Jaguar

In 1993 Atari Corp finally returned to the home video game console market with its advancement 64 bit multimedia entertainment system called the Atari Jaguar 64. This system featured high resolution graphics, superb stereo sound and DSP expansion capabilities which made it the perfect platform for a whole new generation of video games and accessories. However, Atari Corp’s short lived re-entry back into the market would not last long, with Sega’s Saturn and Sony’s Playstation consoles looming on the horizon and Jaguar 64 sales not meeting expectations the plug was pulled on both the Jaguar 64 and Atari Corp itself in 1996 when Atari allowed itself to be reverse merged with JTS Corp, a hard disk manufacture startup from the famous Dr. Jugi Tandon. The company was hungry for a fresh injection of fast cash and an easy route to becoming a company with publicly traded stock.ATC ceased to exist on the stock exchange and JTS took its place. Unfortunately manufacturing defect rates were too high and Compaq cancelled a do or die contract with JTS and the stock then proceeded to nose dive from $3-4 per share to .65 cents per share (one time as low as .12 cents) and had held around that number until the company went bankrupt.

JTS management then liquidated the remaining stock of Jaguar 64’s and related products and ceased support to the Jaguar 64 line. Due to the shadow of an SEC investigation for not maintaining Atari’s business as specified in the reverse merger agreement, JTS quickly sold the Atari division.

On March 3, 1998 JTS sold its Atari division to Hasbro Interactive for $5 million and Hasbro began to sell retro-game versions of Atari’s most popular titles for the PC and Playstation markets. Hasbro only pursued software releases of Atari titles and no plans of utilizing any of Atari proprietary hardware designs for any new console or handheld games ever came about. Hasbro Interactive was purchased among other US companies by Infogrames, a well known European game company. All of the US companies were pulled together an became Atari, Inc. In 2004 Atari would make its first return into the console market with the Flashback-1 console, other consoles are on the horizon including Flashback 2.0, a 100% 2600 VCS compatible game console and rumor has it other more powerful consoles based on Atari proprietary chip designs are in the works.

Atari had many bold plans and announcements for the Jaguar platform when it came out, however many of the promises quickly fell short. It was these unfortunate turns of events which caused certain projects to be cancelled and products which were completed to never see the light of day. Above you see the Jaguar 64 as we know it.

Click on Jaguar File Store – a storage center of information, technical and data files of many aspects and designs of the Jaguar, its accessories and other kindred devices such as its earlier sibling the Panter.