The Atari Jaguar as console artifact

It's no secret that the Atari Jaguar was a terrible failure—one of gaming's worst. The last dud in the sordid history of Atari's Tramiel family ownership, the Jaguar followed the Lynx's underrated hardware debut in the late 1980s with an early '90s abomination of poorly designed hardware and software that barely competed against its 16-bit forebears, much less the higher-tech Neo Geo, 3DO, CD-I, Sega 32X, and Sega Saturn technologies against which the system was supposedly targeted.

Whereas those systems also underperformed in an increasingly crowded home console market, the Jaguar's true achilles heel was its total lack of support... support from consumers, 3rd parties, and even 1st party games that were consistently delayed (some to the point of such obscurity and derision that they easily could have been seen as the predecessors of vaporware like Phantom console games and Duke Nukem Forever). While a handful of titles (namely Tempest 2000, Battlemorph, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Iron Soldier, and Aliens vs. Predator) rose to relative critical acclaim, the system itself never became so much as a blip on most gamers' radar. According to GamePro, the Jaguar ended up selling less than 250,000 units. To put that number in perspective, that's less than half the number of CD-I consoles sold, around one-tenth the amount of 3DO and N-Gage consoles sold, and even one half the number of original Xbox consoles sold... in Japan. The system is infamous among critics and game historians and is well known for its cult homebrew following, but for the average gamer, the Jaguar hardware is obscure to say the least.

So why bring up this sore spot in 2009, roughly 16 years after the Jaguar's ill-fated launch? Because as an artifact of video game history, the Jaguar speaks volumes about where we've been, where we are, and where we're going.

That Controller!

Depending on your age and tolerance for design whimsy, the sight of the overly complicated Jaguar controller either conjures fond memories or churns your stomach. On the one hand, the part of the controller that was utilized in almost every game is nicely set apart from the phone pad and resembles the simplicity of Sega's original Genesis controller. Moreover, those unfortunate enough to have owned a Jaguar will recall that despite its plasticky appearance, the Jag controller was a sturdy and extremely comfortable piece of hardware. So comfortable, in fact, that I have yet to hold another controller to equal the Jaguar's in terms of weight, shape, and ergonomics. Gamers tend to shy away from large controllers—the original Xbox's "Duke" controller was perhaps the last of a now dead breed—but it is undeniable that human hands hold up best when they are able to grip a molded, fairly sized controller... rather than, say, struggle to maintain an awkward and unnatural grip such as that needed for Nintendo's various DS models. (I continue to marvel at the fact that two of gaming's most comfortable controllers, those of the Jaguar and Virtual Boy consoles, belonged to two of its least successful systems; and that some of the most successful systems have had some of the least comfortable controllers.) Surely, modern console designers could stand to learn a thing or two from the Jaguar's gamepad.

On the other hand, there's that hideous phone pad, complete with space for the various cheap-looking (and often useless) overlays packaged with Jaguar games. While the phone pad and overlays represented an interesting throwback to the button arrangement of consoles like the Intellivision and Colecovision, it was also aesthetically unpleasant, distracting, and relatively impractical. The last part was evidenced by the sheer number of Jaguar games that barely utilized this part of the controller. Did Tempest 2000, for example, really need twelve additional buttons?

We've learned now from Sony's PlayStation and Nintendo's DS and Wii that a system's controllers should be designed around its preeminent first-party software. Sony's shoulder-buttoned and, later, dual-sticked PlayStation controllers functioned perfectly for movement in the kinds of 3D environments its PSOne was pushing (e.g., Jumping Flash, Warhawk, and Ace Combat). The Wii's wiimote and nunchuck don't work perfectly for every game type, but they work for the games that best demonstrate the system's design sensibilities. By comparison, the Jaguar's controller worked for... nothing. A cute yet completely extraneous anachronism.

Thus, the Jaguar controller itself is a bridge between gaming past and history. It borrowed novel ideas from both successful and bizarre design antecedents, blended them together in a controller as comfortable as it was unappealing, and continues to serve as one of gaming's most unfortunate symbols of form over function. (Take note, PSP Go!)

The Add-Ons

As represented by its complicated controller, Atari's Jaguar was a vehicle for a company trying to do too much. Instead of focusing on quality control for its games, pushing design teams to meet release dates, and proper advertising, the Tramiel family focused it attention on bridging gaps with future technologies. The most famous of these were the Jaguar CD add-on, released far too late in the system's brief stay on the market, and the proposed $250 VR helmet.

The CD add-on, of course, was far less risky than the VR helmet, but that didn't make it any better a strategic decision for an already obscure console. While the system was always designed with the CD expansion in mind (represented by the grooves in the middle of the console itself), the fact that the CD player was not present at launch, added little in terms of gameplay advancement, was far too expensive at $150 (over the already inflated launch price of $250), made the system look bulky, and had very little in the way of software support, all contributed to the appearance of the Jaguar CD as an excessive afterthought. By the time the CD player arrived in 1995, the Jaguar was on its last legs, and an expensive piece of technology didn't help matters at all.