Do The Math - The Story Of The Atari Jaguar

you know why the video game you're playing tonight sucked huh because it was old technology Bob it was a 16-bit system this is the Atari Jaguar Bob we're talking the next generation of video games their 64 bits are Rob gaming power see equality stereo sound and state-of-the-art graphics bros your old system away in the 70s and early 80's Atari was synonymous with home video game consoles then the video game crash of 1983 left the company in dire financial straits although it's two consoles released between 1986 and 1987 were profitable Atari wasn't anywhere close to recapturing its former home console market share by 1992 Atari had discontinued both the 7800 and XE GS while the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo became the undisputed kings of the console mountain they and their competitors all shared a common weapon bits whether in magazines or TV commercials the message being sent was clear new consoles had more bits and more bits must mean that they're better without realizing it the marketing for the Genesis Super Nintendo and even the turbo graphics 16 were creating the perfect environment for Atari to make its comeback as 1991 approached there were rumors that Atari would soon announced the Panther a new console to compete with the Genesis and the Super Nintendo and at 1991 summer CES Atari did indeed make a public statement about the Panther Atari surprised those in attendance by announcing that the 32-bit Panther had been canceled and they would instead concentrate on a new 64-bit machine the Jaguar in the two years between the announcement of the Jaguar in its release the video game industry's obsession with mids had set the stage for the Jaguar to make a splash Atari flaunted the Jaguars horsepower in its advertising reached a deal with Sega to release some of its titles on the Jaguar and quickly sold all of the units that had manufactured for its test markets the Jaguar it seemed was destined for success and Atari had big plans for it including a virtual reality headset but instead of bringing Atari roaring back to the mountaintop the Jaguar was a commercial failure and some critics doubted if it was even really a 64-bit system today we're going to look at how a console that Atari didn't even design ended up being its last this is the story of the Atari Jaguar [Music] [Music] while the Atari Jaguar was released in 1993 it's beginning dates back years earlier 1988 to be exact I'm our captain of the u.s. video game team I'm not going to high scores in the arcades I'm home playing games on my atari 7800 in 1988 atari had two consoles available on the market the atari 7800 and the atari x EGS while both performed well enough neither was exactly lighting the gaming world on fire Atari wanted to reclaim its lost market share and re-emerge as leader in the home console market in a big big way that same year Atari began working on a prototype for a new console using technology found in the Atari ST and the blosum video card found in the Atari transputer this machine was going to be a follow-up to the company's aging 8-bit xyg s console computer hybrid Atari looked for outside help to complete and implement its prototypes chip design Richard Miller a director working on the Super XE you just who to reach out to flare technology flare technology was a computer hardware company from the UK that had been formed by a trio of engineers from Sinclair research Martin Brennan Ben cheese who years later would go on to help Argonaut games design the super nintendo super FX chip and John Matheson whom Richard Miller had worked with when he himself was at Sinclair Claire's biggest accomplishment at the time was the flare one chipset which was developed into the cancelled conics multi system game console flares chipset gave conics the ability to move sprites and block graphics faster than an Atari ST and in 256 colors under conditions when the ST would only show 16 it can do this despite running on an 8-bit z80 CPU Atari asked Flair to complete a partially designed chip for the prototype the chip that Flair's Martin Brennan named panther after his wife's panther Calista and the console itself would go on to adopt Panther as the entire systems name Flair's panther chip was an object processor that in conjunction with the rest system allowed it to display 8,192 colors from a palette of 260 mm 144 colors making it a quite powerful 32-bit machine for the time Atari now had their next game console well underway but the company wanted to begin developing its follow up before the panther was even finished so while working on the Panther Flair technology began to simultaneously develop a project at the head of Atari Sam Tramel would later renamed the Jaguar Ataris plan was to deliver a one-two punch to the gaming market first the 32-bit Panther would be released sometime in 1991 to compete with the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis then a few years later Atari would release the Jaguar with the idea being that it would be technologically superior to every other system on the market by at least a generation but plans soon changed although there are prototypes out in the wild the Panther dev kits never actually worked once they were assembled fortunately for Atari the Jaguars development was proceeding ahead of schedule so far ahead of schedule that two Atari it no longer made sense to continue with the Panther so at 1991 summer CES Atari announced that it had cancelled the Panther altogether and would instead concentrate on completing and releasing the 64 bit Jaguar in time for a 1993 release the world's first 64-bit games console the Jaguar this is the only one in the country and in fact it's so new that the games themselves aren't even that proper cartridges yet Hattori's announcement sent a bold message at the height of many consumers obsession with this atari was going to leapfrog current systems and deliver more bits to the home than any other system before atari was back and it was coming back to retake its throne after Atari surprising Jaguar announcement at CES information regarding the system itself began trickling out and gamers liked what they heard Atari had promised that the Jaguar would be the world's first 64-bit console so naturally the public's perception was that the Jaguar would far exceed the capabilities of the 16-bit Genesis and Super Nintendo as well as upcoming 32-bit machines like the 32x 3do Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation the price was right - here's Benjamin hall on the Jaguar system throughout 1993 Atari made several announcements regarding the Jaguar specs upcoming games and peripherals like the Jaguar CD on November 4th 1993 Atari held a big media event at the hemisphere club on the 48th floor of the time-life building in New York the event drew 300 people including buyers for national retail stores major corporate players and members of the media Atari announced the signing of multiple developers for the Jaguar including virgin interplay Microprose ubisoft gremlin graphics and activision just to name a few the biggest announcement from this event was that atari expected to ship about 50,000 Jaguar systems before Christmas divided between stores in New York and San Francisco but for an increased price of 249 95 Atari had captured the public's attention and the increase in price didn't seem to deter consumers that wanted a Jaguar as the trial run was an absolute success in a press release dated January 7 1994 Atari touted New York and San Francisco sales of the Jaguar with San Francisco's fao schwarz manager quoted as saying sales of the Jaguar couldn't be better all of our units sold out in one day and across the country all of the Jaguar consoles sent to the New York market had also sold out while in Europe Atari had amassed two and a half million pre-orders that number may come as a surprise to those in the US but it's important to remember that unlike in North America Atari still enjoyed a sizeable market share in Europe sales of the 2600 7800 XE GS and particularly the stn Lynx were very strong in the UK still the marketing manager of Atari UK pushed Atari to make the UK market a priority it was after all Atari strongest market unfortunately it wasn't that simple IBM who Atari had contracted to manufacture the Jaguar experience supply issues that coupled with their inexperience at making consoles led to exaggerated production estimates in other words there wouldn't be enough Jaguars to go around this left Atari in the unenviable position of having to choose which market to concentrate on Atari chose America and the UK would only initially receive 2,000 units back in the US it wasn't just sales that Atari had to be happy about the Jaguar was raking in awards as well On January 13 1994 just six days after the press release boasting about the Jaguars test market sales Atari sent out another press release this time to announce that Jaguar had been named best new game system by video games magazine best new hardware system by Game Informer and 1993 technical achievement of the year of my die hard game fan and taking a peek at its specs there certainly seemed to be a lot to be excited about overall the Jaguar was quite powerful it was capable of texture mapping to and three-dimensional objects sprites could be over 1,000 pixels tall and featured programmable screen resolutions up to 800 pixels per line and supported lighting and other special effects and 3d graphics and that's just some of what the system was capable of at first the Jaguar enjoyed brisk sales even outselling the much hyped 3do during the 1993 holiday season going into early 1994 some of you believe your system is the most advanced in the universe let's review the numbers Sega Genesis is 16 bits 3do is 32 bits the Atari Jaguar is 64 bits which is more advanced clifford 64 bits 3d graphics real world animation head lightning speed that you can only get with [Music] the Jaguars 1994 nationwide launch came with an aggressive advertising campaign featuring the tagline do the math Atari had positioned the Jaguar as the next step in home gaming Atari had even announced the CD add-on to be released in the second half of 1994 a VR headset to debut in 1995 and a modem for direct dial-up play despite all that it had going for it the Jaguars nationwide launch was a rocky one it's packin games cyber morph was a somewhat impressive polygon game for the time that was generally well received by critics it was an open-world game as opposed to a more restricted rail shooter like the Super Nintendo starfox its next three games trevor McFerrin the crescent galaxy Raiden and Dino dudes didn't fare as well with critics and gamers pointing out that they looked and played like 16-bit games but all those sales tapered off as 1994 went on the jaguars launcher was far from a complete bust the jaguars first hit came in april with the release of the critically acclaimed tempest 2000 this was followed up by well-received ports of doom Wolfenstein 3d and arguably the Jaguars most popular game alien vs. predator towards late 1994 the Jaguar had several hit games upcoming peripherals like the Jaguar CD and Jaguar VR headset seemed to have generated real consumer interest and perhaps the Jaguars bigger shot in the arm to date Sega and Atari had reached a settlement after Atari filed a suit against Sega for infringing on its patents this settlement provided Atari with reportedly somewhere around ninety million dollar cash infusion from Sega and would allow some Sega exclusive titles to be ported to the Jaguar from the outside it may have seemed that despite sluggish first year sales Atari had the potential to make 1995 a big success but before we talk about 1995 it's important to understand what was going on under the Jaguars hood and how that affected the games released for it because for all that the system's seemed to have going for it there were problems on the horizon for the Jaguar and one of its biggest problems Atari itself had created [Music] strictly speaking the Jaguar is two 32-bit machines one dedicated to sound one to pictures and it has special custom chips to help the whole lot move even faster they're nicknamed Tom and Jerry it's these two here the custom chip said that Flair design for the Jaguar featured five processors the most well-known of these being its two 32-bit risc chips Tom and Jerry while both chips shared a similar architecture they each had very specific functions Tom acted as a Jaguars GPU but also included a 64-bit object processor and a 64-bit Glitter processor Jerry was a digital signal processor and is largely in charge of the system sound it's capable of producing CD quality sound and wavetable synthesis the Jaguars custom chipset was tied together with a 68,000 Motorola's CPU a chip that wasn't exactly cutting edge technology the 68000 series CPU had been used as the process for powering early Apple Macintosh models the Commodore Amiga the Sinclair QL the Atari ST and the Sega Genesis just to name a few but unlike those other systems its job within the Jaguar wasn't as the main CPU as Jaguar Co designer and Flair technology team member John Matheson explained Atari were keen to use a 68000 family device it may be the CPU in the sense that it's the center of operation and bootstraps the Machine and starts everything else going however it's not the center of the Jaguars power the 68000 is like the manager who does no real work but tells everyone else what to do I maintain it's only there to read the joysticks so essentially the 68000 was there to tell the other chips what needed to be done and not much more although Tom and Jerry had been optimized for graphics and sound there were still good general-purpose RISC processors developers would be able to specify which processors to use in a program as desired unfortunately this level of freedom would actually hurt many games that was really cool at 31 it's a lot of fun definitely it's a little tricky there's there's not too much a lot of people talk about the Jaguars learning curve and I don't buy that it does you have to definitely get used to program multiple processors but I found that it's really cool the Jaguars familiar and easier to program for motorola 68000 chip would prove to be too tempting for some developers to pass up this resulted in a large number of companies creating Jaguar titles that used the motorola 68000 and its 16-bit external data bus as the main CPU instead of as a manager for Tom and Jerry so is the Jaguar a 64-bit system technically speaking yes though to be fair opinions differ on who you ask again quoting from Jaguar designer John Matheson Jaguar has a 64-bit memory interface to get behind bandwidth at a cheap DRAM where the system needs to be 64-bit then it is 64-bit so the object processor which takes data from DRAM and builds a display in 64 bit and the blitter which does all the 3d rendering screen clearing and pixel shuffling is 64-bit where the system does not need to be 64-bit it isn't regardless of what the Jaguar is or isn't it was most certainly marketed as a 64-bit console and to defeat the evil needed yaku you need razor-sharp reflexes disappear shrinking and really gonna cheat sheet with all the death leaves only on the 64-bit Jaguars in 1993 Atari president Sam Trammell predicted that Atari would sell over 500,000 Jaguars the following year but by the end of 1994 Atari had only sold approximately 100,000 units 1995 was fast approaching and it became clear that this would likely be a make-or-break year for the Jaguar and maybe even Atari itself during 1995's January winter CES Atari started the year off by making several promising announcements first the Jaguar CD would finally ship in September of the same year nearly two years after it was first announced and would retail for one $49.99 the Jaguar CD featured a double speed drive and it's CDs could hold up to 790 megabytes significantly more than standard discs opening the door for potentially massive games second the Jaguars VR headset would be priced under $200 and would be on store shelves by Christmas 1995 third the jag link interface which allowed two Jaguars to be networked together was introduced and lastly Atari announced a number of new and much needed titles just two months later Atari dropped the price of the Jaguar down to $149 between the game and Hardware announcements as well as the consoles large drop in price the target was clearly doing everything it could to ensure that the Jaguar gained momentum and market share in the first half of 1995 and with good reason by 1995 the Atari ST Falcon 7800 and XE GS had all been taken out of production and Ataris other system the portable atari lynx would itself be discontinued in 1995 Atari had placed all of their faith in the Jaguar on with the upcoming releases of the Sega Saturn and the Sony Playstation looming Atari desperately needed to turn the corner on the Jaguar over the next few months Atari president Sam Trammell made a series of statements and interviews that didn't come to fruition in the April 1995 issue of next-generation magazine Sam said that he believed that the Saturn and the PlayStation would fail due to their more expensive retail prices two months later in the July 1995 issue of next-generation magazine he said that Atari had sold approximately 150,000 systems when asked about the Saturn Sam described it as a mess inside seemingly forgetting about the Jaguars own unusual and problematic chipset Tramel said he expected 50% of the jaguars customer base to purchase a Jaguar CD and stated that the Jaguar was at least as if not more powerful than the Sega Saturn and the PlayStation was only a little more powerful in some areas it's understandable that Sam Trammell was defensive of the Jaguar Atari had a head start on Sony and Sega I lack the funds to match the massive big-budget marketing campaigns that would launch those systems upon their launch both the Saturn and the PlayStation outsold the Jaguar by a wide margin and even the 3do sales had left Jaguar in its rearview mirror Atari zone 1995 annual report conceded that the Jaguars disappointing sales were due to a combination of delays in the development of games as well as the release of the Saturn and PlayStation in May and September respectively the Jaguars lack of titles also came as a result of its questionable long-term prospects due to poor sales and a reputation of being difficult to develop for Atari failed to attract many third-party developers that actually completed their games those third-party developers that signed on soon discovered that the Jaguars development tools weren't quite up to par these factors led to what some have described as lazy ports that looked worse than 16-bit titles and a long list of announced but never released games recently Leonard framel shared some insight with me into the issues with the Jaguars development tools while the Jaguar was being developed Atari contracted a UK company to complete design verification and to also create a development system for it according to Leonard they didn't do a good job of design verification and there were bugs in the development system as a result Atari had to create a development kit of their own very quickly the Alpine board mad Mac GPU DSP assembler and the associated software for it was all created in just one weekend and Leonard's own words the system was far from perfect and would have hurt the Jaguars long-term prospects if it wasn't improved but what about Sega and Ataris deal to bring Sega exclusive titles over to the Jaguar Sega provided Atari with a list of titles that could be ported over to the Jaguar but for unknown reasons none were ever developed despite continuing to invest heavily in game development throughout the year running infomercials and dropping the price of the Jaguar down even further 1995 couldn't be saved on October 31st just a month after the Jaguar CD had been released Atari's Board of Directors decided to substantially reduce the resources devoted to the Jaguar and its related products Atari also decided to change the Bertie's focus by devoting its resources to pc software publishing and porting under the Atari interactive name on November 2nd Atari dismissed the internal Jaguar development team and on December 15th in an attempt to liquidate as much of its Jaguar stock as possible Atari reduced the price of the Jaguar to $99 that same month Sam Tramel suffered a mild heart attack Sam's father Jack Tramel the man who had purchased the home computing and game console divisions of Atari Inc from Warner Communications in 1984 came back to help lead the company thankfully Sam Tramel would recover but the Jaguar wouldn't be as lucky it was now January 1996 after 12 years of being Atari stewards the trommel's were looking to sell and with good reason Atari's end-of-year filing with the SEC revealed just how bad their financial situation really was the company's total revenue had dropped from 38 point seven million dollars in 1994 down to just fourteen point six million in 1995 remember when Sam Trammell said that they had sold approximately 150,000 Jaguars by mid 1995 in their SEC filing dated April 12th 1996 Atari reported that between 1993 and December 31st of 1995 only 125,000 units had actually been sold and as of the end of 1995 Atari had approximately 100,000 units of unsold Jaguars in inventory the Atari Jaguar was also released in Japan where it was imported by Moomin locations that sold the Jaguar were extremely limited and the Jaguar ended up only selling about 3,000 units in Japan although a small number of games were still being released Atari had cease production of the Jaguar in July of 1996 Atari merged with jts Inc hard drive manufacturer and formed JT escort Ataris name all but vanished from the gaming market and in 1998 JT s sold the Atari name ad assets to Hasbro interactive for five million dollars less than a fifth of what warner communications had paid 22 years earlier the Jaguar and possibly Atari itself appeared to have finally met its end you [Music] on May 14 1999 Hasbro announced that he had released all rights to the Atari Jaguar whether you were a major software developer or first-time amateur anyone could now freely create and publish software for the Jaguar without the need of obtaining a license from Hasbro following Hasbro's announcements a few developers released previously unfinished Jaguar games as well as several brand-new titles in 2001 UK retailer game began selling new Jaguars for 30 pounds game continued selling the Jaguar until 2007 when its remaining stock was sold off for around ten pounds eventually a dental imaging company purchased the molding plates for the Jaguars casing and used it to house their hot rod camera they also used the game cartridge molds to create an optional memory expansion card for these cameras in 2014 the mold were to be reused as part of a crowdfunded retro console that project was shut down amid controversy and the molds have since been sold to the founder of Atari age comm in 2001 Hasbro sold Hasbro interactive and its subsidiaries including Atari to French developer info grams in June of 2017 Atari announced a new upcoming console called the Atari box while there aren't many details available yet about the Atari box it does appear that the Jaguars time as Ataris last console is coming to an end since Hasbro opened it up to the public in 1999 over 40 games have been released for the Jaguar its most recent title fast food 64 was released on June 23 2017 on both CD and cartridge formats the Atari Jaguar didn't enjoy the critical or financial success that a competitor's the Sega Saturn Sony Playstation or even the 3do and Philips CDI had but it does have a dedicated community and it's thanks to the Jaguars dedicated fans and homebrew scene that its potential seems to be just now being realized [Music] maybe Sam was right about the Jaguar all along for more Atari and retro gaming content I highly recommend you check out Karen's fantastic channel Laird Slayer as well as historic nerds also excellent retro centric channel I'd also like to thank Jaguar sector 3 for their assistance and contributions to the Jaguar community if you'd like to reach out to me directly you can do so on Twitter at Russell's gaming if you'd like to contribute to my channel monetarily you can do so at the patreon link in the video's description but most importantly thank you for watching [Music]

Channel: Wrestling With Gaming

Views: 550,244

Keywords: History of the atari jaguar, is the atari jaguar 64 bit, 64 bit consoles, 90s video game consoles, The story of the atari Jaguar, atari jaguar commercials, launch of the atari jaguar, Atari consoles, History of atari, atari jaguar (video game platform), Atari Jaguar, Alien Vs Predator atari Jaguar, gaming history, retrogaming history, videogame history, new atari console, last atari console, wrestling with gaming, Atari documentary, 90s gaming, what happened to atari jaguar

Id: XsQY0YEqzYo

Length: 25min 44sec (1544 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 22 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/bubonis]

My moderately-informed opinion on the failure of the Jaguar is just two points:

1. Atari should have expressly forbidden development of any title that specifically leveraged the 68K CPU either through legal or technological means. Because a lot of games were allowed to be produced this way, Jaguar games weren't seen as any better (and in some cases, they were seen as worse) than existing 16-bit consoles at a higher cost.
2. Atari should have abandoned cartridges and gone right to CD for game distribution. It would have been a cheaper and faster way to release new and better titles, as Sony proved a short time later.