Inside the Atari Jaguar with Rich Whitehouse

On this special DF Retro stream, we're joined by Rich Whitehouse to discuss the Atari Jaguar in-depth. Rich created the amazing BigPEmu (a version of which was used in Atari50) which emulates the Jag with stunning accuracy. Time to learn more about how this beast works!

[@PFBM86]

I'm really blown away by the knowledge and passion that Rich exhibits for his work here. It's incredibly sad to hear that he's been fighting an illness. Really hope he recovers and is able to continue lending his expertise to the community for many years to come.

[@joaogrrr]

To me, the fact he knows and remembers all this shit means just how fucking AWFUL it was to work with the Jaguar.

[@seanmckelvey6618]

The Jaguar is such an interesting platform. History is written by the victors, but the "losers" are often much more fascinating.

[@FifthOfNovember_Original]

Thanks John & DF for bringing legends like Rich to spotlight! Jaguar really was an interesting piece of tech

[@Heakz]

Not often do we get a video with John related to retro gaming where he doesn't have to lead the discussion, a guest with a comparable level of technical knowhow, experience and dedication, no trick, hack or discovery without a quicky intriguing provenance, my favorite part. Unfortunately, I am fine with interviews but the longer, unscripted videos with guests and similar youtubers or friends I can never end up watching, this was a nice exception, thanks guys!

[@retronemesis7064]

You guys made me get out my jaguar and hook it up to my CRT

[@jhkuno88]

.....and remember what a piece of sheet it was

[@ScrapKing73]

I’m so excited for this video!!! I was a huge fan of the Jag. Probably the most underutilized console from a major game company that we’ve yet seen. It had vast untapped potential, with most developers using its weakest processor as the main CPU.

[@roberthanthonymartinezrive7383]

It sucks that i didn't arrive to the stream on time. Oh well. Good to see more Jaguar stuff from you John! Also, massive thanks to Rich Whitehouse in making the emulator! It allowed me to play Iron Soldier 1 again since more than 10 years and finally play Iron Soldier 2 at last :D

[@SpankTheMunkee]

A Retroarch core of this would be absolutely epic!

[@modestyblaise4167]

Yes it would. The days of releasing a standalone Windows only emulator are long gone. So many more ways to play these days.

[@SPG8989]

Lol no they aren't. There are still quite a few standalone versions that are more viable to use and better to use than the Retro Core versions@@modestyblaise4167

[@KrunchyTheClown78]

My love for the Jaguar has increased 100 fold thanks you DF Retro! Thanks so much John And Rich for showing the Jag the love it deserves!

[@Doskias26]

Thank you! If you ever do one on the 3DO as well I can die happy.

[@corey2232]

When I owned a retro game store back in 2013, a guy came in with an entire Jag collection complete in box, barring 3 or 4 games. Had the system + Jag CD too (though it wasn't working), but boxes & games were all in great condition. At the time, I wanted to get a good reputation for being up front about a collection's value & would tell customers what they could get piecing it out online, compared to what I could offer. So we went through & priced it out, but he still wanted the cash right then. The reason this all sticks with me is because it was only a few months later that Jag prices started skyrocketing, especially games that were CIB. I felt eternally guilty about giving him only $300, when individual games from that collection nearly sold for that much. Even the broken Jag CD sold for $150! If you're out there reading this, I'm sorry man. I never wanted to rip you off!

[@harrinieminen1512]

👏 Big thanx that we had people like this! Big salute to Rich Whitehouse and all others who made these excellent new Jag games possible etc. 🍻 It's really amazing how strong Jaguar is going nowadays!

[@joesomebody1278]

Great video! I had no idea someone was working on a new and improved emulator like this, so that was a pleasant surprise! This video helped bring back some fond childhood memories I have. For better or worse, the Jaguar was my only console growing up.

[@G360LIVE]

Ouch. That's got to be rough. But then, you likely have more of an appreciation for the Jaguar than other people. I bought a Jaguar when it launched, and I always thought it felt a bit cheap compared to the other consoles. However, I seriously enjoyed games like Tempest 2000 and Alien vs Predator. I played those games for countless hours.

[@budge1972]

Thanks for all your great work Mr Whitehouse It's much appreciated and wishing you well for the future.

[@techieg33k]

This is amazing. Thank you for what you do Rich! Thank you all DF

[@tomkirbygreen]

Awesome stream chaps. Thank you for sharing this!

[@onlysublime]

my first experience with Wolfenstein 3D was on the PC. So when I saw the Jaguar version, I was so blown away as the Jaguar version had all new graphics, better sound, and ran much faster than 486 version

[@SHGames97]

This stream was incredible & thank you Johnaheima!

[@GameplayandTalk]

That was a lot of fun! Tons of great information from Rich on this one, which was insightful. Thanks, guys!

[@ZimLuvGigan]

few things can make me pause my playing of tears of the kingdom, this is one

[@elone3997]

That was awesome - Thanks John, Rich and DF. I remember my friend traded in his Snes and floppy drive pirate collection for a Jaguar...he wasn't impressed, which is why he then ended up with a PS1 which if I remember rightly, he bought secondhand from Blockbuster video.

[@plume...]

Thanks John and Rich, this was a super interesting watch

[@TB-nf6bs]

Thank you for covering this topic been interested in it

[@myretronation]

Thank you Rich for the amazing emulator!

[@acem7749]

Great stuff, so happy work like this was done and he was able to do this.

[@joshuaDstarks]

Where did you learn to fly? Where did you learn to fly? Where did you learn to fly? Where did you learn to fly?

[@ActuallySanFrancisco]

watching john miss ALL of the powerups in tempest 2000 has been the most frustrating viewing experience i’ve had all week. cheers! d-:

[@JmMateo933]

Very cool stream 👍

[@JesusKristov]

Rich really is a fantastic guy. I would happily watch John talking about Rayman 1 for hours. I love and hate Rayman 1 a lot.

[@davidt3563]

Heck yes! I've always wanted to know about this story and it's hardware

[@robbieburns3564]

Interesting. It ALMOST makes me want to take this hunk of junk out of my basement storage to play it for a short while. I got one for $18 at a yard sale with some games about 6 years ago. I played it for some short time and decided "Well.. this stinks!" and put it away. But I kept it because it was such a weird thing for $18. They've curiously gone up in value considerably. Another weird console in history!

[@elone3997]

Ha, yeah..that's the thing about all these old machines. The history, quirks and lore are sometimes better than the actual 'experience'. I recently watched an Angry video game nerd special on the god awful Tiger electronics line of handhelds. Fascinating history for such an offensive bit of 'hardware' :)

[@cyrollan]

You could make a ton of money selling the console and those games!

[@Lightblue2222]

Thanks to this amazing emulator, perhaps the Jaguar homebrew scene will get better. Just see the amazing stuff people have done with 2600 and 7800 surpassing the retail games in graphical quality. So far the most impressive games for the Jaguar are still the old retail games from the mid 90s. I would love to see homebrews that show the systems actual potential. Lets see what this puppy "cat" can really do!

[@davidbanner9001]

Rich, great emulator. Thank you very much.

[@bdre5555]

I'm one of the few who bought a Jaguar at lunch. It was worth owning just for Alien versus Predator and Tempest 2000! I'm a huge alien and Predator fan, AVP was my dream come true at the time

[@Substance242]

I remember reading about Jaguar and Atari Falcon at the time and believing that, being so amazing, they will rule the world definitely!

[@AntneeUK]

Awesome to hear about the Romero signed Doom. Someone who loves DF Retro and everything you do must've given you that 😉

[@ScrapKing73]

I have great memories of many of the games mentioned here, but also Hover Strike! Hugely underrated, IMO! Especially in two player mode (one drives and the other shoots).

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

A feature I didn't see again until PS2 Starsky And Hutch

[@SimonBuchanNz]

Perfect opening!

[@mariotaz]

Amazing video

[@user-hr5di5fg8b]

I love these type of video informative and interesting.

[@tiagoj8020]

Doom multiplayer deathmatch on Jaguar was top tier in the day! Needed multiple tvs and jaguars but when you set it up, it was golden!

[@cdlelondon]

What a cool video and people like Rich restore are good for the soul 👌

[@jjasper7512]

"custom silicon M.F." sounds so much better as an ad phrase than do the math! Thanks for this a great watch.

[@banditrw27]

I hate I missed this live. I was one of those that waited Patiently for the Jaguar’s supposed December’93 release only to be disappointed. That should have told me something about how Jag was going to go, but I hung in there.

[@ThomasGorgolione]

"Quantum-bug" is a great term. I think I'm going to start using that when I run into similar bugs.

[@frankmcelhill9379]

I hope they release each of the games from the Atari anniversary pack individually, like Capcom did with Capcom generations. Some I'd buy on their own but many of them I don't want or need.

[@jeffjefferson7384]

I remember playing Doom and Alien vs Predator on the Jaguar. Good times.

[@shootermcgavin1208]

The only decent titles for the console. I don’t think Doom even had music.

[@cyrollan]

I still play them on the Jag! But I just purchased my first one last year 😊

[@eskimopi8617]

Nah there’s two dozen worthy titles on it.

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

​@@shootermcgavin1208 depends on your tastes, but Tempest 2000 and Iron Soldier were superb exclusives.

[@atarijaguarsgarage8873]

That was excellent stuff!

[@davidshelton4920]

Thanks Rich for Emulation Jaguar.

[@balohna]

These pre-PS1 consoles are so interesting. Like they were clearly cutting edge at the time but didn't quite get where the market was headed. So you have these games that look like the most amazing, souped up version of 90s 2D with some FMV stuff mixed in. Meanwhile, people wanted 3D. Not that Jaguar and 3DO couldn't do 3D, but they weren't all about it in the way PS1 and N64 were.

[@guillermo9171]

The Saturn released WITH the PS1 and it still didn't know where the market was headed....

[@G360LIVE]

Actually, the PlayStation pushed the home console market into the 3D space. At the time, it was controversial for Sony to push 3D games so heavily since people mostly played 2D games. The 2D market was saturated, and Sony needed to be different to stand out from its competitors, and that's what they set out to do from the start with PlayStation. They made a console that focused on 3D gaming. Not to mention, the Jaguar was in development in 1992, and Atari wanted to compete with the Super NES and Genesis, which were very popular 2D consoles. People didn't want 3D at the time. Street Fighter II was all anyone really wanted to play (and it certainly wasn't 3D). We barely got Virtua Racing in arcades back in '92, which was like the first of the 3D games, and Virtua Fighter wasn't in arcades until late '93. We really didn't know that 3D arcade games could be brought to home consoles at an affordable price. (Plus, by then, it was all Street Fighter vs Mortal Kombat.) I mean, we were only a couple of years into the life of the Neo Geo, which brought arcade games home at a cost of $650 for the console and $200 for games. So, Sony really did do something special and changed the landscape of gaming by pushing 3D technology with the PlayStation and making it affordable.

[@graphicsgod]

Sony: "$299." **mic drop**

[@FhargaZ]

I had some issues using the xinput gamepads on BigPEmu, and also the DS5. Funny enough the Hori fighting game stick arcade worked fine 😄. After some updates I was able to make it work.

[@RetroGamerBB]

So amazing. I hope one day it gets a port to Android and optimized for lower end PCs

[@loganjorgensen]

Thank you so much Rich Whitehouse, without your excellent work the Jag scene was stuck with poor emulation or the difficulty of finding the console for a reasonable price which is largely over lol. Also the Game Drive, what a Godsend that was too.🙂 Appreciate some positivity cast on the Jaguar since it was good hardware for the time but was unfortunately buried under a bunch of superficial matters that could have been fixed Eg. could have easily shipped with a better AV cable than RF using the back card edge output, Composite, S-Video, Component, or RGB/VGA were all possible during it's release.🤕 It's funny how the controller was inherited from the Falcon computer or how the Jaguar shell was repurposed in dental equipment since I've been watching a lot of Hasbro action figure stuff and many big toy companies often recycle the injection mold immediately after a single production run.😒 That doesn't surprise me about using modern online solutions for Jaguar networking, it never stood a chance with how things went with the platform. Still I think it could be revived based on the DC games getting online again. I'd love to try Jag-VR, I think that will be a wonderful new venture through the emulator to explore with modern HMDs. I bought a Philips Scuba goggle a few years ago but it would take some modding to add the tracking portion back into it. Yeah it's highly negligent of the owners to not reverse engineer document the Jag/Sega VR tech since I doubt many can maintain them forever. I've seen the Sega VR modern adaption and it turned out quite well.😁 My research into early 3D/VR mainly came to the conclusion that the games would always have to scale back in features and engine resolution just to get the performance higher so it would be more comfortable for more people. For example you'd have to drop from 1X pixels to 2:1/1:2X or 2X either manually or dynamically just to have it be more similar to non-VR performance levels on all the platforms. So basically no one wanted to go from 240p to 120p even though the frame rates were atrocious.🤔 Entitled complainers could be nicer but it's inevitable for esoteric things like the Jaguar, Rich is too modest as he is much more talented than the average person, I'm sure their own frustrations at not being able to do things makes them forget their manners. One good example is how many people regard Assembler language as black magic when basically every past famous game engine on PCs or game consoles were all written in machine language Ie. it was the only way to speed things up on vintage CPUs.😐

[@SirChadofWick]

Rich is a legend for BigPEmu

[@rolandsmash]

Please do the Atari Lynx.

[@roberthanthonymartinezrive7383]

The Atari Lynx has been emulated pretty well with the Handy emulator.

[@retronemesis7064]

I only have 4 games. AVP, Iron Soldier, Rayman, and Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure.

[@TheNeonrazor]

Phase zero would have been a good game to look at, voxel based smoothness

[@Lagrangeify]

I loved my Jaguar but it was so starved. Tempest 2000 was as close to a pure arcade experience I'd ever had at that point, maybe even to date. And AvP promised so much for a future that was sadly never realised. Things were moving so fast back then, even the mighty Sega couldn't weather the storm.

[@Reese300NK]

I still have my Atari Jaguar and Jaguar CD.

[@thebrightjay8638]

Do you know how much is it worth ?

[@graphicsgod]

Does your cd attachment still work?

[@mickael486]

Clearly this guy is brilliant in this field. Then he drops a "I'm not feeling well health wise but I'd like to continue to reverse engineer" really cool shit. Are you just sick or are you sick sick? Do you have a gofundme that would make you better? I'm sorry John didn't ask any details but I understand the awkwardness of asking a personal question. You're an amazing dude and I sincerely hope you get well. 💙👍

[@dmer-zy3rb]

He seems to have some serious illness, he hints at it at his website too.

[@DigitalFoundry]

He has severe cancer. He’s posted about it on his blog.

[@mickael486]

@@DigitalFoundry 😪😪😪

[@f1nkangel]

It looks wonderful, considering the over the internet play....astonishing it works at all these days!

[@akaimizu1]

Looks like Rich, right there, wasn’t ready for Stadia. (Ahh. Streaming only platforms. Foiled by our current internet industry standards). Still, I knew this was going to be a fun time the moment I saw another Retro console, like the Jaguar. I also like the start “play some Jag” because it made me think of the short-lived Tv show called “JAG”. For me, that show was on a similar level of success as “Manimal”. Kind of a flash in the pan, and nearly forgotten.

[@pipikakachu]

Please talk about the M2 adapter for the 3DO that was scrapped. Mortal Kombat 3 was supposed to release on that.

[@Rdeboer]

I remember a friend showing me screenshots of AvP on Jaguar in a magazine and thinking it looked absolutely amazeballs, like the future had almost arrived (I knew next to nothing about gaming hardware). Between that heavily skewed first impression and Atari marketing the machine as a 64-bit monster I had no inkling of what a stinking failure the platform would turn out to be.

[@adamuser8246]

I still have this.I have the Alien game, they mostly work at night..Wink

[@erockbrox8484]

My main interest with the Jaguar is that there is a flash cartridge and on that cartridge there is an FPGA and with this chip you can create new enhancement chips for the console. Because of this, you can literally create additional CPU's and such and beef up the consoles performance.

[@baroncalamityplus]

Tomb Raider for the Jag would be fitting considering the game started out on the Jaguar.

[@bowi1332]

I would love to watch similar content with the developer of Portal64 for the N64! ❤️

[@Spellfork]

On a scale from 1 to "disaster" that start was an "epic fail", haha! Just kidding it wasn't higher than an "awkward moment" :)

[@WhiteMagicRaven]

Did Atari Jaguar have something like 3d hardware graphic accelerator? does its posible to override resolution to Full HD at some 3d games?

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

Jez San, Argonaut, who were working on the cancelled Jag CD version of Creature Shock: "A true 64 bit chip would have a 64 bit ALU and 64 bit registers. The Jaguar does not. Simply having two 32 bit chips does not constitute a 64 bit cpu. Having a 64 bit databus does technically allow you to call it a 64 bit system if you must, but 64 bit cpus? no way."

[@jaysoegaard]

Love this took me back hard

[@WhiteMagicRaven]

ok i saw Cybermorph can use Native resolution, i think another console that can have something similar is Sega 32X as three games on it actually a polygon games with additional hardware on cartridge , and these three games are: "Metal Head" and "Virtua Fighter" and "Virtua Racing Deluxe"

[@hrungnir00008psp]

Flashback had same colours on SNES, except for the white shirt on the Mega Drive. So the Jaguar is probably the DOS version.

[@scottlinux]

Do you think that Jag titles were crippled by the limited rom size at that time?

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

It cost games like AVP in-game music and various concepts the teams wanted to implement, for sure.

[@DarkCylon]

I pawned my Jaguar console and games (and some SNES/GENESIS games) back in the 90s because I needed money right after college. I got $60 from the pawn shop. Man, do I regret my decision (I did need the money, though).

[@atarijaguarsgarage8873]

Raiden Jaguar is the first port with 2 player sim. support., I believe. Possibly the reason it was hard coded 30 FPS. That being said, the scrolling is smoother and more consistent than that of the PSX Project version. Some assets were touched up a notch, with more colors and detail. An interesting port, worth checking out. Too bad you did not try Native Demo or some other examples of the more impressive homebrew stuff. For Rayman, my impression is that it has less input lag than the PSX version. The understated soundtrack has some serenity to it the CD versions are missing.

[@DigitalFoundry]

I covered both Raiden and Rayman in the PS1 launch episode and found that the PlayStation version of Raiden is basically arcade perfect and runs at the correct frame-rate. Not sure about the input lag on Rayman as it feels similarly responsive between all four versions from that era. I just know Jag is missing a bunch of parallax scrolling. Otherwise, the art is the same.

[@atarijaguarsgarage8873]

@@DigitalFoundry I own both versions as well. The scrolling in the PS version is inconsistent, with small judders. If that was the same with the arcade game, it is arcade perfect indeed. I can't say I prefer the PS version.

[@A31Chris]

Atari hired the lowest bidders. Imaginec did decent work but had no interest in reinventing the wheel.

[@masti733]

Surely the humble old Jag couldn't handle Tomb Raider??? It would be truly fascinating to see it. Would love a Jag vs Saturn vs Ps1 comparison video, getting ahead of myself though.

[@Krejstrup]

Stumbled on this just right now. I still have a Atari Jaguar in my basement 😅 not knowing what to do with it... I don't know anything about what this show is about, but I'll run it in the background and see if I figure something out 😊

[@cyrollan]

If your Jag works, you can get major bucks for it!

[@ghost085]

12:58 The xenomorph in the AvP start screen looks so wrong. It's like it's head it's connected to its torso in the wrong place.

[@stagename2]

I was the proud owner of one of these bad boys.

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

More, from the period, Commercial Jaguar Developer quotes: Perhaps some of the delays in Jaguar games and the current lag in development come in the sharp learning curve of programming the Jaguar. There is no OS on the Jag like the 3DO and the development tools are still very primitive although they have improved a great deal. There is a brand new development system from SNASM (a third party developer of development systems) that we have acquired that promises to make development faster and easier with enhanced debugging. However, after you get over the learning curve and start programming all the processors on the Jaguar with bare-to-the- metal ASM and keep them running in parallel, there is an incredible amount of power in the machine. Fully texture mapped games running at rates of 20-30 fps is not going to be a problem for people who spend the time to learn the jaguar. An example is that I have a very simple algorithm to doom in texture mapping floors and walls in 65536 colors with light shading to enhance depth perspective and it runs at about 40-50 frames per second!!

[@OwtDaftUK]

Hopefully his health improves and it's nothing serious.

[@modestyblaise4167]

Was thinking the same thing. On his website there is an air of depression so I wasn’t surprised to hear that he’d been I’ll. Let’s hope he he’a on the mend. We need more people like Rich.

[@Iryngael]

I had a Jaguar with close to 20 games because it was dirt cheap at the time (1996) and that's the only console I had after the NES. Not a single friend of mine had it, I couldn't lend or borrow games and even Rayman was slightly different from the PS1 version. I regret having sold it but it was worth nothing in the early 2000s. Now it's the only piece missing to my retro consoles collection and it's stupidly expensive...

[@justinvia7506]

Rich Whitehouse's KZbin channel has multiple videos focused on booby jiggling in video games. Fascinating stuff

[@cyrollan]

That's hilarious. Subbed!

[@walter_the_wobot2349]

The beginning of the stream reminded me somewhat of a AAA game launch on PC these days😅

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

Bit more from Andrew Seed regarding Jaguar Bubsy about halfway though development Atari wanted to introduce the nerf gun. At this point it was not feasible not include. Also they wanted a 3d sub game adding into the game. This too was dropped due to both cartridge and time constraints.

[@MysticalGesture]

Yay Atari Jaguar :) I really liked this system back in the day. Can anyone recommend a good Jaguar emulator ? I would like to see someone make a Descent game for the Jag.

[@A31Chris]

Yeah the only good one is BigPemu which is featured in this video. Go find it.

[@Lightblue2222]

Actually. Speaking of Checkered Flag, with this Bigpemu emulator you don't have to mess with any of the settings, it runs smooth as is "unlike real hardware" . I've been able to learn and do clean laps on every single track, many without even letting off the gas! With a little patience, it's completely playable! I'm fairly certain my times are world records since like you say, most think the game is unplayable. But I've truly enjoyed it with Bigpemu. As a professional Virtua Racer who's beaten the 32X game on the hardest setting,.. Checkered Flag provided a new challenge. All tracks mastered. 🏆 Now all I need is a real Jaguar to see if I can do the same on original hardware 😅 Fyi if anyone wants to see my classy checkered flag driving, I put my videos on lvlupscore as well as my KZbin channel. Thx

[@Lightblue2222]

I spoke a min too soon. I have a habit of commenting before the video is done. Nice you tried it. But I didn't change any of the settings and it runs at the proper hardware speed but with smoother framerate. Once you memorize the tracks and all the turns, there's only 2 tracks where you have to let go of the gas, the rest can be done pedal to the metal without hitting the wall. Island Hop and Green Valley I needed to slow down on a sharp turn, but the rest can be angled right for fast clean laps.

[@formulaic78]

I went to the store with my cash for the jaguar as a young teenager. They were already sold out. I was devastated. Then recovered very very quickly:) i think it was Edge reviews of cybermorph and aliens vs predators that sold me on it.

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

It wouldn't of been Edge's review, as far as AVP was concerned, they gave it 4/10

[@BurritoKingdom]

Atari created 2 new RISC processors just for the JAG???? That's crazy. Nobody else was/is insane enough to do that. Sure they would create their own graphics and sound processors but not the thing driving the unit.

[@retrospiel]

@Rich Sad to hear about your health problems! Not sure what health issues you are suffering from but please consider going whole foods plant based vegan. It helped me with my health a lot and I hope it would help you too. Give it a try for 7 to 10 days to see if you feel better.

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

Regarding Bubsy:Coder, Andrew Seed was kind enough to share insights, many years ago: Andrew Seed 3/10/99 to At the start of the Jaguar Atari promised a lot but were unable to deliver, the GPU and DSP were cut back to half speed. The reason was that the chips could not handle the heat and could overheat and stop working. ( As informed by an ex-Atari insider ), also you only had either 2K or 2K of instructions cache in the GPU - back to the days of the ZX81. Ok originally you were able to run programs from outside the GPU's memory ( and DSP) but production machines could not. This meant that you had to have code inside the GPU to load memory from main 68000 memory. This was a pain. Also the GPU and DSP could read 64bits from main memory but internally it was 32bits - this meant that 32bits of the lovely 64bit read went into a memory address. Other problems with the Jag was the more sprites on screen took more time away from the CPUs. Bubsy ( which I wrote - mainly in 68000 - based on the Genesis control code) did run at 60 frames a second ( PAL 50 frames - not my fault 8¬) ) The Ali Baba level had a lot of small sprites per character - to save memory but crucified the game since it placed a heavy burden on processor time. But due to having 3 full screen sprites ( background , and 2 for the map - Bubsy could run behind things) I lost about 30% of processor time. Another problem I had with Bubsy was that updating the visible tiles meant a loss of 40% processor time - this varied due to the amount of none blank blocks I had to blit onto the map sprites. This was at most 72 16*16 blocks ( 256 colour). Depending upon how you needed to use the blitter it could be very fast but in most circumstances it would be slow. Finally the sound was like the ST, would had create an interrupt and feed the sound chip the values. Unlike the STE and Falcon where you could just play a buffer OK you had to create the buffer but that was in a nice fast tight loop).

[@atarijaguarsgarage8873]

GPU and DSP were supposed tu run over 40MHZ? Never heard of that and I don't believe it. What was cut back 50% was the GPUs internal RAM, that would be more meaningful.

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

​@@atarijaguarsgarage8873 Andrews comments did generate some response at the time. Thierry Schembri 3/10/99 >could not handle the heat and could overheat and stop working. ( As informed >by an ex-Atari insider ), also you only had either 2K or 2K of instructions >cache in the GPU - back to the days of the ZX81. Ok originally you were able >to run programs from outside the GPU's memory ( and DSP) but production >machines could not. This meant that you had to have code inside the GPU to Production machines could run GPU & DSP programs from outside their own memory. I did it then, you had to align your code section to several phrases, otherwise, the jump instructions didn't work. But your program was slower. Actually I think that blitting gpu code from external memory to the RISC memory to run it was the best solution but it was so painful... Andrew Seed's profile photo Andrew Seed 3/10/99 to Hmm we were told otherwise from Atari and probably have a sheet lying about with all the stuff on it -you know the stuff Atari said was wrong or broken ( for example the clr into GPU/DSP memory ). On I-War we had to have separate passes - 3d transform- clipping and drawing because we "could not " run the code from outside GPU. It was a pain but the games were done. Andrew Seed

[@atarijaguarsgarage8873]

@@thefurthestmanfromhome1148 Well the overheating issue with the first dev kits was also reported by Eclipse and Bill Rehbock. But not cutting back speed of GPU. Andrea sounds totally bitter on this, I dont think Atari did lie to the devs, makes all not much sense. Actually Marc Rosocha of Eclipse told an interviewer that Atari did not lie about Jaguars hardware. The devs got support from the hardware designers at Atari HQ. Nontheless some double downed on misconceptions about the hardware and just blamed Atari for their subpar efforts. Needless to say, Bubsy and I War have game design issues, nothing hardware related. It is telling that devs who understood the hardware got better results and did not voiced any accusations towards Atari.

[@MrDev68k]

Rayman Jaguar : 4MB !

[@powerfulaura5166]

Is this emulator free/libre & open-source software (F/LOSS)?

[@akfreed6949]

I miss my Jaguar w/ CD ROM player . I wish the creator of Jaguars VLM CD player and ATARI could make a Jaguar emulator . I'd love an emulator for Jaguars VLM player

[@CorporalDanLives]

Rich is one of a kind, I flipped him some bucks on the initial release of his godlike emulator because of how damn happy this makes me

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

Checkered Flag was the only polygon 3D Racer, Rebellion attempted and it was the main coders first ever project. Rebellion themselves admit they had no idea how to implement steering properly and the game was literally contract work.. Deliver a 3D Polygon Racer on the Jaguar. It should of been killed and Atari waited for Teque's F1 Racer which was moved to CD and became WTR. Rebellion weren't the team to arrempt a Virtua Racing clone.

[@_yadokari]

Using Atari's bus width bit metric the PlayStation 2 would be a 2560bit machine.

[@GeraldTN06]

How many teraflops? 🤪