Christ, what a disaster the Jaguar was.
Atari’s reasoning that the 32-bit Tom and Jerry chips work in tandem to add up to a 64-bit system was ridiculed in a mini-editorial by Electronic Gaming Monthly, which commented that “If Sega did the math for the Sega Saturn the way Atari did the math for their 64-bit Jaguar system, the Sega Saturn would be a 112-bit monster of a machine.”
The system was notoriously difficult to program for, because its multi-processor design is complex, development tools were released in an unfinished state, and the hardware had crippling bugs.
In 2006, IGN editor Craig Harris rated the original Jaguar controller as the worst game controller ever, criticizing the unwarranted recycling of the 1980s “phone keypad” format and the small number of action buttons, which he found particularly unwise given that Atari was actively trying to court fighting game fans to the system.
Yeah it was, but goddamn I really wanted that Alien vs Predator game.
As a kid, I was burned by the 7800 and the XEGS (though if my parents had just realized what a disk drive would have done, I might have held off asking for a PC for several years), but I was still kind of a sucker for Atari stuff and got a clearance Jaguar for $40 or $50. I had AvP, and one of either Doom or Wolfenstein 3D (I played both on PC, so my memory is fuzzy here). AvP was flawed but the twist it put on the formula was pretty cool, and it was half-decently made.
