Why Atari Jaguar Got COMPLETELY DESTROYED! - Video by "Lady Decade"

[RickR]

Or maybe it's just the gigantic fall of Atari from industry leader to nothingness in such a short time.  Instead of taking the bigger picture view of how that happened, it turns into potshots at the last gasps from Atari.  I guess it is an easy target and although it is lazy, it probably brings in the viewers. 

Mattel, Coleco, Commodore, and many others suffered the same fate, but didn't go out punching like Atari did. Therefore, it isn't so easy to kick them so hard. 

 

Edited September 1, 2023 by RickR

[- Ω -]

Interesting, I posted a comment saying her video caused some discussion, and provided a link to this thread.  The message is gone.

[Paul Westphal]

On 8/29/2023 at 6:31 PM, Justin said:

 

 

Something about her tone of voice and pious demeanor reminds me of Kai Winn. I think our Star Trek fans will appreciate what I mean 🖖

"...But the Atari Jaguar got COMPLETELY DESTROYED ®, my child. Just as the Prophets had wished it. Like and subscribe for more." - Winn Adami

 

I know, right? I evaded that video for a while but eventually watched enough to know the familiar tone.

[Justin]

On 9/1/2023 at 12:11 PM, RickR said:

Or maybe it's just the gigantic fall of Atari from industry leader to nothingness in such a short time.  Instead of taking the bigger picture view of how that happened, it turns into potshots at the last gasps from Atari.  I guess it is an easy target and although it is lazy, it probably brings in the viewers. 

Mattel, Coleco, Commodore, and many others suffered the same fate, but didn't go out punching like Atari did. Therefore, it isn't so easy to kick them so hard. 

I hear what you're saying, that's absolutely a plausible theory. It's still weird to me, though, how Atari is always the one to be singled out. Nintendo never suffered the same fate as Atari, falling from industry leader to nothingness... but Nintendo did suffer through some darker times. N64 sold about half as well as the Super Nintendo, and the GameCube was no where near as successful as either of those. I can remember seeing mainstream nightly news reports (Tom Brokaw) reporting on 3rd party publishers dropping support for GameCube and how Nintendo was facing challenging times. Wii turned everything around, and then Wii U sold one-tenth as well as Wii had. Fortunately Switch is a hit, and regardless of Nintendo's hardware or sales, they have always had their IPs to fall back on. Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Mario Kart, Pokemon, and others will always be good sellers. However Nintendo has been kicked from the top spot more than once, and in all my years of being a classic gamer, even working at Toys R Us during the early stages of Nintendo's misfortune, I've never heard Nintendo spoken of the same way Atari has. I'm willing to bet there are more YouTube videos with clickbaity titles about how the Atari Jaguar was "COMPLETELY DESTROYED" than there are about how the Wii U was "COMPLETELY DESTROYED".

Who knows, I could be wrong, this is my perception and I've never understood the scoffing mean-spiritedness behind Atari discussions. At best the comments are "I loved Space Invaders but Pac-Man and E.T. killed the video game industry!" - which is a valid view to hold, but still not a positive conversation.

[Justin]

On 8/29/2023 at 8:38 PM, socrates63 said:

What little I know about the Jaguar is because of the I/O. I didn't know about the Jaguar when it was originally released, and I only learned of its existence a few years ago. I bought one because I wanted to take part in the I/O high score challenge. I sincerely hope the I/O community continues to keep the Jaguar love alive.

@socrates63 I'm surprised how often I've heard this, even today. It speaks volumes not just about the Atari Jaguar's lack of mainstream popularity, but about Atari's incredible lack of marketing and advertising at the time. When you say "Atari", so many people in the world think of Atari 2600 (or possibly Atari 8-Bit computers) but rarely does the general population think of or are even aware of the Atari Jaguar (both today, and even at the time the Jaguar was being sold. Similarly for Lynx and Atari 7800)

There might've been one generic print ad during the Jaguar's run, that you could search for in Next Generation Magazine or Die Hard Game Fan Magazine. Every other advertisement was something for Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis and they were all memorable. "Sega Does What Nintendon't" etc. Most of the ads were for new games from 3rd party publishers that were pushing their games for almost every system BUT Atari Jaguar. The whole thing made the Atari Jaguar feel "niche" at best, and "left out" when you really thought about it.

 

On 8/29/2023 at 6:39 PM, Atari 5200 Guy said:

It was not marketed in my area at the time.  The only reason I knew it even existed was by an ad mailed out by Go Atari.  I don't even know how they got my address.  If not for Radio Shack I would not have received one.

 

On 8/30/2023 at 4:40 AM, Atari 5200 Guy said:

If it wasn't for that ad showing upon the mailbox about the Jaguar I would have never known about it.

This proves my point. Imagine this sort of advertising for Nintendo or Sega. What was Atari thinking???

[socrates63]

1 hour ago, Justin said:

@socrates63 I'm surprised how often I've heard this, even today. It speaks volumes not just about the Atari Jaguar's lack of mainstream popularity, but about Atari's incredible lack of marketing and advertising at the time. When you say "Atari", so many people in the world think of Atari 2600 (or possibly Atari 8-Bit computers) but rarely does the general population think of or are even aware of the Atari Jaguar (both today, and even at the time the Jaguar was being sold. Similarly for Lynx and Atari 7800)

There might've been one generic print ad during the Jaguar's run, that you could search for in Next Generation Magazine or Die Hard Game Fan Magazine. Every other advertisement was something for Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis and they were all memorable. "Sega Does What Nintendon't" etc. Most of the ads were for new games from 3rd party publishers that were pushing their games for almost every system BUT Atari Jaguar. The whole thing made the Atari Jaguar feel "niche" at best, and "left out" when you really thought about it.

You're totally right about what "Atari" means to people. They're usually thinking the 2600.

To add more salt on the Jaguar wound, I had known about the Lynx and had even seen one back in the day. Maybe it was because I had the OG Game Boy that I paid attention to handhelds. I should also add that I only found out about the 7800 a few years ago as well when I was looking to get back into playing 2600 games.

[Justin]

1 minute ago, socrates63 said:

You're totally right about what "Atari" means to people. They're usually thinking the 2600.

To add more salt on the Jaguar wound, I had known about the Lynx and had even seen one back in the day. Maybe it was because I had the OG Game Boy that I paid attention to handhelds. I should also add that I only found out about the 7800 a few years ago as well when I was looking to get back into playing 2600 games.

It's on our shoulders to change the narrative and foster a stronger, more optimistic conversation about Atari, and that is my primary goal in creating Atari I/O.

It's okay to acknowledge these were niche systems, enjoy them and play them until their ICs pop. It's okay to play different!  

[MistaMaddog]

12 minutes ago, Justin said:

It's on our shoulders to change the narrative and foster a stronger, more optimistic conversation about Atari, and that is my primary goal in creating Atari I/O.

It's okay to acknowledge these were niche systems, enjoy them and play them until their ICs pop. It's okay to play different!  

I do wish you and everyone well luck with that.  It's really tough all because of the Nintendo Narrative that many 90's gaming mags have repeated, and the overall influence on a whole generation of gamers...especially all the AVGN-wannabes on YouTube.

 

And I'd be very surprise if anyone still watches LadyDecade since she lost all credibility after the whole e-begging scandal.

[RickR]

Sega too though?  Look at the scathing reviews for 32x, SegaCD, Saturn, and even Dreamcast. 

Ima go play some Jaguar and forget all this nonsense 🙂  

[Justin]

27 minutes ago, RickR said:

Sega too though?  Look at the scathing reviews for 32x, SegaCD, Saturn, and even Dreamcast. 

Ima go play some Jaguar and forget all this nonsense 🙂  

Scathing reviews, yes. Venomous mockery at the level of Atari, no. That wasn't my experience at the time. 

[RickR]

I gotcha.  Undeserved mockery is the key. 

[Justin]

1 hour ago, RickR said:

I gotcha.  Undeserved mockery is the key. 

And the nastiness of it, the clickbaityness of it, and the amount of it. All game systems and platforms are open to criticism, particularly the disappointing ones. In my experience Atari receives its own level of trolling and mockery especially from people who don't really know much about Atari.

[RickR]

Interesting fact.  The Intellivision, Colecovision, and Atari 5200 all sold about the same...right around 3 million units.  To prove Justin's point, which one is deemed a "failure"?  Why is that? 

Some common reasons you hear:

• The controllers are bad.  But are they really?  Are they any better or worse than those for Intellivision or Colecovision?  Absolutely not.  They are all so similar.  5200 sticks are probably the most functional of the three.
• It didn't sell as well as the 2600.  So what?  Nothing else did either until much later. 
• Only 69 games were made.  Yes, the library was small.  But most likely because Warner Atari pulled the plug too soon on the 5200. 

The 5200 and Colecovision were the two systems that should have survived the crash.  But bad management decisions doomed both. 

 

 

Edited September 3, 2023 by RickR

[Justin]

26 minutes ago, RickR said:

Interesting fact.  The Intellivision, Colecovision, and Atari 5200 all sold about the same...right around 3 million units.  To prove Justin's point, which one is deemed a "failure"?  Why is that? 

Some common reasons you hear:

• The controllers are bad.  But are they really?  Are they any better or worse than those for Intellivision or Colecovision?  Absolutely not.  They are all so similar.  5200 sticks are probably the most functional of the three.
• It didn't sell as well as the 2600.  So what?  Nothing else did either until much later. 
• Only 69 games were made.  Yes, the library was small.  But most likely because Warner Atari pulled the plug too soon on the 5200. 

The 5200 and Colecovision were the two systems that should have survived the crash.  But bad management decisions doomed both. 

@RickR These are all excellent, excellent points that I could respond with paragraphs about. Totally agree! There's some strange Atari paradox where some people - some in the general public, some on YouTube, some gamers, some trolls - love to kick Atari when they're down. I don't know why things turned out that way, but my guess is it's not just one thing, it's a perfect storm of things, and it's like hitting your elbow at just the wrong spot.

[Jinroh]

I am glad I could try the Jaguar at the toy store. I found out about the Lynx in Boy's Life Magazíne.

Maybe to some credit for Atari, Intellivision, Coleco, NeoGeo AES, Phillips CD-I, etc. aren't hated on as much, is because the general public mind, most has no idea about them, so they are not worth it. 😂

At least if you talk about the Atari machine. People understand the company you are talking about, even if the topic is not favorable to Atari. The rest maybe sent to the dust bin of history except for what die hard fans they still have.

Similarly is when people crow about the Amiga over the ST like there is not even a contest, or do not know about the ST even existed. Another poor marketing on North America Atari. Amigas were given away as prizes often in Nickelodeon game shows. So you know people knew about those. 

Edited September 4, 2023 by Jinroh

[phoboz]

I can understand that people find it motivating to earn money on their favourite hobby (by making these videos), I just whish they were more informed about the topic.

The message that all of these so called retro video game influencers repeat about the Jaguar has been heavily inspired by a satiric episode that the angry video game nerd made a while ago. I can understand that having seen this episode before even knowing about the Jaguar, they may not be aware about how this have affected their judgement (and the intention of that episode was to be entertaining, not nessesarily accurate)

For me, who was a teen (buying new game consoles and playing games at that time), I can only speak based on my personal experience about how it was in my region back then.

To be honest, the Jaguar was quite hyped as the first 64-bit console at the time and most of me and my friends had the SNES, Amiga or Megadrive. A few of us had the oppurtinity to play Wolfenstein 3D on a PC (which was widely perceived to be a 32-bit machine). The Jaguar version was far superior in terms of graphics, so everyone were quite convinced about the Jaguar's power. So it was quite a step up from the 16-bit consoles, and most of us wanted one for some time before Sony came along.

Due to Sony's huge budget, aggressive marketing and it's ability to attract 3rd party developers, they basically blew everyting else out of the water (even Nintendo became uncool for a few years) So what happened after was something that none of the competitors could protect against, Nintendo just survived because of it's size, and SEGA's gradual decline as a console provider started here. Not even the fantastic Dreamcast could save them later. Not to talk about all the other forgotten consoles of that generation.

Edited September 4, 2023 by phoboz

[Atari 5200 Guy]

On 9/2/2023 at 11:19 PM, RickR said:

Interesting fact.  The Intellivision, Colecovision, and Atari 5200 all sold about the same...right around 3 million units.  To prove Justin's point, which one is deemed a "failure"?  Why is that? 

Some common reasons you hear:

• The controllers are bad.  But are they really?  Are they any better or worse than those for Intellivision or Colecovision?  Absolutely not.  They are all so similar.  5200 sticks are probably the most functional of the three.
• It didn't sell as well as the 2600.  So what?  Nothing else did either until much later. 
• Only 69 games were made.  Yes, the library was small.  But most likely because Warner Atari pulled the plug too soon on the 5200. 

The 5200 and Colecovision were the two systems that should have survived the crash.  But bad management decisions doomed both. 

 

 

You know...I had a ColecoVision for a short while when I started collecting video games.  Had a bunch of fun games with my favorite being Pepper II. Played the crap out of that game...as long as my controllers wanted to work.  I had so many issues with the joystick portion that I was constantly having to fix them as best as I could.  I had less trouble out of my 5200 controllers then.  I sold off the CV and kept my 5200 obviously.

There might be only 69 games but those games tell a story.  Unlike the 2600 the 5200 got games that were mostly arcade ports.  It got very few non arcade titles. I have accepted the fact that it wasn't a huge success like the 2600 was. But the games it got tell the story of what games were in the arcades at the time.  I have a copy of the unreleased Sinistar.  It, Jr. Pac-Man, Super Pac-Man, Millipede should have been released as a last hurrah. Even if system production ceased at least release this last batch of games.  

If you think about it, after the 2600, Atari had nothing but issues. In my opinion it seems the 2600 somewhat helped keep Atari afloat. It was produced until 1990s. That's a long time.  I really believe Atari under Jack did not understand the business they were in.  The video game industry is very much like the movie industry. One bad production spells disaster for a while and can take a company with it.

[Jinroh]

12 hours ago, Atari 5200 Guy said:

I really believe Atari under Jack did not understand the business they were in.  The video game industry is very much like the movie industry. One bad production spells disaster for a while and can take a company with it.

Exactly that. I heard 1000 times, Jack hated games, which for buying Atari was certainly not the best opinion. 😅I admire the hell out of him though for surviving Auschwitz, starting from Typewriters, and building a computing empire, even if that empire eventually crumbled. I really admire the drive to give the common man a powerful computer with the beautiful ST line at a fraction of the price of everyone else. From all accounts though he was a nice guy, but also disagreeable and bull headed if you didn't play ball his way.

Like you said one bad game can spoil the batch, or the reputation of the company. That goes with another problem. Atari would have guys like Shiraz who make amazing machines, but then....not follow up and support that hardware. Software sells machines, which I don't think they understood. The one caveat to that was the 520ST pack that came with a ton of software, but I think that was mostly just getting old budget stock out the door honestly. 😅

When they had the software, in the case of the Jaguar, they didn't push it the right way. At this point it's hindsight blah blah, but still I am thankful we have these beautiful machines. They are the one gift that Atari (from all 3 eras) has given us.

Edited September 6, 2023 by Jinroh

[Atari 5200 Guy]

I agree, Jack did give us nice machines.

[- Ω -]

On 9/2/2023 at 9:19 PM, RickR said:

Interesting fact.  The Intellivision, Colecovision, and Atari 5200 all sold about the same...right around 3 million units.  To prove Justin's point, which one is deemed a "failure"?  Why is that? 

Some common reasons you hear:

• The controllers are bad.  But are they really?  Are they any better or worse than those for Intellivision or Colecovision?  Absolutely not.  They are all so similar.  5200 sticks are probably the most functional of the three.
• It didn't sell as well as the 2600.  So what?  Nothing else did either until much later. 
• Only 69 games were made.  Yes, the library was small.  But most likely because Warner Atari pulled the plug too soon on the 5200. 

The 5200 and Colecovision were the two systems that should have survived the crash.  But bad management decisions doomed both. 

 

 

I will not argue with anyone who has issues with some controllers on different units.  Now that said,  I like my Atari 5200!  I like it even more with the UAV video mod plugged into a HDMI converter along with the RetroGameBoyz joystick and the AtariMax.

[alucardx]

I find that she often gets facts wrong and I don't think it is intentional but seems to be more that she is glossing over or missing details that someone more acquainted with the Jaguar might actually pickup on. I don't think I'd discredit her completely over it, personally.

[Justin]

8 minutes ago, alucardx said:

I find that she often gets facts wrong and I don't think it is intentional but seems to be more that she is glossing over or missing details that someone more acquainted with the Jaguar might actually pickup on. I don't think I'd discredit her completely over it, personally.

I totally agree, but I also don't think the Atari Jaguar should be discredited completely for clickbait views and YouTube clout, beyond the reputation the Jaguar has earned for itself.

[alucardx]

Just now, Justin said:

I totally agree, but I also don't think the Atari Jaguar should be discredited completely for clickbait views and YouTube clout, beyond the reputation the Jaguar has earned for itself.

I think that is a completely valid viewpoint. I'm not sure which I dislike more, the click bait or the million videos that show up of someone filming their television as they play a Jaguar game. Either way, I'd like some better stuff showing up.