Megalextoria

Atari Jaguar TV Commercial (1995)

http://darth-azrael.tumblr.com/post/158472334433/officialfyig-via

Despite Atari’s bad math (64-bit…sure…) the Jaguar was pretty impressive hardware at a low price.

The Jaguar had three processors:

• “Tom”, a 26.59 MHz processor with a 32-bit RISC core used as a GPU, 64-bit Blitter and 64-bit DRAM controller.
• “Jerry”, a 26.59 MHz processor with a 32-bit RISC core similar to “Tom” but with a larger cache and other components intended for sound processing (two DACs, wavetable synthesis, FM synthesis). It was also responsible for timers and joystick control.
• A Motorola 68000 running at 13.925 MHz used as a controller

While the two special purpose chips were indeed pretty impressive for the time (this was before the PlayStation and Saturn were released), the general purpose “controller” CPU was pretty much the same as what was in the Genesis (albeit clocked almost twice as fast).

Despite the technical advantages of the Jaguar over the competition when it was initially released, it suffered the same problem as earlier Atari systems: questionable controller design, relatively poor third party support and too little software in general, and a marketing campaign that could have been better. It’s multi-chip design also made it relatively difficult to program. It was hard for it to compete against the superior hardware of the PS1 and Saturn when they came out a short time later but more than anything it was the lack of software that made the Atari Jaguar a failure.

The arcade games Area 51 and Maximum Force were based on Jaguar hardware with upgraded CPU (a 68020 or MIPS R3000) and more RAM.