/vr/ - Retro Games

There was no point in it when the Jaguar was pretty much already ready, clearly superior to those 4th gen consoles, and affordable.

>>8093526
Not a chance. The SNES and Genesis (SNES and PC-Engine for Japan) were too entrenched by the time it would have come out. That's why all those mid-gen systems from around 1993 floundered even though many of them were trying to launch the next gen.

It also was a problem for any American console manufacturer that the vast majority of AAA console games were coming out of Japan at the time. Unless it got something crazy like Mortal Kombat exclusivity there would have been little to attract an audience. And that's ignoring that Atari's engineering philosophy was batshit crazy.

>>8093546
haha
this
I don't know why there's that much 90s atari talk on this board. They were so very very bad. Couldn't even play the FPS games that everyone on PC was all about at the time.

>>8093574
Fuck off man. Atari was cool. Underrated as hell

>>8093546
It was planned to be released in 1991.

>>8093587
That's arguably still too late. The SNES was following up the NES. The Panther would be following up the...7800. It would have had no chance at earning people's dollar over Nintendo.

>>8093578
Maybe their PC line had potential but their consoles post 2600 were all fucked up in one way or another. The 5200 had terrible controllers, the 7800 was basically just a 2600 trying to compete with the NES, and the Jaguar was an engineering nightmare that subsequently got a CD add-on that broke if you looked at it wrong.

>>8093578
you're the only person making these threads.

>>8093620
I'm not op. Atari is cool. I got a 7800

>>8093624
Atari was cheap. The Lynx was the best piece of hardware they made and that wasn't done internally.

>>8093606
>every one of their Home Consoles after the 2600 was shitty.
I disagree on the 7800. Its a different beast compared to the VCS/2600. It shares only its predecessor's sound chip. The Graphics and other stuff is completely different and more advanced. Plus, unlike the Euro and NA NES, the 7800 in both its PAL and NTSC variants allows for a multitude of compatible external sound chip possibilities.

>>8093526
Not even Atari had any faith in their own brand by that point. Atari's entire philosophy was to handcuff developers to their brand then force them into acquisition if very strict deadlines weren't met.

>>8093647
>It shares only its predecessor's sound chip
That's a pretty big fucking deal though. When it needs a Pokey inside the cartridge to do more than boops and bleeps it looks like a potato compared to it's mid-80s contemporaries.

The 7800 would have probably fared better had it not been delayed by like 4 years. By the time it came out the games it was pushing were down right ancient in comparison to what Nintendo was doing. In 1987 people wanted to play Zelda and Mega Man, not Centipede and Ms. Pac Man. Atari was paying too much deference to early 80s arcade titles rather than the emerging single player experiences that the NES pioneered.

>>8093526
I think at the time they could have tried to target the older market with a different type of game

>>8093546
This. Also don't forget that Atari's name was mud at this point.

>>8094080
Whats funny is that for those of us who were on the younger side, who first started gaming with the NES and had no reason to dislike Atari, we still had a bias against the name not for quality but for age. The brand "Atari" just felt old and bygone so it was hard to get excited about anything new under that name. The brand conjured images of single screen arcade games where high score was all you played for.

>>8094180
Speak for yourself
Plenty of youngs think the Atari name is cool

>>8093734
Nice post. But I don't think the word "deference" explains what Atari did back then. It was more like their mindset was dated. They were so out of tune with consumers and developers alike, it wouldn't work out. Atari needed to sit down, research and relearn what the market was all about again. Otherwise, it would be shot after shot in the dark (like it indeed was).

>>8096928
Corprate asshatery is what killed Atari Inc. and later on, Commodore. May the same happen eventually to Twitter and Facebook.

>>8096950
I know it's off-topic, but could you elaborate more about Twitter and Facebook?

>>8093526
Just placed an order for one. Will review it once received. I only have 2 games but better than nothing.

>>8093531
>clearly superior to those 4th gen consoles

Jaguar can't run a sidescroller at 60 fps, dude, its garbage.

>>8096879
Yeah any company where Soulja Boy is the CEO is the definition of cool

>>8097118
Fuck off zoomer

>>8097116
what the fuck does that even run

>>8094180
Not true. In the 90's, all Atari had going for it were a cool name and logo. Kids wore Atari t-shirts, listened to Atari Teenage Riot... almost none of them played a Jaguar.
I remember wanting Atari to do better. I was not happy to see them shoot themselves in the foot so bad.

>>8098832
Not him, but you know it to be true. The Jaguar really lost the plot with hardware design, they just said "fuck it" and threw everything at the wall to try getting something to stick, and all they ended-up with was an overly-convoluted frankenconsole that devs could barely program adequately for, most games lookrd like glorified Genesis games at-best, and it still had inferior 3D graphics compared to PSX and Saturn which came out only a year later.

>>8098856
>and it still had inferior 3D graphics compared to PSX and Saturn which came out only a year later.
This isn't specific to Atari. One reason why the 32bit generation had so many false starts is because technology was moving so rapidly in the 90s that even six months difference meant a huge gap in tech. The 3DO tried competing with the Saturn and PS1 in the early days but it was clearly way outclassed despite it being only a little older and the SNES and Genesis were keeping pace surprisingly well for a bit with some help from improved cartridge hardware. Check out Game Informer's top banner. It was a pretty chaotic time, nothing like the comparatively smooth generation transitions we've gotten used to lately.

>>8099696
Oops, meant to respond to >>8098929

Panther would have been a much better choice than the Jaguar's bullshit.

>>8099797
>integrated RF switch.
That's sweet. What consoles did this?

>>8099808
Not many

>>8098783
a-ataribros...

The specs on the Panther were fantastic and it certainly would have done better on the market than the Jaguar.

>>8099831
How does it differ from the Jaguar?

>>8098929
The Jaguar was a decent design on paper. The most important thing was that it was economical, and it was theoretically powerful for the price.
The big issues were the lack of buffers causing bandwidth to be wasted, and the litany of hardware bugs. Especially the broken jump in main memory.
The lesser issues was the fact that it was so bespoke. If it had caught on and developers had to learn it, that wouldn't have been an issue. But it never hit such a critical mass where developers would have to figure it out. It also came a little too early which was a problem like >>8099696 described.

>>8099831
Although Atari did announce its graphics processing chips as 32mhz for some reason, they both ran at 16mhz. It may read main RAM and perform tasks internally at 32-bits, but its graphics retrieval from the cartridge was 16-bits for a max read of 133kb/frame assuming no access by the CPU or pulling sound samples for the sound chip.

>>8099831
Were those the actual specs? Those would actually be really good for 1991. That would have made the Panther an excellent console for arcade ports. It could probably have handled pretty competent Neo Geo, CPS1/2, and System 16/32 games.

>>8099831
>29 bit DSP
weird bus size, internal or external

>>8097118
Have you ever seen Rayman on the Atari Jaguar? And it was also difficult to program

>>8093526
>>8097116
>>8099797
>>8099817
>>8099831
official or made up by some reddit autist?

>>8097116
Where can I buy this?

>>8099935
You can find NOS Panthers just about anywhere. I'd jump on it now though, the secondhand market for these is poised to explode any day.

>>8100379
but what are those? empty shells?

> console's name is Panther
> one of the planned launch titles was a furry shmup
> also released on a console named Jaguar

The levels of furfaggotry, dammit Atari

>>8099918
The specs and console design are official, the 3D images are fan made based on this
>>8099817

>>8099916
No, not a fan of Rayman. I have seen Pitfall, which runs absolutely dreadfully compared to the same game on the Genesis (1980s hardware).

>>8100542
No they're new old stock consoles

>>8098851
Atari Panther games

>>8093526
>old shit hardware worse than Jag with no games
>OMG TAKE MY MONEY