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What Cities & Regions Did the Jag Do Best?


Jagosaurus

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As the title states:

What Cities & Regions Did the Jag Do Best?

 

With the early launch, did it do better in SF and NYC?

 

We also seem to have quite a few early adopters from specific PAL areas. Which areas across the pond had a solid customer base?

 

I grew up a couple hours outside of Houston & the Jag seemed to have very little traction in the region. I know we have at least one other member from Texas who had one at launch (Gunstar?). Would be interested to hear if you knew others around you with the console.

 

I realize you only really see your circle of friends & family & that may skew your view, or possibly give you an idea of the bigger picture. I knew of 1 person with a Jaguar. Only guy I heard of with one at the time.

 

It's easy to say for example that the TG16 did better in Canada & the northern US. Can we make a similar statement for the Jaguar?

 

Did it get more shelf space at stores in certain regions, or perhaps sold at any prominent regional chains that helped moved units in an area?

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It was in all the Electronics Boutiques and related stores in Charlottesville, Va and Charleston, SC during it's release. It was not marketed a great deal if I remember correctly, it just had a small section to itself and very little window real estate.

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Since we know the numbers, it clearly didn't sell well anywhere, so that's probably a different question to answer, i.e., there were no "strongholds" anywhere. In any case, to add to the anecdotes, I was working at Electronics Boutique in Woodbridge, New Jersey, during the Jaguar's release (that and the 3DO were the two "hot" next gen systems, although the 3DO had a far sexier presentation/demo, but of course was held back by that insane price) and a time beyond and there was always shelf space devoted to it, albeit not a great deal because there really weren't a lot of titles available for it for quite a while. I also clearly remember kiosks at places like The Wiz where they let you play Tempest 2000. So it definitely had some presence and had a shot at gaining mindshare as well as marketshare, but it obviously never gained any momentum whatsoever for all of the reasons we've long since discussed.

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As a teenager, I briefly lived near an independent game store in northern Utah. (I think it was Fun Unlimited?) The owner would sometimes hang around the store and chat with the nerdier kids. He bragged about attending Atari's shareholder meetings and getting hands-on access to the Jaguar. He even showed us the VHS demo tapes and discussed the finer points of 64-bit graphics. Lynxes were popular at my high school - all from that guy's store.

 

I got a Jaguar from his first batch in early 94. He claimed to have sold hundreds, stuck waiting on Atari for more. (That summer I got an internship programming games, and learned it's easier selling Jaguars to kids, than convincing my developers at work that Atari had a future - Sony was already dazzling.)

 

I visited the store again in 96. The owner was stuck with some inventory, but remained convinced the JTS takeover was only a speedbump and the Jaguar would live on. It never occurred to me he might just be a good sales guy - saying whatever it took to sell what he had left. I walked out of there with a JagCD. He had a bunch.

 

That part of Utah was a weird vortex of abandoned technology. The high school had Apple Lisas - in the early 90s - thanks to a local business (Sun Remarketing) selling them cheap as Mac-compatible.

 

- KS

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I think it did "fairly" well in Chicagoland (Illinois in general) as there were stores everywhere that carried it.

 

Software Etc.

Electronics Boutique

Babbages

Media Play

Kay*Bee

Wal-Mart

 

...to name a few. Handful of mom and pop stores that sold new/used also.

 

That said, never saw them at places like Target, Sears, Montgomery Ward, Venture (even though they sold the Lynx bundle for a while) or Funcoland.

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I think it did "fairly" well in Chicagoland (Illinois in general) as there were stores everywhere that carried it.

 

Software Etc.

Electronics Boutique

Babbages

Media Play

Kay*Bee

Wal-Mart

 

...to name a few. Handful of mom and pop stores that sold new/used also.

 

That said, never saw them at places like Target, Sears, Montgomery Ward, Venture (even though they sold the Lynx bundle for a while) or Funcoland.

 

There's no question they got into a fair number of retail outlets/chains throughout the US and had solid (from a coverage standpoint) national advertising campaigns. I just don't think we can really point to one particular part of the country where the Jaguar was particularly hot. It was probably more or less the same everywhere.

 

I actually think the infomercial approach was pretty inspired, although the actual infomercial was of course atrocious and too late in life to have made a bit of difference.

Edited by Bill Loguidice
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I was in the northeast US, I always saw the Jag at Kay Bee toys in the local malls. In fact, they still had boxes of them and jag games, circa 1999! At one point, the store didn't appear to have any more. I came back a year or two later (around 1999) and they had a jag unit plugged in demoing games, and a big pile of jag consoles in their boxes lined up next to the demo system, I think for about $30 or $40 each. I should have stocked up then ;) But instead probably bought something more pedestrian like coolboarders 3 instead.

The local video rental stores also started renting jag and 3do games circa 1994/1995, and I noticed that instead of having its own section such as SNES or genesis had, my local video store combined Jag and 3do in one section (I guess due to a lack of games). At the time, seeing the new systems' games come in, I figured Jag would soon become as widespread as the SNES and Genesis. Guess not.

Edited by sirlynxalot
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I think it did "fairly" well in Chicagoland (Illinois in general) as there were stores everywhere that carried it.

 

Software Etc.

Electronics Boutique

Babbages

Media Play

Kay*Bee

Wal-Mart

 

...to name a few. Handful of mom and pop stores that sold new/used also.

 

That said, never saw them at places like Target, Sears, Montgomery Ward, Venture (even though they sold the Lynx bundle for a while) or Funcoland.

I lived in Lisle, IL and worked in Downer's Grove in late '93 and most of 94. Don't recall seeing much of the Jaguar in that area, myself. Although partying was more of my focus in those days so it could've been right in front of me and there's a good chance I missed it. The only thing I was really collecting back then was the Beavis and Butthead comic books (first prints that I still have today.)

I wonder if I would have suffered this same addiction to the console if I'd bought one at/around launch? Will never know.

Anyway, thanks for posting that info. Interesting.

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@Bill, that's why I used the verbiage "sell better" vs "considerably crack market share." It can still sell better in certain pockets and not sell well overall.

 

Interesting responses so far!

 

My local rental chains were: Blockbuster, Hollywood, Mann's (local), L&R (local), PNX (local). None of these carried 3do or Jag games in my area. I looked at the video game sections hard! Haha!

 

I didn't live in "the sticks" either. Typical suburbs. At my house we had cable, internet (by 1995 IIRC), & were 30 minutes from 2 major malls. I rarely made my way into KB though. I only saw the Jaguar in magazines.

 

Am I wrong to think that a lot of our European posters (that where early adopters) seem to be relatively close to each other in proximity?

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From 1993 to 1996 I lived in Northern Virginia, outside Washington, DC and San Diego, California and I saw the Jaguar at all the major video game retail outlets. EB, Babbage's, Walden Software, KB, Toy's-R-Us, Captron, etc., all sold the Jaguar and the Lynx before that. A few mom and pop stores that sold new games also sold the Jaguar. For a brief period in 1995, I remember Wal-Mart carrying the Jaguar. By late '95, Wal-Mart pulled the Jag and Atari started to lay off staff and cancel most projects, except for a few that were almost complete, like Defender 2000 and Fight for Life.

 

The best selection of Atari Jaguar gear I ever saw at retail during that time was Toad Computers, near Baltimore, Maryland. Toad had the Jag, Jag CD, every game, every Jag flyer, stacks of Cat-Boxes, Pro Controllers, etc. Toad was like the Atari super store though at the time. They had everything for the Lynx as well. They also had the STE, TT, Falcon and even the new C-Lab Falcon computers and all the latest import software and games from Europe. If you asked, they even had a back closet stacked full of XE computers and tons of 8-bit software.

Edited by Major Havoc 2049
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I heard that Tulsa, Oklahoma had the greatest concentration of Jag users in the continental United States from 93-95'. If you failed to "do the math" when you came to town you were strapped to a chair in the basement of town hall and forced to watch The Cave until you came around and drank the kool-aid like everyone else..

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I heard that Tulsa, Oklahoma had the greatest concentration of Jag users in the continental United States from 93-95'. If you failed to "do the math" when you came to town you were strapped to a chair in the basement of town hall and forced to watch The Cave until you came around and drank the kool-aid like everyone else..

Damn, I moved from Lisle, IL to Owasso, just north of Tulsa in late '94. This thread is tracking me :-o

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I heard that Tulsa, Oklahoma had the greatest concentration of Jag users in the continental United States from 93-95'. If you failed to "do the math" when you came to town you were strapped to a chair in the basement of town hall and forced to watch The Cave until you came around and drank the kool-aid like everyone else..

Not sure if serious.....

http://adaptershack.com/m/files/img401.imageshack.us_img401_7936_notsureifserious.gif

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To save2600's point, I do recall seeing the Jag in the video game mall stores in the 90s where I grew up around Chicago. When I went to college in the Fall of '95 down state, I don't remember seeing it anywhere. Of course at the time I was mostly into PSX games, but I remember hunting around for closeout titles like 32X games and Virtual Boy so I think I would've noticed Jag stuff too. Venture was where I picked up my Lynx w/4 pack-ins for $99, what a great day that was. I had drooled over Lynx game photos for what seemed like decades.

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  • 1 month later...

I picked up a few Jag games and systems in the Detroit area from Electronics Boutique, Babbages, and mail order. For some reason, the retailer EB would pack the game right into the box that was displayed on the shelf... Games were never shrink wrapped when purchased new, boxes were sometimes worn from being on display - which I found rather interesting.

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I picked up a few Jag games and systems in the Detroit area from Electronics Boutique, Babbages, and mail order. For some reason, the retailer EB would pack the game right into the box that was displayed on the shelf... Games were never shrink wrapped when purchased new, boxes were sometimes worn from being on display - which I found rather interesting.

 

When I worked there for a few years in the mid-90s, this was done for a few reasons. One, one copy had to be on the shelf for display purposes, but couldn't contain the game because it had the potential to be stolen (and sure enough people regularly stole the display boxes thinking it had games in them). The other was that as associates we were encouraged to take games home and try them out so we could speak intelligently about them (this was allowed only when there was sufficient stock and usually only overnight). All other copies of the games remained shrinkwrapped. When the opened copies were ready to be sold (when all other sealed copies were sold out), we would reshrink the boxes in the back. In any case, you probably usually got opened box Jaguar games because the supplies were probably limited and there were only one or two copies of a game in stock (and thus one copy was needed for the shelf). I don't recall many specifics about the Jaguar inventory, but we certainly had less stock of Jaguar stuff than for other systems (it sold infrequently at best).

Edited by Bill Loguidice
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I grew up in South Florida and I suspect the Jaguar had a decent following down here. Toys R Us had a very large section of the store dedicated to the Jaguar -- even one of the Kiosk's. Electronics Boutique only dedicated 4 feet of store space -- it was dwarfed by the Genesis and Super Nintendo sections. Babbage's also supported it pretty well, KB Toys was dismal -- just about 6 games and I don't believe they bothered to carry any hardware.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I would frequent various stores like Babbages, Software Etc, and Funcoland in northern Ohio (Sandusky, Findlay, and Toledo) as well as the Dayton area back in the mid-90's. All those stores had Jaguar games till around '95. I specifically remember seeing Super Burnout at a Funcoland and being a bit disappointed in the look of it. Later I bought Club Drive and it was then that I saw Super Burnout as quite good actually ;)

 

During the last few months of the Jaguar's run I remember seeing Iron Soldier 2 for the Jaguar CD for $60 and totally wanting it. In the end I bought a Jaguar CD on clearance from Babbages (probably $79 or $99 iirc). Later I got Iron Soldier 2 and loved it :)

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