Atari Jaguar
The Jaguar is a home video game console developed by Atari Corporation and released in North America in November 1993. It is in the fifth generation of video game consoles, and it competed with fourth generation consoles released the same year, including the 16-bit Genesis, the 16-bit Super NES, and the 32-bit 3DO Interactive Multiplayer. Jaguar has a Motorola 68000 CPU and two custom 32-bit coprocessors named Tom and Jerry. Atari marketed it as the world’s first 64-bit game system, emphasizing its blitter’s 64-bit bus; however, none of its three processors have a 64-bit instruction set, as do later 64-bit consoles such as PlayStation 2 or Nintendo 64. The Jaguar launched with Cybermorph as the pack-in game, which received mixed reviews. The system’s library ultimately comprises only 50 licensed games.
Development started in the early 1990s by Flare Technology, which focused on the system after cancellation of the Panther console. The Jaguar was an important system for Atari after discontinuing Atari ST computers in favor of video games. However, game development was complicated by the multi-chip architecture, hardware bugs, and poor programming tools. Underwhelming sales further eroded third-party support.
Atari attempted to extend the lifespan of the system with the Jaguar CD add-on, with an additional 13 games, and emphasizing the Jaguar’s price of over US$100 less than its competitors. Jaguar could not compete against the Saturn and PlayStation, both released in 1995. Atari had internally abandoned the system by the end of that year, liquidating its inventory by 1996. The commercial failure of the Jaguar prompted Atari to leave the console market, and restructured itself as a third-party developer. After Hasbro Interactive acquired all Atari Corporation properties, the patents of the Jaguar were released into the public domain, with the console declared an open platform. Since its discontinuation, hobbyists have produced games for the system.
The Atari Jaguar CD is a CD-ROM peripheral for the Jaguar video game console. Only 13 games were released for the Jaguar CD during its lifetime. However, previously unfinished and homebrew games have since been released.
