Was the Atari Jaguar really 64-bit? - Games and Deep Thoughts collide

[King Kobra]

Whorever approved that gamepad design is a lolcow (like all Atari post crash)

 

[trueandhonestfan]

From footage I've seen it looks more like a 32-bit system if that. A lot of games look like SNES or Genesis quality.

 

[DragoonSierra]

I don't really have an opinion about the 32-bit vs. 64-bit claim, but, for a "3D" polygon-fill game released on a home console in 1994, Checkered Flag looks pretty nice. It can at least hold its own against the Sega Genesis port of Virtua Racing which was really only possible on a 16-bit console because Sega included a processor in the cartridge itself.

I know these untextured polygon graphics would look a bit rudimentary after the release of the Saturn and especially the Playstation the following year, but, purely from a 1994 perspective, they would still have seemed quite impressive for a home console unless you expected home consoles to have graphics on par with the arcade version of Daytona USA, which was a bit unrealistic an expectation as the first console that could have done the arcade version of Daytona USA justice without the severe graphical downgrades seen in the Saturn version was the Dreamcast and that was still 4 years off in Japan and 5 years away everywhere else.

3D games didnt push the systems they were on until real later. Just compare games on the Playstation in 1995 and in 1997

A lot of the hardware of the Jaguar was apparently very troublesome to design for, especially in regards to getting said processors to work simultaneously. For a lot of developers it was just simpler to design their games around utilizing one of the processors because it required far less coding and joining of things together in order to have a game running. Most of the titles released for the console were not using it to its full potential, which is kind of a shame.

Same thing with the Saturn. Theres a reason Saturn emulation is piss poor and its not for a lack of trying.

Nintendo, or more to say the fanboys still cream their panties about how the gimmick machine that cost half as much as it's competitors with a pack in game sold more units when the 360 was in it's pre CoD glory and plagued with the red ring of death and the PS3 was still "599 US dollars", yeah it's like saying McDonalds is better because they sold more happy meals to Shake Shack and Five Guys' burgers.

Its a fairly technical marvel for its price according to Digital Foundry. And the fact that its selling as much is it is means its not just fanboys driving the sales.

 

[whatever I feel like]

Other people have already answered (and everyone who understands basic computing should already know) that no, 32 plus 32 does not equal 64 when it comes to bits.

That said, the Jag had some real gems in its library. Shame it didn't have a better life.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

Tramiel era Atari was a company that made excellent gear but was let down by boneheaded marketing.

It all started well with the Atari ST in 1985. The original one, with no internal floppy drive, red LEDs, and suchlike. Despite being thrown together in a matter of months, it smashed the PC and Mac of the time on both power and price. Then along came the STF which had an internal drive (though not all of these were double sided), the Mega ST (which was a box-type computer with a separate keyboard, a blitter chip, and more expandability, as well as a 16 MHz processor in some versions). Then, the STFM came along. Had all the extras of the STF and STM, and the double sided drive. This was the one which made it the machine of choice for professional musicians, of all things; it had MIDI ports as standard as well as lots of expandability (its hard drive interface was basically a cut down SCSI port so it was trivial to plug in an adapter then an SCSI drive without the need for a pricey controller card.)

It sold well, and unlike the Amiga, it actually had proper productivity software for it as well.

Then in 1990, the TT came along. This was basically a high end ST with a 68030 processor (roughly equivalent to a 486 DX2/66 or so), a hefty price tag. They were trying to get into the workstation market, however, all the top workstation software of the time was on PC. Yeah, there was CAD3D (whose developer later went to work for Autodesk, ported it to PC, and it evolved into 3D Studio Max), but AutoCAD, etc., all were on PC. It didn't sell well.

Then along came the STE. Standard ST, but with analog ports, a blitter, a DMA, and enhanced graphic and sound capabilities. Unfortunately they kept the same 8MHz 68000 processor as the ST because they didn't want to accidentally break compatibility and as such software that made use of its extras was not very forthcoming.

Then along came the Falcon, which was another attempt to make a successor to the ST which was both backward compatible and worthy of the name. Then they abandoned it for the Jaguar after a year. Literally, they shoved it onto the market, and ceased to give a single shit about it.

Hardware wise, these systems were all ahead of their time. Unfortunately, they were either not an advance enough to be worth the upgrade and thus nobody wrote for it (STE), too much of an advance and thus broke almost all backward compatibility (Falcon), or too expensive (TT). Or just bloody difficult to write for (Jaguar, and to a lesser extent the Falcon).

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

In hindsight the bit-frenzy was such an obvious marketing trick. Applying their logic to all consoles makes things weird and I hope those that promoted this shit will be forever haunted by time traveling 12 year olds asking them dumb questions like: Was the NES really 8-bit if it could address more than 8 bits of memory? Was the Playstation 2 really 128-bit just because of its SIMD capabilities? Wouldn't that make the old Pentium MMX 64-bit? But how can the Playstation 4 also be 64-bit?

 

[Ginger Piglet]

The Jaguar was also not helped by the fact that it looked like a toilet.

Actually, Tramiel Atari seemed to go backwards in industrial design as time went by. Observe:

Original ST, 1985

STFM / STE, 1989

TT030, 1991

Jaguar, 1993.

The disk drives on the original STs even had slanted slots as well that looked really distinctive, however, as time went on they went to orthogonal slots with slanted buttons and then with the Falcon just to an ordinary drive in a big ugly cut-out.

 

[REGENDarySumanai]

Whorever approved that gamepad design is a lolcow (like all Atari post crash)

Blame Tramiel being a cheap cunt. Just look what happened to Commodore.

Same thing with the Saturn. Theres a reason Saturn emulation is piss poor and its not for a lack of trying.

Saturn emulation is actually getting better lately thanks to the original Mednafen core for it. Still miles better than N64 emulation though.

 

[sasazuka]

3D games didnt push the systems they were on until real later. Just compare games on the Playstation in 1995 and in 1997

There was one home console racing game exception which I should have remembered and which was contemporary to Checkered Flag on the Jaguar that does look better in many ways; Road and Track present the Need for Speed on Panasonic 3DO. Yes, the very first game in the Need for Speed franchise.

The Need for Speed is not as "pure" a 3D game as Checkered Flag, however, because the trackside scenery is obviously scaling sprites and the seemingly impressive (for 1994) draw distance was accomplished through a simple "cheat": after a certain point, the road ahead is a pre-rendered video file. There's some background information about the development of the original Need for Speed game in this ArsTechnica article about the evolution of 3D models for automobiles in racing games.

From what they say in the article, I don't think the cars in The Need for Speed have any more polygons than the cars in Checkered Flag, most of the detail in The Need for Speed is obviously in the textures.

About early racing games on the Playstation, generally, they've aged very poorly. Wipeout would be an exception, since that game didn't need wheels and also because the design of the racing craft made the low polygon count part of the aesthetic.

 

[HY 140]

technically yes cause it has two 32 bit chips (named Tom and Jerry), they thought it technically made it a 64 bit machine, but really the console is pry more comparable to the Sega 32X then say, a PS1 or Sega Saturn

 

[Martys_not_smarty]

There was one home console racing game exception which I should have remembered and which was contemporary to Checkered Flag on the Jaguar that does look better in many ways; Road and Track present the Need for Speed on Panasonic 3DO. Yes, the very first game in the Need for Speed franchise.

The Need for Speed is not as "pure" a 3D game as Checkered Flag, however, because the trackside scenery is obviously scaling sprites and the seemingly impressive (for 1994) draw distance was accomplished through a simple "cheat": after a certain point, the road ahead is a pre-rendered video file. There's some background information about the development of the original Need for Speed game in this ArsTechnica article about the evolution of 3D models for automobiles in racing games.

From what they say in the article, I don't think the cars in The Need for Speed have any more polygons than the cars in Checkered Flag, most of the detail in The Need for Speed is obviously in the textures.

About early racing games on the Playstation, generally, they've aged very poorly. Wipeout would be an exception, since that game didn't need wheels and also because the design of the racing craft made the low polygon count part of the aesthetic.

Spoiler: Speaking of 3do here's a good video let's play with commentary by former 3do employees talking about said console and some of the little things that made it better than the Playstation

I particularly like how they talk about how they got some of the sound effects directly from the sound engineers office.

 

[CIA Nigger]

One of the biggest issues with the Jaguar wasn't the complex and somewhat weak hardware (which was due to numerous design flaws, just find the Errata sheets on Atariage), it was Atari themselves. It was poorly timed, being released right between the SNES/Genesis and a year or two before the PS1/Saturn came out. A lot of first party games in development were rushed or canned due to Atari's mismanagement.

Atari's management did a far better job at selling computers and it showed with the success of the 8 bit line and the ST. Too bad they (like their other big competitor, Commodore) made a ton of big mistakes that killed them off when PCs became mainstream.

 

[whatever I feel like]

Atari's game division, while not a market leader after 1985, still always made money through the NES and early Genesis era with their 7800 re-release. Jag was a mistake in itself though and bad business decisions only compounded it.

 

[Picnic_Boy]

I remember being like 13 and going to check out a local guy's Jaguar. I wanted so much to believe it was the next big thing. I had an Atari 2600 before the NES and even at my tender age, I romanticized the thought of Atari rising up and taking back its place as the king of video games. I was shown Alien vs. Predator, one of the more 'impressive' Jaguar games. I didn't say anything at the time, but I had Earthworm Jim on SNES and it made AVP look like goddam garbage.

:powerlevel:, maybe? But watching the Jaguar wither away organically, it certainly didn't feel 64-bit. Comparing even the best Jaguar game with Super Mario 64 or hell, shit like Shadowman, feels like an exercise in futility. Perhaps something else could have been done with its jury-rigged hardware, but all I know is that every game made for the system felt regressive.

 

[Billy_Sama]

Even it if was a true 64 bit, it didn't help that it was difficult to program for the Jaguar with other establish systems that was feasibly profitable to program along with Tramiel's cheapness. Tramiel's Atari was too busy trying to follow trends of the day like having the higher bit count and developing a impractical cd addon that the Jaguar software library stagnated for his tightfisted demands. I know that Trevor McFur game was supposed to be more advance then it was intended but Tramiel was to cheap to produce the require cartridge for the game so a dummy down one was made.

Fight To Life is another impressive 3D game by a programmer in charge of Virtua Fighter but the released game was unfinished since Atari never paid him fully and he kept the final product

I would love to get a Jaguar especially if it came with Tempest 2000 but for the prices people ask for the system is not worth it. I rather invest in a Turbografx with a Everdrive or ODE device than a Jaguar for a obscure system.

 

[John Carmack]

The frustrating thing about the Jag is that it had so much potential. Just a little more time fixing the bugs, performance bottleneck problems and actually providing support for programmers and it could have been a contender. It also had modem capabilities for dail-up play and a VR headset that was supposedly quite good good with Missile Command.

The 3DO was a better console with a much better game library that fell because of Trip's Hawkins's idiotic business plan and the ludicrously high launch price of the console.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

Maybe I'm just salty because I had one, but having seen the Jaguar and realised that Tramiel Atari abandoned the Falcon and the STE for such a horrific literal and metaphorical toilet, it reduces my heart level to 15%. Had they continued to focus on the ST and descendents, i.e. by giving guidance to porting ST/STE software to the Falcon, actually marketing same outside of a few print ads in mags, putting together further Falcon iterations around the 68040 and then forthcoming 68060 processors... yeah.

 

[Professional iPad Hoarder]

2x32 bit processors does not equal 64 bits, even if the memory data channel was that wide.

We were robbed of the Atari Panther.

Thats pretty much it, a Dual core processor is not like having 2 Single-Core CPU's even on the same board