Why Atari Jaguar Got COMPLETELY DESTROYED ! 

I programmed on the Jaguar. We worked on an unreleased basketball game, however looking at the video it appears at 12:09. It was interesting because what we did was write our code on the 68K, then translated the code to the RISC processor. The processing speed was greatly increased. We had to program 3D matrix calculations in the RISC processor for speed. The game used a virtual 3D world for player, ball position, and court rendering, but was translated to a 2D+ visuals. The Jaguar didn't have a full screen video buffer - It had a single line buffer. It was double buffered, with one displayed, and the other being written to by the blitter. The buffers would swap at the beginning of the next line display. The blitter was extremely programmable as it would have to build the display from various graphical elements. I also worked on a football (American) game for the SNES shown at 12:03. It was the best playing football game at the time, but unfortunately the graphics was hindered by the SNES sprite limit shown on one line. Whole sprites would disappear, causing players on the screen to be torn. Rotating the sprite order, would help, but only just. The Genesis version was a lot better. I programmed the coin toss, referee animations, and the AI coach for person vs computer play. We could have put in different coaching styles for the various teams, but ran out of time.

3:57 The problem with the Lynx is that debuted at twice the cost of the Gameboy. From personal experience, my middle class parents weren't about to spend $180 (The equivalent to about $445 today) on a handheld system that I could potentially lose at such a young age. The gameboy was half the cost and a much more reasonable purchase for them. I'm sure there were a lot kids in a similar situation. I remember two brothers that came in to my local barbershop playing it each playing the handeld their own seperate unit when I was younger. To say I was jealous was an understatement.

I'm 48 now. I grew up with Atari. I have a pretty big Atari collection alongside all of my other video game collections. I can remember wanting one of these back when they were at retail. And I kept hearing how much they were behind in the market. I waited for a fire sale on them that I never saw happen. Still wish I had one to tinker with. But the current aftermarket prices have just kept me from getting one. I passed on a couple deals on the Lynx and kick myself now as I rarely find them locally much less a deal on them. Old video games and nostalgia......ugh.

Got one back in the day. It was not that bad considering Tempest2K, Alien vs Predator, Iron Soldier, Wolfenstein, Doom and a few others. Of course Atari made a lot of bad decisions and with the release of PS1 and Saturn the game was over for Atari as well as for 3DO and Commodore. I still own a Jaguar along with a Gamedrive allowing me to play Cartridge and CD Games without worrying about failing CD Drives. Tempest2K is still an awesome game and the Jaguar itself is a nice memory of the wild 90s.

I remember for my birthday my family were in tough financial times and my mom couldn't afford an NES so she got me an Atari 2600 from a thrift store and to this day I still enjoy hooking it up and playing on my old CRT. Great video!

I remember wanting it just for the hardware design, but then I couldn't find a single game I wanted to play. All these years later I still think it's very pretty hardware. In my dream world, it has a bunch of cool 2.5D turn-based RPGs. But, alas...

What a lot of companies assumed back then was all we wanted the best graphics. Companies seem to forget you can have the most or least powerful system out there. What sells systems is quality of games on it.

I wanted a Atari Jaguar, but changed my mind when I played a friend’s Jaguar. It was still pricey but felt it didn’t compare to my PlayStation.

That generation was so insane. People think the Saturn was a failure should take a look at all the other consols that launched.

I got one for Christmas, I think I only had the pack-in Cybermorph. It was a bad Christmas. But I asked for it, so it wasn't my parents fault. I think my mom ordered it from New York as it wasn't in wide distribution. I didn't learn to fly anywhere, lady.

Never owned one but I used to make a 45 minute commute to a store downtown that had the Jaguar on display just to play it. I was highly impressed by Aliens v Predator and Rayman.

Im about 40, and yeah Atari was not big for us when we were kids but they were like the sires of gaming and i think it was generally acknowledges even though only our older brothers would have played it. however when the jaguar commercials started up, personally I thought 'uh oh nintendo/sega the big boy is back in town' with all the hype those short commercials brought i though it was gonna be a crazy system and blow everything away...it never made it big, i never heard anyone talking about it and never even saw one for sale. that was the point when i was like Atari= irrelevant vintage gaming.

90s gaming got so out-of-hand with marketing that Atari got greedy and shot themselves in the foot. I was fine with my Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive so the Jaguar was the last thing on my mind. Long story short, it was the summer before high school that a played the Jaguar at a family's friends house. After playing Kasumi Ninja and Cybermorph for a few minutes each, I learned what false advertisement means.

In the utter end, the Jaguar case has been used by the medical industry. Now a grey and very medical looking device now. 🤦‍♂️

It's too bad that Nolan Bushnell - the original founder of Atari in the mid seventies - was not able to secure his deal to buy them back. That would have been the ultimate revenge, but I wonder what he would have done with the company.

Just found your channel and only 10 minutes in I'm subscribed! I love deep dives into classic video game topics and you're one of the best I've seen do it so far, I'd say you're up there with Classic Gaming Quarterly which in my opinion is a great compliment. Looking forward to more videos in he future

One correction: Atari Corporation, which made the Jaguar, merged with JT Storage, a hard drive manufacturer, on February 13, 1996. Atari Games, the arcade division, merged with WMS in April 1996. The two Ataris had split in 1984; before that, it was Atari, Inc. I've read that the Jag ceased production in November 1995, and new game releases ended shortly after - the last one during its main lifespan being on January 15, 1996. The Jag CD also likely ended production in November 1995, giving it a production run of probably 2 or 3 months - given the system's September 21 launch date, production likely began in August or early September. Its last game was in March 1996 (also its only game that year). Atari actually exited the console market and announced plans to become a PC game developer just before the merger with JT Storage. On January 2, 1996 they announced Atari Interactive, their PC game label. However, it was disbanded upon the merger with JT Storage, and they never released a game under that label. They did have a large unsold stock of Jaguars that they pitched on infomercials throughout 1996 and sold to a liquidator at the end of that year. From December 1996 to May 1998, after production was discontinued, Telegames released 5 games for the Jag and 2 for the Jag CD. ICD also released one. August 29, 2023 1:47 am

The Atari Jaguar CD, a modern necessity for gracious living

One of the major problems with games is the way hardware was designed. It had the same Motorola 68000 chip as the Sega Genesis. In the Sega Genesis the chip was the main processing unit. It wasn't in the Jaguar. It was meant to be primarily used for controller input and extra processing . Games that used it as such looked amazing for the time. AVP, Rayman, Iron Soldier, and Tempest 2000 to name a few. And that is the problem. I can only name a few. Most games ended up using the Motorola chip like the Jaguar was the Genesis and didn't even touch Tom & Jerry ( The two chips that made this system next gen)

My brother still isn't happy with me and our mom. We listened to the people at kb toys that warned us about the system and lack of games. I mean it was only $50 but still $50 was a lot for us then. It was either late 97, 98 or mid 99 at the latest.

One misconception about the Jaguar, at 34:05. The Atari that was sold to WMS Industries was Atari Games (Atari's arcade division that had nothing to do with the home division, as Atari would be split in two separate companies by 1984), not Atari Corp. This is also why the post-1984 Atari arcade games aren't available in Atari 50, as Warner Bros. Currently owns the rights to Gauntlet, Paperboy and other post-1984 Atari arcade titles

I don't recall seeing any jaguar consoles as a teen in Japan. I would have liked one though just for the collectable value (although I wouldn't have known it at the time).

I remember trading my SNES for this Jaguar I found at a flee market way back in the mid 90s. BIGGEST MISTAKE EVER

In 1995 I was working as a security guard to put myself through school. I spend a lot of late nights watching infomercials. I recall seeing Jack Tramiel on one of those infomercials trying to sell the Jaguar. Thinking back I wish I had a way to record those sales pitches.

You forgot to mention the 64 bit blitter and the 64 bit Object processor packaged up in Tom - again. Remember 5 processors... you only talk about 3 of them.

I've enjoyed the Jaguar as a game system since 1999, just in time for Battlesphere's game release. The development scene for the Jag is extremely active and between the homebrews and games ported from the Atari ST computer it is difficult to keep up with all the titles for the system at this point.

I remember seeing the Jaguar in gaming magazines and thinking it was the craziest thing ever. I didn’t get one until Kaybee (KB) was going out of business and legit bought one for $20 brand new. The games were even cheaper, but was so sad once I hooked it up to my TV. It sucked as a kid, but I wish I still had all of them today.

I feel guilty for having my father buy this. I had him get it from the WIZ for $399 - he also got Trevor McFur, and a second controller. Back then, "$500" was like $1000 today. The system was initially interesting, but it was trash. The games had no music and were technology demonstrators that hadn't been refined. I ended up selling it for $50 - a move I regret to this day as the retro gaming industry is alive and well. Never sold any of my other systems.

Well written and funny comments throughout. Also educational with the Jaguar history. Thanks for the video.

Gotta sleep for shift-work but few things make me as happy as seeing a long-form lady decade work hit the feed. Now I have something to look forward to through my tough Monday. Maybe even watch it at work? 😮😅❤

I'm probably, the only one who liked the "toilet" design of the Jaguar CD.

9:02 it was called the "Consumer Electronics Show", not Entertainment show! Those days were great, I'd get my issue of EGM in the mail and there were 2 CES shows every year (one in summer, one in winter) that would feature all the games. That was before E3.

Great video! I doubt it would have a large audience, but I'd love to see a video on the Atari ST. I grew up with one, but don't know too much about it

Jack Tramiel was the main reason for Commodore's success, especially since the company seemed to lose direction after his departure... yet Atari's failure reeks of someone chasing ego, though I don't know how involved Jack was at the time. Sam Tramiel trying to copy his father's success?

Grew up as a Genesis gamer in the 90s definitely remember hearing about the Jaguar, just thankful I never had one

I do not think it was a bad console at all. I also had the CD drive. The problem was the games! When I was young, I learned BASIC on an Atari 800XL that I purchased from K-Mart that I had to put on Layaway, Fun times.

Atari was so confident in the specs of this console, that they missed the most pivotal aspect of a video game console, the games. It could have been the most powerful console of all time and it wouldn't have mattered since it lacked games that would get people interested. Consoles need killer apps, must-have games that sell the console. N64 had Mario64 and OoT. PS1 had RE, FF7, MGS. What did the Jaguar have???

Love your videos Ma'am! your voice always brings a solace to my otherwise hectic day!

😊Une autre superbe vidéo de Lady Decennie, merci belle reine du monde du jeu rétro

I beat Cybermorph. It wasn't hard to figure out. Just follow the yellow arrow. I bought Atari 50th anniversary game. I started playing Cybermorph again. lol plus other games on there.

You did a good job here explaining the dubious claim regarding the Jaguar's architecture being 64-bit. By any and every industry metric, the Jaguar is a 32-bit platform. You did raise the question regarding its 64-bit wide bus, however. Regarding the dual 32-bit processors Tom & Jerry, this would make sense so that both can have immediate access to memory and the like. But this isn't the case with the Jaguar, as while Tom has full 32-bit access to the bus, Jerry has only 16-bit wide access the same thing. Perhaps this is accounting for the (ahem) "system manager" 68000 (which, also by any and every industry metric, is the CPU. Even the Jaguar developer docs label it the CPU.) The system bus has never determined the bit architecture of a system, as Atari tried desperately to do with the Jaguar. Consider Windows NT 3.1, which is a fully 32-bit OS (Linux works for this example too.) A 25Mhz 386SX is considered to be a 32-bit CPU. Pair them together, you have what the industry will define as a fully 32-bit platform -- ... except the "SX" in "386SX" denotes a 16-bit data bus. This restrictive bus limitation took a toll on overall performance (best demonstrated by Doom at the time) but it's still considered to be a 32-bit architecture. Atari tried to apply the inverse of this arrangement to arrive at the same conclusion. Anyway, great video.

I Read somewhere the shell for the jaguar Was used for dentist Maschines

Atari corporation (the company in this video) did a merger with JTS a hard drive manufacturer in 96. WMS industries bought Atari games corp a separate arcade company.

I remember Target had the Jaguar on end caps at the front of the store, no other game system was sold that way. I even remember being tempted to buy one when they went on clearance. They were briefly like $50

I miss the classic console wars. Now we're stuck with Ps5 and Xbox - either one can run the same games. But, the real money has a PC. My 13900k, 4090, 32GB DDR5, SSD build can run any game on the entire market.

I wish I still had my Jaguar and Jaguar CD. A friend of mine borrowed it and later sold it.

I bought a Jaguar right when it was released. I was so disappointed with it as the only game really worth a damn on a system like this was Tempest 2000. Atari 50th is worth it to play Tempest 2000 (I want to support them by purchasing it) but you can use BigPEmu for free if you want to play Jag games. You might as well glue Tempest 2000 in the cartridge slot. There were a few other good games but they were available on other systems and the vast majority were awful stinkers. I had the Jaguar CD when it came out and oh boy, it's was bad. Blue Lightning is one of the worst games I have ever played. No one knew how to properly program games to the Jaguar and just used the 68000. My favorite things Atari were the arcade games, not so much any of the home systems as many of their arcade titles are legendary. One thing I vividly remember is returning like 4 or 5 games I purchased because they were just so bad. I don't recall ever doing that with any games for any other system I ever purchased.

I bought my Jaguar in a Rumbelows closing down sale for £80. I couldn't afford a PC and wanted to paly Doom and the Jaguar let me do that. It's still working and I sold it last year to a chap who lets people use retro computers and consoles at various conventions.

This is what gaming is all about! Great content!

I bought one when it was released, I was excited as a then 13 year old who loved his Atari Lynx (which I still display in my display case to this day!). I took it back to the shop the next day so disappointed with it. I think Cybermorph itself killed it for me, I absolutely despised it!

A mad man out there managed to reverse engineer the software and game code, so you can actually try out (kinda) what the Jaguar VR would have been like on current VR headsets via BigPEmu version 1.07 . It's not great, but well, it is interesting.

It wasn't underpowered in terms of hardware... it was just a complicated machine and didn't have enough developers spending the time to figure it out and make great games with it.

Very informative and very amusing...particularly liked the commentary about the green head being called a trollop, the jaguar called the little black box of lies...and all the toilet humour around the CD add-on......Although I live in Australia, and thankfully the Jaguar was never released here, I do recall it well through US video game magazines of the day.....there was never anything positive about it (except perhaps the Alien vs Predator game)

I lost it with your head popping up to chastize my flying. Bravo, Lady Decade! 🤣

I bought one and sold it two days later. 😆

Great Stuff, as always!

I remember shortly after we had got the PlayStation me and my buddy Nathan found an original Atari 2600 with the wood grain on it and everything inside of a junk mobile home that my dad had stored on the property down in the woods!! My dad ran a junkyard and so he was always ending up with other peoples “junk“ which consisted of old cars, trailers, mobile homes, boats and pretty much anything you can imagine!! But that Atari 2600 was just laying on the floor inside of the empty mobile home and because I didn’t have no cords or anything to it I ended up giving it to my buddy Nathan whose brother had cords and controllers from his 2600 that he got when he was our age and wouldn’t you know it, the thing still worked perfect!

Man. A 30 min video with an add break every two minutes. I like video game history channels, but not one that are throwing ads that often

I was there for it all and still am to this day lol. When you said “grandpa played the 2600” - back in the late 70s and early 80s, we played it (we meaning 6-8 year old gen x’ers), and generally not adults. Arcades were a big deal at the time, and adults were more into that.

A 64-bit memory bus has absolutely nothing to do with how many 'bits' the CPU architecture is.

The Jaguar was designed to use a 68030 from the onset but was versatile enough to interface (unfortunately) with lesser processors. It was also supposed to have 4MB of RAM. Atari are the ones to blame in the end for cheapening out the system. Though the designers should have made it where only a 68030 or better could have been used.

Playstation showed you why 3D graphics were never going to work on the low memory physical cartridges of the time. The CDROM was destined to take over.

idk why but that slight smug smile of satisfaction on the thumbnail followed by "COMPLETELY DESTROYED" makes me lol

Would love to see a Lady Decade video on the new Atari 2600+. That video would be a necessity for gracious living!

Maybe they should've released the Panther in 1991 and got their foot in the market before the newer systems came out. I owned an Atari Jaguar with the CD attachment and 56 games. I ended up selling it for cheap. The CD unit had trouble right out of the box. Had interference to the tv. By the way, Battlemorph was actually fun.

I swear you have had this video on before?? I remember your cybermorph take on it. Anyways... great video as always!

I always wondered why they went with new franchises rather that carrying the flag of Atari Classics into the new Era. Sadly the Jaguar was like a wanna be Sega Genesis complete with CD Add On that failed just as badly.

Reminds me of my first car. The speedometer listed up to 140 mph, but it wouldn't go above 100 mph. And at 100 mph, you could actually watch the gas gauge go lower. Imagine advertising that car as a 140 mph machine.

Oh Atari... Being over 50, I knew you back in the day...

i am not gonna lie i wasnt apeal to click on the video .. but i gave it a shot and im so impressed great work! i subscribed too!

i remember playing AVP on this. loved it.

I was such a HUGE ATARI FAN!! I remember getting emotional when I read the title of an article in a gaming magazine entitled "Atari Is Dead" in the 90's. Might have been "Next Generation" magazine or something. Anyway, have major memories of bringing home an ATARI 2600 home from Hess's in the 80's. I was SOOOOO EXCITED!! SOOOOO many hours of magical memories of playing ATARI after that. Wish I could go back and relive every single one!!

My reaction to Atari's attempt at home VR is "Almost 30 years later and VR has yet to prove itself as a better option than just playing a game on a TV with a controller."

12:32 both games are completely différents ! Starfox is a rail shooter, cybermorph is a full 3D World where all is calculated is Real time. There is not à lot of 3D elements in the Nintendo's game. To compare both games is a non sense.

The Jaguar launched with 3 games. 3 games in Nov 93. It wasn't until the following March that it got another game. Only 8 games were released for the system before Holiday 94. December 94 got a decent number of games (six). Only 19 of the 50 cartridge Jag games were published by third party companies.

"hhehe, bit wars, 64 bit, 32 bit, 16 bit, 8 bit, 4 bit, 2 bit, 1 bit, half bit, quarter bit, the wrist game!!!" -AVGN

The Jaguar was certainly as powerful as some 32 bit systems and even more powerful than some 32 bit systems (such as the very expensive 3DO).

I remember those ads. I knew from gaming magazines that the Jaguar was just smoke and mirrors, and I really was fine with the SNES at the time.

their big mistake was throwing in the Motorola 68000 in there. Though intended to be a system manager, developers knew how to program for the 68k so they just used that and ignored the two 32 bit processors.

great video, theres nothing more i need to know about the Jaguar

This video sheds new light to the real reasons why the Jaguar CD is so rare.

The wwwwiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiild and colorrrfull pronunciation is back. And i loooooooooooooooooooooooove it :) (or would it be iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii love it, i don't know, i don't know but i love it :)))) ) And nice video btw. I knew for the jaguar and the do the math is forever engraved in my memories but i didn't knew for the jaguar CD. Thank you :)

I must say that i love that you specify it as the American Console Game Crash, and not he Video Game Crash everyone else everyone else addresses it as. The people in Europe never even raised their eyebrows to the NA Crash. We got along just fine, anyway great video!

9/10 year old me desperately wanted a Jaguar. To be fair I desperately wanted a CDi and a 3do as well. As a child you can’t appreciate the reason your parents don’t just buy you what you want. Looking back, the CD consoles were hideously expensive and terrible for gaming and the Jaguar was crap. I couldn’t see that but I think my dad knew.

At the time the arcade systems were all becomming 32bit systems, being the state of the art they were it was pretty hilarious that Atari of all brands to have come up with a 64bit system. I did the math alright back then...

What AVGN did to the Atari jaguar was hilarious. You should have had that clip in this video

great vid... But the biggest success of the jaguar cd (imho) was that after its discontinuation its plastics from unsold units were converted to dentistry equipment (so more userbase... yey?) !

my cousin had a 2600. i played Rampage off it once😎🔥

I remember going to k-bees toy to buy a jaguar and left with a sega cd.

I think it'd be hard to describe the Jaguar as a 'laughing stock' given the likes of the Philips CD-i (18 or so months prior) and the 3DO (same year) amongst a few others with varying degrees of less successful 'success' but the Jaguar was notoriously difficult to code on. That's on Atari for not making sure it was more user friendly for developers and not dedicating a large (and latterly as we discovered a non existent) budget to forge affiliations with established game developers or even commissio a sophisticated in-house game development team. There were however some excellent titles released but too few and far between. AvP is always quoted but it was genuinely superb. That awkward controller wasn't all bad though and the dated use of overlays on the virtually vintage numeric pad wasn't actually such a bad idea. I'm some respects very flexible and allowed game shortcuts without trekking through various in game menus to complete tasks etc. The famously unreliable CD add on was terrible just for the fact it looked like a toilet bowl and cistern made by 'Dudley Duo-flush" though. That or Twyfords. Had that attachment had a flush handle you know it would have come off in your hand.

We’ve been on 128 bit memory on pc for almost two decades. Larger memory bus means more memory bandwidth

I had one that was being sold through coupons of a newspaper… seriously Atari in Europe should have a lot of stock to sell any way possible… games like Kasumi ninja and a football game were given plus cybermorph… they all were ridiculously bad

Poor Atari

I saw a Jaguar in my dental office a while ago. They still manufacture them in a white shell for some kind of dental equipment controller. I looked it up afterwards and they sell these medical ones online.

Just imagine how much worse the Jaguar would have done without the Atari brand behind it. People still had a nostalgic connection with Atari even though they were way past their prime.

I remember a friend of mine having this console, I think it got used once to play Doom then went back in the cupboard and the snes and mega drive was out for Mario and Sonic lol

I have a Jaguar. However, it doesn't work because a friend spilled a beer on it while we were playing 'Tempest 2000' back in 1999.

I live in the UK.... I am 43, always loved gaming. People may say the last couple of generations has been...... Odd, what with last gens: PS4, PS4 Pro, PS4 Slim, XB1, XB1S, XB1X, then the PS5, PS5 Digital, now what looks too be the PS5 Slim and PS5 Pro, along with the Series X and Series S, but though it may seem a lot, it is in sense, the same two companies, updating, upgrading and giving you more choice. But my God, the 90's were just weird!.... I mean batsh##t crazy weird. You had the main staple, the Mega Drive and SNES, towards the end of their cycle. But then you had Mega CD, Mega CD2, CD32X, Multimega, Saturn, Dreamcast Amiga 500, Amiga 600, Amiga 1200, Amiga CD32 Panasonic 3DO Phillips CDi Atari Jaguar N64 It seemed that companies that were known for making toasters, cameras or VHS recorders all suddenly said ''Lets make a interactive unit and sell it as a console''. I have fond memories of some very poor consoles, and looking back now it is actually laughable. But at the time, watching programs like Bad Influence and Games Master, reading the gaming magazines, all i remember as a kid was ''I need these!!!!'' lol.

OG Jaguar owner. Had some decent games and is unfairly judged. I like your videos.

What a great video!