The 9 lives of Atari's BIG cat

Matthew Bacon goes hunting for Atari's BIG cat, the Jaguar64

The Atari Jaguar 64-bit games console was released in late 1993 to high public expectation and media hype (well a lot for Atari anyway!). While early Jaguar owners and Atari fans loved the machine, the media were not so easily convinced.

In the early 1990s, the battle for the title "king of the home games consoles" was being fearlessly fought by the likes of Sega and Nintendo. The Sega Megadrive and Nintendo SNES were both 16-bit consoles and all the rage with loyal fans and mountains of games. The 3DO 32-bit console had just been released and promptly died within a couple of months due to lack of public interest, developers and media support. Consequently, when Atari announced that they were to release the worlds first 64-bit games console everyone's hopes were high!

On track for success
To Atari's credit, the Jaguar was exactly what the market needed. The current crop of consoles were past their best without a successor from the big guns imminent (news of Sony's PlayStation had only just begun to circulate). The Jag looked destined to reclaim the glories of Atari's formative years.

The Jaguar console was truly the worlds first 64-bit home games console, no matter what Nintendo claimed in their original UK adverts at the release of the N64! Manufactured by IBM, the Jags specs were certainly impressive; 64-bit memory architecture, 5 processors including custom audio and video chips (nicknamed Tom and Jerry), CD quality audio and True Colour display. After some initial teething troubles at IBM, the Atari Jaguar was released.

Atari decided to try and capture the American market before venturing further afield to Asia and Europe. The major cities of the US were targeted by some award winning advertisements (no really, Atari won several advertising awards - amazing thought it sounds!) but with limited success. The Jaguar system included; a Jag64 console, one controller, power adapter, TV lead and a copy of Cybermorph all for $250. However when console was released in Europe, fans were expected to pay in excess of $300 for the same kit! This combined with a lack luster ad campaign (as you can imagine) didn't exactly encourage sales.

So what went wrong?
Atari were not new to developing games consoles as we know... just a little out of touch? During the late 1980s, following their success at producing the early 8-bit consoles and the ST range of home computers, the research and development team at Atari Corp. were busy developing their own 'next generation' video game consoles. It is believed that Atari had originally intended to mass produce two 'next generation' consoles; The Panther and the Jaguar. The Panther was to be a 32-bit machine and forerunner to the more powerful 64-bit Jaguar. However, the development of the Jaguar shot ahead of schedule and Atari decided to cease development of the Panther.

The Jaguars architecture was so sophisticated (at the time) that it was capable of; high speed scrolling; texture mapping 2D and 3D objects; morphing; the scaling, rotation, distortion and skewing of sprites and images; lighting and shading from single and multiple source. These features, although now commonplace, beat Atari's competition hands down. So what went wrong?

With all these great qualities, many of the Jaguar games were unsurprisingly good... some were GREAT! while others were just plain awful. Everyone had their personal favourites like Doom, Tempest 2000, Theme Park, A vs P, Rayman, Fight For Life ... and the list goes on. In my opinion, the Jaguar did not take off because of the quality of its games, rather their lack of availability.

Promises promises...
When the Jag was released, Atari made the bold step of announcing a host of developers and a list of game titles as long as your arm. Unfortunately, many of these titles never saw the light of day having never got further than the planning stage. It was not just game titles that failed to arrive, neither did some of the consoles famed peripherals. The most notorious being the VR headset.

At the time of the consoles release, virtual reality or VR was in vogue and the "thing to be seen doing" much like being a .com company is today (daft but true!). If your product was seen to be connected to VR in any form, it was deemed to be a sure fire success. Users were unsurprisingly disappointed when news that Virtuality Group were no longer to produce the Jags VR lightweight headset and that all development had ceased. The breakdown of communication between Atari Corp. and the Virtuality Group was over publicised by the world's media and followed by accusations by both sides for its failure.

Although the Jag's VR headset failed to materialise, Atari's R&D had been busy. Following several announcements, misinformation and missed realised dates... the Jaguar CD drive reached production. Unfortunately, due to the untimely passing of Atari Corp, the Jaguar64's combined console and CD unit and successor (rather aptly named) Jaguar II never appeared. However, further development of the Jaguar system did occur - to a point.

The Jaguar64's architecture was licensed for use in arcade machines by Time Warner Interactive (once a major stockholder of Atari Corp. shares). These systems, called CoJags, consist of a Jaguar chipset with additional memory, hard drive space and processor upgrades. Two CoJag games are currently known to exist. These are Maximum Force and Area 51.

So what went wrong? Who knows, but I doubt a single event could pinpointed and it certainly wasn't for the want of trying. Was it Atari's past success catching up with them, their public image or famed public/media relations?

On a positive note, development of Jaguar games continue thanks to the announcement in 1999 by Hasbro that the Jaguar platform be declared an 'open system'. Companies and individuals are now free to develop games for the console which has got to be good news! The future of the Jaguar now resides with us, its fans, so lets make the most of it. It appears that the big cat hasn't used all its nine lives up after all ;-)

For those of you interested, I took this photograph while staying in a hotel in Sturbridge, MA (USA) - amazing or what!

MyAtari magazine - Feature #6, January 2001