Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Same energy as those old TurboGrafx ads, and the same catch too. Atari sold the Jaguar as the world's first 64 bit console and built a whole campaign around it called Do the Math. The pitch was simple. 64 is a bigger number than 16 or 32, so buy the Jaguar. There was just one problem. The main processor inside was a 32 bit Motorola 68000. The 64 came from two custom chips nicknamed Tom and Jerry that had 64 bit buses, which is why critics at the time called it two 32 bit chips glued together and slammed the marketing as misleading. If that sounds familiar, it is the exact same fight people had over the TurboGrafx calling itself 16 bit.
The controller alone tells you what era this was. It had a full seventeen key telephone style number pad on it, with paper overlays for different games, and only three real buttons when six was already normal. The console launched in late 1993 at 249 dollars, and that 159 price in the ad is from a later price cut as Atari kept slashing it to move units. It eventually fell all the way to 99.
It did have a few genuine gems. Tempest 2000, Alien vs Predator and Doom are the ones people still talk about, and Tempest 2000 alone is basically the reason to own one. But the hardware was brutally hard to program, so most games barely looked better than 16 bit, and the promised leap never really showed up. Atari predicted half a million sold by the end of 1994 and managed about a hundred thousand.
Then Sony showed up. The PlayStation hit America in September 1995 and outsold the Jaguar by something close to a hundred to one, and the Jaguar was discontinued within months of this very ad. It was the last console Atari ever made, and its failure ended Atari as a hardware company for good. Funny ending though, exactly like the caption says. These things are pricey collector items now.
Did that 159 price tag get you too, or did you dodge the Jaguar? Subscribe to Game Forest GF for retro gaming content every single day.
#atarijaguar #atari #jaguar64 #dothemath #64bit #tempest2000 #alienvspredator #retroconsole #consolewars #retrocommercial #vintagead #90sgaming #gaminghistory #retrogaming #gameforestgf #youtubeshorts #gaming
Same energy as those old TurboGrafx ads, and the same catch too. Atari sold the Jaguar as the world's first 64 bit console and built a whole campaign around it called Do the Math. The pitch was simple. 64 is a bigger number than 16 or 32, so buy the Jaguar. There was just one problem. The main processor inside was a 32 bit Motorola 68000. The 64 came from two custom chips nicknamed Tom and Jerry that had 64 bit buses, which is why critics at the time called it two 32 bit chips glued together and slammed the marketing as misleading. If that sounds familiar, it is the exact same fight people had over the TurboGrafx calling itself 16 bit.
The controller alone tells you what era this was. It had a full seventeen key telephone style number pad on it, with paper overlays for different games, and only three real buttons when six was already normal. The console launched in late 1993 at 249 dollars, and that 159 price in the ad is from a later price cut as Atari kept slashing it to move units. It eventually fell all the way to 99.
It did have a few genuine gems. Tempest 2000, Alien vs Predator and Doom are the ones people still talk about, and Tempest 2000 alone is basically the reason to own one. But the hardware was brutally hard to program, so most games barely looked better than 16 bit, and the promised leap never really showed up. Atari predicted half a million sold by the end of 1994 and managed about a hundred thousand.
Then Sony showed up. The PlayStation hit America in September 1995 and outsold the Jaguar by something close to a hundred to one, and the Jaguar was discontinued within months of this very ad. It was the last console Atari ever made, and its failure ended Atari as a hardware company for good. Funny ending though, exactly like the caption says. These things are pricey collector items now.
Did that 159 price tag get you too, or did you dodge the Jaguar? Subscribe to Game Forest GF for retro gaming content every single day.
#atarijaguar #atari #jaguar64 #dothemath #64bit #tempest2000 #alienvspredator #retroconsole #consolewars #retrocommercial #vintagead #90sgaming #gaminghistory #retrogaming #gameforestgf #youtubeshorts #gaming
