Atari Jaguar emulators

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Revision as of 16:43, 21 April 2018 by Jpx (talk | contribs) (Comparison update)
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The Atari Jaguar and controller

The Atari Jaguar (AJ) was a console produced by Atari in 1993. Despite the intense marketing efforts by Atari, the Jaguar is, in fact, a 32-bit console rather than 64-bit, as a whole; only one part of its two CPUs were 64-bit. The console would prove to be the final home console release for Atari, before releasing plug-and-play versions of their older games. There was also a CD addon called the Atari Jaguar CD (AJ-CD).

Emulators

Name Operating System(s) Latest version AJ-CD Libretro Core Active Recommended
PC
Phoenix Emu Project Windows, Linux, macOS 2.8.JAG
Virtual Jaguar Windows, Linux, macOS 2.1.3
Unofficial builds
Git
(Git)
MAME Multi-platform 0.264 ?
BlastEm Windows, Linux, macOS 0.5.1
Project Tempest Windows 0.95
Mobile
MAME Multi-platform[N 1] 0.264 ?
IrataJaguar Android 1.0.7
  1. Only available on mobile as a libretro core.

Comparison

Phoenix
A project from one of the long time contributors of the FreeDO emulator. It's closed source but more compatible than Virtual Jaguar. About 95% of Jaguar titles are compatible (full list available on website). No support for CD games yet.
Virtual Jaguar
An open-source emulator based on the original by the same name. It has excellent accuracy and performance but behind Phoenix. Use the link given as "git" on this page and choose the most current version from there.
MAME
Preliminary support. Some games boot but the emulation is far from perfect.
Project Tempest
Was the first ever working Atari Jaguar emulator. It emulates some games, but most have issues. As its name suggests it was primarily made for Tempest 2000, with other games as secondary goals. Project Tempest is the only(?) Jaguar emulator that supports Jaguar CD games, but only two are compatible; Primal Rage and Baldies (the latter has sound distortion though). It has not been updated since 2004.
IrataJaugar
The Phoenix emulator is released as separate emulators for Android, this is the Jaguar version. Identical compatibility to PC version according to the author. Requires fast 64-bit CPU 2GHz+ or better for full speed.

Resources