Description

The Atari Jaguar will go down in the history books as a highly anticipated gaming console, which could not live up its high expectations and its historical fame. Although it pretended to be the first 64 bit console, the two processors, named Tom and Jerry, where both limited to 32 bit. They couden’t output the power that was needed to differentiate itself from the competition. The console also lacked sufficient titles. Especially of good quality. Only 80 games were released for the system and the majority by Atari itself. The later introduced peripheral ‘Jaguar CD’ was to expensive for many gamers and also, or maybe therefore, wasn’t embraced by third party developers.

In the early days of 3D gaming, the console was unable to acquire sufficient market share. The focus was insufficiently on the release of qualitative and exclusive games. The Jaguar sold no more than 150,000 units before it was discontinued in 1996. This means that the Jaguar belongs in the same list as the Philips CD-i, 3DO and Apple / Bandai Pippin. CD and cartridge based consoles that couldn’t impress and almost initiated a ‘second video game crash’ in the mid 90’s. The arrival of the Playstation marked the end of not only the Atari Jaguar, but also the other aforementioned consoles.