Most of your information on the jag seems to be wrong, the jaguar have 2 megs of ram not rom like you say. Carts can be 1/2 or 4 megs of rom. Next you mention that tom and jerry are 32 bit and this add up to 64. That is wrong also, maybe before doing a video you could take 5 minutes to read on wikipedia and don't look like a fool later.

The Jaguar actually has two 32-bit CPU's, one 64-bit Object Processor, one 64-bit Blitter, and one 16-bit 68000, so if Atari wanted to "add up the processors to get 64-bits" wouldn't they have added them all together to get 32 + 32 + 64 + 64 + 16 = 208 bits? Why would they only add 2/5 of the CPUs in that marketing? Face facts, the console had 64-bit wide RAM which could be accessed 64-bits at a time with The GPU, the Blitter, and the Object Processor. Can we put this "32+32=64" thing to rest after all these years?

Pojr, you have to do the MATH !

They didn't call it 64-bit because the Tom & Jerry chips added up to 64 (32+32). They called it 64-bit for 2 reasons: 1) the memory bus was 64-bit 2) The Tom chip while containing a 32-bit RISC architecture contained a 64-bit object processor/video processor, a 64-bit blitter, and had the controller for the 64-bit memory bus This is sort of, but not completely, similar to how the Turbografx-16 technically was an 8-bit cpu with a 16-bit video processing capabilities, and so they called it 16-bit. Through out the 80s and 90s this sort of wishy-washy nature of bits was common. Chips consisting having mis-mashes of bits from the bus to the register size and everywhere. The Motorola 68K through out its various versions would have 32-bit instruction set, but 16 bit data bus and sometimes 24-bit address bus. Motorola even dubbed it a 16/32-bit processor. Later versions would of course expand it upto the full 32-bit, but it mish-mashed around over the years before then. Case in point the N64 used a variant of the MIPS R4200 called the R4300i which trimmed the bus down to 32-bit to make it more affordable to produce. And most games on the N64 actually performed all of their math in 32-bit rather than 64-bit since it was faster than doing it in 64-bit (the bus was only 32-bit afterall, so it required 2 reads to get a full 64-bit value). Though I will stand by the idea that the N64 has more right to call itself 64-bit since it's a 64-bit processor with its bus trimmed down (it was 64 first and foremost). Where as the Tom chip is a 32-bit RISC architecture with some 64-bit features added on. But in the end... its marketing. It's not like Blast Processing on the Genny meant anything really. Yes, the marketing term was drawn from a comment made by Marty Franz in regards to the faster DMA controller... but really... it meant nothing.

Love your channel but this video has so many issues. For one the 64 bit on the Jaguar comes from not 32 + 32 bit equals 64 bit as you say, but from the 64 bit data bus, 64 bit object processor that displays all data to the screen, and 64 bit Blitter processor. The Jaguar is massively more powerful than the SNES and Genesis, as shown in a recent demo of Quake. The Jaguar could have been much more powerful with some hardware tweaks, but the issue with games was many developers just used the 68K CPU for simple 16 bit ports and never pushed the system. Fact is the Jaguar is more 64 bit than the SNES is 16 bit.

The main issue with the jag was it was too hard to program for...so most devs just used the moto 68000 to program their games...thats why they all look 16bit cuz the 68000 was the same cpu as the genesis.

"I feel like I'm driving in Upstate New York" LOL.

Jag wire? Jag-WAR. :)

Atari did not "lie" about the Jaguar being "64-bit". If they had said "The Atari Jaguar's CPU is 64-Bit", well then that would be a lie. They never "added 32+32" to get to their advertising conclusion. That is not how it was advertised. It was simply advertised as "64-Bit". And that was true based on the fact that certain aspects such as the data but and object processor were 64-bit. The same concept goes for the Turbografx 16. That console has a 16-bit graphics processor, although the CPU was 8-bit. Again we see what was done here. Some areas are 64-bit with the Jaguar and some 16-bit with the Turbografx. That allowed them to advertise these highlights. Advertising is no different today. It's not like companies are going to focus on the worst parts of their products. They focus on the best parts and advertise them. The areas that were 64-Bit on the Jaguar were what were advertised. And again I will reiterate they never said that the CPU was 64-bit. As for the Jaguar, it was released to compete at the time with the Genesis, SNES and 3DO. It had vastly more power than these consoles but unfortunately we did not see it very much (although I will say I am still amazed to this day with Zero 5 and some other titles) because developers chose to take the easy route of creating games only utilizing the 68000 CPU that was onboard and meant to be used for simpler processes. And the Lynx hardware by the way was far superior to any handheld on the market for years. I think the problem was the poor battery life that really held it back, and of course the stranglehold Nintendo had on the market at the time.

It's not that the company lied, it's that the entire concept of marketing for "bit-ness" is fundamentally flawed. The Jag was indeed 64-bit on paper. But because it had no dedicated polygon rendering, the PlayStation massively outperformed it (and 3do, and saturn) in 3d. Ps1 was a 32-bit console. So the entire question is moot.

Who actually decides what aspects exactly measures bits? If CPU, GPU and BUS all needs to be same number, then there was no 128 bit machines ever released. Sure, Jaguar is not 64 bit as clearly as N64 is, but Jaguar does have 64 bit parts, as well as 32 bit and 16 bit. So it is more 64 bit than say, PSX or old PCs. However, Jaguar CPU is only 16 bit. But "bits" are not as good measure of performance power as GFLOPS.

While the Jaguar only had 63 games (that's counting the 13 Jaguar CD games as well), there were 15 good games the system did received between those bunch, those are Tempest 2000, Defender 2000, Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, Rayman, Raiden, Atari Kart, Super Burnout, Dragon's Lair, Primal Rage, Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure, NBA Jam Tournament Edition, Syndicate, Flashback, and AVP. At one point the Jaguar was also plan to receive more ports of hit games (license and non-license) including Mortal Kombat 3, Revolution X, Batman Forever (a port of the boring Sega Genesis and Super NES game, not the more exciting Arcade, Sega Saturn, and PS1 version), Cool Spot, Out of this World, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (a Jaguar CD port of the Sega CD FMV game), and a Madden NFL game but all of those were canned once Atari stopped supporting the console and its CD add-on. I also heard that Sega was gonna port some of their games to the Jaguar, they waited for Atari's approval but Atari never approved of anything so nothing was ever done and no Sega games were ever brought to the Jaguar.

Awesome !! It’s not pronounced -- “ jagwire .” It’s pronounced -- jaguar

We need a USB Jaguar controller for the emulation scene!!!!!

Atari was one of those companies full of potential, yet managed to mess up spectacularly so many times, it's amazing it lived so long. They had some very interesting computers as well, like the ST, STe, TT and Falcon lines. Compared to Amiga and Atari computers, it's nearly unbelievable how the PC managed to become the dominant computing and gaming platform. It was so terribly crippled in so many ways, it was not even a fair comparison. But in the end, not being tied to a single company helped the PC molt and grow out of it's terribly limited shell many times. Back in the 90s, I constantly wondered when was the Alpha, MIPS, SPARC or PowerPC would obliterate the puny x86 on the market. But one company after another, they just weren't able to compete at pricing, and intel's massive production capacity and sales volume eventually helped making their products outperform everything else, despite it's many technical disadvantages. We're seeing something similar again, with ARM constantly nibbling away Intel's dominance by focusing on low power, cheaper devices and eventually competing with it in it's core markets.

Atari may not be the company they were in the past, but they're at least making an effort to return to their roots, with Atari 50 chronicling their history, and their Recharged series modernizing their classics and even bringing those games to arcades.

The Jaguar has a 64bit Blitter processor sitting on top of 64bit registers. That's what made the system 64bit.

Nobody used the full power of this console. At all.

Cybermorph was really special back then, first 3d sandbox game on consoles ever.

I disagree with your math. I have access to the Devkit docs. The Tom chip is a 64-bit chip with a 64-bit bus. If you added up the bits to all of the different processors you would 192-bits. (Tom Chip (CPU1 GPU 32/64-bit, CPU2 Object Proc 64-Bit, CPU3 Blitter 64-Bit), Jerry (CPU4 DSP 32-Bit), CPU5 68k 32/16-bit Control) I agree that the hardware is hard to program for and could have been more powerful if improved caching had been implemented on the bus between the processors. (Many developers "phoned-in" games by using the 68k CPU instead of the Tom and Jerry chips.) The 68k CPU bus also throttled the system due to the 16-bit memory bus with 32-bit internal registers. The CoJag (Jag 1.5) arcade board ran on these same chips with the 68K CPU replaced with the 68020 CPU 32/32-bit or MIPS R3000 CPU 32-bit and 4 Meg RAM which ran much better. (Area 51, Maximum Force, etc.) Also, the speed problems and improved 3D implementation were worked out on the backward-compatible Jag 2 prototype, which never made it to market. This console suffered from mismanagement. They should have released the 32-Bit Panther to market and worked out more kinks on the Jag console hardware before releasing it to the market.

I have had a jag and working jag cd cib since the later 90's. It was anything but impressive. Atari Karts is probably the best thing on the system

Everything about the Jaguar was just kind of janky, except for the virtual light machine in the CD player.

Correction: GCC made the Atari 7800 during the Warner Era (just before the split). Jack Tramiel did however have a dispute with Warner over who should pay GCC for their work on the 7800 with Jack reimbursing them (GCC) at the end of the day

Bits are a pretty horrible measure of power. If you go by bits alone, the sega master system and snes are basically identical in every aspect.

It’s amazing how few it sold. People may have been Nintendo and sega obsessed by then, but you’d still think the Atari name and marketing campaign would’ve gotten it over a million sales or so

9:03 "the graphics are very grey and depressing. I feel like I'm driving in upstate New York". Spoken like someone who's never driven in upstate NY! I lived there for 40 years. They have some of the most scenic roads in the country. In fact, Rt. 97 was extolled "the most beautiful highway in the east". You should really check out some videos on it. The mountains, lakes, rivers, and farm land looks very nice. This is especially true when the leaves are starting to turn, in the fall. You won't find more gorgeous colors of foliage in the entire country.

A major problem for Atari was that Jack Tramiel screwed a lot of retailers in his time at Commodore, and virtually no retailers trusted him. This caused Atari to have to agree to payment terms that were unsustainable, especially for a cash strapped company. When their consoles had prob;ems, or didn't sell, retailers would return product to Atari without ever paying them anything. People consider Jack Tramiel a great business man, but he really wasn't. He made terrible short sighted decisions that made future success virtually impossible.

I think its funny that one of the best looking Jaguar games is a Bubsy game.

TurboGraffx 16 was also not completely honest about their system. The graphics hardware may have been 16-bit, but its processor was not. The Jaguar was also a victim of the idiots in charge of Atari not knowing what they had and not understanding the consumers or the industry. Atari just shoved a bunch of stuff into the Jaguar and had a bunch of cool sounding listed capabilities on what it could do. But they didn’t give anyone enough time or guidance to properly make good use of the hardware, because they didn’t even know themselves! So we got a lot of lackluster crappy games that didn’t show off what the system could do. Its best game was Tempest 2000 for crying out loud! If Atari would’ve released the Panther, they might’ve learned how to properly deal with consumer demand and tastes and figured out how to build an audience. But I doubt it.

Generally 64 bit means the data memory bus. So it is truly 64bit. However bits have little to do with performance in and of itself. In 64 bit can be slower due to the extra overhead. Outside of game consoles, bits increase to access more data, or perform more precise calculations. The extra speed is due to manufacturing quality and chip complexity, not the ‘bits’.

Jagwire...lol

I love the Jaguar, it's got some great games. I actually just purchased a copy of the Bubsy game lol ATARI KARTS IS AWESOME! Sadly, awful documentation hampered game development for the Jaguar, it can do some really decent 3D if a developer has enough time, and knowledge.

Xbox and PS5 are advertised as 64 bits, but all games only use the 32bit instructions and 32bit floats in the GPU.

Atari desperately needed to move away from sequels to arcade/2600 games that had little depth to them. What original titles they did come up with just had no appeal compared to what Sega/Nintendo were putting out at the time. Hindsight is 20/20 but it should have been obvious to them that the games they were putting out just did not have the same staying power as games from other consoles. Trevor McFur for example was just a bad game and should not have been one of the first impressions people had of the system, especially with Gradius 3 on the SNES as a direct comparison.

When the Jag was new the only game I got to see it running was Wolf 3D, which did look incredible compared to the PC version. Based on that I wanted one but thankfully it failed before I got around to it. Dodged a janky bullet there.

I got an Atari Jaguar on its way out for about $50 retail and another $50 for the CD attachment. Games were pretty much dirt cheap and I had a lot of fun with them until eventually I got an N64 and saw what 64 bits really could do.

Great content hope to see what you think of the Neo Geo someday.

That would be so funny if they came out with some special cable for the Jaguar soon and call it the Jag-wire. Just to create more hilarity Also I think pronouncing it wrong on purpose as the JagWire is a brilliant way to get lots of comments posted below.

Even the N64 had problems when using 64-bit registers, did not have the resources to take full advantage of 64 bit processing. In most cases, using 32 & 16 bit functions were faster than using 64. You do get more accuracy, and can work with numbers higher than 6 billion and can use more than 4GB of RAM although the system only had a max of 8MB. Kaze Emanuar has a pretty good video explaining. Also, the GameCube uses a 32 bit power PC processor. So much for 64 bits.

My first video of yours. Nicely done. I remember when the Jaguar came out. Its main competition was seen as the 3DO. Neither one made it. Your video was great. Instant subscriber.

Never saw this console in person but I did see ads in magazines back then. Never left an impression, unlike their lynx thing which looked really cool in the ads(having colors). The funny thing is when I think back the same magazines that showed these consoles also showed the commodore 64. Never had any of these consoles/computers. it was either SEGA and/or Nintendo in our family.

It's really too bad Atari couldn't attract more third party developers. I actually really liked how games looked on the Jaguar compared to the PS1 and Sega Saturn.

Wanna get technical? The Turbografx-16 used a MOS-6502 derived CPU; 8-bit registers and data bus, 16-bit address bus. So even in '89, there were arguments to be made about how many bits consoles were using.

No mention of the Jaguar CD? Did it add any performance or anything to the base console? I remember back when this was still being sold people speculated that the Jaguar CD games were literally the cartridge rom equivalent files burned to a CD with no enhancements to the original game, (like an animated opening movie or something similar). Anyway just curious as to why no mention of the Jaguar CD.

It's strange that I've seen several videos about how Atari "lied" in calling the Jaguar 64-bit, yet I've never seen a video accusing NEC of lying in calling the TurboGrafx-16 16-bit.

The Lynx was awesome. I had one and liked it way better than the Gameboy due to the colour display with background lighting. The first handheld Nintendo I actually liked (sort of) was the DSi. The PSP was more awesome though. Now the Switch is really great.

hey dude, your video editing skills and presentation are great. i bought a Jag two years ago and quite enjoy it. expensive as heck though.

I can tell you that in my life I only knew one person with a Jaguar and he was never enthusiastic about it.

Jag was awesome, I had Tempest, AVP, Doom, Wolfenstein and NBA Jam.

Atari 5200 would eventually see its most technically impressive game, "Rescue on Fractalus" in 1985. No other home console of the time could do those kinds of graphics.

I convinced my little brother to return his Jaguar and get a Turbografx 16 instead. He didn't like Turbo at all and I ended up with it. I'm still convinced he made the right choice.

Fun video, but It's "Jag-you-are", not "Jag-wire" :D Reminds me of Benedict Cumberbatch trying to say "Penguin" :D

Great video :) I think ultimately the jaguar suffered not because it was particularly bad but the vision and timing was poor. It was good for 2D graphics, but so were the SNES and Genesis. And it was too weak for smooth 3D, therefore unable to compete with N64/PS1. And the timing was poor. A lot of people were happy with their 2D console and Atari didn't make a good case for ppl to upgrade. It's a bit sad, I like the 2600 and I like competition :(

This video reminds me of the time Benedict Cumberbatch voiced a documentary on penguins, and he kept saying "penwings"

I heard the system was particularly tricky to take advantage of the full potential of the system and seen some gameplay of technically impressive fan made games for it

Why did the two Processors had referenced Tom & Jerry? Like I’m confused, 2 video game chips name a cartoon?

Still remember all the hype surrounding the new Pitfall game on Windows 95. I didn’t even remember it being a Jaguar title. Of course I remember all the hype surrounding the Jaguar and really didn’t hear much about it after its launch until years later on videos like this one.

Hum.. I think I saw shenanigans like this recently. As I recall the box said 8k 120hz or something. 🤪

Odd that the annoying "where did you learn to fly?" face in Cybermorph wasn't mentioned. AVGN really emphasized this in his video.

Pojr do you think we'll get a jagwire core for mister ? I hope so

I remember them saying on ITV's Bad Influence i think that it was more like 24 bit i think. The way the processers were split a bit of controversy. The PC Engine had a bit of the same problem they was flagging that as a 16 bit console then later on said something like it's 8 bit with 16 bit grafix. Looks like they were both made by Frank Spencer😅

Jaguar had 67 games released for it I was trying to collect them all from 2010-2014 before giving up and selling it all off to focus on finishing my full collection of Original Xbox games (998 games).

Jerry needed to get off his butt because a lot of my Jaguar games came with no music.

FWIW my favorite port of Flashback is on the Jaguar.

What's a jag wire ?? Confusing video hearing that but not knowing what you're talking about 🤷‍♂

I own one - picked it up from when I was in high school. Interesting, but it was hard to acquire games!

Pitfall the Mayan Adventure should be part of the Activision classic. If XBOX decided to make one.

Jag-you-are, not Jag-wire.

It also cant be understated that the Jag had zero development tools and devs were not exactly lining up to make games for Atari, they were doomed from the offset

And it is sad, every system except for the 2600 is superior to the competition.

I'm surprised in all this talk about the Atari Jaguar in this review that you didn't mention the CD unit and how it constantly crashes.

"jaguire"? I'm not sure I get the joke, but overall .. nice video.

When I got an Atari Lynx 2, a few years after trading my Gameboy in for a Megadrive, I didn't miss my Gameboy ONCE. The Atari Lynx was so much better. It was amazing having graphics and sound fX like that in a handheld. Hardware sprite scaling etc

Wish Atari would have had more support. Could have had some great games.

They didn't add the two 32-bit processors together, the Jaguar had a 64-bit wide main system buss. Was the N64 really 64bit?

SNES having 32k colours is very misleading. It has a small number of layers each which can display their own set of 256 colours. If you multiply them together, you get 32k yeah, but it doesn't look like a 32k colour image. Remember those old MS-DOS VGA games? They were 256 colours. It would be like having a handful of layers of those kinds of graphics. None of them together are going to look photorealistic like a single 32k colour image would. Instead you get the cartoony graphics we saw on the SNES. And digitised photos or pre-rendered graphics would have that grainy look to them, like the MS-DOS games had, because the layers are still limted to 256 colours.

Yo tuve un Jaguar en esos tiempos, y aun lo tengo en alguna caja, después de este video me dio ganas de buscarlo. También tenía el lector de CD, que no se mencionó en el video. Siempre pensé que el Panther era la consola que estaban desarrollando para sustituir el Jaguar, no un esfuerzo anterior del Jaguar. Gracias por la información.

I keep seeing tens of videos about the same topic. But it would be interesting having some company insiders interviewed, so they could actually answer about why such complicated hardware was chosen for consoles like the Jaguar or the Saturn.

I recall selling my Sega CD and games to buy an Atari Jaguar while on Spring Break 1994. Wow this is the 30th Anniversary of my buying the Jaguar! I bought it from a mom and pop Video Rental store in Hartselle,AL while visiting my grandparents. It came packed with Cybermorph and that was the only game I owned for it for like 2 months because it was hard to find games to buy for it. When I was back home in Wisconsin my local Electronics Boutique had about 8 games for the Jaguar and the first game I bought was the amazing Wolfenstein 3D. To this day in my opinion it's the greatest Jaguar Game ever made. It's 3D graphics looked hi resolution especially when compared with the shit version of Doom that came out for the Jag. I beat Wolfenstein many times the final boss was Hitler in a mech suit with miniguns/Gatling Guns. Just keep moving and shooting and Hitler's dead before too long. I ended up buying around 5 games for the Jaguar before deciding it was a lost cause and sold it off to buy the new Playstation (PSX/PS1). Doom on PS1 makes Jaguar look like a babies toy.

You meant 2mb ram not rom

Technically, it was 64-bit. You're right, unfortunately it was so difficult to program for. None of the games were ever fully optimized to maximize the hardware's capability. The memory interface was 64-bit, since two of the sub-chips, both within the Tom (3D rendering & object processor), are 64-bit. The third chip inside the Tom was the GPU, which was 32-bit.

There's also a 64-bit data bus which could have contributed to the 64-bit claim. One of the print ads talked about the 64 bit data bus.

JAGUAR, not Jaguire!🤣

It's not about the number of bits. It's the size of bits that counts.

There was also a similar debate regarding the Turbographix 16 since while it did have a 16 but GPU the CPU was only 8 but.

John Carmack once said that if they had doubled the cache on Tom and Jerry, there was very real possibility that it could have kept up with the Ps1/Saturn. But because of the lack of cache the system spent far too much time just spinning in place waiting for memory requests to get things done. A shame really but that just how it falls. Also when it comes to difficult programming, one of the reasons the Ps1 had such a rapid pick up from developers was that Sony proved actual decent development tools. You could program in C and C++ unlike Jaguar/Saturn that was still a primarily assembly based development base. Atari was working on a Jaguar 2 that fixed most of these issue but it all came far too late. There are a few photos of a prototype motherboard and some early documentation on what it was going to be but it never amounted to anything. About the only legacy of that was the Nuon, another system that had a fate even worse than Jaguar.

Excellent analysis. This console needs a revival through a dedicated homebrew community and a thorough understanding of its weird hardware, this would allow for a better development of indie games, and a better harnessing of its hardware, things that couldn't be achieved not even by its own developers because of its awkward overall planning. BTW, I heard the Nintendo 64 was somewhat of a scam about the 64-bit thing. I would like you to develop on that, although that rumor probably is unlikely and stretched.

I get so aggravated when people dis the 5200 controllers. I have had many controllers throughout the years and other than having to clean them I have never had issues with mine. Plus they were way ahead of their time.

Did you know the voice for "Pitfall Harry" was done by Bruce Campbell of Evil Dead fame?

That side scrolling shooter that was a launch title looked like an Amiga port.

CD players in 1990's.. 1-Bit, 18-Bit, 48-Bit, 96-Bit etc. The gimmick decade.

Goes to show you that, at the end of the day, no shmancy technology or marketing hyperbole is going to save you from a mediocre game library.

What's a Jagwire? It's pronounced as "Jag you are" 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

oh not, not the jagwire again 😫

I asked myself was the Saturn really a commercial failure. It sold 9.5~17 million units... Worldwide. Ouch! Still I had one, and had plenty of fun on it.

Ol’ Lord Farquaad at it again. Insulting & downplaying peoples favorite console again 😃

Still kicking myself over selling my Jaguar. I got one off some online site back in 1998 (new old stock or whatever they call), got the system and 3 games (incl Tempest 2K, some driving game and Pitfall) and for $99. I ended up selling it to a guy at work for $250 about 2 years later because I needed money to get the PS2 at launch (yeah money was tight then with 3 little kids and all, luckily I kept all my older stuff). I just didn't realize how rare the Jaguar was back then and it wasn't impressed with the graphics compared to the Genesis or PS1. Oh yeah, what's wrong with upstate NY? (I say as I look out the window at yet another rainy gray day).

The Atari jaguar was a bear to program for and couldn’t easily be ported to so most games had to be programmed from scratch to make them look good. It had the power but getting the hardware to display graphics at a higher level than a snes or genesis was too expensive for the installed base size.

I was today years old when I learned that there was a Rayman game on the Atari Jaguar

Remember folks, it's the games that makes the system a hit or miss, not the hardware.