The Story Of The Unreleased Atari Panther

In this video I tell the sad story of the unreleased 32-bit Atari Panther console.
Video Links:
The Story of The Atari Genesis: • The Story of the Unrel...
The Story of The Super XE Games System: • The Story of the Atari...
The Story of The Atari Jaguar II: • The Story of the Unrel...
Other links:
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Atari Museum: atarimuseum.com/
Panther Blog @ ctrl.alt.rees: ctrl-alt-rees.com/atari-panth...

[@captaincorleone7088]

Great video - very nicely researched. 30 years ago Minter was interviewed for a C64 mag and the journo spotted a device in Minter's Aladdin's Cave that stood out in comparison to the well known, commercially available hardware and Minter referred to it as a secret. Years later I realised that it had to be either the Jaguar or Panther dev kit.

[@TheLairdsLair]

Could have possibly been a Konix MultiSystem dev kit too

[@geraldford6409]

Also, many Atari superfans of the 80s, like myself with the St, walked away from Atari when they dropped the St line 92-1993 to just do games on the Jaguar. Even though I began transitioning to x86 pc in 1990, I kept the st going into 92, then selling it all of by mid 92, seeing the writing on the wall

[@retro_reflections]

I'd be more inclined to believe the devs involved, considering the somewhat dubious nature of management and marketing commentary coming out of Atari Corp over the years.

[@vincenzomottola7778]

Really great video. I kinda wish the Atari Panther had been released, since it could have gotten better launch titles than Jaguar. The Jaguar was a result of incompetence, and it should have been delayed. The Jaguar failed so hard that it killed Atari Corp. Maybe, you should do the story of the cancelled Atari Jaguar 2.

[@TheLairdsLair]

Glad you enjoyed the video! I have already done a similar video on the Jaguar 2 actually, it's linked in the description for this video, but here's another link for you: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pKvSmaatj5mhpsU

[@NesNyt]

10:08 love the groin grabbing selfy

[@MistahJigglah]

Atari under Jack Tramiel went from "Wow, I can't believe they dropped the ball that hard" To "He just straight up popped the ball, set it on fire, and put it out with his own hose" If you're gonna fail, fail hard.... and repeatedly.

[@dreamcaster4754]

Probably the best video you've ever made, absolutely outstanding!!! 👏 👏

[@TheLairdsLair]

Wow, thanks! Glad you liked it mate!

[@grinbrothers]

If the mock-ups were accurate to the design documents, then I got to say, I love the design on the Panther; reminds me very much of the Mega Drive 2 model. Fascinating story and the numerous interview quotes were a brilliant touch; particularly having those that included contradictions to one another. As for whether Atari were right to cancel the Panther... hard to say; it rather depends on how it would have effected things for the latter Jaguar. Would the Jaguar have been pushed back further to iron out some of it's issues? Would the Panther have been able to cultivate developers both first and third party to make a success of the Panther and then carry on the success to the following system? This one What If's spawn a whole lot of other What Ifs. If things had carried on as they did, I imagine the release of the Panther would have just caused Atari the the headache-inducing issue of juggling yet another system to support.

[@TheLairdsLair]

Yeah, I actually found a magazine article that said Atari had delayed work the Panther because of the Lynx launch, although there were no sources to back that up. It did seem Atari struggled to keep support going for the 7800, Lynx and the new STe computer all at the same time, so you do wonder if they were already spreading themselves too thin already without the Panther. I mean look at when they launched Jaguar, they pretty much ended support for everything else to give it full focus and still failed, which in my opinion was a big mistake because the Lynx was still a mainstream system with a decent userbase that was effectively abandoned aside from the odd release like Battlezone 2000 and Super Asteroids/Missile Command.

[@johneygd]

I think it was the right decision because both the genesis & were already out in 1991 and the panter would,ve been much more expensive then those other cartride based 16bit systems.

[@ITGuyinaction]

😀👍🍻 It could be quite interesting device... Atari made many business errors which costed them a lot... I'm also big Atari fan (and have few videos about it).

[@RetroShowCaseGr]

35th like dropped! An "eye-opener" video for Panther info we didn't know of! Great job dude!

[@TheLairdsLair]

Awesome thank you!

[@mattuw82]

It's funny that Jack Tramiel as well as his son's publicly tell lies so frequently. Are they just dishonest people? Or is this part of some bigger strategy? Given the fate of Atari, it's evident that their public dishonesty really harmed them.

[@steveoranges1960]

They're shysters alright

[@ejazmoghul5286]

Instead of flashback consoles i want unreleased and cancelled consoles like the panther, colevision computer and intellivision 4, with the new kids honing their coding skills on this older hardware, just imagine the quality that we could get.

[@10p6]

Interesting. In my opinion, they should have made the Panther like a one chip STE but with Sprite support, and the Jaguar a One Chip Falcon with the Object processor and backwards compatible with the Panther.

[@andresdigi25]

Thanks for this amazing video

[@seany84uk]

This is the most detailed panther docu ive seen thank you! They should have released it in place of the 7800 and gave more time to work on the jag too. Lack of 3rd party software support didnt help either. I remember getting my jag from littlewoods for £200 with cybermorph. Its a shame doom wasnt the pack in it would have pushed sales and also the cd addon was a waste of time and money too.

[@TheLairdsLair]

To be fair the Atari Corp. re-launch of the 7800 and the proposed launch date of the Panther are 5 years apart, so I don't think you can compare them. However a 2600/7800 adapter for the Panther at launch would have been very cool!

[@seany84uk]

@@TheLairdsLair yes it would have been cool indeed!!

[@Tolbat]

Thanks btw, some interesting facts that I had never heard.

[@dragokills6990]

Awesome video m8!

[@IGDNews]

It is well known that SEGA of America came up the the Genesis name. And I think that your information on the Sega approaching Atari is false as Sega already had a Marketing and Development Division in the US at that time.

[@TheLairdsLair]

You can think that all you like but these stories are all backed up by fact and multiple sources of evidence from the people who were involved in the actual deals.

[@daviddavies3637]

While watching this, I was forming the same conclusion as Darryl Still. If it was so far advanced in its development, and so far advanced to its 16-bit competition, they should have released it, rebuilt their user base (presumably it was easier to code than the Jaguar) and continued to work on the Jaguar, releasing it when the 3D market was mature enough and when programmers had a better idea of what 3D development entailed. But hindsight is 20-20. If history had turned out differently but the Panther was a flop and the Jaguar held back, we'd be criticising the Tramiels for that as well.

[@TheLairdsLair]

I'm inclined to agree with Darryl also, the Panther was a lot easier to code, because it had a central CPU.

[@daviddavies3637]

@TheLairdsLair I never fully understood the Jag architecture. I always got the sense that the 68000 was little more than a data stuffer for the Tom and Jerry chips. It was a massive departure from earlier Atari systems (except the 2600 obviously) which were generally a doddle to code ... the computers especially.

[@TheLairdsLair]

According to Flare it was there for general management tasks like booting the console and reading the controller inputs and should be put to sleep once the game is running to stop it hogging the bus. Unfortunately most developers totally ignored these instructions.

[@Tolbat]

I sometimes wonder if Atari could have gotten this out two years earlier if they could have made an impact..... who am I kidding they didnt have the game development they needed.

[@TheLairdsLair]

I think if they had got this out around 90/91 they could have had a chance, as the ST was still doing well in Europe and the Lynx was doing pretty well too on both sides of the pond. Most of the developers who signed up to make games for the Panther were people who already made games for the ST.

[@Tolbat]

@@TheLairdsLair Good points, I saved for a Lynx myself in the early 90s, loved that little gem. Had a Jaguar but they just got decent games out way to late. I agree they needed to be out earlier, maybe they should have finished the Panther, and put the Jaguar in R and D for the next console to replace it. We lived in a very rural area, and Atari was not readily available, and the Japanese system (Nintendo) got put in every kind of store, that did not help as the days of the Sears Catalog were over and the Toys R Us stores were few and far between. Our closest was 2 hours away. Oh well the benefit was all ours as we got to live through every single generation of gaming. Thanks as always.

[@everneil4326]

Great Video m8.

[@adonian]

I would love if someone could make a 3D print file for the Atari panther so I could put my MiSTer inside it.

[@STR82DVD]

I wonder where the truth lies on this dev kit? Very interesting young lad. Brilliant stuff on a Saturday with my coffee on a early spring morning here in Ottawa. Thanks!

[@TheLairdsLair]

Yeah, someone clearly isn't being truthful . . . .

[@STR82DVD]

@@TheLairdsLair Agreed.

[@sataniachya1840]

I think that canceling the panther was a mistake, they already had a product almost ready and very advanced(and working), and an atari with more money and production capacity, it was a mistake to conclude that the jaguar was going to come out fast and well, there are always problems in such projects, it is a pity, perhaps, atari would have lived a couple of years more, or still alive if they had been successful with the panther, but that will never be known, is as you say that what happened if the n64 had had cds, or the snes playstation had come out.

[@geraldford6409]

Panther wouldn't have done any better than Jaguar, given the specs vs the MD/Genesis with same 68000 cpu. Snes and Genesis already had significant footholds in the USA by the end of 1990, and certainly by mid 1991. 1990 was also a turning point for mass x86 Pc gaming as vga became standard and lower cost, adlib, soundblaster and clone cards were cheaper, and by 1992 x86 gaming had 16 bit dma stereo sound and svga cards were pushing past 64k colors to 16M. 1990-96 was the Dos gaming Golden Age in North America, with the rise of apogee and nes/snes style games, Wolfenstein, doom, and other x86 3d gaming. The x86 scene had huge numbers of sound, gfx cards and controller innovations through the 90s

[@TheLairdsLair]

It was much more powerful than both the MD and SNES though because of its custom chips. I think it still could have carved a nice niche and set things up for Jaguar, had the price been right of course.

[@petewillson205]

Panther would have to of been released 91, would if been crushed by Nintendo/Sega/TG16 to a smaller extent neogeo/nes. 93 Was actually the right time to release next generation machine as it gave them 2 yrs on Playstation/Saturn, the problem both Atari systems would never overcome is that, sports and fighters something they were never going to get 3rd parties to make for them, plus cute mascot games were what.consumers wanted. Sony had the foresight to go 3d, also to see mistakes sega/Atari/3do etc.

[@retropalooza]

Genlock my foot....I What was it trying to do compete with the Famicom titler hahah....Atari has too much free reign.....write that down

[@Larry]

Would The Atari Panther essentially have been the Konix Multisystem 2?

[@TheLairdsLair]

No. The Panther was mostly designed in-house at Atari, that would be the Jaguar. Flare only came in to help towards the end of its design phase. The Konix was codenamed Flare 1 and the Jaguar was codenamed Flare 2.

[@Sinn0100]

Here's the sad question...did it really matter? Had Atari gone with the Panther plan instead of the Jaguar would it have made a difference? I don't think it would. We would have just had a less capable failure on our hands (and I loved the Jaguar).

[@TheLairdsLair]

Personally I think it would have, because Atari had far bigger market presence in 1991 than they did in 1993/94 and there was also a lot less competition too.

[@Sinn0100]

@@TheLairdsLair I don't know man....in 1991 Sega had taken a commanding lead in the 16-bit market. Nintendo just released the Snes and NEC was trying to really break into the 16-bit market here. That doesn't include the Nes and how many we were still playing it. The market was over saturated in 1991 with 8-bit/16-bit consoles and it was about to get a lot worse. Our market today is many times greater than it was in 1991. However, our market really couldn't handle another player in the industry that's building consoles. Too many products...

[@TheLairdsLair]

According to a Mintel report in 1990 Atari held over 50% of the console market in the UK, as staggering as that might sound its verified in black and white, and that doesn't even include the hugely popular ST computer. I think a lot of people forget just how popular Atari were in Europe and I think the Panther could have capitalised on that had it hit in 1991, there was certainly a lot of excitement about it in UK magazines of the time. North America is a different matter of course, but look at the say Sega went on to dominate Europe after Atari, they certainly saw it as a huge market.

[@Sinn0100]

@@TheLairdsLair Oh no doubt about it, Europe is a huge market and we can't forget the UK either! Atari absolutely held a dominant position in the European and UK markets. Which is baffling why they chose (stupidly in my opinion) to snub you guys for us when it came to the Jaguar. They likely would have sold out just as fast and had repeat customers clamoring for more. After the initial sales of the Jaguar in the US everything slowed down to a crawl which caused a cacophony of bad things to hit all at once. Had they just waited 6 months we would be looking at a vastly different video game landscape. I have always felt Atari failed to take into account Nintendo's effect on our consumer base in the US. We had certain expectations that I felt the launch titles for the Jaguar failed to meet here. Now, had Atari sold first say in the UK then brought the Jaguar here with Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, Tempest 2000 and AVP as launch titles...oh my God. It would be considered the absolute best launch lineup in history which would have seen many 3rd parties chomping at the bit to get on board. Even when the drought hit (because it was going to happen no matter what) that lineup of all must-haves helps them establish Atari as the king in hardcore gaming. With Nintendo's illegal stranglehold on our market broken Atari would have likely been unstoppable. Addendum: Launch expectations in the US at the time were- every game should have music. Quick pick-up and play titles (Iron Soldier/Tempest) are a plus. Ground breaking for consoles (Doom/Wolfenstein 3D/AVP) showing why your machine is the best. A good price point (250 was incredible). Finally, arcade ports as close to or better than the cabs...Tempest 2000.

[@TheLairdsLair]

I have long argued the Jaguar should have been launched in Europe first and Darryl Still, who was product manager for the Jaguar in Europe and Marketing Manager of Atari UK, told me that he argued that very point at the time. Supposedly Atari UK (who handled the whole of Europe as far as the Jag was concerned) had pre-orders of 2 million, but come the Nov '93 launch Atari UK were given 2000, 1000 of which were sold at the London launch party in Hamley's toy store and the launches in Germany and France were completely cancelled. Atari UK didn't get any significant stock until the Summer of '94, by which time everyone had got fed up waiting and moved on. It's also worth pointing out most of the Jaguar's best developers were from Europe too - Llamasoft (UK), Virtuality (UK), Rebellion (UK), Virtual Xperience (France), Eclipse (Germany), UbiSoft (France), Attention To Detail (UK), Imagitec Design (UK), Lore Design (UK) etc.

[@NesNyt]

Don't see no svideo port

[@TheLairdsLair]

I can't think of any Atari system that has an S-Video port!

[@sunspot42]

@@TheLairdsLair Well, the Atari 8-bit computers could output Y/C video over their 5-pin DIN video ports. With an adapter you could plug them into an S-Video port... Stupidly, Atari never released a matching monitor to take advantage of this, although both Commodore and Teknika made monitors with Y/C video inputs.