This Company was DISHONEST About Their Console

[@10p6]

Love your channel but this video has so many issues. For one the 64 bit on the Jaguar comes from not 32 + 32 bit equals 64 bit as you say, but from the 64 bit data bus, 64 bit object processor that displays all data to the screen, and 64 bit Blitter processor. The Jaguar is massively more powerful than the SNES and Genesis, as shown in a recent demo of Quake. The Jaguar could have been much more powerful with some hardware tweaks, but the issue with games was many developers just used the 68K CPU for simple 16 bit ports and never pushed the system. Fact is the Jaguar is more 64 bit than the SNES is 16 bit.

[@SweetStevieAaron]

Yeah I was gonna say, the SNES processor is weak and it’s more akin to the PCE is it not in that the graphics are 16-bit but it has other factors going against it. End of the day, they all used the “bit” thing as a big marketing campaign even though most people didn’t understand it at all. Modern consoles are 64-bit but that hasn’t stopped claims that older consoles were “128 bit” or whatever.

[@ribenasquash]

We're all saying the same thing lol. I just said that in my comment. The Jaguar is kind of more powerful than the PSX as the PSX has a 32Mhz cpu and the Jaguar is 26Mhz with similar MIPS performance. Just less advanced 3D acceleration. Definitely a console that I would have loved to see do well, in retrospect it had so much potential but it was released with annoying hardware bugs.

[@convenientEstelle]

A lot of data buses in modern hardware are wider than even 128 bits. The PlayStation 5 has a 256 bit data bus for its GDDR6 memory for example. The RTX 4090 has a 384 bit wide data bus.

[@ajsingh4545]

PC engine and genesis processors destroys the Snes processor. Snes had the slowest processor at the time

[@GustavoValdiviesso]

I remember from another video that Jaguar had a serious hardware bug, and the programmers mostly stuck with what the 68000 could do instead of pushing Tom and Jerry. Not only because it was hard to program for, but mostly because even if you jumped over that hurdle, the system still wouldn't deliver.

[@lordofduct]

They didn't call it 64-bit because the Tom & Jerry chips added up to 64 (32+32). They called it 64-bit for 2 reasons: 1) the memory bus was 64-bit 2) The Tom chip while containing a 32-bit RISC architecture contained a 64-bit object processor/video processor, a 64-bit blitter, and had the controller for the 64-bit memory bus This is sort of, but not completely, similar to how the Turbografx-16 technically was an 8-bit cpu with a 16-bit video processing capabilities, and so they called it 16-bit. Through out the 80s and 90s this sort of wishy-washy nature of bits was common. Chips consisting having mis-mashes of bits from the bus to the register size and everywhere. The Motorola 68K through out its various versions would have 32-bit instruction set, but 16 bit data bus and sometimes 24-bit address bus. Motorola even dubbed it a 16/32-bit processor. Later versions would of course expand it upto the full 32-bit, but it mish-mashed around over the years before then. Case in point the N64 used a variant of the MIPS R4200 called the R4300i which trimmed the bus down to 32-bit to make it more affordable to produce. And most games on the N64 actually performed all of their math in 32-bit rather than 64-bit since it was faster than doing it in 64-bit (the bus was only 32-bit afterall, so it required 2 reads to get a full 64-bit value). Though I will stand by the idea that the N64 has more right to call itself 64-bit since it's a 64-bit processor with its bus trimmed down (it was 64 first and foremost). Where as the Tom chip is a 32-bit RISC architecture with some 64-bit features added on. But in the end... its marketing. It's not like Blast Processing on the Genny meant anything really. Yes, the marketing term was drawn from a comment made by Marty Franz in regards to the faster DMA controller... but really... it meant nothing.

[@gcolombelli]

I always get confused by that... what was that 32 bit bus? Was it an internal one? Between the CPU and RCP? Both? The memory bus was much narrower IIRC, but it also operated in a very high frequency. Developing the memory controller on that must have been a real pain.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

@@gcolombelliRamBus was a separate company without a fab, but with the claim: “We know how to make better memory (including the controller)”. No one was forced to develop this memory controller. Simple SDRAM was used by Sony and Sega. AtariJaguar used even simpler DRAM Lila Atari 8bit .

[@TehVulpez]

This is also true of the 65c816 in the SNES. It supports 16 bit registers inside the CPU but only has an 8 bit data bus

[@nilus2k]

You nailed it. It’s all marketing. Bigger number is better. At least in the minds of marketers trying to sell to the moms, dads and grandparents.

[@audie-cashstack-uk4881]

Same applys to pcc always 32bit until x64 but many areas of the pc and gpu and cpu were multitudes of 32 and even 128 256 and 512 bit but the pc was always referred to as 32bit. Today all computers consoles phones etc have parts varying from 16 to 512 bit

[@soviet9922]

Most of your information on the jag seems to be wrong, the jaguar have 2 megs of ram not rom like you say. Carts can be 1/2 or 4 megs of rom. Next you mention that tom and jerry are 32 bit and this add up to 64. That is wrong also, maybe before doing a video you could take 5 minutes to read on wikipedia and don't look like a fool later.

[@litjellyfish]

Yes and it’s not the first time. I have mentioned that in almost all his last videos it has been plenty facts errors that as you say could easily be checked

[@datacipher]

@@litjellyfishI wrote elsewhere I’ve never made it through a pojr video without finding errors. He’s a poseur not a true enthusiast/expert. It’s why I won’t subscribe or support him.

[@litjellyfish]

@@datacipher seems so. And I understand you.

[@storerestore]

Also consistently pronouncing Jaguar as "Jagwire"

[@worsethanhitlerpt.2539]

Try to make 64 bits by chaining together 8 NES's !!!!

[@USWaterRockets]

The Jaguar actually has two 32-bit CPU's, one 64-bit Object Processor, one 64-bit Blitter, and one 16-bit 68000, so if Atari wanted to "add up the processors to get 64-bits" wouldn't they have added them all together to get 32 + 32 + 64 + 64 + 16 = 208 bits? Why would they only add 2/5 of the CPUs in that marketing? Face facts, the console had 64-bit wide RAM which could be accessed 64-bits at a time with The GPU, the Blitter, and the Object Processor. Can we put this "32+32=64" thing to rest after all these years?

[@gsus3918]

I think I'm going to stop watching Pojr. There are too many times where he puts out inaccurate or missing info in videos.

[@MaxAbramson3]

If a 64- bit graphics pipeline driven by two 32-bit RISC processors isn't 64 bits then how wide is it? Developers at the time and after the failure of the console have described it as being 64-bit.

[@blakasmurf]

You explained this much better than i could! Just scrolled down to check if anyone called him out on this. The console was actually a brilliant piece of engineering

[@AFourEyedGeek]

So my PC is 4096 bit system because the GPU has a 4096-bit wide bus? Cool. I mean Microsoft, Apple, Intel, AMD, and more professional companies consider modern day systems to be 64-bit based on a different set of criteria to you, but I imagine @USWaterRockets your expertise on this matter are superior to theirs.

[@AFourEyedGeek]

Oh and the guy (Rich Whitehouse) who wrote the emulator for the Atari 50th Anniversary (BugPEMu) stated he doesn't believe it is a 64-bit system, someone with a bit more expertise on the subject than you.

[@aaronmilic5916]

"I feel like I'm driving in Upstate New York" LOL.

[@Rouxenator]

Really? Well, I'm from Utica and I've never heard anyone use the phrase 'steamed hams'.

[@stolenlaptop]

​​@@Rouxenator Love the Simpsons reference. You want your axels rearranged tour ithica.

[@v-14415]

Oh, not in Utica, it's an Albany expression.

[@pojr]

Haha love it.

[@shadowrunner3k94]

The main issue with the jag was it was too hard to program for...so most devs just used the moto 68000 to program their games...thats why they all look 16bit cuz the 68000 was the same cpu as the genesis.

[@MarquisDeSang]

It was not difficult to code, they simply did not finish the SDK and documentation in time.

[@mattl_]

The 68k is also in many ways 32-bit CPU. The bit-wars mean very little in reality. The Intellivision has a 16-bit CPU yet came out in 1979, for example.

[@peterpereira3653]

From what I remember the Atari Jaguar had SDK based around an Atari TT. Not sure if later SDK was PC based.

[@gcolombelli]

The Jaguar also had serious hardware bugs that prevented developers from taking full advantage of the Tom and Jerry chips, crippled their performance and made them way harder to use reliably than it would have been without the bugs. The lack of a decent SDK also didn't do it any favors. Rushing the design and validation phases of new hardware can result in major, crippling bugs like this. Atari was already in terrible financial shape before this, they took huge risks, cut too many corners trying to save time and money, and it backfired big time.

[@Roxor128]

@@mattl_ Yeah, and new PCs of the time were running 32-bit 386 or 486 CPUs, yet you don't see that much difference between a VGA side-scroller and one on the consoles of the era.

[@maverickbna]

Jag wire? Jag-WAR. :)

[@pojr]

Yeah wasn't totally sure the right way to pronounce it, so I just went with the way I usually say it lol.

[@btr3k]

Jag? YOU are!

[@jwr2904]

That's just how we say it here in the States, get over it lol

[@Reepicheep-1]

US or UK pronunciation would be fine. But wire? Jags had nothing to do with electricity. This is like nails on a chalkboard. Jaguar is hardly an uncommon word, and a simple Google search can give you pronunciation of any word.

[@MountainHomeJerrel]

@@pojr scientists have recently determined no two people on earth have ever said "Atari Jaguar" the same way.

[@eightbit1975]

Atari did not "lie" about the Jaguar being "64-bit". If they had said "The Atari Jaguar's CPU is 64-Bit", well then that would be a lie. They never "added 32+32" to get to their advertising conclusion. That is not how it was advertised. It was simply advertised as "64-Bit". And that was true based on the fact that certain aspects such as the data but and object processor were 64-bit. The same concept goes for the Turbografx 16. That console has a 16-bit graphics processor, although the CPU was 8-bit. Again we see what was done here. Some areas are 64-bit with the Jaguar and some 16-bit with the Turbografx. That allowed them to advertise these highlights. Advertising is no different today. It's not like companies are going to focus on the worst parts of their products. They focus on the best parts and advertise them. The areas that were 64-Bit on the Jaguar were what were advertised. And again I will reiterate they never said that the CPU was 64-bit. As for the Jaguar, it was released to compete at the time with the Genesis, SNES and 3DO. It had vastly more power than these consoles but unfortunately we did not see it very much (although I will say I am still amazed to this day with Zero 5 and some other titles) because developers chose to take the easy route of creating games only utilizing the 68000 CPU that was onboard and meant to be used for simpler processes. And the Lynx hardware by the way was far superior to any handheld on the market for years. I think the problem was the poor battery life that really held it back, and of course the stranglehold Nintendo had on the market at the time.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

SNES : F-zero , and all the parallax backgrounds of donkey Kong country were not matched by Jaguar. Show me need for speed on Jaguar.

[@slaapliedje]

​@ArneChristianRosenfeldt Really? "This game didn't come out for that system, so it must be incapable of running it!" The Jag, when properly coded for, can definitely outdo anything the SNES could. The problem was all the great devs were not working with Atari. Atari, and this was an historical issue with them always, could put out awesome hardware, but were always stingy with their documentation. As if they wanted the first party games to be superior to third party games. And this, ultimately, ruined their chances, time and time again. Outside of their computer ranges, which had massive 3rd party support, and the 2600, which literally caused the video game crash, they have had terrible a 3rd party library. They were not big enough in the mid 90s to be able to fund the entire line of games for the Jaguar, and that is what lead to the demise of the Tramiel era. The hardware itself was quite fine for that little era inbetween 2d and 3d gaming.

[@ngantnier]

Gameboys were less than $100. Thats why they dominated. Within the budget for most children and their parents.

[@eightbit1975]

@@ngantnier Price is always a factor, sure. But, at the same time, people will spend more for better hardware in general. The Wii was tons of fun, but there were many people who had purchased a PS3 for so much more. Why? Well, it was way more powerful. The Lynx was way more powerful. But, it was a portable with a five hour life on six AA batteries. Not good versus a Gameboy with a few weeks life on two AA batteries. I know as a parent that buying batteries for your kids toys is a costly PITA. Imagine having to buy six AA batteries potentially daily. You'd pay the cost of Lynx a month if not more. Thankfully nowadays with modern screens you can get way more life out of the batteries. Me personally however, I just pay it plugged into AC at home :)

[@eightbit1975]

@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt Just because the Jaguar went unrealized does not mean that it did not have superior horsepower to the SNES. Some games (although few as again it went unrealized) show that. Show me a game on the SNES with a soundtrack like Tempest 2000. Show me a SNES game that runs so fluidly with polygons as Zero 5 (and please don't say Star Fox...its great no doubt, but not on the same level). We didn't see much unfortunately when it came to the Jaguar as the game developers took the quick route using the hardware (using the 68000 only) so we ended up with a lot of games that of course looked like 16-bit titles. But, the horsepower is there no question and is visible and audible from a few games that actually used the hardware as intended.

[@JimLeonard]

It's not that the company lied, it's that the entire concept of marketing for "bit-ness" is fundamentally flawed. The Jag was indeed 64-bit on paper. But because it had no dedicated polygon rendering, the PlayStation massively outperformed it (and 3do, and saturn) in 3d. Ps1 was a 32-bit console. So the entire question is moot.

[@worsethanhitlerpt.2539]

Having 2 Processors that are 32-bit doesnt add up to 64. The programmers just end up trying to use both at once and its worse than having 1 really advanced processor

[@Tornado1994]

PS1 only had one advantage over Jaguar, but Jaguar was STILL a Superior piece of Hardware.

[@videogameobsession]

9:03 "the graphics are very grey and depressing. I feel like I'm driving in upstate New York". Spoken like someone who's never driven in upstate NY! I lived there for 40 years. They have some of the most scenic roads in the country. In fact, Rt. 97 was extolled "the most beautiful highway in the east". You should really check out some videos on it. The mountains, lakes, rivers, and farm land looks very nice. This is especially true when the leaves are starting to turn, in the fall. You won't find more gorgeous colors of foliage in the entire country.

[@ValensBellator]

It’s amazing how few it sold. People may have been Nintendo and sega obsessed by then, but you’d still think the Atari name and marketing campaign would’ve gotten it over a million sales or so

[@jwr2904]

Atari nearly killed the home console market, Nintendo brought it back so I'm not surprised. Even with the 7800 Atari didn't show up with anything good, nothing to compete with super Mario, Zelda or Metroid

[@ressljs]

Part of the reason the launch was so disastrous was Atari no longer owned their own factories so they contracted IBM to build the consoles for them. It was apparently a clown show at the IBM factory and they only produced a fraction of what Atari was expecting for the launch. So stores that were expecting to be able to sell them couldn't, and by the time production caught up, everyone was seeing how few games were coming out and the whole project looked like a shambolic mess. And about that marketing campaign... Atari was in such bad financial shape, they essentially couldn't afford proper advertising. I'm actually surprised they even attempted to launch the Jag in the state they were in. I would say that they should have seen the writing on the wall and cancelled it in 1992 and become a third party publisher. The only problem was that since the 7800 and Lynx hadn't sold great either, they didn't have any big name IP to make the transition to third party easier.

[@helicopterjets]

I got an Atari Jaguar on its way out for about $50 retail and another $50 for the CD attachment. Games were pretty much dirt cheap and I had a lot of fun with them until eventually I got an N64 and saw what 64 bits really could do.

[@VOAN]

While the Jaguar only had 63 games (that's counting the 13 Jaguar CD games as well), there were 15 good games the system did received between those bunch, those are Tempest 2000, Defender 2000, Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, Rayman, Raiden, Atari Kart, Super Burnout, Dragon's Lair, Primal Rage, Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure, NBA Jam Tournament Edition, Syndicate, Flashback, and AVP. At one point the Jaguar was also plan to receive more ports of hit games (license and non-license) including Mortal Kombat 3, Revolution X, Batman Forever (a port of the boring Sega Genesis and Super NES game, not the more exciting Arcade, Sega Saturn, and PS1 version), Cool Spot, Out of this World, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (a Jaguar CD port of the Sega CD FMV game), and a Madden NFL game but all of those were canned once Atari stopped supporting the console and its CD add-on. I also heard that Sega was gonna port some of their games to the Jaguar, they waited for Atari's approval but Atari never approved of anything so nothing was ever done and no Sega games were ever brought to the Jaguar.

[@pojr]

Yeah true. I didn't consider the CD games. And there's quite a few games I wish I talked about.

[@sloppynyuszi]

That Sega thing was a weird legal case between Atari and Sega where Atari ended up winning the license to publish a handful of titles. I think it was 80s arcade titles like outrun, altered beast or something. Atari would have had to develop themselves kinda like the Sega games on pc engine. They just ran out of money to make them after paying the lawyers or something. Don’t know the exact happenings, but Sega didn’t want to publish on that console. There are videos about it

[@ExtremeWreck]

@@sloppynyuszi I don't think Atari would've been able to do that. There was NO WAY that was gonna happen.

[@luisedgarf]

@@sloppynyuszi I can't blame them. There's no way a Japanese developer was going to risk caught dead developing (or even allowing) games in a console like the Jaguar.

[@segaunited3855]

@@sloppynyuszi The SEGA situation had mostly to do with Atari Games/Tengen, not Atari. Legally, Tengen did not have Permission to use the ISO codes from SEGA's System E Arcade lines, but they only had used the IP to spite Nintendo for the NES. SEGA didn't license the ISOs for themselves at the time, so it put them under a Grey Spot.

[@dmac7128]

The "64 bit refers to the width of the data bus of the system which is 64 bits wide. "Tom" is a 32 bit RISC processor with a 64 bit object and blitter units. "Jerry" is a 32 bit processor that controls the audio and all other I/O. The controversy lies within the definition of a computer system. The number of bits usually refers to the CPU. In this case, its a Motorola 68000 CPU which is actually a 16 bit processor. Two things to note about "Tom" and "jerry" is one, they are not general purpose processors. 32 bit PCs in the late 90s were often equipped with advanced 64 and 128 bit video GPUs but were still considered 32-bit systems based on the Pentium CPU. And second they can't really claim to be 64 bit based on the memory bus. That would be like calling the Intel Pentium CPU a 64 bit processor based on the fact that it ran on a 64 bit data bus.(It is a 32 bit CPU). The marketing was a little misleading. And some of the titles didn't look much better than their 16-bit versions on other consoles. In some cases, developers just ported the 16 bit code directly into the Jaguar with minimal recoding fir the Tom and Jerry chips.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

Would still be so cool if the Jaguar could texture map polygons and Gouraud shade them for depth cueing or point lights and z-buffer in a fixed function pipeline and max out memory bandwidth.

[@WigWoo1]

1:07 why did you slow down and lower the pitch of the commercial? I can’t imagine that there would be a Contant ID claim for a 90s video game commercial

[@Some_Werewolf_Dude]

Surprised to see you on a video about the Atari Jaguar of all things

[@WigWoo1]

@@Some_Werewolf_Dude I’m everywhere lol

[@philipwood7651]

The Jaguar has a 64bit Blitter processor sitting on top of 64bit registers. That's what made the system 64bit.

[@xei2694]

No calculations are happening on the console in 64bit.

[@Tornado1994]

@@xei2694 SEGA Saturn was 64-bit as well. It had VLIW and a specific 64-bit Division Unit and DMA bus.

[@segaunited3855]

@@xei2694 Jaguar is Mostly 32-bit with a VERY Weak 64-bit Bus.

[@gcolombelli]

Atari was one of those companies full of potential, yet managed to mess up spectacularly so many times, it's amazing it lived so long. They had some very interesting computers as well, like the ST, STe, TT and Falcon lines. Compared to Amiga and Atari computers, it's nearly unbelievable how the PC managed to become the dominant computing and gaming platform. It was so terribly crippled in so many ways, it was not even a fair comparison. But in the end, not being tied to a single company helped the PC molt and grow out of it's terribly limited shell many times. Back in the 90s, I constantly wondered when was the Alpha, MIPS, SPARC or PowerPC would obliterate the puny x86 on the market. But one company after another, they just weren't able to compete at pricing, and intel's massive production capacity and sales volume eventually helped making their products outperform everything else, despite it's many technical disadvantages. We're seeing something similar again, with ARM constantly nibbling away Intel's dominance by focusing on low power, cheaper devices and eventually competing with it in it's core markets.

[@leap123_]

The PC used to be tied to a single company which is IBM. They opted to use off-the-shelf components which made it inferior to other 16-bit computers at the time such as the Macintosh, the Atari ST, and especially the Amiga which had incredible graphics and sound capabilities in the 80s and is comparable to the likes of 90s game consoles. Since it used off-the-shelf components unlike Mac, ST, and Amiga, it made it very easy to clone and thus IBM PC clones such as the Compaq Portable and the Tandy 1000 were popping up in the mid-80s and became the dominant home computer platform even after the 80s. Heck, even Macs nowadays are essentially just IBM PCs (well, until they switched to their own ARM-based Apple Silicon chips for their Macs). With Commodore being bankrupt in 1994 after the failure of the Amiga CD32 and Atari leaving the home computer industry to focus on the Jaguar which also failed and thus bankrupting their electronics division, Macs and PCs became the only home computer platforms after the 2000s and thus IBM both won the 16-bit home computer market while also losing to other companies that made clones of the IBM PC that were better and cheaper than the original and thus were forced to sell their entire home computer division that made the original IBM PC to Lenovo and the rest is history.

[@GeoNeilUK]

"Compared to Amiga and Atari computers, it's nearly unbelievable how the PC managed to become the dominant computing and gaming platform. It was so terribly crippled in so many ways, it was not even a fair comparison. But in the end, not being tied to a single company helped the PC molt and grow out of it's terribly limited shell many times." You're leaving out the Acorn Archimedes. That is a computer that had way more wasted potential and it being British instead of American or Japanese. We're more than happy to buy foreign computers (see the Commodore 64 and Vic 20 before the Amiga and ST) they most certainly aren't! It also doesn't help that when Olivetti bought out Acorn, Acorn didn't continue to develop the Archimedes/Phoebe/RISC PC line. At the very least you could have got some very sweet, very cheap UNIX workstations as well as home computers and maybe even consoles. "Back in the 90s, I constantly wondered when was the Alpha, MIPS, SPARC or PowerPC would obliterate the puny x86 on the market. But one company after another, they just weren't able to compete at pricing, and intel's massive production capacity and sales volume eventually helped making their products outperform everything else, despite it's many technical disadvantages. We're seeing something similar again, with ARM constantly nibbling away Intel's dominance by focusing on low power, cheaper devices and eventually competing with it in it's core markets." And ARM got its start in the Acorn Archimedes!

[@petewillson205]

IBM got alot of government contracts and marketed as a home office pc that happened to play games, plus initially costed more. Apple went after the school mkt. ATARI/COMMADORE went after gaming mkt. Because they hooked up to tvs fcc made them put shielding and this made the keyboards huge. The biggest mistake on Ataris end was not being fast enough to get compatible home office tools that worked with Microsoft office/works/lotus. If they would of done a better job with bring your office stuff home on a comparable cheap Atari pc then they would of had a chance. Ataris last lines of computers were compatible with pcs but ran slightly slower this was in early 90s when the clones of pcs arrived making pcs drop from 3k to 1k or less overnight. Atari did descent on the computer line, probably getting the Falcon to become more of a music/movie pc vs pursuing Jaguar would of been better way to save company.

[@johnp8587]

The jaguar had a 64bit data bus. The tom and jerry chips were both 32bit but there were many other chips in the chipset. Also I beleive the sound chip could handle collision detection.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

The sound chip has interrupts. So at the sampling rate it would be summoned to create the next sample. Idle time could be used for long running tasks: ideally sample decompression, note decompression, reverb filter . Pre-load some queues. Decide on eviction strategy. But if your game has almost no sound, you may run collision detection on it. Math heavy trumps memory heavy. GJk algorithm comes to mind. The blitter has actually a collision mode for 2d games, but again it is unusable slow.

[@OGHUGO]

Pojr, you have to do the MATH !

[@pojr]

Indeed lol

[@UltimatePerfection]

Yeah, 32+32=64. It's really simple.

[@peterpereira3653]

​@@UltimatePerfectionActually this is a wrong misinformation. Atari Jaguar does have some parts of the hardware 64 bit. And has a 64 bit data bus. If Atari had simply added 32 bit+32 bit processor together to get 64 bits. That still leaves out the 68000 16 bit processor. The two 32 bit Tom and Jerry, plus 16 bit 68000 would together be 80 bit. Was the Atari Jaguar fully 64 bit no it was not, but did it feature some 64 bit technology yes it most definitely did. It also had some bugs in the hardware, that reduced its potential performance. Atari Jaguar was mainly a 2D powerhouse that could do some 3D.

[@UltimatePerfection]

@@peterpereira3653 🤓

[@DJ_POOP_IT_OUT_FEAT_LIL_WiiWii]

@@peterpereira3653 Moreso size of the bus is what matters most when talking about bit count.

[@blackmesacake5361]

We need a USB Jaguar controller for the emulation scene!!!!!

[@michaelwhitacre8499]

I've had this same idea, I thought maybe an Xbox 360 controller with the text pad but that doesn't work on Windows...

[@slaapliedje]

There have been adapters for ages to use the Jag Controllers on USB. And they are currenly selling Jaguar Pro controller clones.

[@robbates4704]

Generally 64 bit means the data memory bus. So it is truly 64bit. However bits have little to do with performance in and of itself. In 64 bit can be slower due to the extra overhead. Outside of game consoles, bits increase to access more data, or perform more precise calculations. The extra speed is due to manufacturing quality and chip complexity, not the ‘bits’.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

I once read that AMD CPUs have smaller bus widths on chip than Intel to save transistors. How much transistors would it have costs to route the full 64 bit over the whole chip. How many address lines do the smaller processors check? Don’t need to pass all 24 lines to the backyard. Just check if it is in IO space. I hate that the blitter is a vector processor. It should have done the phrase leap ( every first pixel ), and then have a hardwired combinatorial circuit to interpolate.

[@Tornado1994]

Jaguar had a VERY poor and very primitive 64-bit DMA Bus. That was even slower than Saturn's 64-bit DMA.

[@MarquisDeSang]

Cybermorph was really special back then, first 3d sandbox game on consoles ever.

[@pojr]

It's a cool idea. Not my favorite, but I respect it.

[@peterpereira3653]

Personally I liked Cybermorph and is one of the Atari Jaguar games I beat. I also liked Hover Strike which I played lots of hours on. But yes I don't think those two games.Were ever going to appeal to majority of Atari Jaguar owners.

[@inceptional]

I honestly thought it looked garbage when I first saw it, and it absolutely hasn't even remotely held up in any way either. I mean, I had already played Star Fox on SNES by that point, and seeing something like this claiming it was on a supposedly vastly superior and more expensive 64-bit system did absolutely nothing to convince me I needed a Jaguar. I guess that's one of the reasons history is exactly what it is in this case.

[@benb.1273]

Atari desperately needed to move away from sequels to arcade/2600 games that had little depth to them. What original titles they did come up with just had no appeal compared to what Sega/Nintendo were putting out at the time. Hindsight is 20/20 but it should have been obvious to them that the games they were putting out just did not have the same staying power as games from other consoles. Trevor McFur for example was just a bad game and should not have been one of the first impressions people had of the system, especially with Gradius 3 on the SNES as a direct comparison.

[@ressljs]

I really think what doomed Atari was the 7800. It looked like a joke compared to NES and SMS. And that was the generation where franchise IP started to become a thing. The Lynx was an impressive system, and it actually had quite a few good games, but by that time, 3rd parties were already ignoring Atari and their homegrown IP just wasn't pulling eyeballs away from Mario and Sonic. So back to the 7800, had they actually pushed that system and put more effort into their games, they may have arrived into the 90s with some popular IP and the attention of the general public. But they didn't and that's why no one took the Lynx and Jaguar seriously.

[@Tornado1994]

@@ressljs 7800 or Agnes, Started development in 1982 and was Trial Released in August 1984 during the Crash. Atari basically took a 2 year old Console and pretended it was new. 7800 was Doomed from the get go.

[@dan_loup]

Bits are a pretty horrible measure of power. If you go by bits alone, the sega master system and snes are basically identical in every aspect.

[@pojr]

Good point. In reality it's mostly just a number.

[@Domarius64]

SNES having 32k colours is very misleading. It has a small number of layers each which can display their own set of 256 colours. If you multiply them together, you get 32k yeah, but it doesn't look like a 32k colour image. Remember those old MS-DOS VGA games? They were 256 colours. It would be like having a handful of layers of those kinds of graphics. None of them together are going to look photorealistic like a single 32k colour image would. Instead you get the cartoony graphics we saw on the SNES. And digitised photos or pre-rendered graphics would have that grainy look to them, like the MS-DOS games had, because the layers are still limted to 256 colours.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

Can’t you use a line interrupt for a copper sky? With 5 bits per DAC color Channel you make an even nicer transition than on Amiga .

[@segaunited3855]

@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt SNES/Super Famicom has 256 Display Colors like Genesis/Mega Drive, but theoretically could display up to 384 Colors with 32k Sprites as opposed to the 27k Sprite Capabilities of Mega Drive/Genesis. It also had Lower Resolution than Genesis.

[@BURRITO44]

Awesome !! It’s not pronounced -- “ jagwire .” It’s pronounced -- jaguar

[@worsethanhitlerpt.2539]

Its the SHAG-uar, baby!

[@jwr2904]

That's how many of us pronounce it in the US

[@M1XART]

Who actually decides what aspects exactly measures bits? If CPU, GPU and BUS all needs to be same number, then there was no 128 bit machines ever released. Sure, Jaguar is not 64 bit as clearly as N64 is, but Jaguar does have 64 bit parts, as well as 32 bit and 16 bit. So it is more 64 bit than say, PSX or old PCs. However, Jaguar CPU is only 16 bit. But "bits" are not as good measure of performance power as GFLOPS.

[@kevin12567]

Atari may not be the company they were in the past, but they're at least making an effort to return to their roots, with Atari 50 chronicling their history, and their Recharged series modernizing their classics and even bringing those games to arcades.

[@LCTesla]

0:10 lynx was way better than gameboy though. just weaker on the battery side.

[@AlexOjideagu2]

When I got an Atari Lynx 2, a few years after trading my Gameboy in for a Megadrive, I didn't miss my Gameboy ONCE.

[@yeahyeahwowman8099]

The Lynx has more power, not a better library of games, I am sorry. The system being more powerful isn't enough, the gameboy library is phenomenal.

[@gamerk316]

Wanna get technical? The Turbografx-16 used a MOS-6502 derived CPU; 8-bit registers and data bus, 16-bit address bus. So even in '89, there were arguments to be made about how many bits consoles were using.

[@segaunited3855]

PC Engine used Dual 8-bit Processors, Both were MOS based, its Main Process was handled by Husdon Soft.

[@dogeymon83]

That would be so funny if they came out with some special cable for the Jaguar soon and call it the Jag-wire. Just to create more hilarity Also I think pronouncing it wrong on purpose as the JagWire is a brilliant way to get lots of comments posted below.

[@jasonminote7499]

Nintendo also lied The gameboy advance is not 32 bit.

[@bildo1977]

TurboGraffx 16 was also not completely honest about their system. The graphics hardware may have been 16-bit, but its processor was not. The Jaguar was also a victim of the idiots in charge of Atari not knowing what they had and not understanding the consumers or the industry. Atari just shoved a bunch of stuff into the Jaguar and had a bunch of cool sounding listed capabilities on what it could do. But they didn’t give anyone enough time or guidance to properly make good use of the hardware, because they didn’t even know themselves! So we got a lot of lackluster crappy games that didn’t show off what the system could do. Its best game was Tempest 2000 for crying out loud! If Atari would’ve released the Panther, they might’ve learned how to properly deal with consumer demand and tastes and figured out how to build an audience. But I doubt it.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

Jaguar barely managed to replicate Mario Kart. F-Zero with the more top down view is impossible. SNES can show ghost with translucency in Super Mario, Jaguar cannot. Jaguar can only do what genesis does. I think that 3 years after SNES for this is a bit weak.

[@bryede]

Game consoles that are hard to develop for and have crude development tools will always have lame software.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

@@bryede I mean, people should just look at Atari ST or PC. Lots of software. Many 3d games were developed outside of Japan. Just look how glide let PC 3d game numbers explode. In the end, Jaguar would have gotten ports from Japanese consoles.

[@maxmouse3]

Great video :) I think ultimately the jaguar suffered not because it was particularly bad but the vision and timing was poor. It was good for 2D graphics, but so were the SNES and Genesis. And it was too weak for smooth 3D, therefore unable to compete with N64/PS1. And the timing was poor. A lot of people were happy with their 2D console and Atari didn't make a good case for ppl to upgrade. It's a bit sad, I like the 2600 and I like competition :(

[@CovenantAgentLazarus]

Nobody used the full power of this console. At all.

[@pojr]

Very true.

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

​@@pojrthat'd be news to Eclipse (Iron Soldier 2),Rebellion (Skyhammer) then...

[@Tornado1994]

@@pojr They NEVER used SATURN's True power either.

[@kendalljenkins9938]

A major problem for Atari was that Jack Tramiel screwed a lot of retailers in his time at Commodore, and virtually no retailers trusted him. This caused Atari to have to agree to payment terms that were unsustainable, especially for a cash strapped company. When their consoles had prob;ems, or didn't sell, retailers would return product to Atari without ever paying them anything. People consider Jack Tramiel a great business man, but he really wasn't. He made terrible short sighted decisions that made future success virtually impossible.

[@pjsampras7072]

You meant 2mb ram not rom

[@ZylonBane]

MFer is so clueless he even gets RAM and ROM mixed up.

[@pixelsrnautded9286]

I think its funny that one of the best looking Jaguar games is a Bubsy game.

[@ajsingh4545]

Yeah the 2d pixel art ages better

[@pojr]

Yeah maybe not a great sign lol. But there are some nice looking platformers on there, like Rayman

[@artemusprine]

They didn't add the two 32-bit processors together, the Jaguar had a 64-bit wide main system buss. Was the N64 really 64bit?

[@crazedlunatic43]

The N64’s CPU was indeed 64 bits.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

@@crazedlunatic43would be cool to be 64 bit. The file does provide only one value per cycle. So you could try to pair registers and the have instructions to add one half to the other. Or pair instructions to send the halves to ALU, DIV, MUL, barrel shift.

[@Tornado1994]

@@crazedlunatic43 N64,Jaguar and SATURN were all 64-bit.

[@segaunited3855]

@@crazedlunatic43 Atari Jaguar,SEGA Saturn and Nintendo 64 all had 64-bit DMA Buses and were very capable of 64-bit Instructions.

[@ecdhe]

The first 16-bit console was the Mattel Intellivision back in 1979. Yet the ColecoVision (a bona fide 8-bit console) was at least as good in terms of graphics. So "16 bit graphics", "32 bit graphics" doesn't always mean much. Also, the Atari developers did NOT call it a 64-bit console because it had two 32-bit processors, but because "the parts that matter" are 64-bit (like the blitter).

[@dogsbark5750]

I have had a jag and working jag cd cib since the later 90's. It was anything but impressive. Atari Karts is probably the best thing on the system

[@karlaboerger3619]

Pitfall the Mayan Adventure should be part of the Activision classic. If XBOX decided to make one.

[@AnHebrewChild]

16.8 million colors > 32,768 colors Yes, this is a big difference. But, just as you intimate, not as big as some might think to the actual end user. Past a certain point, you hit that law of diminishing returns. SNES cleared that hurdle. 32k colors was more than sufficient to produce visually striking content. Meanwhile, Sega Genesis' support for a mere 512 colors (and only a fraction of that on screen at any time) amounted to an end product that just didn't feel polished: at least not to my nine year old eyes! I mentioned this on another video, but for a hand held, I went with the game gear. I was blown away by what they could pull of in a tiny unit.. but when it came to standard gaming, people can hate on Nintendo all they want, but for standard consoles, they really did hit the sweet spot. "Baby bear"

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

I did some research, but not first hand. It seems that no game on the Jaguar uses millions of colors. They all limit the linebuffer to 65,536 colors. So they could not even use more colors for a copper sky. Million of colors is for still images. When you decompress JPEG, Jaguar uses the circuitry originally meant for audio. So you got almost 16bit per color channel. Then for a still (without backbuffer) you could try max out the memory and even apply some dithering to convert down to 8 bit per color channel. I never quite understood the theory of perfect dithering. These gifs where you clearly see that that top left influences bottom right look worse than hand dithering in C64 art. Now, still images should probably be pre-processed, but I wonder if we could accept a slightly more aggressive compression, but defer the final bits of bloom, saturation, and dithering after decompression. JRISC is quit fast and could go criss cross, diagonal over pixels and distribute overflowing light energy (bloom) and cancel unfavorable rounding ( +0.4 -0.4) of close pixels. 360x240px . On SCART 720x480i 16bpp probably looks better. Even more need for intelligent dithering. Edit: there is a mode to also use the back line buffer. So 720px true color are possible. Just I have not done the maths. Are there glitches? Can I still put some sprites over this?

[@AnHebrewChild]

@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt very interesting. Thanks for writing that out.

[@Tornado1994]

@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt Jaguar has Superior Hardware to PS1, but unlike PS1, it doesn't have a Framebuffer or Matrix Integer, It is Significantly WEAKER than the SATURN which has Bit Mapping, Multi Plane and Background Mapping, and N64 which uses XY Tessellation and Quad Layered Multi Bend Mapping. Jaguar could have OUTSHINED PS1 easily. If only it used a Framebuffer and Matrix Integer instead of a Geometry Render Tool like 3DO,32X/MARS.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

@@Tornado1994 Jaguar has a framebuffer. All 3d games use it. 60 fps 2d games don't use it. The problem with the frame buffer is that the Tom chip developers apparently did not think about cost and wanted not only use 64 bit, but a second set of memory chips for texture memory. Like eat the cake and have it, too. It is always said that BusinessAccountants look too much on cost. If engineers wanted to make the Jaguar expensive then the sales of CoJag alone would have been left. Main memory is always the most expensive part. Why did the devs not aim at utilizing it to full extend? You can see some small good ideas like burst read of a whole scanline from frame to line buffer. Clearing the z-buffer also is fast. I checked the 3d code and tried to rewrite it. Matrix multiplication is only a small part. Jaguar stores Matrices in SRAM. The size is flexible. I don't get why I cannot configure the MatrixMultiplication instruction to work with 32 bit values. SRAM has 32 bit granularity in JRISC. The developers where on FMV hype. I guess we have to thank Philips for the delay of the CD drive. So graphics needed to pivot to 3d.

[@keithfulkerson]

Everything about the Jaguar was just kind of janky, except for the virtual light machine in the CD player.

[@billschlafly4107]

I convinced my little brother to return his Jaguar and get a Turbografx 16 instead. He didn't like Turbo at all and I ended up with it. I'm still convinced he made the right choice.

[@Jikangire957]

No mention of the Jaguar CD? Did it add any performance or anything to the base console? I remember back when this was still being sold people speculated that the Jaguar CD games were literally the cartridge rom equivalent files burned to a CD with no enhancements to the original game, (like an animated opening movie or something similar). Anyway just curious as to why no mention of the Jaguar CD.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

Yes. CD is some matsushita audio CD drive converted to rip red-book CDs. Games added FMV in front and after the actual game. More levels. In game Music .

[@pojr]

Good point. I would have liked to have talked about the CD, but it was already a long video, so I wasn't able to get to it.

[@jeffroybal2629]

Another point in the 64 bit argument is the 64 bit memory bus. Greg's game room did a vid on it. Not argument material more discussion. I love the jag personally it plays games smoothly in a very unique way. More fun than you think.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

I would like to see a photo how the bus enters the die. Apparently 64 bit data and 24 address bits are quite expensive to route around. So guess that the ObjectProcessor, the Blitter, and the GPU (64 bit bus master) sit close to these pins. Then there is a bridge to pass 16:16 to the rest of the chip. Palette RAM for example. Linebuffer manipulation. Really strange is the 32 bit connection to GPU RAM. This is somehow different from the GPU itself? I have not seen code which writes 32 bit values to GPU RAM. GPU only reads. Bitter writers. 64 bit words would be no big problem. Store register pairs or accept readModifyWrite speed penalty.

[@TheThorns]

Nothing about Jag CD or Jag VR. Shame...

[@grtitann7425]

Bad management is one thing, but Atari simply had this amazingly crazy bad luck. Every single device they ever created and or sold after the 2600 had crazy bouts of bad luck. Now i will add, as a constructive advice, do proper research before making such videos. As noted by others, you are simply stating lots if wrong info and thet will end up taking your credibility away.

[@wonderdog8895]

Fun video, but It's "Jag-you-are", not "Jag-wire" :D Reminds me of Benedict Cumberbatch trying to say "Penguin" :D

[@mattl_]

It’s pronounced that way in the much of the US.

[@ajsingh4545]

​@@mattl_ph yes ... Merica and their bad pronunciations

[@chriswheatley3146]

It depends on where you live. It's like Aluminum where it's pronounced differently between the US and England.

[@pojr]

Thank you! And yeah I was considering which way I should pronounce Jaguar for the video. I decided to go with the way I usually say it lol.

[@pvanukoff]

I'm in the US and I pronounce it "jag-wahr". "jag-you-are" is too many syllables and it almost sound like an insult 😂

[@MarquisDeSang]

Xbox and PS5 are advertised as 64 bits, but all games only use the 32bit instructions and 32bit floats in the GPU.

[@marcelosoares7148]

After the 6th gen of consoles or so, the "power advertsiment" thing changed from bits to resolution. The PS5 has "8K" slapped on the box but there's maybe only 1 game that runs at such resolution and I remember Sony pushed the PS3 as a 1080p capable machine.

[@MarquisDeSang]

@@marcelosoares7148 Atari 2600 (1977) had all its games runs at 60fps and supported 8K

[@mattl_]

But they can address more than 4GB RAM…

[@Clay-iu2ht]

They use teraflops as a power measurement now. Which is GPU based

[@MarquisDeSang]

@@Clay-iu2ht But they rarely specify the word size : is is 16, 32 or 64. Maybe you don't know, but CPU do have floating point extension and vector extension that do pump a lot of teraflops not just GPU.

[@Wallyworld30]

Jaguar had 67 games released for it I was trying to collect them all from 2010-2014 before giving up and selling it all off to focus on finishing my full collection of Original Xbox games (998 games).

[@Helladamnleet]

Imagine an alternate reality where the Sony/Nintendo deal didn't fall through and the Jaguar became a commercial success. The Dreamcast would have likely done a little better without the PS2 being in direct competition, and the N64 would have been what it was intended to be because the 64DD would have just been the console. We would have Sega, Atari, and Nintendo competing to this day.

[@AirZonkWorldChamp]

Jerry needed to get off his butt because a lot of my Jaguar games came with no music.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

I heard that Music was stored at the end of the file. When Tramiel cut the cartridge ROM, music fell off.

[@FeralInferno]

It's really too bad Atari couldn't attract more third party developers. I actually really liked how games looked on the Jaguar compared to the PS1 and Sega Saturn.

[@lordvoldamort4606]

Common mistake in the console industry. Making your console imposable to code for.

[@pojr]

Yeah imagine if Konami or Capcom made games on the Jaguar. Would have been insane.

[@MaoRatto]

Lordvoldamort. Impossible*

[@peterpereira3653]

Sony PlayStation 3 was said to be hard to code for properly. And some development teams were not keen on it, as it required more effort to get the best out of the hardware. And the PS3 is still the lowest selling, home video games console released by Sony.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

@@peterpereira3653PlayStation 3 has a single, powerful CPU and a graphics card from AMD. So like PS4. What is the purpose of cell? Physics? So just buy an engine?

[@mindthreatx]

There is zero debate: the Jaguar is a 64-bit machine. The reasons the games look the same is because they are simply money grabbing direct ports from the SNES/Genesis and nothing more. Videos like these is why this nonsense will never end.

[@xei2694]

No calculations are happening on the console in 64bit. And it is still debated whether it is a 64-bit machine.

[@segaunited3855]

@@xei2694 SEGA SATURN,Nintendo 64 and Atari Jaguar ALL have 64-bit DMA.

[@luisoleiro135]

It´s Jaguar not Jagwire... Why pronounce it that way? Is it a joke? Where is Pojr from? How can a Videogame reviewer make a mistake like that? And Pojr forgot to mention the Atari Jaguar CD addon, that added a few more quality games. Jaguar wasn`t considered 64Bit for the reasons mencioned in the Video, the console really had some 64bit processors.... There are too many inconsistencies in this Review :(

[@huldu]

Never saw this console in person but I did see ads in magazines back then. Never left an impression, unlike their lynx thing which looked really cool in the ads(having colors). The funny thing is when I think back the same magazines that showed these consoles also showed the commodore 64. Never had any of these consoles/computers. it was either SEGA and/or Nintendo in our family.

[@Octolicia]

5:00 : But to be fair, Nintendo had backward compatibility in mind when they used that processor. They wanted the Super NES to be compatible with the NES.

[@Volcell-85]

What is a Jag wire?

[@LunaticMoth]

Honestly this is why I love the retro-games development scene. There have been new games for the SNES, Genesis/MD, TG-16/PCE, Master System, C64, Saturn, Dreamcast...there's even a completely modern development console for GameBoy now. You can get most new-old titles on Steam usually as well but they tend to get limited physical releases at launch, so they're out there if you look. I am not sure if anyone's done a Jaguar game yet, but if they can come up with a decent way of developing for it, someone should.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

There is an RPG or two. Jump and run . Hack n slash. Some voxel demo .

[@andromedaone3640]

I remember them saying on ITV's Bad Influence i think that it was more like 24 bit i think. The way the processers were split a bit of controversy. The PC Engine had a bit of the same problem they was flagging that as a 16 bit console then later on said something like it's 8 bit with 16 bit grafix. Looks like they were both made by Frank Spencer😅

[@Zarathustra-rj4yz]

I heard the system was particularly tricky to take advantage of the full potential of the system and seen some gameplay of technically impressive fan made games for it

[@Zarathustra-rj4yz]

Supposedly the plastic shells housing the jaguar's innards were repurposed for dental x-ray equipment

[@ecdhe]

According to Leonard Tramiel (one of Jack Tramiel's sons), the Jaguar devkit was written over a weekend by adapting the Atari ST assembly devkit. As Leonard said, when you come up with a devkit over a weekend it's going to be rough on the edges. But "someone related to him" said "does it work? Yes? So ship it" and that was that. Doom programmer John Carmack (who was commissioned by Atari to port Doom) apparently loved the console, immediately understood its potential, and even ported Wolfenstein 3D over a weekend for fun. But most developers struggled to understand how to program Tom and Jerry and fell back on what they knew - the 68000 which was supposed to be a synchronizer.

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

Carmack initally praised the Jaguar hardware, yes, but in later statements, expressed his sheer frustration with it

[@Tornado1994]

@@thefurthestmanfromhome1148 Jaguar's Architecture was developed by Flair Technologies. Atari didn't even have an in house R&D Department. The Chipset was called "PANTHER" or "Atari Super Cat".

[@wwazman]

"Jag wire" .. no.. "jag war"

[@Sly88Frye]

I'm surprised in all this talk about the Atari Jaguar in this review that you didn't mention the CD unit and how it constantly crashes.

[@josephgregorowicz5135]

Love the video but…why are you mispronouncing “Jaguar”? Jag-war, not “jag-wire”. At least you didn’t say “jag-yoo-ar” like the British.

[@johnddb]

This video reminds me of the time Benedict Cumberbatch voiced a documentary on penguins, and he kept saying "penwings"

[@RetroGamerBB]

It had all the bits!

[@videogameobsession]

The system is pronounced "JAG-WAR", not "JAG-WIRE". I don't know where that was ever made up.. Maybe in the deep south? I know the pronunciation, JAG-YOU-ARE, also wrong, is how some Europeans pronounce it. If you are talking about the Atari system (or the animal, or automobile), it's "Jag-war". Also, you should try to back off of the mic a little whnen pronouncing words that end in S. It tends to distract from the rest of the sentence.

[@atomiswave1971]

I can't watch a video where you keep saying Jagwire. It ends in an R.

[@AngryCalvin]

Still remember all the hype surrounding the new Pitfall game on Windows 95. I didn’t even remember it being a Jaguar title. Of course I remember all the hype surrounding the Jaguar and really didn’t hear much about it after its launch until years later on videos like this one.

[@pojr]

Yet I'm sad Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure isn't talked about enough. It's actually a decent game, unlike Super Pitfall.

[@AngryCalvin]

Yes the mechanics and gameplay are a lot of fun. I still remember clearly when the original Pitfall came out and how revolutionary it was. The Mayan Adventure didn’t revolutionize gaming but it’s a worthy of the franchise and really fun to play. An overlooked gem. Yeah I remember the nightmare Super Pitfall gave me as a rental back in the day. I guess someone made a rom hack that turned it into a good game. What it should have been.

[@V3ntilator]

CD players in 1990's.. 1-Bit, 18-Bit, 48-Bit, 96-Bit etc. The gimmick decade.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

CDs only read a single track at a time. There either is a pit or not. So it is just 1 or 0. Or do they time the distance between two pits? But then I read that some CD players flash their beam to track the track in all directions. So time discrete.

[@V3ntilator]

@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt Yes, but the sound quality were not the same on all CD players. The sound were light night and day between a bad and a proper CD player. RCA Cable type also were very important for what kind of sound you wanted.

[@ccricers]

@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt Gonna get more technical here, but CDs store 1s as a _change_ between pits and no pits, and no change in the structure is a 0.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

@@ccricers And I thought that magnetic media does this due to the induction law.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

@@V3ntilator I don't even know how to stabilize supply voltage for 16 bit. Yet , we can buy 24 bit DAC and ADC. No need for variable gain amplifiers. DAC can drive each way of a speaker directly.

[@KrunchyTheClown78]

I love the Jaguar, it's got some great games. I actually just purchased a copy of the Bubsy game lol ATARI KARTS IS AWESOME! Sadly, awful documentation hampered game development for the Jaguar, it can do some really decent 3D if a developer has enough time, and knowledge.

[@pojr]

Nice, how do you like the Bubsy game? I like Atari Karts a lot. It's a cool Mario Kart-type game and the graphics are colorful.

[@KrunchyTheClown78]

@@pojr bubsy is good too, I had a lot of fun playing it, the one hit deaths are really the only knock I have against it, but it's a good challenge!

[@Tornado1994]

@@KrunchyTheClown78 Jaguar,Saturn and N64 ALL suffered from poor documentation. PS1 got absolutely LUCKY. Even though ALL three machines were superior.

[@xargos]

Your videos have been going downhill. The incorrect information about where the 64 bit claim comes from is just one of a number of things you've gotten wrong. You've lost this subscriber.

[@ajsingh4545]

Come on

[@eddiemidnite]

When the Jag was new the only game I got to see it running was Wolf 3D, which did look incredible compared to the PC version. Based on that I wanted one but thankfully it failed before I got around to it. Dodged a janky bullet there.

[@pojr]

Yeah I hear Wolfenstein 3D and Doom are excellent versions of the game.

[@cyrollan]

@@pojr yup, i have both and they're great. both were ported by id Software themselves.

[@pixelsrnautded9286]

Great content hope to see what you think of the Neo Geo someday.

[@metronome8471]

Pojr doesn't understand any thing he talking about does he? It's not even ragebait now. Just poorly researched videos and a severe lack of technical knowledge.

[@ajsingh4545]

Pojr do you think we'll get a jagwire core for mister ? I hope so

[@winstonslone2797]

All these companies forgot that the fun derived from a game has no relationship to it's computational prowess.

[@ZEKESPILLEDINKMUSIC]

The Jaguar was not the last time that Atari would made a video game console. They have since made the VCS in the 2020s. They have also made "Plus" versions of their older consoles so that more people can have access to their games. They recently released the 7800+. Does the VCS have problems? Yes. A lot of them.

[@crimsonlion100]

Technically speaking, YES. The Jaguar is 64 bit. The definition of 'bits' is the maximum number size any bus or cpu is able to handle. The memory bus of the Jaguar IS 64 bit. It DOES NOT matter if the cpu is, the gpu, or anything else is 64 bit at all. If ANY part of that system can handle 64 bit numbers, it IS by lawful definition a 64 bit machine. You may notice, that nowhere in the phrase '64 bit machine' is any mention of cpu, gpu, or anything. The terms they used were analogous enough that this definition is legal, and correct. Thats advertising, and they did a masterful job!

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

I am impressed by the 64 bit z-buffer logic. If Atari had not butchered the rest of the design, no one had joked about the 64 bit. The blitter could have loaded only the texels which pass the z test and only assert CAS for those pixels.

[@segaunited3855]

@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt Saturn and N64 are 64-bit as well.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

@ yeah, I just like how on Jaguar for 10 address bits (overhead) 64 data bits are transferred. Plus RAS CAS and occasional page flip. I like how the DRAM is really bare bones fabbed in a process optimized for capacitors and low leakage MOSFETs, while Tom is high speed CMOS. Jaguar appreciates SMT and narrow pin spacing. I just wish that the memory controller was better. Like for reads, couldn’t 64 bit be the default. Then accept 20 bit addresses in a list and sort by page (the upper 10 bits). Devices on the system bus must accept latency without stalling. For example the GPU has a score board for Load and fire and forget for Store (but as of now keeps the order within the writes).

[@qwaH]

6:00 dont forget "Where did You learn to fly?" every few seconds/minutes as you crash due to that draw distance/the game being terrible

[@pojr]

It's interesting because when I played the game, she kept saying "avoid the ground".

[@cyrollan]

@@pojr there were two version of the game, 1MB and 2MB. one of them features WAY more "where did you learn to fly?" than the other.

[@alcampbell469]

A load of rubbish. You are talking out of your rear dude. Get your facts right before dissing Atari.

[@brichan1851]

My first video of yours. Nicely done. I remember when the Jaguar came out. Its main competition was seen as the 3DO. Neither one made it. Your video was great. Instant subscriber.

[@piratesephiroth]

oh not, not the jagwire again 😫

[@superbatman3762]

Jagwire...lol

[@mattl_]

Go watch Apple talk about Mac OS X Jaguar. It’s how much of the US pronounces it.

[@billschlafly4107]

Made me want to unsub like 12 times...not really.

[@colinschmitz8297]

If we pronounce it "Jag U ar", it lends any product to being nickname "Junk U ar" if they don't like the product.

[@danparish1344]

Jaguar’s native range actually extends to Arizona so American English has the naming rights.

[@colinschmitz8297]

@@danparish1344 when it comes to the car division I will call it "Jag U Ar" since the car originates from England. If that's the way the producer calls it, I will do that out of respect. When it comes to the animal or this gaining system. I pronounce it "Jag war" or "Jag Wire"since that's how we pronounce it and that's where the animal and gaming system originates from (and how the producer of the game pronounces it). So I pronounce it as such.

[@rsnhostmaster]

I disagree with your math. I have access to the Devkit docs. The Tom chip is a 64-bit chip with a 64-bit bus. If you added up the bits to all of the different processors you would 192-bits. (Tom Chip (CPU1 GPU 32/64-bit, CPU2 Object Proc 64-Bit, CPU3 Blitter 64-Bit), Jerry (CPU4 DSP 32-Bit), CPU5 68k 32/16-bit Control) I agree that the hardware is hard to program for and could have been more powerful if improved caching had been implemented on the bus between the processors. (Many developers "phoned-in" games by using the 68k CPU instead of the Tom and Jerry chips.) The 68k CPU bus also throttled the system due to the 16-bit memory bus with 32-bit internal registers. The CoJag (Jag 1.5) arcade board ran on these same chips with the 68K CPU replaced with the 68020 CPU 32/32-bit or MIPS R3000 CPU 32-bit and 4 Meg RAM which ran much better. (Area 51, Maximum Force, etc.) Also, the speed problems and improved 3D implementation were worked out on the backward-compatible Jag 2 prototype, which never made it to market. This console suffered from mismanagement. They should have released the 32-Bit Panther to market and worked out more kinks on the Jag console hardware before releasing it to the market.

[@segaunited3855]

Jaguar is a 90% 32-bit Machine. Yes, Tom can reach 64-bits, but it doesn't use VLIW and can't run Parallel unlike the SEGA Saturn which IS 64-bit as it has a 64-bit Division Unit, your getting almost entirely SIMD pipeline. Jaguar isn't hard to program per say rather its engineering is a Mess. Debugging is quite of Pain as Point-Of-Entry is directly inside Tom's 32-bit Main Processor Code. Regarding Jaguar's 3D, it used Early 90s Standards which was Geometry Render Tools,Micropolygons and Basic Buffer non Filtering. Jaguar's disadvantage over PS1 is its lack of an Integer

[@johnketo2150]

Yes. This video has issues. GCC dealt with Atari Inc. and the Atari 7800 was completed before the split into Atari Games and Atari Corp.

[@Clay-iu2ht]

Ol’ Lord Farquaad at it again. Insulting & downplaying peoples favorite console again 😃

[@mchenrynick]

Odd that the annoying "where did you learn to fly?" face in Cybermorph wasn't mentioned. AVGN really emphasized this in his video.

[@pojr]

Surprisingly during my playthrough, she didn't say it at all. But she did say "avoid the ground".

[@dizaster777]

JAGUAR, not Jaguire!🤣

[@pojr]

My bad lol

[@droiduseruserdroid1731]

The only thing "64-bit" about the Jaguar was the address bus of an object blitter. The 7800 video architecture had restrictions on the color pallet and the resolution that made no sense. You could either have good colors with a super low resolution or just a few colors at a standard resolution.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

The address bus in Jaguar has 23 bit because it is the one from the 68k CPU. The databus has 64 bit. Fast page is a big thing in Jaguars design. Sadly, OP and blitter are unable to fall in a rhythm were they use the bus for a few clocks then the other. Also every odd cycle should not go off Tom (and go wasted) but be reserved for internal use, like loading Data into GPU RAM. GPU RAM is 32 Bit. But GPU has a 64 Bit input register. Why not both? MemCopy code snippets could run at full speed!

[@Tornado1994]

@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt Tom and Jerry are both 32-bit, but Mostly SIMD, and CISC. Jerry is handling mostly Slave Processor and DSP Bus Work ala early Southbridge, While Tom is handling CPU Main duties ala Early Northbridge. Regarding GPU, Jaguar doesn't have a GPU, GPU didn't really exist yet. It uses a full 32-bit Geometry Render Chip. The Problem it has against the PS1 is that GTE was a built in Calculator with Integer Matrix and Z Frame, while Jaguar and 3DO used the Geometry Primitive Map and Fill Texturing. Jaguar used a VERY weak 64-bit DMA. When compared to SATURN, which used a Dual Core SH-2 32-bit CPU which was MIMD,VLIW, and Loaded with a fairly strong 64-bit DMA Address Bus but with Dual 32-bit VDPs with BGs,Multi Layer Mapping, Bitmapping, Float Point Units, Alpha Bend Texture, Mapping and Recalculation.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

@@Tornado1994 Jaguar manual speaks of a GPU (inside Tom). It actually does the same thing like the RSP in the N64. No SIMD -- something which modern GPUs use a lot. What do you mean with "mostly" CISC? JRISC has like two complex instructions: Load immediate (takes 3 cycles) and MMULT ( inner product with vectors from memory). And of course this instruction is buggy. All other instructions are RISC. I don't understand what you mean with "very". 64-bit DMA on Jaguar works: 32 bit color frame buffer to screen runs at full speed, mem-fill also.

[@segaunited3855]

@@ArneChristianRosenfeldt Yes Jaguar AND 3DO have 3 Instruction Cycles much like 3DO. But the Tom GPU is primarily a 32-bit Instruction Chip. With 32-bit Memory Management. Yes 64-bit Internal Register was embedded in the Tom Bus, but the blitter was fairly difficult to get ahold of because Majority of the Main Computing was being handled by Both RISC 32-bit and Motorola 68000C which is NOT capable of 64-bits. " Many technically knowledgeable industry insiders and gamers claimed that the Jaguar was not a true 64-bit platform, because the Jaguar’s Motorola 68000 CPU chip was only 16/32-bit (like in 16-bit systems), and the primary GPU delivered a 32-bit instruction set. The complaint is similar to the earlier argument that the TurboGrafx-16 was actually an 8-bit system, since it was based around an 8-bit CPU (but with 16-bit video chips), and equally gray." Yes its SIMD and CISC. Jerry is a Slave Processor. Motorola 68000 is specifically CISC based and Jaguar's main Instructions ran 16x32 to 32x32 Latency.

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

Jason Rubin (Naughty Dog) talking about the Atari Jaguar hardware, when he was developing 3DO Way Of The Warrior: "It's a decent piece of Hardware. It's not as good as they're claiming in terms of numbers. One of the game's magazines has been pushing the reports that Atari puts out. 64-bits for example, is questionable. That's like saying I have 3 Ferrari's that all go at 150 MPH, so i can drive at 450 MPH. "

[@ressljs]

People get so caught up in the numbers and pointing to the worst games so they can say, "LOL, it sucked." It's actually pretty hard to say what the Jaguar could really do because except for AvP and Rayman, all the games (even the good ones) are very low budget. Most games had about 5-10 people in the credits, while games on other systems often had 50-100. Shovelware like Bubsy and Trevor McFur clearly don't represent what the Jaguar could really do. But late games and prototypes like Battlemorph, Skyhammer and Phase Zero? Maybe? They were much more impressive, but they were still small devs with smaller budgets. My best guess is that the hardware is about what you'd expect in 1993 for $250. It wasn't ahead of its time, but it also wasn't the "weak, no better than the Genesis" system I've heard so many people claim. Sure, the 3DO was better and came out the same year, but it was also crazy expensive.

[@EmperorZelos]

it is jaguar, not jagwire

[@Danyplaysboblox]

Why did the two Processors had referenced Tom & Jerry? Like I’m confused, 2 video game chips name a cartoon?

[@ribenasquash]

The GPU is Dreamcast is called Holly. I like to think they named it after the ship computer from Red Dwarf.

[@chriswheatley3146]

It's normal for Atari to give them actual names. Stella for the 2600 and Maria for the 7800 (Lynx was originally developed by Epyx). My guess is they were looking for a popular duo and someone was a fan of the cartoon.

[@Danyplaysboblox]

@@chriswheatley3146 I mean it makes sense since the Super FX Chip was first named “Mario” (only seen in Star Fox)

[@bryede]

Chip naming. It's a thing.

[@pojr]

I love the fact that it's called Tom and Jerry. And apparently the two chips cooperated with each other, just like the cartoon, right?

[@TheWolvesCurse]

Jag-you-are, not Jag-wire.

[@battra92]

I can tell you that in my life I only knew one person with a Jaguar and he was never enthusiastic about it.

[@mattl_]

I’ve had two of them in my life so far. They’re not great.

[@pojr]

I don't know a single person with a Jaguar lol.

[@peterpereira3653]

Its a decent video games console but certainly not great. Has some good games in its small library. Way I see it a video games console is as good or bad, as the games you bought. I have around 25 games for it. I never bothered with buying an Atari Jaguar CD unit.

[@svr5423]

The Lynx was awesome. I had one and liked it way better than the Gameboy due to the colour display with background lighting. The first handheld Nintendo I actually liked (sort of) was the DSi. The PSP was more awesome though. Now the Switch is really great.

[@pojr]

Yeah the lynx was a really cool console for its time. But despite the game boy being worse, it had better battery life and better games. If Atari had some better third-party support though...

[@AlexOjideagu2]

Same here. When I got an Atari Lynx 2, a few years after trading my Gameboy for a Megadrive, I didn't miss my Gameboy ONCE. The Atari Lynx was so much better. It was amazing having graphics and sound fX like that in a handheld. Hardware sprite scaling etc

[@GnarlsGnarlington]

Jag-war, not not jag-wire.