Matthew Bacon goes hunting for Atari's
BIG cat, the Jaguar64
The Atari Jaguar 64-bit games console
was released in late 1993 to high public expectation
and media hype (well a lot for Atari anyway!). While
early Jaguar owners and Atari fans loved the machine,
the media were not so easily convinced.
In the early 1990s, the battle for
the title "king of the home games consoles"
was being fearlessly fought by the likes of Sega and
Nintendo. The Sega Megadrive and Nintendo SNES were
both 16-bit consoles and all the rage with loyal fans
and mountains of games. The 3DO 32-bit console had just
been released and promptly died within a couple of months
due to lack of public interest, developers and media
support. Consequently, when Atari announced that they
were to release the worlds first 64-bit games console
everyone's hopes were high!
On track for success
To Atari's credit, the Jaguar was exactly
what the market needed. The current crop of consoles
were past their best without a successor from the big
guns imminent (news of Sony's PlayStation had only just
begun to circulate). The Jag looked destined to reclaim
the glories of Atari's formative years.
The Jaguar console was truly the worlds
first 64-bit home games console, no matter what Nintendo
claimed in their original UK adverts at the release
of the N64! Manufactured by IBM, the Jags specs were
certainly impressive; 64-bit memory architecture, 5
processors including custom audio and video chips (nicknamed
Tom and Jerry), CD quality audio and True Colour display.
After some initial teething troubles at IBM, the Atari
Jaguar was released.
Atari decided to try and capture the
American market before venturing further afield to Asia
and Europe. The major cities of the US were targeted
by some award winning advertisements (no really, Atari
won several advertising awards - amazing thought it
sounds!) but with limited success. The Jaguar system
included; a Jag64 console, one controller, power adapter,
TV lead and a copy of Cybermorph all for $250. However
when console was released in Europe, fans were expected
to pay in excess of $300 for the same kit! This combined
with a lack luster ad campaign (as you can imagine)
didn't exactly encourage sales.
So what went wrong?
Atari were not new to developing games
consoles as we know... just a little out of touch? During
the late 1980s, following their success at producing
the early 8-bit consoles and the ST range of home computers,
the research and development team at Atari Corp. were
busy developing their own 'next generation' video game
consoles. It is believed that Atari had originally intended
to mass produce two 'next generation' consoles; The
Panther and the Jaguar. The Panther was to be a 32-bit
machine and forerunner to the more powerful 64-bit Jaguar.
However, the development of the Jaguar shot ahead of
schedule and Atari decided to cease development of the
Panther.
The Jaguars architecture was so sophisticated
(at the time) that it was capable of; high speed scrolling;
texture mapping 2D and 3D objects; morphing; the scaling,
rotation, distortion and skewing of sprites and images;
lighting and shading from single and multiple source.
These features, although now commonplace, beat Atari's
competition hands down. So what went wrong?
With all these great qualities, many
of the Jaguar games were unsurprisingly good... some
were GREAT! while others were just plain awful. Everyone
had their personal favourites like Doom, Tempest 2000,
Theme Park, A vs P, Rayman, Fight For Life ... and the
list goes on. In my opinion, the Jaguar did not take
off because of the quality of its games, rather their
lack of availability.
Promises promises...
When the Jag was released, Atari made
the bold step of announcing a host of developers and
a list of game titles as long as your arm. Unfortunately,
many of these titles never saw the light of day having
never got further than the planning stage. It was not
just game titles that failed to arrive, neither did
some of the consoles famed peripherals. The most
notorious being the VR headset.
At the time of the consoles release,
virtual reality or VR was in vogue and the "thing
to be seen doing" much like being a .com company
is today (daft but true!). If your product was seen
to be connected to VR in any form, it was deemed to
be a sure fire success. Users were unsurprisingly disappointed
when news that Virtuality Group were no longer to produce
the Jags VR lightweight headset and that all development
had ceased. The breakdown of communication between Atari
Corp. and the Virtuality Group was over publicised by
the world's media and followed by accusations by both
sides for its failure.
Although the Jag's VR headset failed
to materialise, Atari's R&D had been busy. Following
several announcements, misinformation and missed realised
dates... the Jaguar CD drive reached production. Unfortunately,
due to the untimely passing of Atari Corp, the Jaguar64's
combined console and CD unit and successor (rather aptly
named) Jaguar II never appeared. However, further development
of the Jaguar system did occur - to a point.
The Jaguar64's architecture was licensed
for use in arcade machines by Time Warner Interactive
(once a major stockholder of Atari Corp. shares). These
systems, called CoJags, consist of a Jaguar chipset
with additional memory, hard drive space and processor
upgrades. Two CoJag games are currently known to exist.
These are Maximum Force and Area 51.
So what went wrong? Who knows, but
I doubt a single event could pinpointed and it certainly
wasn't for the want of trying. Was it Atari's past success
catching up with them, their public image or famed public/media
relations?
On a positive note, development of
Jaguar games continue thanks to the announcement in
1999 by Hasbro that the Jaguar platform be declared
an 'open system'. Companies and individuals are now
free to develop games for the console which has got
to be good news! The future of the Jaguar now resides
with us, its fans, so lets make the most of it. It appears
that the big cat hasn't used all its nine lives up after
all ;-)
For those of you interested, I took
this photograph while staying in a hotel in Sturbridge,
MA (USA) - amazing or what! |
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