Where was the Jag sold in Canada?

[jhd]

Did the Jaguar have a significant retail presence in Canada when it was new?

 

In 1994/95 I was mostly focused on academics (and PC games), but I honestly do not recall having seen a Jaguar for sale anywhere.

 

In Nova Scotia, at least, none of the major department stores (Sears, Eaton's, and Zellers) sold it, and Wal-Mart was only just starting to enter the Canadian marketplace (having acquired many of the former Woolco stores). Electronics Boutique was also just establishing its first Canadian stores at this time. There were a small handful of independent game stores -- I recall one local place that really pushed the Sega Saturn -- but these tended to be short-lived.

 

Someone recently mentioned seeing them on clearance at the "Sam The Record Man" flagship store in Downtown Toronto.

 

So, did any of my fellow Canadians buy a new Jaguar in the mid-1990s? If so, where?

[+davidcalgary29]

I'm the one who saw it at "Sam's". Huge display on the second(?) floor with stacks of units and games. They had staff there (one salesperson, if I recall) to show off the system. He was playing Val D'Isere while I was there. It wasn't on "clearance" at that time, though. I believe it was '94, and certainly during the Summer, as I was working at my summer job at the TTC at the time. I chanced upon the exhibit while on a treasure hunt for The Best of Blondie, which was on sale for something like $2.99. I left the store with Blondie, but not a Jag.

 

This was the only time during its commercial life that I saw a display for the Jag. And I didn't see a commercial presence for it anywhere else in Canada until 2002, when I saw NOS games in a small chain of used game stores in Calgary. They also had consoles, but I can't recall how much they were. I didn't buy one, as I already had two by that point. Remember when they were going for about $25 each? I did buy about ten games at that time, as they selling them for ten bucks each. And not just the crappy Jag games, either.

[Rick Dangerous]

At Canadian Tire right next to the deer urine?

[+davidcalgary29]

Hey -- I used to buy computer games at Canadian Tire! By 1988, it was about the only place you could buy those cheapo C64/A8 "flippies" which constituted the NTSC market at the time. I also bought my first 1702 monitor from them. Good times...

[jhd]

Yep, Canadian Tire was long a bastion of reasonably priced consumer electronics. They even sold Atari 2600 cartridges in the 1980s; I have some boxes bearing their price tags.

 

I once saw a Vic 20 at a flea market that included a tape of games with a Canadian Tire logo -- presumably a store-specific pack-in.

 

Have there been any further retail Jaguar sightings in Canada?

[Rick Dangerous]

I used to visit the Sega Playdium in Toronto in the 90s, but sadly there were no Jaguars there. Just a bunch of arcade games, $5 a pop VR games, and Saturn's plugged in all over the place.

 

Weren't there EB's in major urban areas in Canada that would have carried them?

[+davidcalgary29]

Not really. EB apparently expanded into the Toronto market in 1993, but that would have been a tiny presence in a huge market. I didn’t even know they were in Canada until after 2000.

 

Atari didn’t have a major footprint in Canadian chains after the mid ‘80s. They did much better with the Mom-and-Pop computer stores, and that’s where I shopped. I bought all of my Lynx games at Atari dealers, as it was very difficult to find them elsewhere.

[AMenard]

The only jag I ever saw back then was in a small computer store in Montreal.

[AtariLeaf]

I don't remember ever seeing a Jag but by 93/94 I was getting into DOS PC gaming here in Southern Ontario. I may have but I wasn't paying attention. I don't even remember any commercials for it BITD.

[+davidcalgary29]

I think that the infomercials did play late night on Canadian TV, but cant recall. We had so many stations from Buffalo that they very well might have been on one of them.

 

I have a faint memory of possibly seeing some Jag stuff at the Commodore/Atari store on Keele north of Wilson. Cant remember its name.

 

So to answer the original question: no, it had a minimal presence (at best) in Canada when new. I dont believe Atari Canada even held any Jag promotions, unlike its ubiquitous ST (and intermittent Lynx) promotions.

[AMenard]

I did saw the commercial on TV, but it was on cable and on US stations.

[+5-11under]

I think it was at EB that I saw piles of them for liquidation. I can't remember the price, but I should have bought them all... .

[+LS650]

I recall seeing Atari Jaguars, Lynxes, and STs all being sold and supported by A&B Sound here in Victoria. They were a bit of a chain here in BC that eventually got bought out by Future Shop.

[oo7]

In toronto replay entertainment on mccaul street had them, a few small stores here and there had them. They were around. I believe even toys r us had them

[+davidcalgary29]

On 8/1/2021 at 11:47 PM, oo7 said:

In toronto replay entertainment on mccaul street had them, a few small stores here and there had them. They were around. I believe even toys r us had them

If it was in Village by the Grange, it was a successor store (or a rebranded one) to one of the few dedicated Atari dealers in Toronto. I used to go there to buy Lynx cartridges, and they sold A8 software for an impressively long time after its main commercial run had ended.

[oo7]

1 hour ago, davidcalgary29 said:

If it was in Village by the Grange, it was a successor store (or a rebranded one) to one of the few dedicated Atari dealers in Toronto. I used to go there to buy Lynx cartridges, and they sold A8 software for an impressively long time after its main commercial run had ended.

Mark the owner took over compustore after atari closed. Mark was an atari canada employee 

[oo7]

1 hour ago, davidcalgary29 said:

If it was in Village by the Grange, it was a successor store (or a rebranded one) to one of the few dedicated Atari dealers in Toronto. I used to go there to buy Lynx cartridges, and they sold A8 software for an impressively long time after its main commercial run had ended.

There was another atari guy selling st systems in there named steward. I wonder what happened to these two guys

[JumbleJag]

I bought the jaguar brand new from Microplay when it was released,I lived in Ottawa,Ontario back then.https://microplayvideogames.ca/

[Drixxel]

The first and only time I ran across a Jag being promoted & publicly demoed during its retail life was at an independent game store called Master Player, they had AVP running on a big projection TV. I thought it looked incredible, would've been '94, '95 in Kelowna, BC, Canada. On one other occasion a little later in the '90s, I saw some new Jag games on display at what I believe was an Electronics Boutique in a mall in Vancouver, there was at least a row of them on a wire floor rack and I remember having a good look at the box for Doom.

 

Post-retail heyday at this point, but when I eventually bought a Jag in 2000, it was from a business in Eastern Canada called Dentec. They happened to also be selling a small selection of brand new Jag games, so I ended up ordering a NIB console and Tempest 2000 from 'em.

[jhd]

This is a bit of a necrobump, but I only just discovered that the unreleased Jaguar game Phear was created by H2O Entertainment -- a Calgary-based firm.  

 

Presumably the developers of this game would have had some exposure to the Jaguar for them to choose it as a target platform.   

[+LS650]

...

Edited October 13, 2022 by ls650

[tripled79]

I bought mine from a MicroPlay in Winnipeg. That was about the only place that had Jaguars around that time.

[Chinese Cake]

This is interesting. Dididn't know there was a presnse for the Jaguar in Canada.

 

I am interested in who was selling it in Japan myself, there are Famitsu scans of the Jaguar console among other consoles on sales and am curious how much it sold there and who was carrying it. 

[GrizzLee]

My Jaguar Kiosk came from Vancouver Canada. 🙂

 

I was in a mall store back in the day as I understand it.

 

FYI.. I live north of Seattle. So I drove north to pick it up.