THE RANT:

Message for Atari people: This is just my opinion here. I'm just a guy. Don't take it too seriiously -Mark

So it's 1992 and Atari is a shadow of their former selves. The last game system they released of any significance was the Lynx handheld, and despite being a better system overall than any of the competition it still failed to capture a leading share of the market. Atari must've felt they were in trouble and decided to get back into the console market. So they come up with the Jaguar, the world's first 64 bit system. 

Well, maybe not. It ran with two 32 bit processors working in tandem, which technically made it a 64 bit system, but for some reason the game playing public at the time cared more about the processing power a machine could dish out and less about the actual games. Thus Sega (with the 32x) and 3DO capitalized on the apparent lie in Atari's "Do The Math" advertising campaign. For some reason this was like a big deal back in the day. In the stone age before the internet people had to do thier flame wars through letters written to video game magazines. Crack open an EGM from 1991 and read the letters collum to see what I'm talking about.

Anyway, To add insult to injury Atari's first generation software for this system didn't show much change from what was on the SNES and Genesis at the time. The graphics and sounds were only slightly improved, and mostly the game design was less than, shall we say, adequate (as with most 1st gen titles.) Things seemed to improve with the release of Alien vs. Predator and Tempest 2000. Atari promised a CD drive that came waaaaayy too late to save the system, in addition to a VR unit that never materialized. By the time the PS1 and Saturn came on the scene the Jaguar was already on the way out. Atari ended up closing up shop but has been resurrected in recent years as a software publisher for the next gen. systems. Atari the giant that once ruled the world went out with a whimper.

THE GOOD: Well, the system looks cool. Plus Aliens vs. Predator and Tempest 2000 ain't bad. 

THE BAD: None of the games seem to fully utilize the hardware to it's maximum potential. The only other one I've liked is Ultra Vortek, and that's just because I like fighting games. The rest of them seem too rough, too early, like they were all rushed out as quickly as possible. Plus the Jaguar controller is an example of function over functionality in it's desgin. It's responsive enough, it just has this goofy telephone control box shape. You feel stupid using it.

THE UGLY: The only way Atari seems to be making money off thier 20 year + game library nowadays is by packaging them in those "Play TV" type deals. A pretty sad last attempt by the company that practically invented home video games.

 

JAGUAR WIERDNESS:

• Composite and S-Video Jacks
• RGB Monitor port
• Stereo/Mono Line-Out Audio Jacks
• Two Powered Headphone Jacks with Volume Control
• RS232 and RJ11 CatNet communication ports
• DSP-through connector

Memory Track Cartridge

Used to save games for the Jaguar CD

All pics on this page are courtesy of Atariage.com

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