All the Video Game Consoles I’ve Ever Owned in Chronological Order, Pt. 3 of 4

Atari Jaguar (1993-1995)

There is a noticeable trend whereby  the hardware ‘platform’ that was the most advanced/invested in technology seemed to be the least successful [re TurboGrafx-16, Sega Dreamcast].  Despite the observable mainstream perception that ‘graphics’ are really important to gamers, this trend persists today, as Sony’s PlayStation 3 is kinda far behind in third place in the ‘console arms race’ while the Nintendo Wii, which was accused of being ‘two GameCubes duct taped together’ has sold an insane amount of units and is on track to become ‘the most successful video game console ever.’

Few people seemed to be aware that Atari continued to manufacture console hardware well past its iconic original incarnation. Atari decided it was going to release a 32-bit console in the heyday of the 16-bit console – pretty much it made like a PlayStation-level product to compete with a Super Nintendo level product, had an aggressive black and red marketing campaign where it seemed to want to ROAR onto the scene bragging about hardware power + chip sizes + something to do with IBM.

The Jaguar had sweet graphic, and  a control pad the size of a brick with a full multi-row keypad on it and for some reason no one wanted to develop games for it so it had like five games and they were all terrible. Except this one called Ultra Vortek, which was essentially a clone of Mortal Kombat where it tried to be graphically ‘real’ + very bloody simultaneously. Its tone was so dark that the music would give me bad dreams.

Also played some kind of fighter jet plane game where some guy with a really ‘amped’ voice would tell what subweapon I had selected or what level I was picking, like NAPALM! and SOMEWHERE OVER THE PACIFIC. Seems my sister and I made fun of that amped voice a lot.

Didn’t play this console much. It ‘tanked’ because it had no games.