# Atari - Jaguar CD thumbnails

Hosted on the Virtual Jaguar site (https://jaguar.provenance-emu.com/thumbnails/) until
libretro-thumbnails has an "Atari - Jaguar CD" repository (libretro-thumbnails/libretro-thumbnails#141).
The Virtual Jaguar desktop app falls back to this mirror for disc titles that libretro-thumbnails
does not have, so upstream art wins as soon as it exists. URL layout is the same as
thumbnails.libretro.com: `<base>/Atari - Jaguar CD/<Named_Boxarts|Named_Titles|Named_Snaps>/<name>.png`
(spaces and punctuation URL-encoded). Not submitted to libretro-thumbnails.

Layout follows libretro-thumbnails: `Named_Boxarts/`, `Named_Titles/`, `Named_Snaps/`, one PNG per
game, named exactly after the game name in libretro-database
`metadat/redump/Atari - Jaguar CD.dat` (27 entries, 26 unique names; "Vid Grid (USA)" appears twice
in the dat and so yields one file). The characters `&*/:\`<>?\|"` would be replaced with `_`; none of
the 23 generated names contain any.

## Counts (dat has 26 unique names)

| Folder | Files |
| --- | --- |
| Named_Boxarts | 20 |
| Named_Titles | 23 |
| Named_Snaps | 19 |

`SOURCES.tsv` has one row per dat name: TGDB game id, TGDB title, image URL, and which emulator frame
was used for the title and snap.

## Boxart (TheGamesDB)

- Mapping came from Provenance's offline TGDB dump (`thegamesdb.sqlite`, platform 29 "Atari Jaguar CD"),
  not from scraping. Matching was by normalized title (HTML-unescaped, case/punctuation/spacing
  ignored) and checked by eye against each row.
- Image: `https://cdn.thegamesdb.net/images/original/boxart/front/<id>-1.jpg` (front cover), fetched
  sequentially with a delay, converted to PNG with `sips`. Width over 512 px was scaled to 512 px wide;
  smaller sources (Frog Feast, Robinson's Requiem, Vid Grid) are kept as-is. Metadata stripped,
  recompressed with ImageMagick.
- TGDB has a single entry per title, so regional/reissue dat entries share one cover:
  both Blue Lightning entries (TGDB region_id 2; ids are raw, the dump has no region table, so
  region mismatches against the Redump names could not be checked), both World Tour Racing, both Vid Grid, and the two
  Songbird reissues (Battle Morph, Iron Soldier 2) use the generic title's cover; whether TGDB's
  artwork matches the reissue was not verified.
- TGDB title quirks accepted: "Battlemorph", "Brain Dead 13", "Frog Feast CD", "Robinson's Requiem CD",
  "Philia the sequal to Elansar" (not the separate "Elansar" entry). "Myst [Demo]" was not used for Myst.
- Missing (no TGDB platform-29 entry): Beebris, Ocean Depths, Simone, Demolition Man & Commander Blood,
  Varuna's Forces Disc 1 and Disc 2. No guess was made from near matches.
- Copyright: box art is third-party publisher artwork hosted by TGDB; libretro-thumbnails already hosts
  scans of this kind ("Substitutions" / Credits in its README), but the maintainer should decide.

## Titles and snaps (generated with this emulator)

- Core: libretro/release/v3.8.1 @ 550a695, built with TEST_EXPORTS=1 on the LAN build host, default
  core options (HLE CD boot, no shaders, no filtering, no enhancements, 1x).
- Tool: `test/tools/hires_shot` (shared harness), headless, frame dumps every 300 frames up to 12000
  (frame dumps every 200 up to 7000 for the scripted-input pass). Contact sheets were reviewed by eye
  and one frame picked per image.
- Disc images identified by CRC32 of the first track against the dat (all 23 matched). The Beebris-based
  homebrew discs (Ants, Fast Food 64, Frogz 64, Klax, Saucer Wars) share Beebris's track 1 and were
  skipped: not in the dat. Duplicates by content (Blue Lightning, Vid Grid, World Tour Racing) have
  identical frames, so those pairs are byte-identical images.
- Input-driven pass (`option`/`a` pressed every 400 frames from frame 900): needed for Frog Feast,
  Hover Strike, Alice's Mom's Rescue, Philia (English menu), Myst. Everything else is the no-input run.
- Size: native framebuffer, unscaled (libretro-thumbnails: 512 px wide or narrower is added as-is):
  326x240 for most discs, 326x224 Alice's Mom's Rescue, 326x241 Frog Feast, 260x240 Iron Soldier 2 and
  Myst, 186x240 for the World Tour Racing snaps. The core reports a 4:3 display aspect, so the narrow
  modes appear horizontally stretched in the game itself; thumbnails are not aspect-corrected.
- Not generated (disc image not available on the host): Demolition Man & Commander Blood, Varuna's
  Forces Disc 1 and 2.
- Titles exist for all 23 discs that were on the host; all 23 booted.
- No snap for Beebris, Ocean Depths, Philia, Simone: these only ever show a static start screen and the
  scripted presses did not get past it, so a snap would duplicate the title.
- Snap quality caveats: several discs are FMV/cutscene heavy and the snap is an intro/attract/briefing
  frame rather than gameplay: Baldies (clay intro), Highlander, Space Ace, Dragon's Lair, BrainDead 13,
  Vid Grid (intro clip), Robinson's Requiem, Myst (starfield intro), Hover Strike (mission briefing).
  Real gameplay snaps: Battle Morph, Blue Lightning, Frog Feast, Alice's Mom's Rescue, Iron Soldier 2,
  Primal Rage, World Tour Racing. Better gameplay snaps for the rest would need a human at the pad.
- Headless caveat from the repo docs applies: confirm in RetroArch if exact presentation matters.

## Upstream status (checked 2026-10-13, read-only)

- No `Atari_-_Jaguar_CD` repo exists, and libretro-thumbnails has no submodule for it.
- libretro-thumbnails issue #141 "Missing repository" (opened 2024-07) is still open; a maintainer noted
  there is no database for the system.
- libretro-database ships `metadat/redump/Atari - Jaguar CD.dat` but no `rdb/Atari - Jaguar CD.rdb`, so
  RetroArch cannot yet scan Jaguar CD discs into a matching playlist; the thumbnail repo name only
  matters once that rdb exists.