Atari Jaguar
Atari Jaguar
- Manufacturer: Atari Corp. | Release Year: 1993
With the failure of the Atari 7800, and with the Atari Lynx on the losing side of the fight against Nintendo's Game Boy, Atari gave the videogame console market one last shot with the Atari Jaguar. The company decided to focus on the numbers game in attracting the gamer: where the Super NES and Genesis were touting the cutting edge of 16-bit technology, the Atari Jaguar surpassed this with whopping 64-bits of raw processing power, the first of its kind in the home market!
Marketing speak aside, the system was, indeed, a capable piece of hardware when compared to the generation it was intended to compete with: it definitely surpassed the Genesis and Super NES in 2D and 3D capabilities. The controller revisited gaming ideals of a previous gaming generation with its keypad and game specific overlays, something familiar to those that grew up on the Intellivision, Atari 5200 or Colecovision. It also offered the potential for CD gaming with a future add-on that seamlessly docked right on top of the main system.
Its claim as the most powerful console was, however, short-lived, as Sony and SEGA were just around the corner with their PlayStation and Saturn consoles. Even 3DO, with its own CD-based gaming hardware, managed to show the market that having 64 bits of processing power doesn't mean much if you don't have the games to back those numbers up.
During its life, the Jaguar managed to make a few cases for a purchase with a couple of solid efforts from id software, Rebellion, and psychedelic visual artist Jeff Minter. Atari's mismanagement of the hardware and company, its lack of internal development teams, its inability to secure key third-party developers, a disastrously terrible pack-in title called Cybermorph, and the fact that the Jaguar system was insanely difficult to program efficiently all played a part in the system's demise.
Notable Games
- Tempest 2000
One of the earliest games on the system was easily one of the best: Jeff Minter gave the Atari arcade classic a psychedelic update and it's one of the most energetic shooters of its time.
- Aliens vs. Predator
First-person shooters were slowly advancing with the hardware, and Rebellion managed to come up with one of the eeriest designs that featured three playable characters.
- Doom
Another first-person shooter, the Jaguar port produced from iD was almost as good as you could get on the high-end PCs, even featuring network play.
- Iron Soldier
Giant mechanized robots are awesome, and so is this game where you could topple entire buildings with the power of your enormously powerful rockets.
- Power Drive Rally
Though it didn't show off the 3D power of the Jaguar, this was one of the most technically advanced top-down racers ever created.