In the early '90's, Atari was developing a "next-generation" system called the Panther. The Panther was a 32-bit system, and looked promising. Also, they were developing a 64-bit system at the same time, and was called the Jaguar.
By early 1992, the Panther was being plagued with hardware problems. But the Jaguar was coming along speedily. Atari dumped the Panther and four of it's (known) planned games for the system, Panther Pong, Cybermorph, Trevor McFur in the Cresent Galaxy, and Dino Dudes (the
latter three became the first three Jaguar games). The Jaguar then became the focus at Atari. A lot of rumors began floating around the system (like any new system), such as it was to be either 32- or 64-bit, maybe a hybrid of both, it was said to be a PC type thing, there was
also speculation on a backwards compatablity with the Lynx. It was all quite interesting.
Then August of '93 rolled around. Atari finally unveiled it's powerful new 64-bit system. It was to be released on Nov. 4, 1993.
(for specs, click here). The Jaguar blew away every system on the market in terms of power, even the then new 3D0. The Jag could
produce an "unlimited" number of sprites, could do real-time 3D graphics, 16-bit, CD-Quality sound from the cartridge, had a pixel rendering speed of 850 million pixels per sec., and provided with many other amazing and movie-like special effects.
Even though it's five years old now, and Atari's owned by Hasbro now who's just using Atari for the name, it's still worth getting. They only cost $60 now, and still have games being made for it.It'll be worth even more to get because off BattleSphere . That game definently proves what just what the Jaguar can do!
Songbird has delivered! As you all know, Soccer Kid was shipped in January , and for those of us lucky enough to get it, it's a pretty nice addition to the Jag. For the review, click here
