The Atari Jaguar Press Release (Aug.21,1993)










From: Atari SIG (xx004@cleveland.Freenet.Edu)

Date: 02/19/94-09:04:59 PM Z









From: xx004@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Atari SIG)
Subject: The Atari Jaguar Press Release (Aug.21,1993)
Date: Sat Feb 19 21:04:59 1994


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 :: Jaguar Special Edition   ATARI EXPLORER ONLINE       21 August 1993  ::
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 |||   The Atari Jaguar Press Release
 |||   Courtesy: Atari Corp.
/ | \  ----------------------------------------------------------------
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"In creating our 3DO technology, we aimed for a really big jump in
colors and animation performance.

"You can't establish a standard if another manufacturer has a
consumer device that's going to be better than yours next year. You
have to provide a performance level that puts the stake way out
there.... Then people don't bother to challenge it."

                                                    Trip Hawkins
                                                    President & CEO
                                                    3DO


                            THE ATARI JAGUAR

Sunnyvale, CA - August 18, 1993 - Atari Corporation is aggressively
taking command of the consumer electronics market with the
introduction of the Atari Jaguar this Fall. "We believe that we have
taken a more substantial jump than 3DO has in bringing a better and
more affordable entertainment experience to the consumer market," said
Sam Tramiel, president of Atari.

While the spotlight has been shining brightly on the latest multimedia
craze, Atari Corporation has emerged with the ultimate interactive
home entertainment system: The 64-bit Atari Jaguar. At around $200,
the 64-bit Jaguar outperforms the $700 32-bit 3DO system by a factor
of 2.

Consumers will see the difference in the Jaguar's vivid screen
imagery, most notably featuring over 16 million colors (16,777,216 to
be exact) in 32-bit true color graphics. The Jaguar produces 3D
Polygons for manipulation in a 3D world in real time. Animation
capabilities are in excess of 850 million pixels per second, creating
superior special effects and real time texture mapping. Using 55 MIPS,
speed and motion are unequaled with no constraints as to how fast or
restricted screen objects can move.

"The imagery is something that needs to be seen to be believed," said
Sam Tramiel, president of Atari. "Imagery is one thing, but wait until
you see how you can interact with these images."

The Jaguar has full three-dimensional capabilities, with three-
dimensional models that can rotate, be wildly distorted and even be
texture mapped. Lighting sources can be defined so that objects are
illuminated appropriately and at differing intensities, depending on
the light intensity and its distance. With the full 16 megabits of
system RAM available for game usage i.e., no needless operating system
overhead, speed will be superior to other consumer entertainment
experiences.

The Jaguar's sound system is based on Atari's proprietary, high speed
Digital Signal Processor, with 16-bit stereo CD quality sound output.
This allows for extremely realistic sounds, including human voices,
cars racing, jets soaring, worlds colliding, and more. The Jaguar's
synthesizer is used to create limitless boundaries in special effect
sounds and the dramatic use of music. Fidelity is far beyond coin
operated quality sound.

As a true multimedia platform, future applications for the Jaguar's
32-bit expansion port include connections into cable and telephone
networks; a digital signal processor port for modem use and connection
to digital audio peripherals such as DAT players. The Jaguar CD
peripheral is a most anticipated feature, with a fast dual speed drive
that can output data continuously at a rate of 350K bytes per second,
or run at normal audio rates of 175K per second. As well as being the
repository for almost 700 megabytes of video game storage, the Jaguar
CD Module is also being designed to interface with audio CD, Karaoke
CD, CD+Graphics and optional Kodak Photo CD. Atari also plans to
release an MPEG 2 cartridge which will allow users to play full length
motion pictures from CD.

With the Jaguar CD-ROM drive comes the ability to deliver full-screen,
full-color, full-motion video. Jaguar uses a video decompression
system licensed from SuperMac Technologies called CinePak?. The system
permits over sixty minutes of video to be stored on a single compact
disk (sic) and allows a game to use these video sequences at 30 frames
a second. The result of this combination of technologies is to provide
movie quality pictures that may be overlaid on the screen with
computer generated graphics if the game demands it.

Also included with the game is a high performance, ergonomically
designed, Controller with Joypad, three fire buttons, Pause, Option,
and a 12 key keypad with game specific overlays.

IBM Corporation's Charlotte, North Carolina, facility will manufacture
the Jaguar. They will be responsible for component sourcing,
assembling, quality testing, packaging, and distribution of the
Jaguar, which will be made in the United States. This fall, the Jaguar
will be introduced into the New York and San Francisco markets
followed by a national roll-out next year.

"As an American company we are in support of utilizing domestic
manufacturing," said Tramiel. "We are proud that the Jaguar is made in
the U.S.A."









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