Atari Jaguar Review

Atari's bid to leapfrog Sega and Nintendo leaned hard on one claim: that the Jaguar was the first 64-bit games console. Inside sat a pair of custom chips nicknamed Tom and Jerry alongside a Motorola 68000, a design capable of impressive 3D for 1993 on paper but so awkward to program, and so poorly served by tools, that few games ever tapped it. It launched in New York and San Francisco at 249.95 dollars with Cybermorph in the box and reached the rest of the United States in 1994.

A few games still earn respect. Tempest 2000 is a genuine classic, Alien vs. Predator is tense and atmospheric, and the ports of Doom and Wolfenstein 3D hold up well. Early reviews also praised its raw power.

The rest of the story explains why it sits on so many lists of failed consoles. Major third party publishers stayed away, many releases looked no better than 16-bit games, and the controller, with a telephone style keypad and only three face buttons, is routinely named among the worst ever made. Price cuts and a CD add-on could not hold off the Saturn and PlayStation, and Atari abandoned the system in 1996 after selling only around a quarter of a million units. Today it is a cult machine for collectors and homebrew fans.