All Jaguar Vs SNES Games Compared Side By Side

[@pacsonic9000]

Things I noticed: - Jaguar had a higher resolution resulting in smaller looking sprites but more playfield - More colors - Some more detailed sprites and/or backgrounds (Noticeable in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story) - Better 3D (Wolfenstein and Doom(Which had no music and it turns out to be a licensing and predicted sales thing))

[@CAustin582]

Can't quite put my finger on what's different about Dragon's Lair, though

[@tf4665]

The fact that the SNES, a 16-bit system, was still nearly comparable to a supposedly advanced 64-bit system says a lot more

[@JTSDAD67]

I agree, however Cannon Fodder looked more textured and had more depth on SNES. To my eyes at least.

[@NarkoHamponTV]

SNES RULES 💯

[@AdamsOlympia]

@@tf4665 It wasn't truly a 64 bit system -- some small aspects were 64 bit but not enough to make a huge difference. The jump from NES to 16-bit SNES was far more substantial.

[@PacDork]

Mr. Atari: Let's make a system that's not the SNES but HAS all the weird SNES games no one wants!

[@RetroComparisons]

Lol!

[@KyleRuggles]

Except NBA Jam TE, Pitfall, Zoop? LOL

[@shedever]

Flashback, Bruce Lee, Theme Park are great games as well. If you know how to play of course.

[@Ramjet164]

Sensible soccer and cannon fodder are also amazing games

[@KyleRuggles]

@@shedever True true! Forgot bout Flashback, LOVE that game! It was like on all the platforms.

[@user-hi3ke6qh7q]

I think some of us underestimate the impact the SNES controller had on system appeal. The colored buttons controller felt like magic.

[@heckensteiner4713]

Not only that, most controllers use the 4 button diamond configuration to this day.

[@timur3505]

Not on American SNES though.

[@jeanlundi2141]

I love the reasons people use to justify why certain consoles were popular......as if it's always on merit. It's not. We all know how markets work. We all know how people make choices, how marketing works....what biases go into these things.

[@waynemyatt8262]

@@heckensteiner4713 The PS One controller is basically a SNES controller with 2 extra L/R buttons on a dog bone.

[@BrockMace-y3c]

Most of these games I didn’t even know that they were on the Jaguar like NBA Jam TE and Worms

[@RetroComparisons]

NBA Jam is one of the strangest. I played it for the first time last year and was so confused by the music to the point that I thought the game was broken.

[@ai_art_and-music2010]

Я тоже не знал этого!

[@markula_4040]

I can't make up my mind on Dragon's Lair. They look so identical. You sure you didn't accidently use the same console version for both sides?

[@RetroComparisons]

Lol!

[@simon0044]

😂😂😂😂

[@IllusionSector]

@@RetroComparisons _Where did the other 48 bits go?!_ - *AVGN.*

[@SignOfTheTimes008]

Love this comment! Most of these look better on SNES, a few of them better or comparable on Jaguar.

[@carlosalexandresilvasilva5851]

TALK TO ME!!!??? ANSWER ME!!!??? TALK!? TALK, PLEASE ANSWER ME!!?? ANSWER FOR ME!!!???

[@SomeOrangeCat]

Fun fact, the SNES port of Wolfenstein 3-D is what the Jaguar/MAC/3DO port was based on. All enemies were now forward facing, levels were heavily simplified, an some boss encounters were more frequent and some were replaced with Bosses from Spear of Destiny.

[@stevensole1909]

Wolfenstein for SNES censored the Third Reich imagery.

[@SomeOrangeCat]

@@stevensole1909 At Nintendo's behest. But all of the changes to the engine itself carried over to every subsequent version. The automap, Doom style ammo backpacks, the truncated maps, single-direction enemies etc. All of that came from the SNES version of the engine.

[@RetroComparisons]

That's cool, I never knew that.

[@SomeOrangeCat]

@@RetroComparisons Developers tend to take the path of least resistance, so if an already optimized-for-console version of the code exists, they're gonna use that!

[@jakeconer]

It’s actually the other way around with Doom sort of. Many of the earliest version like the 32x, and GBA versions are based on the Jaguar version. Although the SNES version was made from the ground up

[@GregorioBastosNeto]

Do the math! 🐆

[@f.k.b.16]

4 games look better on the SNES 4 games look better on the Jaguar The rest lol equal... Looks like a tie but the math here is pointing to the SNES as it's older, had more and better games, and the Jaguar should have blown them all away but didn't.

[@GregorioBastosNeto]

@@f.k.b.16 Just check Jaguar ads at that time 😁

[@f.k.b.16]

@@GregorioBastosNeto lol i remember those. And then the game magazines saying "Is it? Is it really 64 bit?" 😂 If you do Atari math they should have claimed it was 80 Bit since it also had a 16 bit processor as well 🤷

[@RetroComparisons]

@@f.k.b.16 Lol! No not like that. This should be judged in bits only.

[@TCMcBiscuits]

Two 32-bit processors. 32 bits is (2^32)-1. Two of those makes the Atari Jaguar the first ever 33-bit home console!

[@Mot-o1e]

Atari Jag was a story of creating hardware, decent for the time, hardware, but not giving the tools needed to 3rd party dev's on how to make best use of your hardware while at the same time not developing games for it yourself. It is like they showed up and said, we made this dohicky, now make games please.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

But why did they not try out Gouraud shading for a surface in a software renderer first? Cybermorph has the most ugly (I would not say "art") style? Everyone else was clever enough to go for "tunnel demo" (Need for speed on 3do, ridge racer in arcades) or height field "magic carpet" .

[@Mot-o1e]

@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt That was just Atari for you. Also keep in mind when game development was did back then they often had to program in assembly languages to speak to the hardware because of the lack of API frameworks. So writing a software render would still be dependent on understanding how the hardware works under it. No one understood the Jag, just like no one undertook the Sega Saturn. Most Japanese developers were "discriminating" at the time and chose to stick with Japanese companies. Atari also didn't understand how to handle their licensing so US developers chose to stay off the platform, choosing to stick with PC development. This was all Atari's fault. Just like Sega, they failed to open up licensing, failed to approach 3rd party companies expecting them to come to them, and failed to document their hardware and develop tool kits for developers.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

@@Mot-o1e I just meant that bullfrog and looking glass and probably also Microsoft wrote 6DoF software rasterisers in C and assembly and with textures and tried them in the latest Intel CPU they could find. Heck, even Atari Falcon would be a-okay to try out concepts. In the end Atari managed to implement the inner loop in hardware. They were proud that it ran slightly faster than software on falcon, and called it a day, I guess. Give studios a working demo. Write it in portable C for Falcon and PC. Assembler for core parts on Jaguar. Atari and Amiga devs knew how to write assembler. Maybe Atari had problems with debugging? I have never used VHDL, but still: the rasteriser inner loop is very much still software defined due to the serial access to the memory. Instead of being clever, a lot could run sequential over subspans of up to 16px. First pass: z check , second pass: affine texture read ( cache last phrase), third pass: Gouraud and write. Maybe even include a single step option to debug using the 68k.

[@MoonOvIce]

​@@Mot-o1eAll of that, plus that ridiculous controller.

[@Mot-o1e]

@@MoonOvIce It wasn't bad. Like a modern controller it felt comfortable in the hand and prevented finger cramping. If there were more games the keypad eliminated the need for a weapon wheel or something like that, and also would have given assignable buttons. Its not among my favorite controllers though. That would be the Dreamcast, which everyone seems to hate, and then the Switch Pro/Wii U Pro controllers.. heh..

[@espfusion]

Most of these Jaguar versions were low effort ports that had pretty much no asset improvement or even palette optimization. But it's hard to really blame them. There wasn't much of an appeal for a system in 1993 that could do marginally better 2D than an SNES but with no real quality first party efforts or interest from Japanese developers. They needed something with 3D killer apps out the gate to have any chance and they totally blew it.

[@youuuuuuuuuuutube]

Even the "high effort" Jaguar games don't look very good compared to PS1 games made with "little effort".

[@sataniachya1840]

jaguar can do MUCH Better 2d than snes, the problem is that it was the time of 3d and polygons, and was a console without resources(aka no money),unlike like other like playstation o sega saturn, is like saying that the n64 was just better than the snes in 2d, just because it has few games in 2d (for the time more than anything).

[@atarijaguarsgarage8873]

@@espfusion Jaguar is a very strong 2D machine, it could handle NeoGeo style games or more modern hicolor stuff like Rayman.

[@TommieHansen]

Exactly what I thought, the Jaguar could do stuff the SNES couldn't but all these ports ... No. Low effort only ports which is basically what killed the Jaguar since why buy a Jaguar when you can buy the now (at the time) much cheaper SNES and get the same experience?

[@espfusion]

@atarijaguarsgarage8873 I've read the hardware manual more times then I'd really like to admit so I'm pretty familiar with its specs. Calling the difference only "marginal" was probably a little unfair but the thing is while it looks like a lot on paper I just don't think it amounts to that much in practice because it has a lot of bottlenecks and is ultimately limited to composite NTSC resolution. The max cart size being barely higher than what we saw on SNES doesn't help either. Sure there was the CD addon but it came a lot later and was really overpriced and unreliable. The Jag's object processor has a lot of raw grunt but it's hampered by inefficiently reading display lists from the unified DRAM and lacks special effects. The blitter is more versatile but it's a lot slower.

[@Wahinies]

Jaguar was one of the consoles I had a nerd boner for along with 3DO and Neo Geo but never had the scratch for. God bless the minds who brought us emulation.

[@boilerhousegarage]

Same apart from the Neo Geo. In fact, people complain about the launch price of the 3DO and overlook the Neo Geo at £500 in 1990 and the cost of the cartridges, that were near identical to the arcade boards.

[@brittislove]

I was in the same boat as you, I admired it from far away because the price tag and questionable support for it. So... as someone who has never played the games, how were they?

[@1legend517]

It's a shame about 3DO and Jaguar emulation though. One day they'll get there... maybe.

[@kharilester]

We never had the money for those systems either when I was younger, but I was really good at trading. I actually traded my way to a Jaguar and a 3DO at one point, but the Neo Geo was completely out of my league. Anywho, when I got the Jaguar after making all these deals, honestly I was disappointed. A big reason I wanted the system was to play Aliens vs Predator and it was delayed so long that I ended up trading it away for an SNES & a new copy of Maximum Carnage. Also, there’s like 70 games now, at the time there weren’t very many available, even though live in California. The 3DO was fun though, Space Hulk was my favorite game on that system.

[@KyleRuggles]

Same! We had so much choice in the mid 90's. So many systems. It was a great time to be a teen.

[@TronixGuy93]

The Jaguar could have looked so much better. The hardware was only being barely used.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

The only thing hardware offers for 2d games is : lots of colors. But somehow the crowd which complained about 512 colors of genesis cannot appreciate it .

[@Memememe-is1yn]

The irony that a game people spent the last 30 years making a game called DOOM work on every known piece of technology with a screen is not lost on me.

[@MrSupplementScene]

Except for the various Amiga machines, because it couldn't run it. Which spelt the end of the system

They have ported it for quantum computers now. Also Linux boots on Intel 4004. In five days. Also ray-traced "Doom" but then it shouldn't really be Doom any longer but rather a new graphics engine outputting a result which looks like Doom?

[@jimherold7827]

Ok..? Why would you post this?

[@Memememe-is1yn]

@@jimherold7827 Ok, look up the definition of doom and apply it to humanity by way of technology. Should have been simple to figure out.

[@jimherold7827]

@@Memememe-is1yn You really need to go outside.

[@ShadowBanned-o_O]

I really like how you split the sound too! It's really cool listening through my headphones. 🙂

[@RetroComparisons]

Thanks for the feedback on that! I get mixed reactions on splitting the audio.

[@fmors]

@@RetroComparisons that's expected, mixed reactions with mixed audio :) ... there's no better way to make it side-by-side than with both video and audio like that!

[@jmewhyte]

in my head, Jaguar and Neo Geo still have the most advanced graphics and a T1 connection is unrivalled

[@BrockHerrin]

I used to think that, until I heard of T3.

[@chadwolf3840]

T1. Lmao

[@GOPSlayer]

@@BrockHerrin Yeah T3 was the best. Like the Neo Geo, I never had it. My family only had 56k growing up. I remember using Windows 95 and using Internet Explorer and Netscape navigator. It was before ads, data mining and social media influence. I miss the days of dangerous chat rooms, and unchecked file sharing. Lol I joke

[@CynHicks]

Oh they absolutely do. If your point of reference is modern, like many, then they both look ancient. If you're looking at it for "realism" like we did back then those systems almost always looked better. If you see it only for the artistic aspect... Take the more realistic water effects. They look awful when compared to today's water in games. This means that the SNES static looking lower color "water" that required more imagination to visualize as water (more like a place holder for water) could be more pleasing to the eyes. Back then when I saw the water from the Jag I was blown away. "It's almost like real water! 😮" 😂

[@CynHicks]

​@@GOPSlayerI remember when after Kaza came out and I went crazy downloading stuff. One day I downloaded a video. I don't remember what I THOUGHT I was downloading but let's just say I couldn't close it fast enough. I reformatted and reinstalled Windows and never downloaded another video from P2P ever again.

[@RedLP5000S]

When a 16-bit console is compared to a 64-bit console, you know that the underdog is truly one of the greatest consoles ever made.

[@saturndual32]

@@RedLP5000S Jaguar just had terrible support… most of these games are 16bit titles cheaply converted to the Jag… when it comes to high end games like Doom, Wolf3D, NBA Jam, AVP… the Jag blows the snes away

[@Dynamic3DLtd]

I loved the Jaguar and that era of gaming in the 90's as they made so many gains towards 3D worlds and I feel blessed to have been part of in my teenage years.. BUT I can't help thinking the jaguar failed in part due to having games on it like this. There should have been NO comparison of a 16 bit system to one marketed as a 64 bit (cough) system and the future. I recall seeing and then owning AVP on the jaguar and being somewhat blown away at the time. I still think it looks somewhat impressive. We needed more of this, cybermorph had the potential to blow star fox away. They really needed to take advantage of the jags relatively advanced sprite scaling and 3D capabilities over the amiga, snes, megadrive. I guess though the game industry was very young many were not geared to such games. Alas, the Jag still has a place in my heart just due to the wonder of it at the time and how I managed to obtain one through unlikely means.

[@GOPSlayer]

Well...don't leave me hangin', how did you get the Jaguar? What games did you get? I recently discovered NeoRage5. A Neo Geo emulator with all the games. I recommend it. And did you ever have or play a 3DO? I think that was a system also ahead of it's time. I was a Sega Genesis/N64 kid for the most part though and now just PC. I love boomer shooters and beat'em ups.

[@gam85191]

I think the Jaguar was meant to compete with P1/Saturn, but it barely beat the snes. The Jaguar certain wasn't a next-gen leap.

[@frenchaddict6846]

Alien Vs Predator was a real killer game. But maybe it was the only one

[@SRPC21]

@@frenchaddict6846Tempest 2000 was really great too. It was the only game I was sad about not being able to play anymore when I sold my Jaguar a few years ago.

[@cpl.m9645]

What it isn’t said, is that the Jaguar’s architecture allowed direct ports from 16-bits systems which made it a dumping ground towards the end of life.

[@bryede]

I developed for it. It had lousy development tools and it was unclear how to get the best performance from it. I mean, you have all these processors using (and slowing down) the main bus and sometimes the only way to know which CPU should handle what was to write a bunch of proof of concept demos. It really was a mess, but if you were clever and lined things up just so, you could mitigate some of the bottlenecks. Some of the fanatical start-up studios took the time to write games that took advantage of the quirks of the hardware, but the big studios pretty much used the 68000 and treated it like a souped-up Genesis.

[@TheLastLineLive]

That is actually not true, it was a lot more powerful when you look at games like Doom. But a lot of Jaguar games didn’t get good ports like this. It’s because of the weird hardware architecture it had and Atari didn’t do a good job with developer support. So a lot of the hardware didn’t even get utilized. So most of them used a weaker chipset that was basically like a slightly beefed up Genesis on that chipset, when it had full access to 2 more powerful chipsets on there that didn’t get used for those games.

[@Jabjabs]

It is funny to see Jaguar in this light just being slightly above where the SNES was. John Carmack once said that if Atari had merely doubled the cache on the processors there was a chance it could have been much closer to the PS1/Saturn in performance. As it was released everything was constantly stalling all over the place, tripping over each other trying to get things done. Alas that was not to be.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

It is always weird how game consoles were so low on cache. But then I checked pcEngine and genesis and their memory is DRAM, just with some fancy integrated controller to make it look like SRAM. So synchronous DRAM in 32x is not such a revolution. In the end we don’t have the money to give all components on Tom lots of memory. I learned that an internal (to Tom) bus could physically run at 4 times the memory bandwidth. And then there are all those page misses. So plenty of cycles to move data around. Some game could use memory for a higher resolution linebuffer or multiple lines. Or palette . Or texture , vertices, objects, code. I propose SRAM squares of 64x64 bit. The ID of the target square is put on the bus 2 cycles prior. Coders need to prevent collisions. Kinda like work with open channels between memory squares and processor squares.

[@dh605x]

Based on the whole "Do The Math" campaign, the 64 Bit Jag should have blown the 16 Bit SNES out of the water easily in side by side comparisons. But they didn't. I'm guessing this has much to do with the hardware architecture of the Jag, which has a reputation among developers for being difficult to program on.

[@someguy3186]

Problem was that it didn’t do anything all that well. The 3D was weak as the tech wasn’t there yet. But it wasn’t optimized for 2D either.

[@boptillyouflop]

The Jaguar had a single area of Fast-Page ram with a 64-bit bus. So it would go fast if you did everything in 8-byte chunks and if each memory access was in the same ~2kb page. Even just letting the 68000 run at all would prevent that (16-bit bus usage only, continuously accesses the bus every couple cycles, likely has code and data on different pages). Using the blitter to do any kind of texture-mapping/rotation would prevent that (must go pixel-by-pixel so 16-bit accesses, likely mixes pages between source and destination). Everything except the 4kb cache on the GPU and the 8kb cache on the DSP fights for these ram access slots and any kind of interleaving causes these costly page-misses. It came very close to beating everybody else to texture-mapped 3d by a couple years but alas it was not meant to be. The PSX solved this by having a separate ram between the CPU and GPU and the sound unit, and cache on the CPU and texture cache on the GPU.

[@OldAussieAds]

These "which hardware was better?" marketing campaigns were a strange thing for the consumer to be concerned with. 64 bit, Blast Processing, Mode 7, RAM, Clock speed etc, were really things that should have been targeted at developers. The consumer was simply just playing the games. If the games were obviously superior on a certain platform, then that's the system you bought, and the developer was paid. It's different to specs of home computers of the day. Because even if you were a developer, it was understood that you'd use that hardware to create things. Whether that be a full 3D rendered image or simply a good looking written report. But a games console in the 80s and 90s... All the content was created. You were enjoying a baked cake as it were, not putting the ingredients together. Edit: I've been reflecting on my comment above and realise I'm using the benefit of hindsight. Yes it's true that now that these consoles are well and truly end of life and we can see their entire games libraries in a list, all that matters is the games. But the gamer in the early to mid 90s didn't have that power. The consumer needed to take a gamble on the console they purchased because for most of them, that was the sole console they were going to be owning for the next few years. So to them, the powerful specs of a console was the "promise" of future game library that was better than the competition. It told them they were investing in a platform with a good future.

[@nuclearwinter391]

The real comparison needs to be made on a CRT TV, because that's how these games were played.

[@bizarroeddie1]

Jaguar was significantly more powerful than Snes, yet only got 16-bit quality games or worse, with few exceptions. It probably got Snes beaten here in every game, but sometimes it does just enough to be better. That doesn't cut for a next-gen system.

[@RetroComparisons]

Yep exactly. I can't imagine buying the Jaguar at full price back then to only have a slightly better looking game (with a worse controller) and a minuscule library of games to choose from.

[@Blas4ublasphemy]

@@RetroComparisons Atari really needed to get at least one Japanese giant on board early. Imagine new Konami, Capcom or Treasure titles had released on the system, even SNK classics would have been awesome. At one point Atari was close to getting Genesis ports of Sega titles but even that would have been quite underwhelming at the time...

[@RetroComparisons]

@@Blas4ublasphemy That could have been a huge win for Atari but without that support it was doomed.

[@archive3do769]

On paper sure. Functionality-wise the jaguar is a mess under the hood.

[@ironhell813]

It needed it but wouldn’t get it because the Japanese were weary of the Konix affair, that and they don’t have a great record of supporting western game consoles. I think they see it as capitulating to the enemy.

[@kisupantteri]

Jaguar was around 370 fin marks more than the cost of snes and I cant remember did jag even come with second controller. snes was super hit on xmas sale when it was released, had two controllers and super mario world

[@ENFDO]

Cannon Fodder was made for the Amiga 500 and was a complete sucess. The Amiga 500 version has the best soundtrack and sound. Later was released for home consoles and no one can match the amiga version.

[@billgordon6489]

The colour palette on the Jag is beautiful, so vibrant 👍🏻

[@RetroComparisons]

It really pops when using a scart cable though I think there's even better and more convenient solutions these days for getting the best visual output.

[@JayOwinFull]

The sprites look better on SNES but the background looks better on the Jaguar

[@Keitosha]

Great video! I was a teen in the 90's and was really hyped by the bit wars. I wasn't into picking sides, just interested in what other companies were bringing to the table. Really one of the best decades for gaming. Too bad the Jaguar didn't live up to the hype. It is actually not a real 64-bit console compared to the N64. And 64-bit doesn't translate well for platformers. A few interesting things about the Jaguar and some games in this list: - The main CPU's in the Jaguar were 2x 32-bit custom RISC CPU's called Tom & Jerry. The basic math of 32 + 32 = 64-bit. Both CPU's worked in tandem - The Jaguar also had a complementary CPU, the much used by the time and era CISC Motorola 68000 CPU, used in for example the SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis - Programming for Tom & Jerry turned out to be a hassle with little documentation or help from Atari - Since it had the Motorola 68000, most devs just used that since it was well more known. Therefore many games looked more "16-bit ish" - Theme Park is quite interesting. The PS1 version has a PS1 exclusive 3D mode where you can walk around your park in first person

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

The JRISC cores don’t work in tandem very much. The DSP does audio and the GPU does 3d Graphics. Both are called by the 68k when the game logic is done. Yeah, when you are really talented, try putting the game logic on that tandem. Coarse Collision detection on the GPU. Fine GJK algorithm on DSP? 64 Bit help with pushing around lots of colorful 2d pixels, which helps platformers. Sadly, bugs keep the system bus idling .

[@phexus]

It always makes me sad for Atari every time I think of the Jaguar. I remember all the ads in magazines for it. It seemed like it was going to be something cool. And then it died quickly in obscurity once N64 and PS1 hit the market.

[@RetroComparisons]

Same here. That ad campaign really worked well on me as a kid because I wanted a Jaguar so bad.

[@robarmstrong5404]

Doom on SNES is still sort of shocking to me. I know it had the FX chip but even then it was crazy underpowered and the SNES version ended up being the 2nd most feature complete version at the time behind the PS1 game.

[@RetroComparisons]

That's one of those ports that I'd never want to play even being a huge fan of Doom yet I respect the hell out of what they were able to pull off.

[@DesertRainReads]

​@@RetroComparisons apparently the new version using the FX3 chip fixes the slowdown.

[@ImWithTeamTrinity]

I hadnt played a lot of stuff on pc back when DOOM released for snes. I had nothing to compare it to. It is still one of my all time favorite snes games. I played it for a year non stop, I loved turning the lights off and having the snes plugged into my stereo with the speakers spread out when I played in the pitch dark. You could hear the direction the secret doors would open and close better that way, or when a secret chamber full of bad guys opens behind you and you hear the monsters growl when they see you, there was literally nothing even close to it on 16 bit consoles. As someone who experienced DOOM on snes with nothing else to compare it to at the time, I can tell you it was one of the finest gaming experiences I had ever had at the time, and also the snes game that impressed me the most. I honestly thought they would release doom 2 on it eventually with a more powerful FX chip. If it could do DOOM 1, it should be able to play DOOM 2.

[@Op_Intrude-N313]

Doom on the SNES was terrible... until you realize that it was Doom on the SNES. MANY better versions were available unless they weren't available to you.

[@RetroComparisons]

@@ImWithTeamTrinity Thanks for sharing your story! Of all of the times Doom has come up in one of my videos I think this is the first time I've ever heard someone say that the SNES version was their first experience and I've always been curious to hear from someone like yourself to see what the consensus would have been. I also didn't have much computer exposure back then and first experienced it on the 32x and I thought it was the coolest game ever. It wasn't until years later that I realized most people hate that version. Based off of the newer homebrew version it definitely could have been better but was still fun for what it was IMO. That SNES port is a minor miracle.

[@arzak1]

Doom on Jaguar is leagues above the Snes version

[@RetroComparisons]

I'm amazed they were even able to get Doom on the SNES but yeah the Jag blows it away.

[@Redfoot138]

@@RetroComparisons At least we got music on the SNES version though 😅 The SNES version was the first version I played and it was pretty damn fugly. It came out during Nintendo's "Wait! You don't need to go next gen yet!" era, along with Killer Instinct.

[@anotheruser2527]

SNES Doom didn't fill the entire screen and animation was limited amongst other things

[@Mistraker]

The Jaguar was a more powerful console than the SNES, but had a pretty garbage library. Mostly it just got low effort ports from other consoles. I was completely unaware that it even existed when I was a kid. The same was true for the TurboGrafx 16. It wasn't until years later that I found out about the consoles. I was aware of the Lynx, thanks to ads in comic books at the time.

[@sorenpx]

The TG-16 overall was a vastly superior console, especially if you allow for the CD attachment and the Japanese games. Japan got a lot of cool stuff that never made it to the US. At least a REAL EFFORT was made for the TG-16/PC Engine. The same can't be said for the Jaguar.

[@mathewlynch583]

Pitfall walked so Uncharted could run.

[@MercyOnASinnerLikeMe]

I feel bad for the Jaguar. Atari had a good opportunity in the 90s to make a significant comeback and they blew it. The Jaguar was released too quickly. They didn't have enough software to take advantage of the potential for their 64 bit capabilities. When they did try to do just that, they flubbed it with projects like Tempest. They developed a system that was legitimately ahead of its time for the market but their execution for presenting it to the public was a disaster. They had terrible marketing and a lot of shortsightedness when it came to simple things like the controllers, game licensing, and actually taking advantage of the computing power they had hyped up their product with. I remember drooling over magazine articles and keeping my ears peeled for any conversations in computer and video gaming stores for updates on the release of this 64-bit wonder that was going to hail the mighty return of Atari. Then, when it did finally come out, it was such a flop that I didn't even know it was commercially available until about six months after it was released. I tried it at a friends house and remembered thinking that it was no better than my SNES or Genesis and most of my 256 color PC games were better or equal quality to the Jaguar library. They also shot themselves in the foot with their pricing and retail availability. I had trouble finding a Jaguar at most of the local big name media stores. My nearest Best Buy didn't have it and neither did the Media Play warehouse in the city I lived in.

[@RetroComparisons]

I remember the ads but I don't think anyone carried the console near me and I never saw the games anywhere. I ended up getting one for next to nothing in the early 2000s at a tag sale but it was the one console I ended up getting rid of because there was nowhere to get games back then.

[@beachlife2968]

The early 90s was like the start of a game of monopoly where everyone thinks they can win but it was always going to be won by those with bigger pockets like Microsoft and Sony. Respect to Nintendo though for navigating their way through to still be the kick as s company they are. Kinda sad that it is so predictable now with the same players

[@CMCAdvanced]

Tempest 2000 is awesome, how dare you

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

But tell me how a company which once tried to introduce a clean system bus architecture for its 8-bit, messes up the 64-bit system bus so much? Already Amiga would load multiple samples at once, why can't Jerry do it? Would this be like the first design choice: Allow the DSP and the GPU to gobble up a burst of phrases at full memory speed (in the top border to then leave the bus alone)? Same for the blitter. Basically, N64 has it all correct. N64 has a "blender" which acts on the frame buffer and z-buffer at full speed of the memory. Atari tried this, but failed to solve some simple algebra and the GPU has to come to rescue. But the weird part is that the blitter cannot initiate a seperate read burst to for example read a row of pixels from a sprite, or read a line through a texture. Quake linearly interpolates over 16px. Sprites are often no wider than 16px. Just at least give me a 16px = 4 phrases burst. This would be my requirements already for the Minimal Viable prototype. I may even run in 32 bit . Bonus points for a fast 90° rotation blit (4x4px at once) to first draw the walls in doom and then the rest.

[@ConkerTS]

Apparently, the game development software that Atari gave games developers to use was very unfit for purpose, it was limited and had many bugs. This would have made game development on the Jaguar potentially much more difficult and time consuming. The software was, from what I've read, released into the world much too early, resulting in bugs, missing features, and flaws that just should not have existed. And the situation seems to have been the same for the Jaguar console itself. Another few months spent in the design phase might have meant that both the Jaguar and it's development software were much easier to use. I doubt that that would have saved the Jaguar, though. It seems to me that Atari lacked the money to produce (either in-house or by third parties) great Jaguar exclusive games, and it is the really good exclusive games that tend to sell the consoles.

[@BurstingVeins1]

Double Dragon V was like showing the different between S-Video and Component cables. Component looks clearer, but you lose detail because it smooths out textures.

[@ravengaming4143]

SNES players weren't missing out on too much, Wolfenstein 3D was better on the Jag and it had Rayman, but DooM didn't even have music during gameplay.

[@argonaut31]

So for most of these games the SNES does a very similar job. There are a few stand outs like Primal rage and Wolfenstein but man its not much of a jump for being a "64-bit" system. I had a 3DO and it had more advanced games than the Jag hands down. It also cost like $500 bucks.

[@RetroComparisons]

The 3DO was a beast. I'm actually going to be doing a whole series of comparisons with the 3DO next year.

[@argonaut31]

@@RetroComparisons Yeah for 93/94 nothing could touch it until the PS1. Road Rash, Madden, Star Control, Way of the Warrior even Super Wing Commander were good looking games. Also, dont forget the first Need For Speed was on the 3DO and was pretty amazing for the time. A little game called Return Fire was a sleeper hit for me. Looking forward to your 3DO comparisons.

[@densakai]

Good old Cannon Fodder. Didnt know it was on the snes.

[@RetroComparisons]

It's a super fun game that I'm kicking myself for not playing until recently.

[@vittosphonecollection57289]

I only knew about the GBC port and you know exactly why! 😂😂

[@cj694x2]

Was only released in Europe, just like the Mega Drive version.

[@DanDoesGame]

Never played Jaguar as a kid, I grew up with the SNES and Genesis...... Jaguar graphics are so strange, it's like it has more detail but its softer so the SNES looks better which makes no sense 😂😂

[@RetroComparisons]

Haha yeah I don't know what's up with that. It would be one thing if the cables were way different but both are using Scart cables through an OSSC so it doesn't make much sense.

[@dad7275]

If only Atari would have had the financial backing Nintendo had we could've seen some amazing games.

[@ironhell813]

Depends. Atari once had a lot of money, more than any other game company… and a lot of times they couldn’t do anything with it… I’ve recently found out that the games industry has a lot of racism and gate keeping, mostly involving France (Ubisoft/infogrames) the US, (mostly midway and Williams) Japan (mostly Nintendo sega taito and namco) and Sweden (mostly embracer and it’s companies) and more recently China with tencent. The games industry has become very monopolistic and I have much evidence to support license gate keeping involving these companies. Maybe due to lack of collaboration Atari lost a lot of its prominence.

[@homersimpson8955]

It rather not, some decision making from Atari was questionable, because people at charge wasn't into a games, but rather see it as business. In contrast to Nintendo which making games with scientific approaches. They missed important point which makes console successful. Good exclusive games. So, factor not really was a money.

[@ironhell813]

@@homersimpson8955 a lot of the aforementioned game companies see the industry as just money still…. It’s all licensing and gamesmanship. The industry is a lot more ruthless than its fans would like to know. Quite alot of game companies in the us are actually descended from casino companies and their aforementioned problems with mafia and organized crime… Ballys and midway come to mind…. Wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of it is a front for criminal activity… Did you know before Rosen restructured Sega it was a front? Even more interesting is if you go to Segas headquarters in Japan they have the slot machines that got them in trouble on display….

[@dad7275]

@@ironhell813 they was never the same after the video game crash in the 80's. Bad management was a huge problem with Atari and alot of unlicensed junk was released on the platforms, especially 2600, which caused alot of intrest to be lost. It was alot of factors but ultimately the lack of cash and quality programming hurt them the most.

[@dad7275]

@@homersimpson8955 Jack (who your referring too?) was a computer guy first and yes he was a business guy too. But ultimately for Atari money ran out which severely effected quality programming because they simply couldn't afford the best programmers (unlike Nintendo) and in the Jaguar's case Atari couldn't even afford to distribute it to many places at launch for sell and just got swallowed up by the massive competition at the time sale wise. So yeah in short money was the main issue because if you cant afford the best programmers and have to nickel and dime it its going to affect everything.

[@Jerry4050]

Wow only 4 games look better than the SNES. I am so glad I didn’t got this system and got a N64 in 1996 instead.

[@RetroComparisons]

I would have been pissed if I could only get 1 console per generation and had gotten the Jaguar instead of the 3DO, Saturn, PS1 or N64.

[@Redfoot138]

I sold my SNES in the summer of 1996 and all its games so I could help pay for the N64. A year later, I missed the little fellow and bought it all over again from Walmart (it came with a Super Gameboy). It fit along side nicely with my Playstation and N64.

[@sikliztailbunch]

for a 16 vs 64 bit comparison, the Jaguar is kind of underimpressing, tbh

[@joelachiana9912]

I love these types of videos.

[@RetroComparisons]

Thanks so much for checking this one out:)

[@postguru5805]

I saw 8 Amiga games on the Jaguar site ,some 1:1 copies ..... Cannon Fodder, ,Dragons Lair , Flashback , Pinball Fanasies , Sensible Soccer , Syndicate , Theme Park ,Worms

[@glatt1817]

Okay, it wasn't just me. I remember these being games that I played on the Amiga, so I was thinking that most of these were ported from there. I did know that Flashback and Worms were widely ported, but can we call Dragons Lair an Amiga original though (I'd assume that it was released on pretty much everything at the time)?

[@postguru5805]

@@glatt1817 Dragon´s Lair is not a Amiga orginal ...first came on the Laserdisc

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

Syndicate was ported from the Amiga code, Worms from the PC code.

[@yuripetrovic7606]

I was anticipating that Jaguar would look better but I was honestly surprised at how little of improvement it was.

[@RetroComparisons]

It could do some great things like Alien vs Predator but you wouldn't know if from the crossover games like these.

[@greensun1334]

The SNES holds up pretty well. The first person shooters and Primal Rage look better on Jaguar of course, but the other games are quite on par on both, or in some cases even better on SNES. Remember, it's 16bit vs 64bit (it's actually 32bit).

[@greensun1334]

And Dragon's Lair has better and entirely different graphics on Jaguar.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

its actually 64/32/16 bit... all in one.

[@jyesucevitz]

I had both, but all these years later I don't recall the SNES graphics being so good?!

[@frosty848]

Sprits just age soo well

[@shotgunl]

I wanted a Jaguar but never got one. I almost bougth one in '01-'02 at a shop in college but didn't. I had a friend, Travis, who had one but with only Iron Soldier and Super Burnout. So, all of my experience with most Jag games has been via emulation aon (some in the past not so good, but Rich Whitehouse's BigP emu is great) and Atari 50th (again, Rich Whitehouse did a great job). Of these games, on the Jaguar DooM and Wolf3d are quite good and though I don't like the music much, NBA Jam TE is also really nice on the Jaguar. I think the Jaguar wins more than it loses in this comparison. The Jaguar definitely needed some more time in the oven and a lot better 3rd party support. There are some nice hombrew out there at least, plus I've been keeping an eye on the development of Chris at Tru Fun Games' homebrew MK1 port to the Jag, which is looking really cool. For the year and it's launch price, it's not terrible just more of a wimper rather than a roar.

[@RetroComparisons]

I think I actually originally got a Jaguar around 01/02 at a garage sale. We had maybe 1 or 2 games, didn't care for it and got rid of it. In the past decade I regretted that decision greatly and finally decided to finally buy it again with the money I've made off of the channel in order to reinvest it for this video (and the next 4 that will be coming out every other Saturday). It's a very underwhelming console with a controller that I can't get into and that's coming from someone who's an ardent supporter of the N64 & Dreamcast controllers. I get that it's convenient for games like Doom but I still don't like it. I have seen some of the homebrew games and not shockingly they're way better than a lot of the games I've tried on it from the original run of the console.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

@@RetroComparisons there was a Pro Jag Pad, which has more buttons and even shoulder buttons, lacks analogue sticks, but the hardware of Jag is supporting even that.

[@RetroComparisons]

@@madigorfkgoogle9349 That's cool! I've never even seen a picture of one of those. I'll check that out.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

@@RetroComparisons if you put Atari Jaguar Pro Controller into google, you will see plenty of them, to buy one is another story...

[@AT-qm8gv]

I had no idea the atrocity that is Double Dragon V was on more than one console. Also, that music in the second soccer game slaps!

[@RetroComparisons]

There are some games that baffle me as to how they got more than one port. Double Dragon V is one of them as well as Klax and Hard Drivin'. I mean did we really need Klax on the Lynx, Game Gear, Game Boy, every 4th gen console and even the freaking 2600?!

[@KyProRen]

I can't believe I'm saying this, but most of these games look better on Jaguar than they did on SNES, and I love SNES games!

[@shelleygoodman2612]

I was wondering if I were the only one to think that the "Jaguar" graphics were better - obviously not

[@MrPipo9010]

Some of the snes' seems to be faster

[@MrPipo9010]

Canon fodder and the soccer game

[@CMCAdvanced]

Of course they do, it's a more powerful console

[@Quoxozist]

Man the framerate in Doom and Wolfenstein was so much better on the Jaguar

[@RetroComparisons]

Those were really good ports, especially Wolfenstein.

[@J0r]

Jaguar: 64-bits of power! SNES: Hold my beer son... Arari is such a joke after the 2600

[@RetroComparisons]

For a company that once held a monopoly over the industry they repeatedly dropped the ball.

[@saturndual32]

Until you try to run high end stuff like Doom on Snes, (it can’t without helper chips) and you realize the Jag has way more power

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

@@RetroComparisons you have to realize that you are talking about two different ATARI companies, the behemoth of Arcade boxes and game consoles ATARI owned by Warner and the post 1984 Jack Tramiels ATARI which was a rather small (today we would say start up) company. I would like to see the SNES holding what ever drink and doing Iron Soldier2 or World Tour Racing.... or even 2d games in same resolution and colour depth then Jaguar can.

[@0815-]

I was never a PC gamer and bought a Jaguar with Doom. I loved it. Tempest 2000 was great too

[@RetroComparisons]

It's a downer that it doesn't have music but regardless I think it's the best cartridge based home console version.

[@ChaossX77]

The Jaguar was by far the worst system I've ever owned.

[@MartiZenith]

You admit to that 🤢

[@Mikewee777]

The controller was huge but the buttons were tiny.

[@jasonleveck8546]

The thing is, back in those days the fanboyism was so hot and competitive, that we foolishly rooted for other manufacturers to go down or out of business. I'd love to see a couple new console choices for the next Gens. Sega would so bad ass, if they were to come out of the blue with a Genesis for the 21st century. Doesn't need to be on par with Xbox or Sony, but something around the Switch or whatever Nintendo has next. Sega made absolutely fantastic games, same as Nintendo. To have another choice would be a really big deal in my mind.

[@Mikewee777]

@@jasonleveck8546 Sega was always too ahead of it's time and that is why they were forced to file a bankruptcy settlement in the first place. Their SEGA V.R. goggles were so expensive that they allowed Nintendo to show off their Virtual Boy without any competition.

[@bittersweetjesus]

Devs didn’t know how to take advantage of the extra power of the Jag so they just did a lot of similar ports.

[@larrydrozd2740]

Hmmmm.... The snes looks pretty damn good for only 16 bit. The Jaguar should have left it in the dust being 64 bit, yet its not a real jump like it should be. Plus, snes has Super Mario World. That game alone made it worth it.

[@TheMightyThor54]

Damn the Jaguar was better visually in just about everything, Nintendo just had a grip on the video game industry back then.

[@redinthesky1]

The Snes is an S tier console, the Jaguar has Aliens vs Predator, Tempest remake and a melted Genesis/Calculator for a keyboard

[@user-14575]

And 3DO vs PS1 will be or Amiga CD32? 🤔

[@RetroComparisons]

I'm hoping to do some 3DO stuff soon. The Amiga CD32 is a console I want but can't justify spending the money on right now.

[@Warmaker01]

Jaguar was an interesting one back in the day. It was a capable platform. Video game magazines talked about it all the time. There's ads for it all over the place to compete with the likes of Sega and Nintendo. I saw the platform and its games in numerous stores. Yet I personally never knew anyone that owned it in those days. I never saw one out in the wild in someone's house, dorm, apartment.

[@RetroComparisons]

I remember those ads back in the day and it really made me want to get one but this is another console that I never saw either, much like the TG-16 and 3DO. I knew kids with the Genesis, SNES, Saturn, PS1, and even a Sega Nomad but I didn't see a Jaguar until I got one at a garage sale in the early 2000s.

[@JimHawkwind03411]

Problem with the Jaguar was that it didn’t have a development kit at the time, and most of the Jaguar games used the console’s 68000 as the main CPU, as developers were more familiar with it. In fact, there were two versions of the CoJag hardware (Atari Games’s arcade board based on the Jaguar); the 68020 and the later R3000 CPU (same one as the PS1). Area 51 and Maximum Force used both boards.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

There was a development kit. When you look through the source code of some games and look into the SDK, which was developed alongside the hardware just as superFX, you will find the complete code needed for the ugly 3d maths stuff. You can link 68000 code and JRSIC assembly. It is a bit weird because C does not know threads and thus halts the 68k while JRISC runs, but then again the 3d libraries need to execute JRISC for quite some milliseconds. You could later optimize your code and run both processors in parallel. But this does not give you much speed advance. And for the R3000 they needed to add a full expensive FPGA to map the bus signals because Atari only knows 68k.

[@KadeRiley-hq8gc]

It seemed Jaguar had better graphics but seems alot of the games were smaller in size on the Jaguar. Also it seemed like the SNES ran smoother especially on the games where there was alot of fast moving sprites you can really tell the difference.

[@dariog36th]

Looks like Jaguar has more depth and more detail in the background but SNES has larger sprites in most games

[@saturndual32]

Looks like bigger sprites on snes only because of their lower resolution

[@Unicoseti]

larger sprites on supershit ????????????????????????????🤣

[@AtariBorn]

Most of the Jaguar titles are running at a higher resolution. The sprites look smaller but have more detail and you end up with more screen real estate.

[@jmartin1885]

Some of the specific Jaguar games couldn't have been done on any 16-bit machine at that time! Dragon's Lair is one example, Tempest 2000 being another... That said; These comparisons blew-me-away! The SNES was released two-years before the Jaguar, so it's developers were more comfortable programming for the machine, than Atari's developers programming on a New machine... I've owned pretty-much every major console ever released, beginning with the Atari 2600... I've enjoyed all the unique properties each console was able to deliver... I especially like the FMV games the Mega-CD offered, the Mode-7 games on the SNES, and a special place, for-me, goes to the 3DO for breaking away from traditional gaming, with it's multi-media entertainment! This comparison was great, more please 😎

[@RetroComparisons]

Thanks so much for watching! There will be 4 more like this with the Jaguar coming out soon (either in the coming week or every 2 weeks depending on which outcome wins the poll.) The Jaguar is another one of those interesting in between consoles where it could blow away what came before it if done right but couldn't hold up to powerhouses that came after it much like the Intellivision between the 2600 & Colecovision, SMS between the NES & PC Engine, and Dreamcast between the N64 & the rest of the 6th gen.

[@jmartin1885]

@@RetroComparisons Cheers, already looking forward to them!! 🤓

[@cj694x2]

Dragon's Lair was on the Sega CD.

[@danielespeziari5545]

There should be Power Drive / Power Drive Rally as well

[@joeboo8626]

Doom on Jaguar is more faithful to the original, but the fact the SNES with uts 3.58Mhz processor had a port is as mind boggling and impressive as RE2 on N64. I never thought the SNES could do it.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

Uh, it is a 28Mhz processor in Doom on both consoles.

[@saturndual32]

@@joeboo8626 it has the FX chip on the Doom cart… the snes by itself couldn’t come close to that

[@17R3W]

The jaguar has better backgrounds, but over all the SNES looked better. Larger, more detailed sprites, brighter colors, etc

[@FrameRunnerX]

Not in every game.

[@saturndual32]

@@17R3W Nah… for a fact you are wrong. The sprites seem bigger and are more pixelated on Snes due to its lower resolution

[@zenitpro]

After watching this video, there's no denying that the Jaguar was such a waste of potential. A relatively powerful hardware wasted on very average-looking titles. Of course, there are more visually impressive games on the system, but it was not the rule. It truly deserves some aftermarket love, and more quality homebrew games should surface.

[@RetroComparisons]

Very well said. It certainly was capable of more but we rarely saw its potential when it was a current product.

[@BubbeParker]

The fact that they could have pushed the SNES even further visually wise is unbelievable

[@mitchjames9350]

The use of specific chips on the cartridges was a wise but also expensive idea for consumers.

[@BubbeParker]

@@mitchjames9350 They could have done MK trilogy and we would have gladly paid for it

[@Lukas-kz4xm]

@@BubbeParker You got that right. Back in winter of 96 purchasing UMK3 for the SNES on release (though content) I would've loved to have been purchasing a SNES port of MK Trilogy instead.

[@BubbeParker]

@@Lukas-kz4xm They could have done it! Not of course by any means something like PS Or N64 but still, it would have had that lovely SNES veneer too

[@jasonleveck8546]

There was a significant amount of horse power left on the table, with SNES. Some times i'd have like to have seen them run SNES and N64 together and have updated the SNES to a full power revision with a different CPU. The SNES still had a ton of life left in it and great games to be made.

[@kaintkk]

snes releae date : September 9, 1991 jaguar : november 1993 2 year more of developement for the jaguar and the snes is nearly identical in a lot of aspect, i think it say a lot that the comparaison is not really fair, but anyway the snes is superior :P its not a wonder why the snes era is called the golden era of the snes

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

That is why Atari should have made sure that their Gouraud shaded 3d really works. That was a killer feature planned from the start inspired by CAD. But uh, Jaguar cannot do white hi lights . No fog . Polygon count is abysmal. And of course texture mapping is incompatible. A simple lighting model would add 8 bit texture lumen and Gouraud lumen. But why can’t I not also subtract Gouraud for shadows . So Gouraud would need to be 9 bit. In reality it is 16 Bit, but the shift is missing and texture mapping does not work with it anyway.

[@atarijaguarsgarage8873]

Most games are way better on Jaguar, some people still feel the urge to hate on the system ;-) Just wow

[@RetroComparisons]

I get it both ways to be honest. Had this console come out in 1991 I think the perception would be way different but this was like the SNES or Genesis Pro when it came to a lot of these ports. However, with the PS1 & Saturn just a year away it became outdated quickly. Having said that, it gets way more hate than it deserves. One of the unfortunate things about youtube is some of the bigger personalities spread false or misleading narratives and it becomes the "truth". I always go back to E.T. on the 2600 for something like that where sure, it's not a great game but now it's become considered mythical in it's awfulness when in reality it's not even in the top 20 worst games on the system.

[@atarijaguarsgarage8873]

@@RetroComparisons I would not say it was outdated. Actually, its way more powerful than both 16 bit Systems and with more compelling Software, could have kept Atari afloat some more years. But Atari was really a small Company, its a miracle they even managed to Release the Jaguar and some profilic titles. Not enough, but AvP, Doom and Tempest 2000 were really great titles. Technically, Playstation overshadowed Jaguar, but the 16 bit Market was still very strong way into 1998. With the proper software support, Jaguar should have been a viable system, but sales were sluggish and Atari failed to turn around.

[@RetroComparisons]

@@atarijaguarsgarage8873 Very well said. I guess I don't really mean outdated from a technical standpoint but more from the consumer side where I don't think many people wanted to upgrade their 16 bit console unless it was a huge jump to something like the Playstation. I'm very fascinated by these more powerful late fourth/early fifth gen consoles like this, the 3DO, etc because of what they were capable of and what could have been.

[@DenverStarkey]

most certainly do look better on the Jag . higher resolution , beter color palette . bgut a few ooked liek ass due to bad porting. also there was no saving that controler.

[@DenverStarkey]

@@RetroComparisons honestly for the time ET was revolutionary . it was trying to be zelda like map wise on a freaking atari 2600. . but yeah many falsey blame it for the almost crash in 83. and also imo it was a good atari game , having actualy spent time with it to complete it when i was a kid, it was way better than games like that horible superman game on atari. imho ET on atari 2600 is a case where people were overly critical because of it's difficulty. a lot of people falsey claim that the game gave you no direction and was too hard to figure out what to do , but the manual outlined the objectives perfectly. if you stuck to that and persisted (like people do in any souls game) ET was beatable.

[@saynotop2w]

I'm still getting Jaguar despite the lack of library, it's an interesting piece of hardware.

[@RetroComparisons]

It's a really cool system to own and especially now that there's a flash cart for it.

[@KrunchyTheClown78]

Love the Jaguar! I have one with almost 20 games, great underrated console.

[@net_news]

hardware wise it was a beast but developers never took advantage of it.

[@RetroComparisons]

I got one in the early 2000s at a garage sale and was super disappointed but I think if I had some better games I would have liked it so much more. Depending on what games you had I think the argument could be made that this gets more of a bad rap then it deserves much like the 32x, but I totally get the argument on the other side too for this or the 32x.

[@Aki_Lesbrinco]

It wasn't great. Most of the few games that got released were mediocre and the hardware was severely compromised to the point many developers just used the complimentary Motorola 68000 chip and ignored the other chips. That's why many games looked like something in between a Genesis and an SNES.

[@KrunchyTheClown78]

​​@@Aki_Lesbrincobut once you did use the extra chips, the quality of the 2D graphics were pretty incredible. And 3D graphics were similar to the 32x, maybe slightly better.

[@DontKnowDontCare6.9]

It wasnt underrated. It was just bad. 3DO had better output of games than the "64-bit" Jaguar. Hell, even the SNES was able to go toe to toe for several years with the Playstation with DKC.

[@supernewuser]

now that's just 64 bits of pure gaming insanity

[@newspooiechannel]

I am surprised you put Dragon's Lair in there when they are the same only in name, but did not include Tommy Moe's Winter Extreme: Skiing & Snowboarding (SNES) and Val d'Isère Skiing and Snowboarding (Jaguar) since the latter is a direct conversion of the former game. 🤔

[@Fools_Requiem]

Val d'Isere in the Jag is sooooooo much better than the SNES version, too.

[@aldoushuxleysghost]

What I see is that nearly half of the Jaguar library is also available on the console of a previous generation

[@jakeconer]

I was about to say that the Jaguar is just a 32 bit Sega Genesis with a built in SVP chip but that actually the 32X. In fact they’re build fairly similar. Both the Genesis and Jaguar have the same 16 bit CPU that issue commands to the 2 GPU’s. In the Genesis case 1 GPU is the Genesis and the other is the 32X. Even then the 32X is not as powerful as the PlayStation which is also 32 bits. Apparently the Blitter is actually 64 bits in the Jaguar. That just draws what being render on screen. But what’s being Render is 32 bit. Although I guess that means it can draw both 32 bit GPU’s at once. So it is technically 64 bits in that sense. But it kind of like how the Xbox Series S claims to be 4K but it just an upscale 1080p video.

[@RetroComparisons]

Very well said. And actually in a few weeks I'll be posting a video with the Jaguar vs the 32x along with the Sega CD.

[@saturndual32]

You are spreading a lot of misinformation… misinformation you got from making assumptions only 🙃

[@jakeconer]

@@saturndual32 what did I get wrong?

[@saturndual32]

@@jakeconer stuff like”since it can draw 2 32bit cpus at once it is technically 64 bit” “Jaguar just a 32 bit Genesis with an SVP” Or thinking that for having similar processors they work the same way

[@jakeconer]

@@saturndual32 technically in a sense is not the same thing as in actuality. Yeah the Jaguar isn’t 64 bit. Also that was sort of a metaphor about it being a 32 bit Genesis with the SVP. Although I do think the 32x is similar in graphical capabilities. I don’t know exact technical details, but I know one CPU just commands several processors at once.

[@GlennEdell]

I must say that the Snes was an amazing system looking at the comparisons.

[@carlacespede3489]

JAGUAR FOR EVER

[@mrjohnnyk]

NBA Jam and Wolfenstein 3D are probably the best out of this list along with Dragons Lair. NBA Jam looks like the arcade version, probably the best home version, and Wolfenstein 3D looks better than the PC version in some ways. Dragons Lair really took advantage of that CD storage for it's arcade-like cinematic presentation.

[@TheRealMCExcellent]

Jaguar being 64 bit was a lie 😂

[@sleepwalker29]

Jaguar is running higher frame rate and resolution. Doom on SNES is lagging. All around Jaguar is better. Images on SNES look bigger because it is lower resolution.

[@74Vidgamer]

The Jaguar puts in a pretty abysmal showing considering the raw horsepower it has over the SNES, positively embarrassing!

[@Zerker_Supremacy]

Man, that Pitfall looks so beautiful, never heard of that game before. It haves the same quality of the Lion King and Alladin i used to play on PC back in 1997 when i was 5.

[@RetroComparisons]

I love Aladdin especially on the Genesis but also on the SNES. Pitfall The Mayan Adventure definitely has those vibes. If you ever get a chance to play this Pitfall game I'd recommend the Sega CD version. I think the soundtrack is fantastic and for some reason the 32x & Jaguar versions have a worse framerate so it hits that sweet spot between the more advanced ports and the SNES/Genesis.

[@Zerker_Supremacy]

@@RetroComparisons thankyou for the insight, i will surely try out on an emulator.

[@RetroComparisons]

@@Zerker_Supremacy No probs, I hope you enjoy the game!

[@MKF30]

Nice comparison dude. Some look better on the snes others the jaguar I think depending on the game. I forgot primal rage was made for so many consoles lol 😅 that game was on everything just about. I've always felt the Jaguar and thr 3DO were way overpriced lol. I feel like most kids just had an SNES or Genesis except the rich kid that had every console lol

[@RetroComparisons]

Thanks buddy! Haha yeah Primal Rage joins amongst the ranks of Klax and Columns that seems to be on every console ever made. Oh yeah this and especially the 3DO were super overpriced for what you got. At least for the 3DO you could use it as a CD player back then, but damn that's an expensive CD player lol!

[@MKF30]

@@RetroComparisons lol true 👍 I forgot it could play CDs. I know right I'm good with my 90s boom box and CD player lol. 🤣

[@RetroComparisons]

@@MKF30 Lmao!

[@MKF30]

@@RetroComparisons 🤣😁👍🏼

[@slingshotcrazy]

I had a Jaguar in 1999 and very stupidly sold it :( I still have a Super Nintendo as well as the Classic Mini too and as much as I can see a difference I've done the math and there's definitely not 64 bit at play here!!! The Jaguar version of Doom though, I did have that and although I didn't know it at the time, it was the closest console port to the PC original despite not having any music!!! I was too blown away by the PS version though!!!!

[@RetroComparisons]

I stupidly bought and sold my Jaguar too back in 2002/3. I had to re-purchase it for this series of videos and a much, much higher price than the probably $20 or $30 that I paid at a garage sale back then. I think the Jag has the best cartridge port of Doom while the Playstation has the best overall version when it comes to consoles from that time.

[@mMaximosaure]

Is it normal that the Jaguar version of Doom is so dark?

[@TheFlamingPike]

My guess would be that like many games with fog to prevent FPS issues in the 90's, they added a darkness since it was more appropriate for the setting.

[@iratanongrata5973]

Yes - The video doesn't show it well, but the Jaguar version ran at 65K colors, whereas the PC and SNES versions was 256. Because of this and the Jag's added features, there are a number of lighting effects that Jaguar version had(some that weren't present on the OG PC version). Keep in mind too that the Jag Doom port was also done by John Carmack/iD and not some 3rd party; John had stated in an interview that he could have produced a better optimized version for the Jag if he had taken a second crack at it.

[@intellectualninjamonkey2496]

The fact that you have to compare a supposedly 32 bit console with a SNES says it all. The jaguar is a clear example why advance technology alone doesn't guarantee a fun gaming experience. The NES is a clear example how good games even without advanced technology guarantee a fun gaming experience. And the SNES ....the best example what the whole gaming experience turns to when you combine great games with advance technology!

[@javiermoreno9041]

The Jaguar's performance is embarrassing.

[@patfer1189]

It didn't help the case of the Jaguar that so many second or third tear games were just as good (if not better) on the a system with a "third" of bits, but also that the games it should have ran well (Doom, Wolfenstein) not only were running on SNES too but usually were even more complete in execution. And the only outlier is Dragon's Lair and the difference comes down to the format the game was published in more than the properties of the hardware.

[@parazels83]

I wish Primal Rage were on the modern consoles!

[@RetroComparisons]

A modern remake or sequel on new hardware would be awesome!

[@RealHomeRecording]

agreed 100%. It was a very unique concept along with Clay Fighters.

[@RetroComparisons]

@@RealHomeRecording Exactly. I've always been mixed on Clay Fighters. I've never really liked the game but it looked so cool back then I still rented it a bunch of times regardless on the Genesis.

[@brandogg]

You can play it on Xbox, PS2, GameCube/Wii (and modded Wii U) on Midway Arcade Treasures 2

[@RetroComparisons]

@@brandogg Very true, those are pretty solid ports of the original arcade version. I wish there was something along the lines of Mortal Kombat 1 for this series.

[@UZiBLASTER7]

Double Dragon on the Jaguar looks like one of those weird 2d early DOS games like the 2D Duke Nukems

[@RetroComparisons]

Haha yeah you're right

[@net_news]

pretty even but the SNES sounds so much better that takes the lead

[@Xehemoth]

I actually had a Jaguar. I didnt even take it with me when I moved houses, it really was an abysmal system. Its hard for me to say which was worse between the Jaguar or the Virtual Boy.

[@RetroComparisons]

The Jaguar & Virtual Boy are the kings of mid-90s overplaying their hand when it came to their technology.

[@amsterdamG2G]

.....you had a Jaguar AND a Virtual Boy?!😱

[@Xehemoth]

@@amsterdamG2G Yeah, we didnt have much growing up, but my mom did spoil the fuck outta us with video games and consoles.

[@awesomstuff]

Crazy, how often the SNES looks on par or even better 🤔 Jaguar deserved to flop

[@mikec3260]

NBA Jam on the Jag looked prett6 darn good. Otherwise wtf.. lol, I saw someone comment on buying a Jag and being disappointed it was marginally better than 16bit consoles. The side by side, the Jag showed promising stuf with 2d, just should have been arcade perfect. Winner: Not Atari Other winner: You man! Again comparisons like this are totally worth watching. I hope this vid blows up!

[@RetroComparisons]

Thanks so much my friend! Funny thing is I did that All Atari video the other week and it did poorly even though I thought it was a big video. Now this one that I thought would get like 500 views is doing really well. I guess it's impossible to figure out lol. There was cool stuff for sure on a lot of the late 4th/early 5h gen consoles but I feel bad for anyone who invested in those like the Jag, CD-I, 3DO, etc. The libraries were underwhelming and it wasn't until the PS1 that we got that true next gen feel. As for NBA Jam I was pretty impressed with it but what's up with that music lol! It seems like it would work better for Pitfall The Mayan Adventure.

[@SeñorDossierOficial]

I don't know if it is true, but i read that many developers used the 16 bit motorola controller inside the jaguar as the main cpu to make most of the games

[@RetroComparisons]

That would make sense considering how a lot of these look.

[@DontKnowDontCare6.9]

Thats true actually. Apparently, the other CPU was too complex to use, so the developers stuck with what they know and only used the 2D capabilities of the Jaguar. Which explains the lack of growth in its 3D capabilities.

[@jasonleveck8546]

@@DontKnowDontCare6.9 that makes a ton of sense! Not a programmer, but i'm 46 and a gamer and fan of the industry. I remember all these systems and played all of them. What you say makes a LOT of sense, because as a layman to the technical parts of the industry I could never understand why a 64 bit console so terribly underperformed.

[@madigorfkgoogle9349]

the sensible soccer and Cannon Fodder are direct ports from Amiga.

[@iratanongrata5973]

@@DontKnowDontCare6.9 Yep. Modern coders have discovered that if you barely use the Motorola 68k in the Jaguar and focus more on the "Tom & Jerry" chips (the GPU & DSP), you get better performance. But that wasn't really known in the 90s when it mattered.

[@zaxchannel2834]

If it came out earlier and had a different controller, maybe Atari could've been a contender

[@RetroComparisons]

This would have been a beast if it had come out in 1991 but by the time it was released the 3DO was out not to mention the Saturn and PS1 on the horizon.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

@@RetroComparisons Why was the design not ready in 1991? I could understand bugs in cutting-edge features like texture mapping or the score board. But why did Flare not unite the blitter and the Object processor at that time? Like sprites = backgrounds .. and then it is the next step. Like in Lynx. There is no separate circuit and manual for sprites vs blitter. The line buffer already shows that Flare knows what a multiplexer is ( to switch between front and backbuffer ). So they could have used the same device to either feedback the blitter to a frame buffer or into the line buffer. Why did Flare not do the math : 6809 can multiply 8 bits in 12 cycles and very few transistors (6800 in total vs 900000 in Tom). This is fast enough (with a little pipeline). Sega already considered sprite rotation for the genesis, but deemed it to be to costly. It is almost ridiculous how a general purpose cache would have helped with so many things starting with sprite rota-zoom and ( yeah maybe tell the non-rotated sprites to bypass the cache ). How do you develop this stuff? All on paper and software? Only the RCA 1802 started life as two chips. All other ICs were integrated on the first run. At the time I would have started with a C++ program. It already has the "Objects". Next thing might be try out some real pipeline with a daisy chain of 68k boards. CDI did away with palette or HAM. Amiga already showed the way with RGB half brite mode. Next thing would be RGB average for translucency. And then the next thing may be to again steal from the 6809 and have multiplication in a pixel shader. Okay, okay, At this point MUL would need a Wallace tree. I took me some time to understand these. Maybe if professional would design the Jaguar, they would know this circuit from university. It grows with the square of bits. So it is actually quite efficient for 8bit (color channel, alpha). Just probably also need to invest into queues to keep this large circuit occupied. Even with Booth encoding, we still occupy all those transistors. With 3 color channels and two sources, this would mean 6 cycles per pixel. So let's have a separate path for shifts and fully transparent or fully opaque. Billinear filtering was well known from PovRay and Photoshop. So I don't see why roto-zoom hardware could not at least has this as a (slow) option.

[@mr.y.mysterious.video1]

How does the jag manage to have smaller sprites on some games......

[@thewindthatblows]

Maybe they look smaller due to a higher resolution?

[@StriderVM]

Cost cutting and rom sizes. If they used arcade accurate graphics, it would cost more to develop than the 16-bit versions. And also since it's cartridges, the publishers don't want to increase the cost per cartridge to be higher than the 16-bit versions. Result. Virtually the same as 16-bit versions.

[@CrazyHomelessWeirdo]

For most of the games there's not enough of an improvement to justify the cost of buying the Jaguar when it was new and a lot of the games I just can't tell the difference but I'd still say there wasn't enough there to justify the price tag of a Jaguar at the time.

[@K0ntakt5]

never played a jaguar, but it looks like it suffered with mediocre talent behind the games and not so much the fault of the hardware. you can see in some places where it is clearly capable of superior feats over the snes, which it should be able to do given the jaguar is more advanced- but in many of the games the snes surpasses the quality of the jaguar

[@RetroComparisons]

I couldn't agree more. It's a lot of wasted potential and for a lot of these I'd rather play the SNES or Genesis version even if they take a slight hit visually.

[@ironhell813]

Jaguar suffered because of a 30 conspiracy between American and French and Japanese game companies to keep The United Kingdom from developing game hardware through systemic withholding of game software licenses. The guy that developed the Konix multi system tried to obtain licenses and reported that the Japanese boycotted him on request from various American companies and I believe the French didn’t like tramiel because he was Jewish… They later designed the Jaguar and he bought it from them but the companies that boycotted the Konix continued to boycott because of the jags association with Konix and the creators decision to incorporate zero copy protection and floppy support into the Konix. Because he refused to comply with Japanese and American copyright concerns they boycotted his products, but it’s actually part of a wider boycott and conspiracy to deny British game hardware that affected the amiga32 and the Amstrad consoles as well. The French being racist towards Jews in business ( well known and sureally tolerated antisemitic business practices) didn’t help. (Tramiel was a holocaust survivor)

[@RetroComparisons]

@@ironhell813 That's wild! I've got to take a deeper dive into Jaguar stuff after learning that.

[@ironhell813]

@@RetroComparisons heh, think that’s while? Commodore had the same issues in the US. Everyone thinks cause of the large amount of Jews in the US they’re not anti semitic but it definitely is… and anti British too. Most British consoles were (and are) heavily boycotted in the US iam assuming because of Britain being mostly Jewish. Clive Sinclair and others had a hell of a time trying to sell their consoles in the US and France because of this and japan even made licenses with Phillips (the famous link affair) to avoid dealing with the British…

[@ironhell813]

It gets even more interesting with the Swedes… The guy that founded and owns embracer group (Lars Wingefors) is related to the guy that designed and created the Gizmondo… and he was in the upsalla mafia…. I wouldn’t be surprised if the upsalla mafias hands are in embracer pockets… and the most interesting thing of all, is they are friends with Bruno bonelle, founder of infogrames, and his cousin that ran the awful game company Titus software. That’s why Titus kept getting game licenses despite being terrible… Did you know Titus is related through the same investors as nacon and Teyon in Poland, and that between Titus and nacon have held the rights to robocop illegally and against French and us copyright laws for over twenty years? Who knows what other shady stuff they’re doing…

[@DrRachelRApe]

Jaguar was a beast of a console but I remember it being pretty expensive so neither me or any of my friends had it. I always wanted it though.