01 - The Jaguar Story - Inception to Launch

Posted by Shinto , 08 August 2015 · 1,486 views

My main reason for starting this blog was to have a place to upload documents referenced in the podcast, but not available elsewhere online. There will be links to this page in the show notes.

Game Calendar from the April, 1993 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly

Newspaper article from June 29, 1993, about the IBM contract

Newspaper article from August 23, 1993, about the Jaguar unveiling

Newspaper article from August 24 (or so), 1993, about fending off competition from 3DO

Newspaper article from August 28, 1993, about pricey new video game consoles

Atari Jaguar block diagram, taken from Atari Explorer Online Special Jaguar Edition. This file was originally a GEM image file, but just about nothing can read GEM .IMG files these days, so I converted it to a GIF and fixed the aspect ratio while I was at it.

Episode 1 ended up being far bigger than I was expecting, owing to the massive amount of great listener feedback. I weighed it, and it came out to be just about a ton. One ton of feedback. This episode has been edited and re-edited so many times, hopefully the final cut is glitch-free. *crosses fingers*

Schmudde likes this

troff

Aug 12 2015 4:42 PM

Shinto - a Great Episode! Although I was generally familiar with the Jaguar's story, you included an incredible amount of detail, much of which I have never heard before. For example, I've often heard the story of the Panther console and how it was cancelled to accelerate the Jaguar. This is the first time I've really heard the details of what Panther was and how that decision came to be made. It was very interesting.

All of the links in the show notes and the "bonus material" here is just amazing. I think I'm going to be busy for a while pouring through it all. You obviously took your research seriously.

Thanks again for doing the show and keep up the good work!

Report

Shinto

Aug 13 2015 7:09 PM

Thanks, Troff!

I've been putting this episode together over the past six months or so. It's a whole lot of research, but I really wanted to tell the Jaguar story more completely and accurately than anyone to date, though I expect my work to be trumped in both accuracy and detail by Curt & Marty when they get to the Jaguar years in their Atari books.

You certainly don't get much detail reading the Jaguar article on Wikipedia, that's for sure, and it's badly one-sided at that.

A lot of the research originated from personal memories, and if I didn't happen to have those, I would have missed a lot in putting the story together. A 20-second blurb on one episode of a computer-themed show on PBS? Certain little references in gaming magazines? A block diagram in an obscure image format in a special-edition online fanzine? That's a big reason why I wanted to start this podcast; I had these memories, not to mention those newspaper articles, and I didn't want them to be lost.

That block diagram, I tried opening the original .IMG file in modern programs under Linux and Windows recently, and nothing could read it. I had converted it to a .PCX file on my 386 PC back in 1993, and still have almost all the files from that 386. Fortunately, the ability to read .PCX files is still fairly common, so this is what I used. It's an excellent document, it really illustrates the Jaguar architecture well, and I'd hate to think that, too, would be lost to the ages, trapped in an obscure file format.

I'm wondering if I shouldn't keep the show notes in the episode itself minimal, and just reference this blog for the complete list. It's a lot of links, since I want to include all my references and sources, and some podcast applications seem to prefer shorter show notes (like a summary paragraph and that's it). My main concern with that, though, is that a blog engine change or something here on AtariAge could alter the URLs for each episode, so relying on the blog for all the episode-related links could be risky in the long term. I don't know, I don't have a good answer yet.

But thank you Troff, I'm glad you're enjoying the show!