We take a look at the Jaguar version of the classic vertical shooter.
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Lets Play: Raiden on the Atari Jaguar
Japan Parcel Unboxing: Rarities and HuCards
Unboxing from 20th of September 2018. A couple more parcels from Japan, once again fairly heavy on the PC Engine games but also with a couple of rare machines.
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Lets Play: Super Huey on the Atari 7800
Super Huey is an early flight simulator where you take the controls of a helicopter. A curious mix of Apache, Choplifter and Battlezone.
Lets Play: Chequered Flag
We play the 3D racing game that sought to outdo Sega’s Virtua Racer on the Atari Jaguar.
Lets Play: Blue Lightning on the Atari Jaguar CD
Blue Lightning
We take a look at Atari’s answer to Sega’s Afterburner games. Now with added Top Gun.
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Let’s Play: Tower Toppler on the Atari 7800
Tower Toppler
We take a look at the unique platformer Tower Toppler. It came out on quite a few platforms (and was also called Nebulus) we’re looking at the Atari 7800 release which came out in 1988.
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Let’s Play: Brain Dead 13
Lets Play: Venture on the Atari 7800
Venture was released by Coleco in 1982 as a launch title for the ColecoVision. It was a conversion of the 1981 Exigy arcade machine. For it’s time it was considered to be both technically and artistically superb, winning an award for it’s graphics on release.
Coleco eventually released it on the Atari 2600 and Mattel Intellivision home systems. We’re taking a look on the Atari 7800.
Atari 7800
Atari 7800
| 3rd Generation Competitors | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sega Master System | Famicom / NES | Amstrad GX4000 | Commodore 64 Game System | ||||||
| Region | Release Date | Discontinued | Lifetime Sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| Japan | NA | NA | NA |
| North America | May 1986 | 1st January 1992 | 3M |
| Europe | July 1987 | 1992 | 500K |
Atari were hit hard in the video game crash and were eventually sold off a couple of time. They mostly concentrated on the computer market but still attempted to regain the glory they’d felt with the 2600. The 7800 followed the largely failed 5200.
The 7800 was basically an expanded 2600. It featured the same audio chip but a vastly improved graphics system. It was the first console developed outside of Atari, instead designed by General Computer Corporation.
The 7800 was an improvement over the 2600 and 5200, but not enough to compete with the incoming Japanese consoles.
The 7800 is compatible with the 5200 and 2600 range of games.
Atari Jaguar
Atari Jaguar
| 5th Generation Competitors | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3DO | CD32 | Saturn | Playstation | Nintendo 64 | FM Towns Marty | PC-FX | Pippin | Playdia | Loopy |
| Region | Release Date | Discontinued | Lifetime Sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| Japan | 21st Nov 1994 | 1996 | 190K (total) |
| North America | 23rd Nov 1993 | 1996 | |
| Europe | 27th Jun 1994 | 1996 |
After the games crash Atari struggled to make ground in the new videogame world with the death of the 2600. After several attempts they started to concentrate on computers instead. Until two engineers from a company called Flare approached them with a hardware platform they’d been developing.
Atari were already working on a project called Panther at the time, but decided to ask the Flare team to develop their platform under the codename Jaguar.
Panther wasn’t progressing as well as Atari had hoped, so they cancelled the project and went full steam ahead with the Jaguar. The machine was released, to fairly underwhelming reviews, in 1994 after a small test release the year before.
Atari billed the Jaguar as being the first 64-bit console. Their whole advertising strategy, named Do the Math, pushed the idea that the current crop of 16 bit and 32 bit consoles were inferior due to the lower bitness.
But this had a number of flaws, firstly the general public didn’t really understand the argument about bits and secondly it was fairly easy to argue that the Jaguar wasn’t 64 bit at all.
The problem stemmed from the fact that the Jaguar has 3 main processors, a Motorola 68000, which is 16-bit externally, but 32-bit internally and two custom 32 bit RISC processors.
On that evidence you’d say the Jaguar was, at best, 32 bit. However, the Jaguar transfers data over a 64 bit address line. This does, technically, make it a 64 bit machine.
Regardless, none of this worked. The Jaguar turned out to be difficult to develop for and Atari no longer had the might needed to compete against Sony and Sega. Games weren’t impressive compared to their Playstation and Saturn versions and developers left the platform in droves.
We’re only just now finding out how powerful the Jaguar was. Modern day developers, with a greater understanding and better toolchains, are able to push the platform with greater results. It’s a shame that we’re just seeing that it could have competed in the 32 bit era.
To try and keep the console alive Atari promised a number of peripherals including a VR headset and CD Addon.
The CD Addon was the only one to see the light of day (although the VR headset was demonstrated). The Addon didn’t have many games and had proven unreliable, but the games that were released are fairly impressive.
Now, the controller. It is not considered one of the best ever. It is ungainly, mostly due to the keypad that takes up most of the space. This keypad allows games to have lots of control options and games come with an overlay (like the Intellivision). It is helpful, but it makes for a really uncomfortable controller.