The Atari Jaguar didn’t stand a chance when it was released at the end of 1993. Coupled with hardware idiosyncrasies that made it difficult to program for and poor pricing and marketing from Atari, the Jaguar was already on the back foot. Once the onslaught of new consoles arrived from video gaming juggernauts Sega with their 32-bit Saturn and the new player in the industry, Sony with their PlayStation, the Jag’s fate was sealed.
But Atari’s black cat now enjoys a huge fanbase, with a shedload of homebrew hitting the market at a frenetic pace, a true testament to what the machine could have been back then if things didn’t turn pear shape. Now imagine if Atari had integrated the Jag console with the CD unit 24 years ago and then marketed it properly (Ed: JagDuo anyone?), the fifth generation console story may had been different. To gain an understanding of what this all-in-one Jaguar plus CD unit would have been like, German hardware modder 10p6 has created the Atari PlayOne prototype – a Jaguar and CD combo unit that we reckon would’ve given the Saturn and PlayStation a run for their money.
Atari Jaguar + Jaguar CD VS The All-In-One PlayOne
Oo’er, check out that rear!
The Atari PlayOne not only looks sexy as hell, but is crammed with cool stuff under the bonnet, like a proper integrated power supply (replacing the 2 separate power sources), a host of outputs and beefed up processing at an eye-watering (overclocked) 32MHz, compared to the stock 26MHz – which would have made it compete quite easily with the Saturn and PlayStation.
Before you get excited, the Atari PlayOne hasn’t seen the light of day, yet. If 10p6 ever decides to do a production run of the Atari PlayOne or the latter Atari PlayOne V2.0, we would be right at the front of the queue!
source: 10p6
