Atari Jaguar emulators

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Revision as of 16:58, 28 January 2023 by Ahayri (talk | contribs) (Emulators: https://buildbot.libretro.com/nightly/apple/ios/latest/)
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Atari Jaguar
Atari-Jaguar-Console-Set.png
Developer Atari
Type Home video game console
Generation Fifth generation
Release date 1993
Discontinued 1996
Predecessor Atari XEGS
Emulated

The Atari Jaguar (AJ) was a fifth generation home video game console produced by Atari on November 23, 1993 and sold for $249.99. It had a Motorola 68000 CPU and 2 custom RISC CPUs. It has 2MB of RAM. 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 system's convoluted architecture didn't help matters either, which led most developers to just use the 68000 for gameplay logic. 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 Platform(s) Latest version AJ-CD AJ-VR libretro Retro
Achievements
FLOSS Active Recommended
PC / x86
BigPEmu   1.04 [N 1] (WIP)
Virtual Jaguar       nightly (libretro)
2.1.2
Unofficial builds
* ~ [N 2] ~
Phoenix       2.8.JAG
MAME         0.264
Project Tempest   0.95 ~
Tempest 2000 Emulator/T2K   0.06 ~ [N 3]
Mobile / ARM
Virtual Jaguar     libretro core
1.01git
~[N 2]
IrataJaguar   1.0.7 ~
Virtual Jaguar X2   0.1a ~
Virtual Jaguar EX   1.0 ~
MAME         [N 4] 0.264
Console
pJag (Virtual Jaguar port)   0.1
  1. Exclusive to patreon build (v1.05) at the moment.
  2. 2.0 2.1 Libretro core only.
  3. Works perfectly for Tempest 2000 and the Jaguar CD VLM, but does not support other games.
  4. Only available as a libretro core.

Comparisons

BigPEmu (compatibility)
The newest and most compatible Atari Jaguar emulator, with 100% compatibility. Jaguar CD supported and VR support is also in the works.
Virtual Jaguar (compatibility)
An open-source emulator based on the original by the same name. It has excellent accuracy and performance. Use the link given as "nightly" on this page and choose the most current version from there.
Phoenix (compatibility)
About 95% of Jaguar titles are compatible. No support for AJ-CD/AJ-VR games. The PC version of the emulator is only available in Russian, but an English patch is available.
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 first and 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.
IrataJaguar
The Phoenix emulation project 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