The Atari Jaguar was such a disaster
Back in the early 90's when the console wars were in full swing there were about as many players in the market as we will likely ever see at one time. Sega, Nintendo, 3do, and even NEC had pretty great systems already out and well, Atari thought this was a good time to re-emerge. Atari had been out of the game for many years at this point as they were still reeling from the massive crash that many people believe that Atari actually created by allowing the release of so many horrible games in the early 80's.
The Jaguar was meant to be Atari's big boost back to the top..... and it was anything but
I will say this: They did a great job with the hype leading up to its release date. Virtually everyone i knew wanted one and this was Atari's first failure of many to come. Most of us couldn't actually get one because Atari had an accidental limited initial launch (they would later claim this was intentional) because they couldn't produce them fast enough due to the internal workings being so complicated to produce. This was just one of the many things they did terribly wrong.
The hardware inside the actual box actually WAS superior to other consoles that existed at the time but Atari failed to produce developer tools and this made it very difficult to make any games for the damn thing. Combine this with the fact that Atari already had a terrible reputation for mistreating third-party developers and well, the industry hadn't forgotten even though it had been nearly a decade. The end result of all this is that the doomed system ended up with a total library of a mere 56 games - with most of them getting horrible reviews.
The above game, called Cybermorph, was their big launch title and it was just terrible. Here Atari had been talking about how their game system has 64-bit processing power compared to SNES and Genesis 16-bits and the console was $100 more expensive than either and THIS was the end result? Just awful.
Unfortunately most of the games did not get any better and there are only 2 that I can recall that received any sort of real praise. This was Aliens vs. Predator and Rayman - which originally was ONLY on the Jaguar but by the time it was released in 1995 the Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation were now on the market and literally no one was even talking about the Jaguar anymore.
Atari's last hurrah of advertising came around Christmas of 1995 where they had a campaign of half truths including that the Jaguar was the "only 64-bit game system on the market"
The problem with this was that the Jaguar had two 32-bit processors according to most people who reviewed it, and you can't simply add up the bits contained in each processor. If that was the case then the Sega Saturn was a 112-bt machine.
For me anyway, the lackluster performance of the Jaguar kind of killed my faith in "bits" as a measure of gaming power. The Jaguar was really just so awful, that if it was a 64 bit machine and the SNES and Genesis were only 16-bit machines (with better looking games) then what good is a bit? This of course wasn't the hardware's fault and it is pretty universally agreed that the Jaguar never really utilized its full potential because it was so buggy and the company just had terrible management and execution. Furthering their difficulties was that shortly after the release of the Jaguar the industry stopped using cartridges as the far superior Saturn and Playstation were both CD-based game machines.
I for whatever reason stood by Atari even after the release of the Saturn because it was something absurd like $500 when it was first released. I held on to hope that they would recover and discover how to use what actually was really good technology. However, just like giving a space-shuttle to a group of kids, it was never going to be used properly and myself and the mere 250,000 other people (all the units ever sold) ended up with disappointment to the bitter end.
Atari soon left the console market altogether after suffering near company-ending losses on this one project. Before fizzling out they had the audacity to shank their customers one last time with an unnecessary add on called the Jaguar-CD and only 12 games were ever made for it.
I wish I could say that Atari would be missed but after all the deception that I was spoon-fed as a teenager who didn't have very much money, i don't think i can ever forgive them.
Tempest 2000 was okay. I don't get the massive controller. They could have added a trackball, dial, and joystick to that thing it's so big. Instead they went with the office telephone pad.
that's a funny way of putting that but yes, i agree with you :)
Of all the ill-fated consoles of the 90's, the Jaguar was certainly one of the biggest disasters. While Atari correctly sensed the emergence of 3D graphics, the system was woefully underpowered in this regard. The Jaguar received little third-party support, and most of Atari's games were second-rate versions of arcade hits like Virtua Racing and Mortal Kombat. Although the Jaguar controller included a numeric keypad, it inexplicably had only three regular buttons. This despite the fact that the Super Nintendo had made six buttons the new standard the year before. The Jaguar never gained much of a market share, and by the time Atari released a CD attachment and six-button controller, the system had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.
One of the more interesting aspects of the Jaguar is Atari's claim that it was the first 64-bit console, as loudly proclaimed by their "do the math" marketing campaign. In the early 90's, the "bit" metric was mainly based on the CPU of the machine. Although certain components within the Jaguar could process 64 bits at a time, the CPU (central processing unit) was in fact 32-bit. This led to a major controversy, with many in the industry labeling Atari's marketing tactics as deceptive. The Jaguar's modest library of games did little to back up the 64-bit claim. Most of its 3D games were slow and clunky, and its 2D games, although sharp and colorful, often lacked the playability of similar titles for the Genesis or SNES. It's not easy to collect all the games for the Jaguar, but it's not too difficult to collect the best titles. Prices of games vary greatly, based on rarity and popularity. The base system is easy to acquire and relatively inexpensive. The CD attachment is somewhat rare, and its scant library of games makes it a questionable investment.
the system had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.
I've never heard this expression before, i love it!
That's too much trouble for a company that tried to do good to the gaming world, it is almost as if they planned to messup. Maybe in the near future you may find it in your heart somewhere to forgive them,lol.
Interesting post. A good learn.
But it looks so cool! Heh.
Cartridge talk once again gets me thinking of RBI Baseball 93 and Street Fighter on Sega Genesis.
I think the Genesis was the last system where i was truly dedicated to the games. I rarely gave up on a game because i had so little income and therefore couldn't just go get more games. I remember both of those games you mentioned very well. Although the SNES version of SF2 was much better.
Ha. That was the debate!
My best friend had the SNES.
Man that controller is something, how often would you even use a built-in num pad like that?
some games came with "overlays" but so few of them had that, the entire thing was just dumb. Poor planning. Maybe make certain that you need a number pad before you build one in. I would imagine that the Jaguar is taught in electrical engineering classes on how to NOT do a project.
haha yeah I could imagine, and it is good fun to break down things that are iconic for all the wrong reasons
Hiii... Gooddream
Really Great Post.
I used to play Rayman on that platform
Great...
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STOPI am curious to see how this console fairs https://atarivcs.com
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I wanted one of these so bad! I was always looking in to the the "Alt Consoles" as a youth. I wanted them all!