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Development

 

The Jaguar was developed by the members of Flare Technology, a company formed by Martin Brennan and John Mathieson. The team had claimed that they could not only make a console superior to the Sega Genesis or the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, but they could also be cost-effective.

 

Impressed by their work on the Konix Multisystem, Atari persuaded them to close Flare and form a new company called Flare II, with Atari providing the funding. Flare II initially set to work designing two consoles for Atari Corp. One was a 32-bit architecture (codenamed "Panther"), and the other was a 64-bit system (codenamed "Jaguar"); however, work on the Jaguar design progressed faster than expected, so Atari Corp. canceled the Panther project to focus on the more promising Jaguar.

 

Reception

 

The Jaguar was introduced in 1993 at a price of $249.99, under a $500 million manufacturing deal with IBM. The system was initially marketed only in the New York City and the San Francisco Bay areas, under the slogan "Do the Math", claiming superiority over competing 16-bit and 32-bit systems. A US-wide release followed in early 1994.

 

The Atari Jaguar struggled to attain a substantial user base. In 1993, Atari reported that they had shipped 17,000 units as part of the system's initial test market. By the end of 1994, Atari reported that they had sold approximately 100,000 systems and had reduced the price to improve the competitive nature of the console. By the end of 1995, Sony and Sega had entered the marketplace with competing consoles and Atari's sales declined rapidly. In their 1995 annual report, they noted:

 

"Jaguar sales were substantially below Atari's expectations, and Atari's business and financial results were materially adversely affected in 1995 as Atari continued to invest heavily in Jaguar game development, entered into arrangements to publish certain licensed titles and reduced the retail price for its Jaguar console unit. Atari attributes the poor performance of Jaguar to a number of factors including (i) extensive delays in development of software for the Jaguar which resulted in reduced orders due to consumer concern as to when titles for the platform would be released and how many titles would ultimately be available, and (ii) the introduction of competing products by Sega and Sony in May 1995 and September 1995, respectively."

 

Jaguar did earn praise with titles such as Tempest 2000, Doom, and Wolfenstein 3D. The most successful title during the Jaguar's first year was Alien vs. Predator. Both it and Tempest 2000 were named among the system's defining titles by GamePro in 2007. With such a small library of games to challenge the incumbent 16-bit game consoles, Jaguar's appeal never grew beyond a small gaming audience.

 

In 2006 IGN editor Craig Harris rated the Jaguar controller as the worst ever, criticizing the complexity of the "phone keypad" and the VGA-style D-subminiatureconnector. A version that has six action buttons, the Pro Controller, is suggested for certain games.

 

Lack of titles was attributable to two main factors: the Jaguar's questionable long-term prospects among third-party game-publishers and the problematic nature of developing games for the Jaguar. Atari had one opportunity to convince third-party developers, vital for the diversity of Jaguar's game library, with a solid retail-performance, but as things played out, post-holiday sales figures questioned the viability of Atari's business; Atari failed to attract many third-party developers already committed to other game platforms. In addition, the Jaguar's underlying hardware was crippled by a flaw in the CPU's memory controller, which prevented code execution out of system RAM. Less severe, but still annoying defects included a buggy UART. The memory controller flaw could have been mitigated by a mature code-development environment, to unburden the programmer from having to micromanage small chunks of code. Jaguar's development tools left much to the programmer's own implementation, as documentation was incomplete. Writing game-code was often an endurance exercise in the tedious assembler.

 

In a July 1995 interview with Next Generation, then-CEO Sam Tramiel declared that the Jaguar was as powerful, if not more powerful, than the Sega Saturn, and slightly weaker than the PlayStation.

 

By the end of 1995, Atari's revenues declined by more than half, from US$38.7 million in 1994 to $14.6 million in 1995. In late 1995, Atari Corp. ran early-morninginfomercial advertisements with enthusiastic salesmen touting the powerful game system. The infomercials ran most of the year, but did not significantly sell the remaining stock of Jaguar systems. In its 10-K405 SEC Filing, filed April 12, 1996, Atari informed their stockholders of the truly dire nature of the Jaguar business:From the introduction of Jaguar in late 1993 through the end of 1995, Atari sold approximately 125,000 units of Jaguar. As of December 31, 1995, Atari had approximately 100,000 units of Jaguar in inventory.

 

Atari had already suffered an ill-fated crash in the mid-1980s as a result of the oversaturation of the video game market by third-party developers.Production of the Jaguar ceased after Atari Corp. merged with JT Storage in a reverse takeover. In a last-ditch effort to revive the Jaguar, Atari Corp. tried to play down the other two consoles by proclaiming the Jaguar was the only "64-bit" system. This claim is questioned by some, because the CPU (68000) and GPUexecuted a 32-bit instruction-set, but sent control signals to the 64-bit graphics co-processors (or "graphics accelerators"). Atari Corp.'s position was that the mere presence of 64-bit ALUs for graphics was sufficient to validate the claim. Design specs for the console allude to the GPU or DSP being capable of acting as a CPU, leaving the Motorola 68000 to read controller inputs. In practice, however, many developers used the Motorola 68000 to drive gameplay logic.

 

Over the short life of the console, several add-on peripherals were announced. However, only the ProController, the Atari Jaguar CD drive, and the JagLink (a simple two-console networking device) reached retail shelves. A voice modem and VR headset (with infrared head-tracking) existed in prototype form, but were never commercialized (see Loki and Konix Multisystem for early development).

 

Legacy

 

After the Atari Corporation properties were bought out by Hasbro Interactive in the late 1990s, Hasbro released the rights to the Jaguar, declaring the console an open platform and opening the doors for homebrew development. A few developers, including Telegames and Songbird Productions, have not only released previously unfinished materials from the Jaguar's past, but also several brand new titles to satisfy the system's cult following.

 

In the United Kingdom in 2001, a deal was struck between Telegames and retailer Game to bring the Jaguar to Game's retail outlets. The machine was initially sold for £29.99 brand new and the software was ranged between £9.99 for more common games such as Doom and Ruiner Pinball, and up to £39.99 for more sought-after releases such as Defender 2000 and Checkered Flag. The machine had a presence in the stores until 2007 when remaining consoles were sold off for £9.99 and games were sold for as low as 97p.

 

This deal was seen as a move to remain competitive with Game's rival at the time, Gamestation, who were well known for stocking retro formats.Imagin Systems, a manufacturer of dental imaging equipment, has since purchased the molding plates for the Jaguar's casing as with minor modification they were found to be the right size for housing their HotRod camera.[19] The game cartridge molds were reused to create an optional memory expansion card.[20]The Jaguar continues to have a small and dedicated game development circle.

HISTORY

Manufacturer: Atari Corporation

Type: Video game console

Generation: Fifth generation

Retail availability:

               NA November 15, 1993

               JP November 21, 1994

               EU Q4, 1994

Discontinued: 1996

Units sold: 250,000 or fewer

Media: ROM cartridge, CD-ROM (Add-On)

CPU: multi-processor

Predecessor: Atari XE Game System

TOP 10 RATED GAMES

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1. PROTECTOR SE

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3. ALIEN VS PREDATOR

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5. RUINER PINBALL

6. TEMPEST 2000

7. ZOOL 2

8. CANNON FODDER

9. MISSILE COMMAND 3D

10. POWER DRIVE RALLY

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1. WHITE MEN CAN'T JUMP

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3. TROY AIKMAN FOOTBALL

4. SUPERCROSS 3D

5. SPACE ACE

6. FLIP OUT!

7. FIGHT FOR LIFE

8. EVOLUTION: DINO DUDES

9. DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY

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ALIEN VS PREDATOR

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