Why Atari Jaguar Got COMPLETELY DESTROYED !

the jumping technology and graphical processing power between the fourth and fifth generations of game consoles was a huge one possibly the biggest we've ever seen and while the early to mid 90s saw some of the more established Brands weight patiently for the right time to release their next-gen systems there were a couple of companies that were determined to jump the gun and bring their consoles out ahead of the competition one such company was the once Mighty Atari which brought out a system that's made a big bold claims but ended up being so underpowered that if far more closely resembled the 16-bit consoles that it was meant to be replacing rather than the 32-bit systems it was supposedly from the same generation as the former industry Giants turned industry punch lines had given us a piece of hard where that was neither 4 for nor fifth generation resulting in a game console that is mostly remembered as a bit of a laughing stock if you're under the age of around 40 you could be forgiven for not being aware of atari's former status as kings of the industry before the infamous American console game Crash of 1983 and the subsequent release of Nintendo's all-conquering Behemoth the NES in North America Atari ruled the U.S Home console Market with their incredibly enduring video computer system which was later rebranded to the far more commonly known name of Atari 2600 also often are referred to as that wooden looking thing that's Granddad used to play released in 1977 the vcso was an entertainment phenomenon for kids and families of the late 70s and early 80s and ended up outlasting the Atari 5200 which was meant two beats replacement the 2600 was so popular and had such a huge install base that it wasn't even officially discontinued until the 1st of January 1992 which was the exact same date as the 5200s successor the 7800 was also discontinued so the stubborn old wood grain box are just outright refused to die and essentially out lived both of its successors although the 2600 was undeniably etched into the fabric of Pop Culture this could also be somewhat attributed to the fact that both the 5200 and 7800 were huge disappointments for Atari neither came close to matching a fraction of the success of the 26 600 and the 5800 which was intended to rival the NES did nothing to usurp Nintendo from its position on top of the American gaming food chain listen up Atari the future is here old man although they were still relatively respected in the home computer Market due to their successful line of 8-bit family systems the Atari St and its successor the impressive for the time s t e two consoles that were generally considered to be two failures in a row meant that the Atari brand no longer carried the weight it once did in the Home console Market this was also evident by the rather underwhelming response to their first foray into the handheld Market in the form of the Atari Links although the chunky little thing was technologically impressive with far better specs than all of its portable competitors and generally played and performed pretty well sales were far lower than projected it wasn't an abject failure by any means but the financial situation at Atari during this period wasn't great and the lukewarm reception to the links didn't help matters at all Jack Trammell and his son Sam the heads of the once Invincible seaming company surmised that atari's future was in the well in the future and the best way for them to get back to their winning ways and to the very top of the video game industry was to focus on the next generation of technology and get the jump on Sega and Nintendo before they even thought about upgrading their respective 16-bit systems after all a more powerful system is all it needs to take over the gaming world because that always works doesn't it Atari started moving forward on their next Generation project as early as 1989 when they saw an opportunity to team up with a British computer hardware company based out of Cambridge known as Flair technology Flair was founded in 1986 by Martin Brennan benches and John Matheson who were all former engineers at Sinclair this would lead to the Atari Panther being developed a canceled game console from Atari that has a backstory behind it that is so convoluted that it would require a standalone video on this channel to fully comprehend despite the panther being close to ready for launch by mid 1991 the panther would be canceled altogether in favor of the more powerful Jaguar Atari thought that the Jaguars Hardware would give them a clear and decisive Edge over Nintendo and Sega and leads them to victory in the console Wars much celebration and rejoicing and the fairy tale happy ending they so craved poor Atari they didn't even know what was coming did they the Jaguars impressive seeming Hardware has five processors spread across three chips Tom a 32-bit risk graphical Processing Unit Jerry a similar 32-bit risk processor that used to provide full stereo sound and a Motorola 68000 used mainly as a system manager the Jaguar also had an impressive 64-bit memory bus under its Hood which could transfer a staggering 106.4 megabytes per second well it was pretty staggering in late 1991 anyway it was the combination of the two 32-bit risk processors as well as the admittedly impressive memory bus that led to Atari giving us what the Jaguar is probably known for best it's bit count now we've been through just our silly and how much of a marketing Ploy the fatuous bit Wars of the late 80s and 90s were on this channel before but Atari took things to a whole new level with the Jaguar not only did they claim that it was a 64 bit console they pretty much based their entire branding and marketing campaign around this incredibly dubious fact the only thing that could be legitimately considered truly 64 bits within the system's Hardware is the memory bus and what use is a 64-bit transferal system if you're only using 32-bit processors make it make sense calling the Jaguar a 64-bit console is at best a clever and misleading use of semantics and at worst unintentional deceptive ploy to attempt to con the naive public it seems rather silly in retrospect that consumers could be whipped into such a frenzy with some simple use of multiples of eight and the word bits but it really was a simpler time back then a simpler stupider time the Jaguar was first unveiled to the unsuspecting public in August 1993 at the consumer entertainment show in Chicago and was released in limited numbers to American Test markets in New York and San Francisco three months later on the 23rd of November for 249.99 a full Nationwide launch came a few months after that in early 1994. Atari had secured a 500 million dollar deal with IBM to manufacture the physical Hardware in an attempt to make it seem like the Jaguar was a homegrown American console despite most of its roots are coming from right here in Jolly Old England the Atari Jaguar was as British as tea and crumpets I told you it was a deceptive little thing didn't I even though on paper Atari seemed to be being incredibly Forward Thinking with the development of their latest bit of Kit the intervening two years between the concept and release had seen Sega bring out their Mega Drive adds on the mega CT while Commodore had just launched the Amiga cd32 device in Europe to compounds matters further an entirely new upstart company led by Gaming's dreamiest hunk trip Hawkins known as a 3DO Hans joined the party and brought out a vastly superior machine Tech wise just over a month and a half before the Jaguar launched can anything go right for the calamitous Atari company Atari has planned to give the public a technological Powerhouse but their new console was starting to look woefully underpowered before it was even released one thing Atari did have on their side was affordability despite the system retailing for fifty dollars more than it's predicted 199.99 launch price the Jaguar was still at 100 cheaper than the cd32 and around a third of the price of 3do's high-end big budget Beast the Jaguars launcher was accompanied by a memorable ad campaign that heavily featured the slogan you do the math in reference to the system's bold 64-bit claims it's those adverts with all no doubt seen countless timed with the annoying teacher lady yelling at us from a classroom about how much we should care about bits part of me feels that a lot of teachers could get into a lot of trouble for saying stuff like that these days a memorable piece of marketing for sure but there was one major problem and that was that a video game consumers generally had eyes and they usually use them for looking anyone with 2020 Vision could see that atari's latest consoles a big talk of having more bits than all of the competition and just didn't translate in the graphics Department truth be told it seemed to look far less graphically impressive than most of the other 32-bit systems it was meant to be out shining this was very apparent in the Jaguars launch game cyber morph which featured the debut of everyone's least favorite bald mouthy disembodied green head where did you learn to fly perhaps a more appropriate question would be where did you learn to program games given the absolutely atrocious draw distance on display here bear in mind that this was a pack in launch title something that should be specifically trying to show off the capabilities of the system I mean granted there are polygons on display and it is in 3D but the game is almost unplayable and that's stupid green trollop constantly in your ear doesn't exactly help matters two put it in context the similar looking but far far more playable Star Fox had come out on the 16-bit Super Nintendo eight months before cyber morph was released it was a little bit embarrassing really and that bombastic do the math ads campaign had backfired massively as people were starting to feel as if Atari was trying to Hoodwink them and early Jaguar buyers were left feeling sorely disappointed after the vague promises about the system's prowess that had been made to them where did you learn to fly where did you learn to fly where did you learn where did you learn to fly where did you learned to fly where did you learned important the Jaguar is awkward and often buggy Hardware was also proving a headache for developers thanks in part to the rushed development cycle the troubled console was put through Atari pushed hard to have the Prototype Hardware ready by the end of 1991 so it was ready for product testing in 1992 which resulted in the custom chip design between the console's three main processors being left somewhat incomplete a huge roster of almost 200 development companies was promised when the system launched but when they realized that just what they were dealing with the vast majority of them simply dropped out yikes as one would expect this resulted in a lack of games with most of the ones that did get released proving incredibly underwhelming aside from the odd Stand Out title such as Rayman or the super cool Alien vs Predator many were left struggling to see much improvement on what we were used to seeing in the previous 16-bit console generation given that we were being encouraged to do the math what did not stand to reason that we should expect Jaguar games to look four times better it's no wonder that most of the consoles games were indistinguishable from their 16-bit counterparts and that's essentially what a lot of them were most programmers did not have the time nor the patience to faff about with two a semi-broke custom processors that they were entirely unfamiliar with so instead they would opt to use the familiar 16-bit Motorola 68 000 thus bypassing the Hardware's 32-bit chips entirely by the way did I mention that this console is deceptive all the bad press consumer dissatisfaction and a lack of compelling software meant the Jaguar struggled to get any kind of significant install base and by the end of 1994 Atari had only managed to sell a worrying 100 000 units things were looking Bleak but they were about to get a whole lot Bleaker this brings us to the summer of 1995. one of the most exciting times in history The Gamers but one of the most depressing times in history for Atari the launch of the Sega Saturn in May and the Sony PlayStation in September meant that the Jaguar was not only increasingly underpowered but was also becoming borderline irrelevant both consoles made atari's ugly little box look almost primitive in comparison this would cause some amount to go into damage control modes in an Infamous 1995 interview with Next Generation magazine in which he claimed that the Jaguar was at least as powerful as the Saturn and only slightly less powerful than the PlayStation The Cheeky deluded little Scamp the interview ended up getting a deluge of complaints after he made some rather curious claims about suing Sony over the price of their upcoming PlayStation he also further angered his customers when he stated that the lack of third-party developers was actually good for the Jaguars profitability despite its meaning that consumers had barely any games to choose from I'm going to have to bring the words nitwits back for you Sam tremel you absolutely knit with you Atari slashed at the prices of their Albatross of a console by 100 in an attempt to stay afloat but it helped about as much as one would expect I.E not a fat lot a rather damning excerpt from Ataris in 1995 annual financial report reads Jaguar cells were substantially below atari's expectations and financial results were materially adversely affected the shaky Financial grounds that Atari was already on before the Jaguar was even released it meant that they simply could not dedicate the level of marketing that is historically required to ensure a video game console's success the development and release of atari's a divisive system was a huge gamble in almost all conceivable ways and it was a gamble that wasn't really paying off by late 1995 Atari was left with little recourse and their ailing console that just started with so much potential was quickly turning into a complete disaster the Jaguar had turned Atari into a laughing stock so to say the Jaguar had been a failure so far would be a bit of an understatement the platform was panning out to be an embarrassment that amused critics angered consumers and was killing off one of the most recognizable and beloved brands in gaming history still there was one elastic ditch attempt to save the system ACD ROM driver the Little Black Box of Lies was first announced just before the consoles in November 1993 launch although plans were a little bit more than speculative at that stage after Atari started knuckling down on the project which was now codes named in Jaguar 2 an initially productive and promising early development process gave the full hearty company hopes that the device would be ready in time for the 1994 Christmas holidays but unforeseen yet hardly surprising budgetary and technical issues caused these plans to be promptly scuppered and the system's release to be delayed Atari is already Limited in development Manpower was also split during this time as the company was simultaneously in development of a virtual reality headset device that would be compatible with the jaguar and was also set to blow the gaming world away with its incredible unparalleled immersive gameplay and unbelievable futuristic technology the likes of which had never been seen spoiler alert the VR has set never came out and the gaming world was never blown away all the attention and extra development time this frivolous piece of virtual reality nonsense was getting was also time being taken away from the already troubled development process of the Jaguar CD it seems that this stripped-down version of Atari had spread themselves so thin that they were barely capable of producing one simple add-on let alone multiple complicated ones it's no wonder that the poor peripheral had a myriad of Technical and maintenance issues but we'll get to that shortly after several further delays and a whole lot more headache for Atari the Jaguar CD was finally released to the public on the 21st of September 1995 for 149 dollars and 95 cents a price that would be pretty reasonable if the stupid thing actually worked the release came hot on the hills of Atari dropping the price of the base Jaguar unit to 149 and releasing a fancy new Pro controller for the system they had hopes of drumming up new interest in the console increasing its install base and getting some hype behind the underperforming hardware in time for its CD add-on release the disc based peripheral came packaged with two games in the form of blue Lightning and vidgrid and also included an audio CD of the Tempest 2000 soundtrack and a demo of the first level of the classic point and click adventure missed but what else did this cursed nightmare bring to the table some of the more impressive aspects of the Jaguar CD were the double speeds driver standards and the use of discs that could hold up to 790 megabytes of data for games this not only provided a significant increase in the amount of maximum memory contained within a standard CD-ROM but also made it far more difficult to Pirate Jaguar CD games given the dedicated format being used rather than using the established blueprint for putting games onto disks laid out by CD-ROMs the Jaguar CD designers decided to base their format on the much cheaper and more readily available audio CD all of this sounded great on paper but it also proved to be one of the system's biggest downfalls the extra memory on the disk it gave scope for larger more expansive games but it also meant that the disk reader provided very little error protection leading to games that frequently not reading or loading and several 40 units being produced if that wasn't bad enough this rather unusual disk format makes the Jaguar CD incredibly difficult to both find parts for and repair leading it to be one of the absolute most difficult devices to be able to find an actual functioning working version of in 2022 what a complete and utter disaster of a machine even the ones that aren't broken very rarely perform consistently and the suspected 10 to 20 000 working machines out there in the wild are constantly diminishing in numbers this means you will probably probably more likely to encounter a real-life snarling jaguar cat than experiencing a working Jaguar CD in your lifetime even if you live in the British Countryside now on to the machine itself the device slots directly onto the top of the jaguar and features a top loading disc tray and even has its own separate power supply we can't really talk about the design for long without addressing the elephant in the room and that is yes the Atari Jaguar CD does indeed look like a lavatory excuse my French but I think Atari are kind of taking the piss here who designs a peripheral to look like a water closet Atari heads the gumption to release a device that deserves flushing and looks remarkably like a thing that literally takes piss so a very chicken D's Atari each unit featured a virtual light machine or vlm which displays a selection of a rhythmical light displays in time with the music should the user insert and play an audio CD this processor also creates a random light show whenever the system is turned on which changes every time programmed by legendary English designer Jeff Minter of Tempest Fame who is often known by the pseudonym Yak the vlm was seen as quite sophisticated and Cutting Edge back then but it admittedly does seem a bit retrospectively silly and pointless now the Jaguar CD also has a secondary cartridge slots at the rear of the unit so that's regular old Jaguar games could still be played when it's plugged in there were plans for hybrid cartridge and CD games to be released making use of both ends of the hardware simultaneously but curl so please this was just another of atari's crazy hairbrained schemes that never came to fruition and no such software was ever released thank God eventually some good did come of the Atari latrines extra slot as the wacky gaming company finally got their act together and brought out the memory track cartridge which sat in the devices back end while CD games were being played and allowed players to save games and store high scores without the use of memory cards many users complained that the Jaguar CD was so poorly developed it didn't even connect to its parent's device properly as the position of the system on top of the Jaguar is borderline precarious it often caused problems with the two machines recognizing each other and maintaining a connection this issue was compounded to buy the cheaply designed motor that operated the disk drive which caused more horizontal vibration than Atari had anticipated when turning on and would often cause connections between the two devices to come loose many units were recalled or returned because either the CD drives motor was faulty all the laser that actually reads the disks was defective due to the cheap components being used and the systems troubled development cycle another problem yes another common problem was the lid on the disk drive closing too tightly and thus mashing itself against the disc underneath stopping it from being able to spin and stopping it from Reading I mean were Atari even trying the press and the public were starting to get wind of just how much of a catastrophic failure atari's new Venture was proving to be and the Jaguar CD was starting to become a very badly told very cliched yet very poor taste joke with few developers on board a few games on the horizon a blink financial situation and a practically non-existent install base the Jaguar CD was an extremely bad Health before it had even really got started what a silly system add-on devs had major issues with the inner workings of the OG Jaguar console itself due to its overly complicated multi-chip operating system and those issues were only exacerbated with its cd-based add-on taking this into account I'm sure you'd all expect the Jaguar CDs Library would be sparse but it's pretty shameful that only 10 games were released for the useless Contraption during its extremely short sub one-year lifespan and that includes the two packing games of those 10 games four are original exclusive Jaguar CD games while the other six are PC or arcade ports of titles that were popular at the time the first of the four exclusive titles was the packing game Blue Thunder which is an updated version of the 1989 Lynx game of the same name the second released in October 1995 was the 3D shooter hover strike unconquered lands which received a mixed to average reviews on release the third was the absolutely horrendous and ugly as Sin Highlander the last of the macleods which bafflingly was actually reviewed quite well at the time but seems almost unplayable today due to how cripplingly slow it is the last Jaguar CD exclusive game released before the system was officially discontinued was Battle morph which was a sequel to The Notorious cyber morph and features the return of Skyler AKA where did you learn to fly the divisive disembodied head with the big Gob from the first game although she is inexplicably blue instead of green this time around green or blue though it makes no difference the game is still awful in comparison to the Super Nintendo Star Fox then again I am sure the game would have been ruined too if it contains this annoying trollop where did you learn to fly where did you learn to fly where did you learn to form do a barrel roll [Music] we talked earlier about how the proprietary disk system that Atari decided upon and gave them 790 megabytes of memory to play with but almost killed the Jaguar CD in the process with how unreliable it was the real kick in the teeth is the fact that Atari didn't even come close to filling those 790 megabytes with any of the games released for the system making the whole Endeavor completely and utterly fruitless it felt like they literally went out of their way to sabotage their own console here absolute lunacy Atari plans are two try and recoup as much money as they could from the hardware of the add-on and so planned to release a combined jaguar and Jaguar CD called The Duo the zany company were intent on recreating as many bathroom items as they possibly could as although it was never ever actually released to the market prototype units very very clearly resemble a pair of bathroom scales as for the future of Atari past this point the Atari company was sold outright to WMS Industries in April of 1996 after co-founder Nolan Bushnell's boots to purchase them was unsuccessful which led to some funding being put back into the Jaguar CD surprisingly this would result in two more official games being released for the ill-fated system in the second half of 1997. in the form of World Tour racing and iron Soldier 2. but it wasn't until Atari was purchased by Hasbro in 1998 that some fresh life was breathed into the almost forgotten add-on rather than just let the license gather dust Hasbro released them both at the jaguar and jaguar C Ed's rights allowing games to be legally developed for either system by anyone this massively opens things up for The Homebrew Community leading to many Innovative and impressive titles being released for the system over the last 20 odd years and causing the Jaguar CD to become one of the most sought-after consoles around quite the turnaround to go from the peripheral that no one wanted to have actually dedicated fans financially fighting it out to get a hold of one although it should be noted that that's only really because so few of the miserable little things actually work nowadays we all saw it coming from a mile off but the Atari Jaguar CD was one of the gaming industry's biggest failures and possibly the most faulty and unreliable system of all time but it is nice to see some use being made of the old thing by Indie developers and The Homebrew community in recent years so although this thing was a massive failure the Jaguar CD still serves some sort of purpose today and in this silly tale on somewhat of a high note [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Lady Decade

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Id: BqZwP1ufYlI

Length: 37min 55sec (2275 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 27 2023