Atari Jaguar in the context of "Cybermorph"

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⭐ Core Definition: Atari Jaguar

Jaguar is a home video game console developed by Atari Corporation and released in North America in November 1993. It has a Motorola 68000 CPU and two custom 32-bit coprocessors named Tom and Jerry. Atari marketed it as the world's first 64-bit game system, drawing controversy as some argued that this configuration did not meet the definition of a 64-bit system, but it is a mix of 16, 32, and 64-bit technology. The Jaguar launched with Cybermorph as the pack-in game. A total of 63 licensed games (50 on cartridge, 13 on CD-ROM) were released for the system prior to its discontinuation in 1996.

Development started in the early 1990s by Flare Technology, which focused on the system after cancellation of the Panther console. The Jaguar became a more important system for Atari after discontinuing Atari ST computers in favor of video games. However, game development was complicated by the complex multi-chip architecture, hardware bugs, and poor programming tools. Underwhelming sales further eroded third-party support.

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In this Dossier

Atari Jaguar in the context of Atari Corporation

Atari Corporation was an American manufacturer of home computers and video game consoles. It was founded by Jack Tramiel on May 17, 1984, as Tramel Technology, Ltd., but then took on the Atari name less than two months later when Warner Communications sold the home gaming and computing assets of Atari, Inc. to Tramiel.

Its chief products were the Atari ST, Atari XE, Atari 7800, Atari Lynx and Atari Jaguar; in addition to hardware, the company also published video games for its home systems and also had an in-house development team for Lynx and Jaguar software for porting, or developing original titles such as Warbirds and Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy. In 1996, the company reverse merged with JTS Corp., becoming a small de facto non-operating division which itself closed after JTS sold all Atari assets to Hasbro Interactive in 1998.

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Atari Jaguar in the context of Motorola 68000 series

The Motorola 68000 series (also known as 680x0, m68000, m68k, or 68k) is a family of 32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessors. During the 1980s and early 1990s, they were popular in personal computers and workstations and were the primary competitors of Intel's x86 microprocessors. They were best known as the processors used in the early Apple Macintosh, the Sharp X68000, the Commodore Amiga, the Sinclair QL, the Atari ST and Falcon, the Atari Jaguar, the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive) and Sega CD, the Philips CD-i, the Capcom System I (Arcade), the AT&T UNIX PC, the Tandy Model 16/16B/6000, the Sun Microsystems Sun-1, Sun-2 and Sun-3, the NeXT Computer, NeXTcube, NeXTstation, and NeXTcube Turbo, early Silicon Graphics IRIS workstations, the Aesthedes, computers from MASSCOMP, the Texas Instruments TI-89/TI-92 calculators, the Palm Pilot (all models running Palm OS 4.x or earlier), the Control Data Corporation CDCNET Device Interface, the VTech Precomputer Unlimited and the Space Shuttle. Although no modern desktop computers are based on processors in the 680x0 series, derivative processors are still widely used in embedded systems.

Motorola ceased development of the 680x0 series architecture in 1994, replacing it with the PowerPC RISC architecture, which was developed in conjunction with IBM and Apple Computer as part of the AIM alliance.

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Atari Jaguar in the context of Xbox (console)

The Xbox is a home video game console manufactured by Microsoft. It is the first installment in the Xbox series of video game consoles. It was released on November 15, 2001, in North America, followed by Australia, Europe and Japan in 2002. As a sixth-generation console, it competed with Sony's PlayStation 2, Sega's Dreamcast and Nintendo's GameCube. It was also the first major console produced by an American company since the release of the Atari Jaguar in 1993.

The console was announced in March 2000. With the release of the PlayStation 2, which featured the ability to playback CD-ROMs and DVDs in addition to playing games, Microsoft became concerned that game consoles would threaten the personal computer as an entertainment device for living rooms. Whereas most previous games consoles used specially designed hardware, the Xbox was built around standard PC components. It uses variations of Microsoft Windows and DirectX as its operating system to support games and media playback, and is powered by a Intel Pentium III CPU and an Nvidia GeForce 3-based GPU. The Xbox was the first console to feature a built-in hard disk. The console was designed to support broadband connectivity to the Internet via an integrated Ethernet port and Xbox Live, a fee-based online gaming service that launched in 2002. The popularity of the system's blockbuster titles such as Bungie's Halo 2 (2004) contributed to the popularity of first-person shooters and online console gaming.

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Atari Jaguar in the context of Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy

Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy is a 1993 horizontally scrolling shooter video game developed and published by Atari Corporation for the Atari Jaguar. The game stars Trevor McFur, a corporal in the Interplanetary Defense Squad's Circle Reserves chapter. The Crescent Galaxy has been conquered by an entity known as Odd-It, whose purpose is to make every living being like it. Alongside his partner Cutter piloting a shuttlecraft, McFur must free four moons of the planet Cosmolite and defeat Odd-It.

Crescent Galaxy was produced by James "Purple" Hampton, who designed it with programmer Eric Ginner and art director Susan G. McBride. The project entered development at the same time as Cybermorph. Ginner had ideas for a side-scrolling shooter while Atari wanted a mascot similar to Mario or Sonic the Hedgehog, which resulted in Trevor McFur's creation. The game was given a short deadline to meet the Jaguar's launch before other consoles were released, leading to several cut features. It was considered as the Jaguar's pack-in game until Atari chose Cybermorph instead. The game was released in North America in November 1993 and in Europe in June 1994. Mumin Corporation published it in Japan in January 1995.

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