http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/ Engadget Comments for Ben Heckendorn's fully portable Atari Jaguar http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/May 2nd 2008 1:06PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/May 5th 2008 8:22PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/
You don't have to be born in the 1950's to have heard of a game console released in the 1990's. A lot of people get into video games before they hit 40 years old.

Competitors. There were none around the time of the Jaguar's release except the 3DO. The SNES and Genesis were on their way out, dirt cheap, big older game selection. Comparing them to the Jaguar is like comparing the NES to a SNES when the SNES came out. It was more expensive, less games, but newer technology.

Failed? No, if the only competition was the 3DO, then no. My friends and I collected ALL systems because we were into games and programming. Our 3DO would reset in the middle of a newer game, took forever to load (ran out of memory I think), choppy motion and took forever to load (not much of a CD buffering system unlike the Saturn etc). I had about 50+ games on the 3DO and only around 30+ on my Jaguars, guess which were actually playable? Which were also the ones played on a regular basis.

$200.00 games. Games on the Jaguar were about the same price as a lot of consoles since the early 1980's. I paid between $50 for AvP when it was a new release.

My Jaguar consoles brand new were $250.00 around its release. My 3DO was $700.00. The games on both systems were comparable in price.

The Atari 2600 and Colecovision competed, next the NES, Turbo Graphics, Sega Master System etc, then the SNES and Genesis were in reign, the short lived Jaguar vs 3DO, then Sega Saturn vs Playstation.

Failed 2. I've known too many Jaguar developers/programmers who made a name for themselves from developing on that system. Jaguar dev kits are STILL being sold, upgraded, over clocked, etc. Games and Graphics Demos are still being released! If it failed, somebody needs to let everyone know :-P

Finally, this does look like a bathroom scale, and the Jag+CD looks like a toilet :-(
]]>May 19th 2008 6:47PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/Oct 27th 2006 9:54AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/Oct 27th 2006 9:57AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/Oct 27th 2006 10:08AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/Oct 27th 2006 10:19AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/Oct 27th 2006 10:37AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/Oct 27th 2006 10:43AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/Oct 28th 2006 7:51PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/
The old Jag may have been a total flop but I don't know anywhere else that you can play TEMPEST 2000 (ala Jeff Minter the undisputed king of game design imho). It ROCKS.


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tempest 2000 was ported to the sega saturn :) i have it. saturns easy to um pirate games to since no piracy protection.]]>Oct 27th 2006 11:20AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/"Why, God, WHY? Jaguar.... *shudder* worst system ever!"

Did you even try to click the read link?

And I quote Mr. Heckendorn:
"Your first thought about this project is probably "Why?" Mine too. But a very good customer of mine requested this so I couldn't say no. (Heck, throw enough money at me and I'll build anything)"

So there you have it, for the money. Wouldn't you do the same, I know I would.]]>Oct 27th 2006 2:15PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/
Good job, dick.

I agree with the bathroom scale comment, but that aside, it's pretty cool. I remember wanting a Jag when I first saw AvP.

Kasumi Ninja made me stop.

This thing is just a tiny bit bigger than the first gen Lynx. Just a bit.

Didn't Jag get Zoop, also? That was a pretty fun game.]]>Oct 27th 2006 12:24PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/
Remember Rayman? The original was first designed for Jaguar. AvP rocked, of course (once it finally came out), and Zoop was a blast (although insanely difficult). But the crown goes to Tempest 2000, and no other port has quite lived up to the original due to the revised "CD" soundtrack in the Saturn and PS versions.]]>Oct 27th 2006 1:10PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/Oct 27th 2006 1:20PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/
I wonder how much a 360 laptop would cost.... hrm]]>Oct 27th 2006 1:38PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/
Some may trash the Jaguar, but it rocked! AvP, Tempest, Attack of the Mutant Penguins, Cannon Fodder... so many cool games.

This is pretty cool. I doubt I would ever get another Jaguar (for now, I'm console-free - only PSP and DS Lite), but kudos to this guy for making it portable.]]>Oct 28th 2006 10:43AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/Oct 27th 2006 2:49PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/Oct 27th 2006 3:04PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/Oct 27th 2006 9:26PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/27/ben-heckendorns-fully-portable-atari-jaguar/
There were a lot of problems, it was terribly marketed, it had a small library and was expensive next to it's peers. It's was optimised for sprite manipulation just as 3D games came big, but....

It was actually a decent machine. The controllers looked cumbersome but were remarkably comfortable for long periods of gaming. AvP was very, very cool and the Jag version of Doom was pretty much the fastest and smoothest I had played at the time.

Yes it failed, and yes it failed against what turned out to be truly superior competition, but that doesn't mean it was intrinsically a bad system.

I bought mine, I think, in '94 - it sat in the living room of my student house for two years where AvP, Raiden and Brutal Sports Football all got regular play from the various housemates. It was, sadly, stolen by morons in 1998 who very kindly unplugged and left behind the second controller whilst mainly taking the two player games.]]>Oct 17th 2007 9:10AM