A console that still receives more unwarranted bad press than any other system out there. The Jaguar is a system that was plagued with problems from day one. As one of the new generation of consoles brought out to usher in the 32-bit era in 1993, it was initially greeted with a great fanfare and predictions of Atari returning to their former glory. The Jaguar won numerous awards and was soon attracting interest from all corners. However, a seemingly endless list of problems with the hardware, manufacturing, software development and some downright bad luck saw the poor Jaguar fail miserably, selling less than 250,000 units. All the early problems could not be recovered in time and before Atari knew it, the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation had arrived and it was game over. It’s a shame that we never really got to see what this 64-bit powerhouse was really capable of (and yes it definitely is 64-bit) or that many people never got to see some of the games released later in the system’s life that really started to show the machine’s potential. The Jaguar’s price continues to rise as it becomes more and more collectable, and it’s easy to understand why when you look beyond the well-known titles such as the iconic Tempest 2000, Rayman and Alien Vs. Predator and see there are a host of superb exclusives waiting to be played such as Power Drive Rally, Iron Solidier 1&2, Hover Strike CD, Super Burnout, Zero 5, I-War, Battle Morph, Missile Command 3D and Ultra Vortek.

The Atari Jaguar, lambasted here by several people, was the most advanced game system when it was released in November of 1993. It is a genuinely 64-bit system, not 32, 24, or 16, like some people here say. It has five processors: 2 are entirely 64 bit, one is a dual 32/64 processor, the sound processor is 32 bit and the secondary processor, which was meant to do things like read joystick commands, is 16. It has nothing to do with adding up all the processors together. The processors that are responsible for the graphics and the speed of the data processed are 64 bit.
Why, then, do a number of games look 16 bit? That's because some lazy developers had no patience to utilize the advanced (and complex) hardware and instead ported over 16 bit titles that solely utilized the 16-bit Motorolla 68000, which was never meant for graphics. When games were developed right, they looked like ALIEN VS. PREDATOR, which looks like a movie, and rivals anything on the Saturn, Playstation, or Nintendo 64, despite coming out well before those systems. The Jaguar DOOM was the best of its time, as were RAYMAN, TEMPEST 2000, WOLFENSTEIN 3D, IRON SOLDIER, MISSILE COMMAND 3D, ULTRA VORTEK, and many more. No one in their right mind would say that AVP looks 16 bit! So stop attacking this system. If you're interested, buy it as well as the games mentioned above (plus more recent games like SKYHAMMER, which like AVP, looks like a movie, BATTLESPHERE, and ZERO 5) and then you'll be quite sure what the world's first 64-bit video game system could do.

sorry if i offend anyone but the atari jaguar was the worst console ive ever owned and ive had nearly every 1 saying it was 64 bit was laughable because the graphics are 24 bit at best like the 3do it was hard to program for because it used several chips to do the samething 1 chip could in playstation it had no ads by atari on tv or in print if they did i never saw them i bought my jaguar new and after 3 months still only about 5 crappy games loomed on shelves and the controller might aswell been a barbell with 90 buttons 88 that u dont even use to me the atari jaguar is basically a sega 32 x called 64 x its about as 64 bit as the 32 x was 32bit lol the only game i liked on this system was doom but woope it was easily available on rival systems later on atari released a cd rom but by then it was popular as playing bridge at a rave party in a side note atari i the last few years have started making games again many actually are good so u atari fans atleast have them still making games
the neogeo sprite freak

yeah, your right, it was pretty horrible. BUT there were a few good games for it, and yes there were advertisements. I remember commercials, and I own magazines that have jaguar ads in them. The controller was ridiculous, for mentioned reasons. The best game was Aliens VS Predator. The Jaguar CD came too late in the systems lifespan, and it had little third party support thats what killed the system. Tempest 3000 was pretty cool also

This thing is awful. I think atari should never show their faces in the video game public ever again for making this crappy system.