Atari Jaguar CD
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Note: This page was copy pasted from the Crappy Games Wiki on Miraheze instead of imported due to the Qualitipedia wikis being deleted.
| Atari Jaguar CD | ||||||||||||
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 Thought the TurboGrafx-CD and Sega CD were bad enough? Look at what Atari did when they attempted the same thing.
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"That's some cool-lookin' design. It looks just like a toilet. Yeah, it's a f***ing toilet! What a perfect analogy."
— Angry Video Game Nerd
The Atari Jaguar CD was an add-on for the Jaguar. Released in 1995, the add-on attaches itself to the top of the Jaguar and has its own library of CD-based games. It also has a cartridge slot on top of it so gamers could play standard Jaguar cartridge games or use the battery-backed MemoryTrack cartridge for storing save data for the CD games.
Why You Should Flush It
- It was 1995 when this add-on was released, and the PlayStation and Sega Saturn were already released before the Jaguar CD, both of which had better hardware and even an integrated CD player, unlike the Jaguar console. The console itself also wasn't doing well regarding sales at the time, so there was little interest in the CD add-on.
- Ridiculous design: The Jaguar CD makes the Jaguar look like a toilet when inserted into its cartridge slot, especially when a cartridge is inserted into the Jaguar CD's cartridge slot (Even Wikipedia mentioned this). Unlike the Sega CD and TurboGrafx-CD, the add-on sits on top of the console instead of behind, under or next to it, supposedly because the Jaguar didn't have any other method of connectivity with the Jaguar CD other than inserting the add-on into its cartridge slot.
- The add-on was very poorly developed, giving it multiple hardware failures.
- It often had an imperfect connection with the Jaguar because it sits on top and the motor causes horizontal vibration, and with digital connections like a cartridge port, it's perfect or nothing. With the first-model Sega CD and Nintendo 64DD, vibrations from the motor turning were dampened by the weight of the console on top, while the second-model Sega CD avoided the problem entirely by having the vibrations not even act perpendicular to the connection.
- The CD drive's motor mechanism was defective.
- The laser that reads the CDs was also defective.
- When the lid is closed, it is often too tight and could mash the CD inside and keep it from spinning, resulting in the game stop playing.
- The problems that this add-on had were almost completely irreparable. James Rolfe's friend, Richard of Stupidfingers, who is well known for creating James' custom Nintoaster and other custom game consoles, was unable to fix the device.
- Only a small number of units were functional, but because these are rare and expensive, you could give up hundreds to maybe even thousands of dollars to find a working unit. James Rolfe spent $450 in total on two Jaguar CD units that didn't function. Luckily, someone sent him a working unit. Spoony (who listed off the above hardware faults) also had a difficult time getting one to work for his Highlander: The Last of the McLeods review and no sooner had he finished recording footage for the review that his system permanently died.
- Only 11 licensed games were ever released for the Jaguar CD during its lifespan, most of which were mediocre at best.
- The cartridge slot also didn't have a dust cover to protect it from dust just like the Jaguar console.
- Like the Sega CD, it had its own power supply so users needed two sockets to use, plus a third for the TV. Also, the AC adapter of the Jaguar CD ended with a big box like the console's, taking up space between other plugs on the outlet.
- The discs had no error-correcting features whatsoever, to increase their capacity to 790MB, even though games from this era were already struggling to fully use the 650MB capacity of standard CDs, and it made the system even more prone to malfunctions. There were no games released for the Jaguar CD that used the full capacity.
Redeeming Qualities
- When you boot up the console with this add-on (if even possible), you get an absolutely beautiful ambiance of moving colors.
- It came with a built-in interactive music visualizer called the VLM (Virtual Light Machine), developed by Jeff Minter. This was the first such visualizer included with a game console and it came with a variety of built-in effects that changed depending on the music. Later Minter would develop the visualizer for NUON DVD players (the VLM2) and Microsoft's Xbox 360. The Jaguar CD also came with two full pack-in games (Blue Lightning and Vid Grid), a demo for Myst and a music CD for Tempest 2000's soundtrack.
- Like the TurboGrafx-CD and Sega CD, you can use the Jaguar CD as an audio CD player to listen to your own music CDs.
Videos
Reception
 "What were they thinking?"
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The Atari Jaguar CD was a massive failure, it was discontinued in early 1996 only months after it launched. The add-on itself is incredibly rare with only 20,000 units known to exist and the average sale price on the internet is often more than $1000. Despite being a total failure, the Jaguar CD became popular with homebrew developers.
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- AVGN Shit Scale The Very High Category
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- Add-Ons
- Consoles
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- Atari consoles
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- Featured on TV Tropes' So Bad, It's Horrible
- Games reviewed by The Spoony One
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