ScuzzBlog: Diaries July 2018
Entry 1st July 2018: Post 16: Atari Jaguar
Atari Jaguar - The end of the long road
I am not very well versed in the world of Atari. I guess being an
Amiga nutter I kinda turned a blind eye to their products and this
extended beyond the death of Commodore. I was aware of their gaming
products but other than early dabbling with the 'Woody' I don't
think I picked up an Atari controller until the day I started to
collect them in the early 2000s.
The Jaguar is the last of their gaming consoles that actually used
physical media. Although killed off by Atari the platform did see
an extended cult following given that the patents were released into
the public domain by Hasbro Interactive.
The poor console although tagged as a 64-Bit machine was in fact a
mix of various parts. The unit sold but 250,000 by the time it was
discontinued in 1996.
It was Flare Technology who began work on the Jaguar back in 1990
having convinced Atari that they could build a console to compete
with the SNES. Atari invested in the technology and had intended
releasing two consoles, the Panther and Jaguar.
The console was released in 1993 as the worlds first 64-Bit console
but in truth only two of the processors were true 64-Bit.
For me it really is a strange old beast. The controller has to be
the biggest I have ever used. The unit is bland and has a rather
strange dished area to the front that looks like an ash tray. The
rear is where it gets interesting and when the cartridge slots in
looks like a starship and really classic. But having the two parts
that are almost same in size I just scratched my head.
Only a minor niggle but the egg carton box inside just screamed out
cheap product. The minute you start pulling that out your going to
say goodbye to any original packaging. The SEGA Mega CD II was same.
Atari Jaguar made by Atari in the USA 1993
Uses a Motorola 68000 running at 13 MHz
Does have the TOM - 32 bit RISC CPU and the 64 bit RISC POP
Plus the 64 bit RISC blitter JERRY and 32 bit RISC DSP
RAM comes in 2 MB of DRAM
Enjoys 16.7 million colours
Media comes on the form of a 6 MB max cartridge.
Atari Jaguar
|
