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Atari Jaguar
The world's first 64-bit game machine

Despite what Nintendo wants you to think, the Atari Jaguar was the first 64-bit gaming system.  It was meant to turn around the ailing Atari Corporation, which had been floundering since being taken over by the Tramiel family almost a decade earlier.

The system was originally called Jaguar, however Atari's marketing team also used the name Jaguar64 to emphasize the powerful 64-bit capabilities of the system.

     
Screen Captures of Defender 2000, Doom, Cannon Fodder, and Iron Soldier 2
Click on image to enlarge

The Jaguar was first sold for $250.  It came with the Jaguar itself, one controller, an AC adapter, a television RF switch box, and the CYBERMORPH video game.  Later on, the Jaguar was sold without a game, and as time progressed, the Jaguar was sold for $150, then $99.  Recently, I have seen it selling at KB Toys for as little as $30.

All kinds of games were released for this outstanding system.  Platform games like Zool 2, and Bubsy.  Classic game updates, such as Pitfall -- The Mayan Adventure, which has the original Atari 2600 version hidden in the game.  Arcade games such as Missile Command 3D, Raiden, Tempest 2000, and Defender 2000.  Sports games like NBA Jam TE, and Troy Aikman Football.  PC conversions, such as Myst, Wolfenstien 3D, and Cannon Fodder.  Doom for the Jaguar is considered to be the best port of this PC classic to any game console.

IBM had a $500 million contract with Atari Corp. to assemble, test, package, and distribute Jaguar units.  Manufacturing was done at IBM's Charlotte, NC facility, and the Jaguar was IBM's first attempt at producing a consumer-grade product for an outside vendor.  By mid-1994, Jaguar units were also manufactured by Comptronix in Colorado Springs.  Jaguar circuit boards were manufactured and assembled by an IBM subcontractor; IBM then cased, tested, and packaged final Jaguar units, which were then sent to Atari.  IBM had no participation in the actual design of the Jaguar chipset.

The primary designers of the Jaguar were Martin Brennan and John Mathieson.  They started their own company in 1986 called Flare 1, and designed an original multiprocessor game console.  After the system was finished, Flare wanted to "evolve" the system, but needed funding for the job.  Atari was contacted, believed in the idea, and agreed to participate.  Atari, Brennan, and Mathieson started a new company called Flare 2 to develop the system.  As Jaguar development moved along, it became apparent that the machine would leapfrog the then-new systems from Nintendo and Sega (the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, respectively), so they decided to bring the machine to light.  The entire process took three years, from initial design to production-ready models.  The proprietary Jaguar chipsets were manufactured by Toshiba and Motorola.

     
Screen captures of NBA Jam TE, Pitfall, Myst, and Atari Karts
Click on image to enlarge

The Jaguar has five processors which are contained in three chips.  Two of the chips are proprietary designs, nicknamed "Tom" and "Jerry".  A third chip is a standard Motorola 68000, and used as a coprocessor.  Tom and Jerry are built using an 0.5 micron silicon process.  With proper programming, all five processors can run in parallel.

The Jaguar contains two megabytes (16 megabits) of fast page-mode DRAM, in four chips with 512 K each.  Game cartridges can support up to six megabytes (48 megabits) of information, and can contain an EEPROM (electrically erasable/programmable read-only memory) chip to save game information and settings.   Up to 100,000 writes can be performed with the EEPROM; after that, future writes may not be saved (performance varies widely, but 100,000 is a guaranteed minimum).   Depending on use, this limit should take from 10 to 50 years to reach.

Features of the Jaguar included:

• High-speed scrolling (Object Processor)

• Texture mapping on two- and three-dimensional objects (GPU and Blitter)

• Morphing one object into another object (GPU)

• Scaling, rotation, distortion, and skewing of sprites and images (Object Processor)

• Lighting and shading from single and multiple light sources (GPU and Blitter)

• Transparency (Object Processor)

• "Rendering" up to 850 million one-bit pixels/second (35 million 24-bit pixels/second, 26 million 32-bit pixels/second), or 50 million Goroud shaded pixels/second. "Rendering" is believed to mean transferring a pixel from a frame buffer to the screen.

• Sprites of "unlimited" size and quantity.  Realistically, sprites can be over 1,000 pixels wide/tall, and the number of sprites allowed is limited by processor cycles instead of a fixed value in hardware (Object processor)

• Programmable screen resolutions, from 160 to 800 pixels per line.  The resolution can be increased even further with additional hardware up to a reported 1350 pixels per line.

• Support for ComLynx I/O for communications with the Atari Lynx hand-held game system and networked multiconsole games (on DSP port, accessible by optional add-on connector).

• Networking of up to 32 Jaguar units available.

• The two controller ports can be expanded to support "dozens" of controllers

• Digital and analog interfaces - Keyboards, mice, and light guns are possible

• Expansion port allows connection to cable TV and other networks

• Digital Signal Processor port allows connection to modems and digital audio peripherals (such as DAT players)

• One megabyte per second serial interface - 9600 baud, RS-232 serial port (accessible with optional interface)

• General-purpose I/O bits via the cartridge port

• Can accommodate future expansions of different processor types, I/O types, video types, and memory types and/or quantities.

One of the Jaguar modes is called "CRY mode", which supports lighting and effects in 3D graphics.  Red, green, and blue color elements are ranged from 0 to 255, and the lighting level for any pixel can be changed by setting one byte linearly.  E.g., the relative proportions of red, blue, and green are indicated with one byte, while a second byte selects an overall intensity of 0 to 255.  CRY allows much smoother shading of single colors, but doesn't allow blending between colors as smoothly.

Actual graphics performance is hard to measure, as there are no industry standard benchmarks.  Rebellion Software has claimed that the Jaguar can render "10,000 Gourard shaded, large, 65536 color, any shape polygons per second," while still performing other tasks.  Presumably this level can be increased further with optimized programming; indeed, some unofficial calculations speculate that FIGHT FOR LIFE may generate between 20,000 to 40,000 texture-mapped polygons per second.

A key to understanding the Jaguar's performance is to realize that most effects are accomplished by programming one of the processors to do the job.  To perform texture-mapping, for instance, required a developer to write a texture-mapping routine for the GPU and/or Blitter, then call it as needed.  The general-purpose nature of the Jaguar architecture gave developers a lot of flexibility; unfortunately, the drawback was that software routines for such effects are invariably slower and less efficient than dedicated hardware chips and components.

Some say that the Jaguar is a dead system.   With Atari gone, and considering the bargain basement prices on the hardware and cartridges, I guess I can understand why people would feel that way.  That is not the case.....  The Jaguar is NOT dead.  Development continues for this system, and more games will be released soon.

In 1998, we have seen such titles as Worms, Iron Soldier 2, and AirCars.  1999 should be en exciting year.  BattleSphere is finished, and production should begin shortly.  Protector, and Gorf 2000 are also on the way.  The Jaguar continues to be an outstanding choice for gamers, and you sure can't beat the prices.

     
Screen captures of BattleSphere, to be released in 1999
Click on image to enlarge

Screen capture of Gorf 2000
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Portions of this page are courtesy or the Atari Jaguar FAQ

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