a few Prototype games, some Flash Carts, various
brochures and literature relating to it and even a Store Display Kiosk (my prized Jaguar centerpiece). I must say, though, that there are other Jaguar collectors just as insane as I (if not a bit more), namely Scott Walters, Ted Rusniak, Micah Rowe and Gary DuVall. I'm sure there are others but these are four guys that I communicate with regularly and share my obsession with. It's always good to know you're not alone :-)
Keep It Up!
It's been a great thing to see the continued support for the Jaguar over the years, and I truly hope it
continues. There always seems to be more new underground projects popping up like BadCoder,
Arkanna by StormWorks, Gorf 2K and Gorf Pluz by KrunchFORCE, and I'm sure Carl Forhan has some more tricks up his
sleeve before the cat spends its 9th life. A diehard Jag fan such as myself can only hope.
Thanks for reading! Take care all...