Atari Jaguar CD & Games Overview 

So I had a lot of congestion when I did the audio for this video and I was medicated when I edited it. So if it's better than usual I will be sure to start abusing cold medicine. Seriously though I hope you guys enjoy it and if you have any thoughts or questions not addressed in the video, then hit us up in the comments! Thanks guys!

I still have my Jag CD that I pre ordered back in the day at EB. I will always remember while others were there to buy Saturn and PlayStation stuff, I stood in line with my Jaguar CD. When I got up to the cashier, he smerked and said " Jaguar Cd eh?" My response was " yup, it's going to be a collectors item someday!" He raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement. I knew it was going to be Ataris last hurrah. Last I knew my Jad CD was still was working . Battlemorph is probably the best over all game. World touring racing is better than CF by a mile though it's still is choppy. It was worth it to me back then, today it's hard to convince people to shell out the huge amounts of money for one.

Got the Jaguar CD as my birthday gift when it came out in September 1995 but had to go pick it up at the only store that carried it in Indiana about an hour away. Loved it! Never had issues with the unit I owned, read even the worst scratched CDs so I always found it interesting to hear others having such bad luck with it but maybe after 20+ years of being neglected and passed along through various hands caused issues. The price of admission of $159 when it came out was worth it alone just for the VLM! It was great to get so many pack/in inclusions as well. Battlemorph was a great sequel Cybermorph and the music rocked. But the game felt somewhat dark and sad, maybe because the combination of all things made it very atmospheric. No one cared about the Jaguar though and despite being able to purchase both a Jaguar for $99 and JagCD for $159, everyone opted for the PSX by that time. It was sad seeing the CD games hidden at the top of the shelf in the back and only having a selection of 4 or 5 titles at the time. Next time I went back they were all on clearance. Paid $29 for Primal Rage.

Don’t hate me but I like the Atari Jaguar controller. Would buy one if 8bitDo created one.

I came really close in buying an Atari Jaguar when it was released in 93. I was still playing my Genesis and SNES. I held off buying a new console until I got a Sony PS1.

So psyched for the video, had a crazy busy week. What a way to unwind!! Thank you!

I think Raiden on Jaguar is the best version of this shooter 😊

Subscribed. Thank you for showing me the dark arts of Atari. I have just about every retro console over the years, but never the Jag. I`m thinking about taking the plunge thanks to your channel.

Cool Content, like I said in earlier comments , I was not an atarians back then, my first console was intellivision, followed by colecovision, Nintendo Nes and Sega Genesis, so I can't comment too much on the Jaguar CD, but I think that should initially by default on the Jaguar, but I find now considering the pricing, for an owner of a Jaguar , the gamedrive should be the way to go, because of youtuber like you , zeropage homebrew and the Atariage community, I find cool that Atari have a variety of console, I plunge myself a little bit in the world of Atari by ordering the Atari 400 mini and I have the stella for the 2600 and an emulator for the 7800 on my pc, I just order the Atari pro system controller on ebay and I will put it on my pc with a special adaptor and soon I should I should install the BigPemu for the Jag and probably go the same route for the controller like I did with the 7800 because the Jag is very expensive now , and I will buy the 7800 digital rom of Arti and Exo from Muddyvision, I play also some modern games but I prefer the retro gaming,, Does the Atari 7800 is still your favorite Atari console ? Keep up the good work John !

“What couldn’t [Jeff Minter] do?” Not drugs, that’s for sure

Jaguar CD games I have beat: Iron Soldier II, Dragon's Lair, Primal Rage, Highlander: The Last of the MacLeods, and Baldies (yes, all 100 levels).

The add-on in question was designed by the Philips Corporation. You know what else they made? The CD-i! Part of me wonders is Philips CD-i games can run on the Jaguar CD?

cool! Blue Lightning does look fun. I also had no luck getting World Tour Racing to work, I'm using Bigpemu emulation. the cartridge games "most of them" are alot of fun. solid titles. Ive been curious on the CD aspect. Informative video here. Keep up the great work!

They had the right idea with the Cart/CD combo. Some games like MYST had so much data and depth, it wouldn't have been feasible or cost effective to have them on a cart. Other games don't require as much storage space that a CD provides so using a cart to streamline playability made good sense as CD would interrupt gameplay to load. Mine was purchased as a XMAS gift 12/95. I still have it and it still works although it does have an issue with the lid latch where I have to put a book on top of it for it to work. Plus the unit tends to overheat and stops working after an hour or so and won't work again til it cools down-been doing this since it was new so it's NOT a well made device overall, yet still works after almost 30 years. I had all the games except Primal Rage and Baldies and it's too bad Black Ice/White Noise was never completed as it looked to be the most promising title. Battlemorph is easily in the top 5 best Jaguar games cart or CD.

A PC version of Highlander did find it's way out.. A beta build of the PC port was released by the defunct Jaguar Sector II website under a CD-ROM compilation titled Jaguar Extremist Pack #3, which also feature a beta build of the original Jaguar CD version

Oh YEH! I have a 3DO And a CDI With loads a games to, And a ton of films for the CDI, It brings me back to my younger days man. But it sure makes you feel old when you can remember it like it was yesterday Dude. My god, I was just 21 22 Years old when i brought my Jaguar. Anyway just wanted to share that with you Buddy. Just like you i love my retro gaming, It's better than todays rubbish for sure.

I couldn’t figure out how to get CD games to work on Jaguar GD. Good thing I have a working Jaguar CD! I like it just for the VLM!

I remember going out to my local Electronics Boutique with my Dad back in 1995 and seeing an Atari Jaguar with CD unit on clearance. I thought that was the system. Years later when I saw the AVGN video, I discovered that it was originally sold as a cartridge based console, and I always thought the Jaguar's aesthetics looked incomplete without the CD attachment.

Cool video. Even at the time, it just never felt like the Jaguar was going to be "the thing". A year after the Jaguar's release Donkey Kong Country came out, and honestly looked better than most Jaguar games. I eventually got one... many years later... and I do love having it in my collection, but I still do not own a Jaguar CD. =(

The issue I had is that while saving and waiting for the Jag CD, Atari suddenly ended and with that support at the local Babbages ended too. I went in one day. Saw it and waited for next pay day. Went back and all the jag stuff was gone! The manager said he destroyed all the stock per the owner’s demands. I guess they couldn’t return it and I was the only one buying it

I know it's not the "real" Atari, but I always thought it was strange that Atari didn't go all-out on Primal Rage CD. It didn't get a normal cart release while every other cart platform in existence did, and the other half-dozen CD platforms all are better ports than the Jag CD. You'd think the two Atari companies would have worked together to knock that version out of the park.

By using cartridges you can actually enhance the console with special chips via FPGA on the Flash Cartridge for the Jaguar. So being a cartridge based system. This is actually probably a benefit. The PS1 and Saturn can't do enhancement chips like the SNES did and the Jaguar has the potential to do that as well.

I like the ending of the video. 😂 "Are you gonna get a Jaguar?" "Well, um -"

I bought the Jaguar CD brand new in late 1995. What I often wonder is if they continued to support it, if the Jaguar CD could handle a port of Resident Evil when 1997 rolled around?

I could never find the Jaguar CD-ROM drive for the Jaguar at local game stores, so I mail-ordered the Jag CD directly from Atari. It arrived, and didn't work. The CD spindle was crammed down into the machine for some reason, so I contacted them and they told me to ship the bare drive back. I did, and when a package arrived from Atari I assumed it'd be the replacement. Instead there was a bare Jaguar console inside. So I had to send that back, and they just sent out a new Jag CD boxed version which gave me duplicates of the music CD and games. Along with a spare power supply. I loved my Jag CD back in the day, Battlemorph was fantastic (and probably my favorite game soundtrack of all time), Hover Strike was a decent improvement over the cart version, and I played through the Highlander game three times (the first time unaided, the second time with a walkthrough, and the third time once I read about a secret weapon hidden in a canyon, the rubber chicken weapon). Some of the games coming out for the Jag CD could have made a decent impression if they'd been released, like Black Ice/White Noise or American Hero. Bizarrely, that last one has recently come out for the PS4 in remastered form, so there's still a bit of the ol' cat's legacy still around.

The highlander cartoon was wierd. Great vid

I had the Jaguar with the CD attachment. Right out of the box the Jag CD had video issues. I had 56 games for the system and did like it. I should've kept the system considering what it's worth these days. Battlemorph was definitely an upgrade over Cybermorph. Video Grid was fun and Highlander was decent. Blue Lightning was decent too. The Jaguar was a good but a stop gap system like the 3DO before the Playstation and Sarurn arrived.

Atari always wanted the Jaguar as the cheapest machine of it's generation, compared to the 3DO etc, so deliberately made it cartridge only with optional CD Drive. The add-on appeared later and higher priced than Atari had originally planned, they had initially planned for Defender 2000 to be on CD, with bonus content like interviews etc, but moved it to cartridge. World Tour Racing started life as a plain polygon 3D Racing game on cartridge, before being moved to CD and Texture-Mapping added

Would like to see some of the Jaguar titles make it to the 2600+

My main issue is the controller with the number pad. If I were a game developer, I would not use the number pad for anything. If you look at the PS1 controller, they did not use a number pad, but instead used dual analogue stickers which ended up being the future.

I still love the Jaguar, and the Jag CD ❤

Try Hoverstrike :U. L on the Jag CD. They moved coding away from the 68000 onto the GPU and got an extra 3-5 fps out of it, it has some very nice textures, lots of missions. It's still a long way from the Battlezone 2000 it started off as, but is a vast improvement over the cart version. Battlemorph is also everything Cybermorph should of been.

I wanted a Jaguar So Bad, Thankfully we were p00r and dad just ignored me LOL KMart always had Jaguar ADs plastered on the windows around the exit, This thing was HYPE, nobody fell for it lol

I saw some of jag CD created on march 1995, don't know if they sold so early or if ot was prototypes.

HEY! Dude I use to have A jaguar, And i loved it, Especially Aliens With the Graphics add on Pack. Anyway, Didn't they make Jaguar XJ220 For The Jag. I can't remember man It's Been So long Since i had one. But i remember Playing the game, And Im'e sure it was on the System, I could be wrong. As for the CD Add on, If the games Companies Had of got Behind it, We could have had some Amazing Games on The System For sure Dude. Day of the Tentacle Full Throttle, Monkey Island 1 2 3, OH man It could have been A fab little console. Anyway grate Video mate I really enjoyed it Pall, Thanx.

I swear Primal Rage was a contractual obligation title by Probe for Atari. No optimization, long loading times, small sprites, feels like it's only on CD to add another title to the library.

Considering that only about 20,000 of these were made (and most likely even fewer of these units exist right now), it got me thinking, I can almost guarantee that in about a century from now, there will be a time when only like 5 Jaguar CDs remain around the world and they will all end up locked inside of a glass at some kind of a historical retro museum. It really sucks to think about this because I NEED a Jaguar CD, but they're just cost-prohibitive. In other words, I cannot afford one. There’s simply not a chance in hell that I will be able to afford one anytime soon, and that also sucks to think about because these are never gonna get any cheaper, so by the time I manage to rack up more money than I have currently, these are gonna get even more expensive and much, much harder to find. I really only want one not because I'm a diehard Jaguar fan, but also because I want to use it as my music player so I can play my all-time favorite songs while watching that awesome visualizer (AKA virtual light machine) created by Minter himself! You know, this wouldn't be a problem for me if the GameDrive could use the VLM as well as the ability to transfer MP3s over to an SD Card. I can only hope that one day an eventual firmware update will make that possible. RetroHQ is no joke, so I have high hopes for them. I'm also aware that it's now possible to use the VLM on BigPEmu, but then again, whenever the subject of that particular emulator gets brought up, I think of the words of Mr. Whitehouse himself, “Cycle accuracy is far from perfect on my emulator!” Yep, indeed, emulation for the Jaguar isn't perfect despite what some so-called “enthusiasts” might lead you to believe. Speaking of built-in music visualizers on game consoles, the Jaguar has, hands down, the best audio visualizer of any 5th-gen console, period. Even beating the PlayStation’s visualizer, which looks plain and boring in comparison. Saturn’s isn't anything special either. The 3DO’s visualizer, on the other hand, is pretty nice, but it's nowhere near as cool as the Jaguar CD VLM.

This sadly makes me feel OK about missing the Jaguar CD run LOL

I’m thinking that the Jaguar didn’t need beefing up so much as it needed developer tools to help other companies access the power under the hood instead of relying on the Motorola 68000

I actually owned a Jaguar cartridge before I even received my Jaguar system it was (Trevor Mcfur) I couldn't find the Jaguar in any nearby stores so I ended up buying the Jag and CD unit online through an old catalog company called chip n bits out of New Hampshire. I really liked the little bit of an upgrade the CD until gave the system. Still felt like a 32X though. I no longer own the system when I sold it all my grand total of games were 47 cartridges and 14 CD'S.

I remember my brother buying the cd for $50 at k-bee toy store. I thought he was wasting his money. At one time he owned every game.

Watching this video makes me wonder “what if” I stayed loyal to Atari after the 2600. Although I went the Nintendo route, they never really had the magic of Atari for me. At least I can explore the consoles I missed out on The Atari Network….

3:00 aw why’d ya have to go there? At least put Bimmy at 5:40 time !

I would have loved to have one of these when it came out, but by that time the writing was on the wall for Atari and, well, the Panther and Falcon were either mishandled, wasted opportunities or both. That said, I did stick with Atari for the music studio, even going back to it after years of frustration with the PC. If you ever want to cover that side, get in touch and I’ll retail you with stories of my time running the Atari Music Network, now run by Exxos.

Have 2 CD drives, but can't get disks to read.

Wait, is this video about the Jaguar CD or is it about the Jag Game Drive?

Never had one. Definitely not going to buy at today’s prices.

😂 bring back Tower Records/Electronics boutique and Babbages😢

You didn't say "Do the Math"

I owned one of these when it was new. Didn't like it then, still don't. I must say, Blue Lightning was the worst piece of software I have ever had the pleasure of playing. There is an article about it you can Google from people who worked on it. I really don't blame the Jaguar or the CD system but the fact they made it so difficult to program and 3rd party support wasn't there. If you ever find a Jaguar just get Tempest 2000 and never remove it. Better yet, get Atari 50, the upcoming Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story or run BigPeMu and Tempest 2000 will run better than it did originally on the Jaguar.

No one loved the shit cause it was a scam

I just wish atari released the jagduo,because that might could,ve became a system seller,because it looked cool and it was a 2 in 1 system,atari just gave up too fast on their jaguar in my opinion🥲🥲