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[VGEsoterica]

Back in the day when Atari still "existed" outside of a name that people keep buying to use to sell you "nostalgia"....they actually made hardware! The 2600/5400/7200....and a whole host of computers and even the Lynx.

But I would say, at least IMO, the Jaguar is the one Atari home console that most people under 40 probably think of when they think "Atari consoles". But the Jaguar wasn't always destined to be what it was / release when it did as Atari also had a SNES / Genesis competitor in development under the name Panther.

Panther and Jaguar were developed side by side as Atari expected the custom chip set on Jaguar to take much longer to finish design wise than it actually did and Atari didn't want to let Nintendo and Sega totally run away with the video game market in the 16-bit era, so they were developing Panther as a slightly more powerful alternative to the other 16-bit machines of the day. Dev kits were made, coding started slowly....and then Atari realized Jaguar would be "finished" (well the hardware had bugs...so lets say more "rushed to the finish line) earlier than anticipated...and Atari just cancelled the Panther and released the Jaguar in its place.

Magazines previewed Panther, there were hardware case mock ups shown...and absolutely nothing came of it. No remaining game demos, SDKs, etc etc etc. Just vanished off the gaming scene and rarely got mentioned every again.

Except a few bits do still exist. There is one (maybe two, hard to say) dev kits left in existence...and this weird board; the Atari Panther Otis development sound board. It's part of the prototype Panther hardware and was intended to be the sound portion of a finalized Panther.

Interesting after Panther was cancelled the Ensonic chip made its way into more than one Taito arcade board so we can actually hear what the Panther would have technically been capable of sound wise.

But it's just another weird instance of a console being near to final design and just scrapped entirely ala 3DO M2 or SNES CD

Curious who on GAF even remembers about the Atari Panther though? As admittedly I am NOT a huge Atari fan...but more of a development / video game history and preservation fan

 

[Katatonic]

I remember reading about the Panther in EGM. It was being hyped up as a powerhouse system along with the Panasonic M2 and Sony PlayStation.

 

[Magic Carpet]

I want a cat pointer.

 

[Henry Panic]

Panther was never close to finished, dev interviews said the hardware was faulty and couldn't even keep up with early SNES games.

Jaguar ended up having complete hardware but Atari had 5 companies make different parts of a console and two guys making the dev kits because Atari didn't have the capital to support the Jaguar.

It's a mystery why they were even working on releasing a console after 1992 when their computer business went bust.

They should have just made money on portables for a few years instead of pulling a Sega. Then came back later.

 

[VGEsoterica]

I want a cat pointer.

hahaha here you go : https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KIG6YX2/?tag=neogaf0e-20

 

[coffinbirth]

Otis!
Pretty neat piece of history, and another thing that was left in troves in a warehouse only to be discovered decades later.
They can be had for $50 if anyone is so inclined to own a completely obscure gaming artifact.
https://thebrewingacademy.com/products/atari-panther-otis-sound-board

 

[RAIDEN1]

Who in their right mind at Atari thought the Jag was ready for release, as well as who decided that the controller for it was "next gen" when it clearly looked like something from 1983, not for 1993

 

[VGEsoterica]

Who in their right mind at Atari thought the Jag was ready for release, as well as who decided that the controller for it was "next gen" when it clearly looked like something from 1983, not for 1993

People running out of time and money.

Atari was broke. They needed to recoup and put money in the bank. So you button it up the best you can and you ship it and hope for the best

 

[theclaw135]

I want a cat pointer.

Cat themed hardware has not been a success story.

 

[ThaMonkeyClaw]

Cat themed hardware has not been a success story.

Haha, cue cat from Radio Shack, I had one of those back in the day!

 

[VGEsoterica]

Haha, cue cat from Radio Shack, I had one of those back in the day!

I remember wanting one as a kid...probably because it was shaped like a cat obv

 

[VGEsoterica]

Panther was never close to finished, dev interviews said the hardware was faulty and couldn't even keep up with early SNES games.

Jaguar ended up having complete hardware but Atari had 5 companies make different parts of a console and two guys making the dev kits because Atari didn't have the capital to support the Jaguar.

It's a mystery why they were even working on releasing a console after 1992 when their computer business went bust.

They should have just made money on portables for a few years instead of pulling a Sega. Then came back later.

Atari def made some BAD decisions

 

[cartman414]

Atari def made some BAD decisions

Sometimes I wonder about the timeline where Jack was never forced out of Commodore.

 

[Pejo]

Genuinely didn't know this was even a thing. I had an Atari Jaguar that my friend traded me for a carton of cigarettes, with Iron Soldier and AvP. They were both kickass games, but the system itself kinda sucked. Those controllers were awful.

 

[MrA]

Who in their right mind at Atari thought the Jag was ready for release, as well as who decided that the controller for it was "next gen" when it clearly looked like something from 1983, not for 1993

atari corp shipped thousands upon thousands of games to Venezuela for no apparent reason, to they shipped the 2600s with a controller that they opened up and snipped a resistor to make 1 button, they would ship games with wrong labels in wrong boxes, basically no qc, as a sensible company it makes to sense
but.... as an old man looking for a way to cash in before retirement the jaguar did a brilliant job of giving atari some semblance of value so as a scheme to dump a dead company it worked.

 

[Ozzie666]

Sounds like another example of a good specs and hardware, that just didn't perform as well as it should have. Just like the Jaguar with its internal flaws.
This hardware should have been well beyond the SNES and Genesis for 2D games.

 

[Henry Panic]

Sometimes I wonder about the timeline where Jack was never forced out of Commodore.

Jack needed to be kicked out for the Commodore name to even be relevant after 1980.

His sacrifice added regulations to three industries filled with corruption that didn't have any, and helped Apple and IBM change course and push computers for home use harder. Also forced Texas Instruments into sticking to calculators.

The con is that no one who wasn't a customer wanted to invest in Commodore after that stunt. Leading to them buying Amiga and the brands slow painful death.

Sounds like another example of a good specs and hardware, that just didn't perform as well as it should have. Just like the Jaguar with its internal flaws.
This hardware should have been well beyond the SNES and Genesis for 2D games.

Panther had the chipset for 3D. It probably would have sold just based on that. But it would have just been flat polygons like most ST and Amiga 3D games, but at a higher frame rate.

That was obsolete by what was shown at winter CES 1993. That would have given only one year to the Panther before games like Need for Speed 3DO or Ridge Racer PS1 came out in 1994.

That's a power gap I understand why Atari wanted to avoid.

 

[MrA]

Genuinely didn't know this was even a thing. I had an Atari Jaguar that my friend traded me for a carton of cigarettes, with Iron Soldier and AvP. They were both kickass games, but the system itself kinda sucked. Those controllers were awful.

well those 2 made up about 17% of the good games on the jag and 33.3% of the good exclusives, so you didn't miss much

 

[cartman414]

Jack needed to be kicked out for the Commodore name to even be relevant after 1980.

His sacrifice added regulations to three industries filled with corruption that didn't have any, and helped Apple and IBM change course and push computers for home use harder. Also forced Texas Instruments into sticking to calculators.

The con is that no one who wasn't a customer wanted to invest in Commodore after that stunt. Leading to them buying Amiga and the brands slow painful death.

The remainder of the leadership of the company (Irving Gould and also later Mehdi Ali) either didn't know or care anything amounting to shit about running a computer company.

 

[Henry Panic]

The remainder of the leadership of the company (Irving Gould and also later Mehdi Ali) either didn't know or care anything amounting to shit about running a computer company.

Yes but Jack started a fire internally that led to that. That's why they chose to buy Amiga in the first place.

Yet Atari made the ST with common cheap off shelf parts in 7 months with barely any money when they started. Ended up losing less, making more, having a stronger processor, and wasn't locked to the hardware as hard.

Amiga was a good media machine but it was a dumb decision by Commodore and an unwise purchase.

 

[RAIDEN1]

If you thought the CD32 was bad, the Jag was Atari's answer...

 

[deriks]

That was one hell of a find

I only heard like was a rumor. But yeah, it was just a prototype. Every company has a ton of shit like this, so... still nice piece of history thou

 

[SCB3]

The Atari after the 2600 really became irrelevant, the Jaguar was a mess with like what 2 decent games (Alien Vs Predator being the big one) and then decided to try a fucking CD add on that most of them now are just broken

I feel sorry for anyone that got one over a n64, Playstation or even a Saturn

 

[VGEsoterica]

If you thought the CD32 was bad, the Jag was Atari's answer...

I mean Jaguar def has some games you’d want to play. AvP is still a banger

 

[thelurkinghorror]

The Atari after the 2600 really became irrelevant, the Jaguar was a mess with like what 2 decent games (Alien Vs Predator being the big one) and then decided to try a fucking CD add on that most of them now are just broken

I feel sorry for anyone that got one over a n64, Playstation or even a Saturn

Don’t forget the Atari ST

 

[ReBurn]

Haha, cue cat from Radio Shack, I had one of those back in the day!

I had a couple. It had an interesting hacking community.

 

[ReBurn]

I mean Jaguar def has some games you’d want to play. AvP is still a banger

It was worth it to me for Tempest 2000. Especially when the fire sale started.

 

[SCB3]

Don’t forget the Atari ST

I try to man, I try to

 

[Henry Panic]

If you thought the CD32 was bad, the Jag was Atari's answer...

Jag was leagues ahead of the CD32.

 

[Henry Panic]

The Atari after the 2600 really became irrelevant, the Jaguar was a mess with like what 2 decent games (Alien Vs Predator being the big one) and then decided to try a fucking CD add on that most of them now are just broken

I feel sorry for anyone that got one over a n64, Playstation or even a Saturn

7800 was relevant, Lynx was relevant, ST was relevant and saved the company, STE was relevant, Mega ST was relevant, and Atari computer clubs were relevant.

Jaguar gives people the wrong idea of where Atari was between jag and the 2600. It's a popular console to hate on without knowing much about it. It's the most popular thing associated with the brand after the 90s. Not even the Falcon is talked about, and that was a capable computer.

 

[VGEsoterica]

Jag was leagues ahead of the CD32.

100%

 

[Henry Panic]

Biggest problem with CD32 was Commodore despite knowing Amiga was mainly a gaming system turned into a computer, did nothing with the hardware or developers to encourage improvement.

Half the CD32 games could be run on a 1985 Amiga 1000 or an 87 500. Other than the audio.

By 1993 you had Sonic CD, Gunstar heroes, Contra 3, Mega Man X, Axelay, Shinobi 3.

Don't get me wrong The Last Ninja was ahead of it's time in 1987. But The Last Ninja still the same on a CD with only better sound in 1993 isn't very impressive.

At least with the Jaguar almost every game it had blew everything else out of the water until spring 1994.

The funniest thing is the least next generation looking early Jaguar games were Amiga ports or were moved from the Amiga.

Commodore really blew it. Amiga was a bad purchase as a computer. They should have just made Amiga a game console as originally intended.

 

[Northeastmonk]

Digging in my brain. I can’t think of a single video game history book that covered the Panther. Interesting how the glory years were spent making boards in a small room of Nolan Bushnell’s apartment to when Pong took over to when he finally left the company. Not to mention Steve Jobs and his work on reducing the chips on the Breakout board. Granted, this came later. It would have been an interesting piece of the story. I’m glad we got more info on the line of computers Atari produced with the 50th Anniversary Collection. That was before my time. I’m an avid fan of Atari history. The games are simple and fun. As a kid, I browsed the Jaguar and 32X isle, but I was too caught up with Nintendo and owning a Sega Genesis was all I needed.

 

[Mobilemofo]

Early signs for the Jag weren't good, and took a dive when the controller was revealed. Fuckin awful. The toilet seat cd add on killed it.

 

[Ozzie666]

Early signs for the Jag weren't good, and took a dive when the controller was revealed. Fuckin awful. The toilet seat cd add on killed it.

I never really understood their way of thinking reaching back into early 80's controller designs with the number pad. Using that tried and tested Coleco and Intelivision setup, pretty gutsy. Unless they were banking on PC games making their way across somehow with minimal control changes.

It ranks up there with The 3D0 daisy chain setup and the terrible Dreamcast controller.

 

[Henry Panic]

I never really understood their way of thinking reaching back into early 80's controller designs with the number pad. Using that tried and tested Coleco and Intelivision setup, pretty gutsy. Unless they were banking on PC games making their way across somehow with minimal control changes.

It ranks up there with The 3D0 daisy chain setup and the terrible Dreamcast controller.

Most people didn't care about the controller at the time

Many at the time thought the extra keys could be used to port computer games to the Jaguar and add item and menu selection, or help with shortcuts. It wasn't until it was proven to be underutilized that people took a bat to the controller.

They were not looking at it as a Colecovision controller back then. They aren't really comparable either, that's a modern perspective.

It was still ultimately pointless I'm not saying it was a good idea. Just like the CDTV controller tried to wedge a keyboard in the middle. The concept was a good idea but games didn't use it.

Early signs for the Jag weren't good,

Actually early is when Atari was able to trick people and hide the skeletons in their closet the most.

They ALMOST got Midway to release Ultimate MK3 on the system based on lies and PR, thinking there would be enough copies sold to make profits until the truth came out and they took their bags and left.

Atari went under less than 9 months later iirc.

I never really understood what Atari's goal was with the Jaguar. They couldn't make 1 million Jaguars so how were they going to make money?

I guess they were hoping to trick a company into investing millions on the project to save it, but it never happened.

That may have worked with the Panther, but Jaguar was too late for that strategy imo.

3DO made things worse, it had almost all the western and half the Japanese third party support. Leaving Jaguar with Ubisoft and early 90s Activision. Before Tony Hawk, MechWarrior 2, and Spiderman so Activision was garbage during that period.

 

[cartman414]

The Atari after the 2600 really became irrelevant, the Jaguar was a mess with like what 2 decent games (Alien Vs Predator being the big one) and then decided to try a fucking CD add on that most of them now are just broken

I feel sorry for anyone that got one over a n64, Playstation or even a Saturn

Bite your tongue. Saturn's the one that aged the best, even if you needed to go the import route.

 

[cartman414]

Yes but Jack started a fire internally that led to that. That's why they chose to buy Amiga in the first place.

Yet Atari made the ST with common cheap off shelf parts in 7 months with barely any money when they started. Ended up losing less, making more, having a stronger processor, and wasn't locked to the hardware as hard.

Amiga was a good media machine but it was a dumb decision by Commodore and an unwise purchase.

The Amiga had a shot when the 500 started doing well. It all went to hell when Gould fired Thomas Rattigan, the guy responsible, and hired Ali, followed by slashing R&D. That idiocy is all on Gould/Ali.

 

[Team Andromeda]

Panther was never close to finished, dev interviews said the hardware was faulty and couldn't even keep up with early SNES games.

Jaguar ended up having complete hardware but Atari had 5 companies make different parts of a console and two guys making the dev kits because Atari didn't have the capital to support the Jaguar.

It's a mystery why they were even working on releasing a console after 1992 when their computer business went bust.

They should have just made money on portables for a few years instead of pulling a Sega. Then came back later.

Depends on what interview you read. I seem to remember an interview with Jeff saying the Panther was way more powerful than the SNES or Mega Drive
It's funny you talk of SEGA, Thanks to SEGA they had almost $100 million with SEGA paying out for the 6 pin patient, another utter crap move by SEGA America

SEGA America loved to spend SEGA's cashflow

 

[Henry Panic]

Depends on what interview you read. I seem to remember an interview with Jeff saying the Panther was way more powerful than the SNES or Mega Drive

It was more powerful in raw specs which is where the polygon capabilities came from but never seen an interview where anyone said it was as capable as either console in sprites and all the hardware tricks and multi-parallax involving them.

Sure they could sell on 3D alone, but the Jaguar was stronger in both areas so would look more impressive

It's funny you talk of SEGA, Thanks to SEGA they had almost $100 million with SEGA paying out for the 6 pin patient, another utter crap move by SEGA America

Really wouldn't change anything for either company. Sega of Japan was burning enough cash for that loss to not matter three times over.

$100 million when everyone saw the truth and we're running for the hills, and Atari could no longer pretend they could market or sell enough games for their console (which they couldn't do day 1) was when that amount may give them another couple months of operating best case.

As I believe, Atari fully intended to trick companies to invest into the Jaguar project for it to work, but the funding never came. They used this trick for the ST and it worked.

They almost got money from Sega, Midway for multiple projects, got some chump change from Ubisoft and Delphine, and whoever helped them get the Highlander license.

I think Jaguar needed an early release in 1993, that year delay destroyed them in getting funding.

 

[Henry Panic]

The Amiga had a shot when the 500 started doing well. It all went to hell when Gould fired Thomas Rattigan, the guy responsible, and hired Ali, followed by slashing R&D. That idiocy is all on Gould/Ali.

Nah, the idiocity was having two upgrades planned even before that, and neither were sufficient enough to keep Amiga competitive. Even if those guys stayed it would only help with their reputation and that's all.

As much as people love it the 1200 was nothing. It came out in 1992, you could barely play Alone in the Dark or fast Wolf on it

Not even the other marginal upgrades could run doom even without full screen, ANY OF THEM, even the Mega ST could play doom, Falcon could play Ultimate Doom and someone got it to play a compromised but impressive port of Magic Carpet.

None of those last Amigas could play any popular games 2D or 3D, until their bankruptcy in 1994.

Even office programs were lagging, crashing, or received little if any substantial updates from 1988.

In 1993 it was even falling quickly behind in video and graphic design, it's main forte.

In comparison, Maxed ST and Falcon were still good for audio programs, and you could make games on it and port them upward onto Windows PC easily.

 

[Team Andromeda]

It was more powerful in raw specs which is where the polygon capabilities came from but never seen an interview where anyone said it was as capable as either console in sprites and all the hardware tricks and multi-parallax involving them.

Sure they could sell on 3D alone, but the Jaguar was stronger in both areas so would look more impressive



Really wouldn't change anything for either company. Sega of Japan was burning enough cash for that loss to not matter three times over.

$100 million when everyone saw the truth and we're running for the hills, and Atari could no longer pretend they could market or sell enough games for their console (which they couldn't do day 1) was when that amount may give them another couple months of operating best case.

As I believe, Atari fully intended to trick companies to invest into the Jaguar project for it to work, but the funding never came. They used this trick for the ST and it worked.

They almost got money from Sega, Midway for multiple projects, got some chump change from Ubisoft and Delphine, and whoever helped them get the Highlander license.

I think Jaguar needed an early release in 1993, that year delay destroyed them in getting funding.

EDGE did an interview/feature with Jeff and in that, Jeff said it was sprite monster way better than the MD or SNES. Jeff never said anything about polygons mind
And a $100 Million dollars is a hell of a lot of money when your entire profits are little over $200 million. Atari was on its knee's and SEGA America should have played the long game and saw Atari go out of business

The management at SEGA America were clueless when it come to money and cashflow

 

[Dane]

Correct me if i'm wrong, wasn't Jaguar made out by a british company called Flare who was a promising startup of game development and accessories? They had some great tech demos on Amiga hardware and thus got Atari attention because of their unusual hardware and programming ideas to extract the most at lower cost.

 

[nkarafo]

Nah, the idiocity was having two upgrades planned even before that, and neither were sufficient enough to keep Amiga competitive. Even if those guys stayed it would only help with their reputation and that's all.

As much as people love it the 1200 was nothing. It came out in 1992, you could barely play Alone in the Dark or fast Wolf on it

Not even the other marginal upgrades could run doom even without full screen, ANY OF THEM, even the Mega ST could play doom, Falcon could play Ultimate Doom and someone got it to play a compromised but impressive port of Magic Carpet.

None of those last Amigas could play any popular games 2D or 3D, until their bankruptcy in 1994.

Even office programs were lagging, crashing, or received little if any substantial updates from 1988.

In 1993 it was even falling quickly behind in video and graphic design, it's main forte.

In comparison, Maxed ST and Falcon were still good for audio programs, and you could make games on it and port them upward onto Windows PC easily.

The 1200/CD32 was probably the most "meh" machine of all time for me.

I live in Europe and the Amiga 500 was a massive success in my country. In the late 80's/early 90's there were far more Amiga fans VS console users. Local magazines would support the Amiga as far as freaking 1996, even thought the brand was dead years prior to that. And they would try to scratch the barrel for something to show.

They would go on about how the 1200 can compete with PCs at the time, because of it's price/perf ratio. That's fair, the 1200 was dirt cheap compared to a PC. But then they would try and convince readers that the machine has games that can compete with Doom. Fears, Gloom, Alien Breed 3D, that kind of stuff. They were proud of those games, even though they are far and beyond behind DOOM technically.

The bar was so low for Amiga users in the early/mid 90's, they would even claim ports like SF2 and Mortal Kombat were good ports, close to the arcade because the still screens looked like so, animation and frame rate be damned. This was cringe worthy even then, these ports were mangled beyond belief, the 16bit console versions look like a whole generation ahead of those.

But wait, there's more. The standards were so low, Amiga users were proud of ports like Aladdin and The Lion King on the AGA chip for being... nearly as good as the 16bit consoles. Yeah, that's right. These ports were made for the brand new and powerful AGA chip and all it could do was games that don't look much worse than the originals running on consoles that used to compete with the older Amiga 500 (these ports were still a little worse mind you). That was how low the bar was in Amiga land in 1995. They just wouldn't let go.

 

[Dev1lXYZ]

I got the Jaguar at launch with Trevor McFur. My friends were very impressed with Cybermorph and we all hated the other title. Broken controller right out of the box. Called Atari and they shipped me a controller next day air over the Christmas holidays. Told me to keep the broken one. I ended up with Tempest 2000, Raiden, and AvP to finish the library. Never got the CD, even though Walmart was selling them for like $50 as soon as they hit shelves.

 

[Team Andromeda]

Correct me if i'm wrong, wasn't Jaguar made out by a british company called Flare who was a promising startup of game development and accessories? They had some great tech demos on Amiga hardware and thus got Atari attention because of their unusual hardware and programming ideas to extract the most at lower cost.

You are very right. They also made hardware for the TXE multi system console too

 

[Henry Panic]

EDGE did an interview/feature with Jeff and in that, Jeff said it was sprite monster way better than the MD or SNES. Jeff never said anything about polygons mind

That's fine but when nearly every other interview including those working on it in the late stage says otherwise that puts his interview into question.

I can see bigger sprites best case from what I've read over time. Nothing else.

And a $100 Million dollars is a hell of a lot of money when your entire profits are little over $200 million. Atari was on its knee's and SEGA America should have played the long game and saw Atari go out of business

It was $70 million looking at their report again, but Atari lost more than that in 1994.

Imagine how much they woukd lose if they had enough money to be aggressive.

In 1995 half the retailers didn't have Jaguar.

Also your Sega of America attacks are strange. I'm not saying they were not poorly run but Sega of Japan lost almost all of Segas profits in a few years so no part of the company was well run.

 

[Team Andromeda]

That's fine but when nearly every other interview including those working on it in the late stage says otherwise that puts his interview into question.

I can see bigger sprites best case from what I've read over time. Nothing else.



It was $70 million looking at their report again, but Atari lost more than that in 1994.

Imagine how much they woukd lose if they had enough money to be aggressive.

In 1995 half the retailers didn't have Jaguar.

Also your Sega of America attacks are strange. I'm not saying they were not poorly run but Sega of Japan lost almost all of Segas profits in a few years so no part of the company was well run.

I can only go on what Jeff said TBH. It was close to 100 million because SEGA America also bought $40 million dollars worth of Atari shares. Great call Tom !!!

 

[Henry Panic]

They would go on about how the 1200 can compete with PCs at the time, because of it's price/perf ratio. That's fair,

I disagree, from the US view.

In 1992 the Amiga 1200 was in US dollar $749 not bare ones with the minimum of everything you needed.

Myst Alone in the Dark ready PC clone equivalent was $999 and usually came with free software. More capable for the office too.

In 1993 that was in the 500s.

In Europe the clones were not gaining as much ground because of how big and competitive the micro market was. It took longer for PC to dominate so it makes sense why the price advantage wasn't there as early as the US.

 

[Henry Panic]

I can only go on what Jeff said TBH. It was close to 100 million because SEGA America also bought $40 million dollars worth of Atari shares. Great call Tom !!!

Looks like the $70m covers everything including the investment according to page 3: https://archive.org/details/AtariCorporationAnnualReport1994/page/n1/mode/1up?view=theater

Whole report looks like a nightmare really.