Atari Jaguar
Unreleased Prototypes and Vaporware

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You know, I have never figured out why Atari had so many unreleased products.  It boggles the mind to think about all of the great ideas that never made it out the door.  Some say that Atari was ahead of it's time with some of these devices.  Many people feel that management was incompetent.   Whatever the reason, many products never made it off the drawing board.  Here are a few.......

Atari Jaguar Modem -  This modem plugs directly into the Atari Jaguar DSP port.  This unit used the Atari Jaguar power supply, then had a cable that came out of it that plugged into the Jaguar to feed it power.  It has 2 telephone jacks, a power switch, 2 LED's (one for power and the other for data connection) and a headphone jack and microphone jack for use with a headset to talk to the player on the other end while you played against them. 

This device has support for "call-waiting."  If a call came in while the modem is in use, the game would pause, and you could take the other call.

The only game with Jag Modem code written into it for use with the modem is Ultra Vortex.  Rumors have been spread that the newly released Iron Soldier 2 may also have code.  Reportedly, game play is good, although voice quality suffers a bit due to the sharing of bandwidth between the data and voice across the phone line.  Maximum connect speed is 19.2k.

This device, although complete, was never released.  Approximately 100 of these devices are known to exist.

Thanks to the Atari Historical Society for the use of their photo.

Atari Jaguar WebTV Adapter - This device was recently shown at the World of Atari '98 show.  It was a device to add WebTV compatibility to your Jaguar, so you could view Internet pages on your TV.

This device was never released.

Thanks to the World of Atari '98 web site for the use of the photo.

Jaguar Virtual Reality Headset - This device was to be used for Virtual Reality type games.  The headset was developed for Atari by The Virtuality Group -- a designer of arcade caliber virtual reality games and equipment. 

The device consisted of two parts.  The first was the headset, which is shown above.  According to the Atari Jaguar FAQ, it weighed less than a pound, could be adjusted for fit, and worked with or without glasses.  Game graphics are provided by a single 7", TFT active-matrix color LCD screen, with a resolution of 260 by 400 pixels and up to 65,000 colors.   Dual temple speakers provide sound, and a built-in microphone allows player communication in networked games. A custom optical system projects a binocular image to both eyes; it is aligned at infinity, so focus adjustment is not needed.  Two degrees of freedom (left/right and
up/down) are available.  Field of view is 52 degrees horizontal by 40 degrees vertical.

The second part was a tabletop-mounted "tracking station."  The station senses the position of the controller and the headset with "V-Trak" infra-red tracking.  The tracking speed is 250 Hz, with a lag time of 4 milliseconds, four times faster than Virtuality's arcade hardware. The tracker has a range of approximately 100 degrees; multiple trackers can be daisy-chained together to provide a complete 360-degree tracking range, but most planned Jaguar VR games did not require a full 360 degrees.

The Jaguar VR equipment was designed to be played while sitting down, so as to avoid injuries.  If a player moves out of the tracking station's range, a safety cutoff would have been triggered to suspend the game.

Jaguar VR games would have been written for use with the regular controller, as well as a two-button "virtual gun" hand-held joystick. The licensing agreement between Atari and Virtuality permitted authorized Jaguar third-party software developers to write their own VR titles.

One product did come out of the Atari/Virtuality partnership. Missile Command 3D for the Jaguar provided virtual-reality type play, without the need for special equipment or controllers. The code for the Virtual Reality Headset mode is still in the released version of the game.

Missile Command 3D was later ported to Virtuality's arcade systems.

JagDuo - This device would have combined the Jaguar, and the Jaguar CD into a single unit.  This system would have reduced the Jaguar manufacturing costs since less electronics were required.  It also would have eliminated one of the main complaints about the Jaguar:  It looks like a toilet when the JagCD unit is attached.  There were also some issues with the "piggy-back" approach Atari used for plugging the CD unit into the cartridge port.  Plans for the JagDuo were on the drawing board.  

The cartridge port was in the back of the system.  CD's would be inserted by lifting up the smoked-plastic cover in the center of the unit, which would expose the CD player mechanism. 

The original Jaguar didn't sell as well as Atari had expected, and development of the new device did not proceed very far.  There are photos on other Atari web sites of Sam Tramiel walking around at trade shows with this unit.  In reality, it is nothing more than a "mock-up" unit to show what the completed unit would look like.

This device was never released.

Jaguar Beta Cartridge Unit - This is one of Atari's "beta-testing" cartridges.

When a game was ready to be beta tested, the code would be dumped to this cartridge via a serial cable.  The cartridge could then be used in any stock Jaguar, just like any other game cartridge.

Infrared JagLink - This device would have functioned like the existing JagLink.  However, instead of transmitting over a cable, infrared technology would be used. 

This device was never released.  It is not known if any prototypes exist, or how far Atari progressed with this product.

Jaguar Joypad Prototype - This is an early prototype of the Jaguar Joypad controller.  The prototype seems very similar to the actual production model, in terms of the layout of the buttons, etc.  However, this prototype has been built inside of what appears to be some kind of project box.  I believe that it is made of metal.

The numbers vary depending on who you ask, but it is believed that there were only three (possibly fewer) of these prototypes ever built.

Radio JagLink - This device would have functioned like the existing JagLink.  However, instead of transmitting over a cable, multi-player gaming information would have been transmitted via a miniature short wave radio.  Transmission range was planned for approximately 5 miles.   

This device was never released.  It is not known if any prototypes exist, or how far Atari progressed with this product.

Atari 2600 Emulator for the Jaguar - Dave Staugas, an Atari software programmer and engineer, was hard at work on a software emulator that would allow the Atari Jaguar to play Atari 2600 games stored on CD.  This would have been similar to the "Action Pack" series recently released by Activision for DOS/Windows based PC's.  As late as 1995, Atari still had plans to release multiple collections of classic 2600 games on Jaguar CD.  

It is not known if any prototypes exist, or how far Atari progressed with this product.

Jaguar Stereo Adapter - This PC board with connector plugs into your Atari Jaguar A/V Port and gives you a Stereo Mini Jack which you can plug in CD type Stereo Headphones, Computer CD type amplified speakers or patch to your Stereo or TV system. This Jaguar Interface Card also has a pass-thru Edge card connector so you can still use your Atari Jaguar Composite or S-Video I/O cables.

Wes Powell, the webmaster at Jagu-Dome, is the owner of the device shown above.  He managed to win it from an auction on eBay.  According to Wes, the only reason that these adapters are not a main stream item is due to the fact that Atari never got around to getting the product out in main distribution.  The units never got officially packaged for retail sale.  Generally, dealers and hard core enthusiasts were the only people to get their hands on this item, at the time.

However, it has come to my attention that B&C Computervisions has a limited supply of these stereo adapters for sale.

Thanks to Jagu-Dome for the use of their photo.