The World's First 64-Bit Game Console

The Jaguar was the product of a long development cycle that began in 1990 with the Panther. The Panther was designed by the English design team known as Flare. It was to be the console followup to the Lynx and was based on the Motorola 68000 (the same CPU as the Atari ST and Sega Genesis). But the machine, plagued with hardware problems, never made it to market. By the time the problems could be ironed out, it was clear that a more powerful machine would be needed to compete in the cutthroat video game market

In England, Flare II was put together to design what would become the Jaguar, or Panther II. It too was based on the 68000 processor, but rather than using it as its principal CPU, the Jaguar was powered by a new custom designed RISC processor and 5 powerful coprocessors, each with their own specific functions. Atari UK's Richard Miller licensed the design from Flare II, brought development in-house at Atari, and was responsible for the Jaguar's development until his departure from the company in 1994.

Boasting horsepower of 55 MIP's, it's up to 100 times faster than 16-bit platforms like the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. The Jaguar's 64-bit bus transfers 106.4 Mbytes per second between its five processors. Jaguar's super-high-speed rendering and 16.8 million screen colors make truly photorealistic 3d graphics possible. And Jaguar breaks the sound barrier with CD-Quality 16-bit stereo audio enhanced by digital signal processing for the most intricate, lifelike soundtracks in the history of video games.