Obscusion B-Side: Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog: 1997 to 2001

Previously on Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog:

"When I first started Prowling the Official Atari Jaguar Catalog a little over three years ago I honestly wasn't 100% sure how long it'd take for me to finish it, or even if I would actually finish it. However, we're now down to the final stretch... and while all prior parts of this series required multiple entries to cover a single calendar year, our next & final part will kind of feel like a whirlwind."

In 2021 RetroHQ released the Jaguar GameDrive, a microSD card-driven flash cart that allowed one to play just about any game ever released for Atari Corporation's final console, including Jaguar CD games without needing the actual accessory (though compatibility still isn't quite 100% there, last I checked), opening up the console's catalog to anyone who owned an actual Jaguar console but didn't want to spend the exorbitant prices for many of its more cherished & rare titles. Since I happen to own a "Jag" I decided that the GameDrive would be perfect for me, turning my console into essentially an "All-in-One" device... and that put a thought into my head. Inspired by much more talented people than me, namely the likes of Jeremy Parish's "Works Series" & PandaMonium's "PandaMonium Reviews Every U.S. Saturn Game" (which both tackle console catalogs in chronological order of release), I decided to take a look at the Atari Jaguar's own catalog release history; at only 50 officially licensed games it felt reasonably doable. Instead of tackling it one release at a time in immense depth, like Parish or Panda, I decided to bundle them together in batches of four or five (& later a couple of trios, due to later changes in release order being unearthed), which I felt was fair enough. Starting with my look at the original test launch line-up in late 1993 on June 6, 2021 I have since spent the past 3.5 years occasionally returning to this series, and while I initially planned it out as an 11-part series, some later revelations about a more accurate release schedule made me change it into a 12-part series (& it'll technically be 13, since there'll be a final thoughts piece after this), but I have finally made it to the end.

Atari Corporation may be long dead (at least, in the form it was when it first launched the console), but the Atari Jaguar itself has continued to live on to this very day... so let's prowl the catalog one last time & see how things fared between the years 1997 & 2001.

When we last left off, JT Storage (the steward of Atari Corporation's lifeless husk, at this point) made a deal with liquidator TigerSoftware on December 26, 1996 in order to just sell off & get rid of the remaining Jaguar stock that was left over, i.e. ~100,000 unsold consoles & a variety of unsold games & standalone controllers. Well, come the next issue of TigerDirect's catalog in January 1997 people could mail order a special Atari Jaguar bundle that contained the console, one standard controller (i.e. the OG model with only three face buttons & the keypad), and the trio of Cybermorph, Checkered Flag, & Kasumi Ninja (what a roster...), all for just $59.99, "a $300 value"! Meanwhile, an additional standard controller was available for $19.99, while four different three-game bundles were available for $29.99 each. Said packs were Iron Soldier, FlipOut!, & Tempest 2000 (a pretty damn good deal), White Men Can't Jump, Doom, & Attack of the Mutant Penguins (a bizarre combination, for sure), Defender 2000, Super Burnout, & Missile Command 3D (a solid bundle, at least), & FlipOut!, I-War, & Supercross 3D (easily the worst bundle). Even then, though, the tradition of "stretching the truth" when it came to the Jag was maintained, as Tiger labeled it "The World Most Advanced 3-D Game System!", despite the Nintendo 64 already being on the market by this point, at least in Japan & North America. From what I can tell there's next to no real info as to how successful TigerSoftware was at selling the Jag via mail order catalog, but I will admit that being able to buy the console with the first & third bundles (i.e. nine games) for around $120 honestly wouldn't have been a bad deal; toss in the second bundle (if only for Doom) to make it $150 & it'd still be a solid enough deal.