3DO 3DO or Jaguar

[HyperTurboFox]

Which consoles is worse and which one have the worst library of games & hardware?

3DO or Jaguar

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

I don't have much experience with either, but I think the Jaguar has a more interesting line-up, with several games that you can't play anywhere else, whilst the bulk of the 3DO library is composed of titles that were released for multiple platforms.

 

[Stingy Perry Stingy Perry]

To me it’s the Jaguar it could’ve been a contender if Atari didn’t botched it. I mean it’s a 64bit console more powerful than the 3D0, PS1 or Saturn but they couldn’t deliver.

 

[AlectoFace]

The 3DO was the first place I saw or played Star Control 2, so it will always be pretty rad in my book. My associations with the Jaguar's library are much more negative (Bubsy, mostly), but I understand that my point of view is super biased.

 

[Somnia]

Jaguar is worse by a mile. I know that there are certain people who have an affinity for the system and I appreciate that, but it had less worthwhile exclusives in its prime than I have fingers. While it is true that the 3DO lost many of its best exclusives/superior ports to later consoles, for its time it had a stellar library. I also just don't feel it is entirely fair to compare the libraries based on ports that came out after the systems had bitten the dust. I prefer to compare the systems as they were in their heyday.

I've also been fascinated with just how unique and lovely its Japanese library is in particular. I had no idea until watching a video on 3DO RPGs last year that it even had a Japanese scene of any kind, but whenever I do peak around for something new to emulate I find some neat stuff!

Iron Soldier, Tempest 2000 and AvP are great games, but they'll never top what the 3DO brought to the table on the whole. The 3DO is shockingly consistent and diverse with just as many if not more standout titles to boot

 

[bjork]

The 3DO has some pretty interesting stuff in addition to the main games people would mention when talking about it (Star Control, Road Rash, SSFII, etc), including a bunch of weird multimedia like the 20th Century Almanac, 3D Atlas, a handful of Vivid adult things, and a thing where Tom Kite teaches you how to be better at golf. It also has... maybe six (?) golf games, which is a plus for me, especially since most of them are T&E Soft and I love how clunky they are. It also has that import wrestling game with spoofs of real guys like Andy Savage, Tigle Mask, and Dr. Kill.
Not discounting the merits of the Jaguar at all, because some of that stuff looked pretty hot at launch, but if I can only play one, I'll go 3DO just for how weird the library is.

 

[sandogma]

My father bought me a Jaguar for Christmas because he was a huge Atari fan. I got hyped up into the "64-bit!" claims, especially when I played games like Iron Soldier and AvP. But after that year the well had already dried up. The other games I owned I barely played (Trevor McFurs Crescent Galaxy, Dino Dudes and Cybermorph).

The following year I got Rayman, which I did love, and then after that was Kasumi Ninja which just made me want to play Mortal Kombat and the last game I got was Fight for Life. I thought it was going to be the big hit that would show everyone the Jaguar was indeed a powerful system. But after playing that game and seeing how slow it ran and how sluggish it felt, I finally came to terms that the system just wasn't as powerful as it claimed to be. But I never had the heart to tell my dad :(

While I never played on a 3DO, I did see that it had a lot more games than the Jaguar. I remember reading about the game Return Fire and thought it looked like the next evolution of the classic Desert/Jungle Strike games that I loved on the Genesis. I also remember reading that the 3DO had a Jurassic Park game, which was my all time favorite movie as a kid and I was very envious that it was on that system lol

Sidenote, I have a great memory of my dad taking me to a "Jag Fest" at an Atari computer store and seeing multiple Jaguars networked together via the Jaguar peripheral called the "cat box". There was a game called Battlesphere that everyone was playing on these networked Jaguars. The game consisted of a bunch of ships flying around in space and shooting each other in a free for all. The ship models were all 3D, though they were fairly simple (think Star Fox), however they all looked distinct and even had their own laser effects and cockpit HUDs. It was a really fun time and I remember being excited to own a copy once it became available. But the damn thing never got released until like 10 years later lol

 

[SkunkyBeaumont]

Any multiplatform game that appeared on the 3do usually did so with he definitive version of that game, Road Rash, all those FMV type games (Some of which are awesome), and a lot of early FPS (Like PO'ed) appear on it. Jaguar has a lot great 1st party titles, Alien Vs. Predator only appears on that system, and the controllers are an evolution of what Mattel and Coleco did with their respective Visions. I mean, hindsight is 20/20, and both systems have some solid games that are worth a look.

 

[Zerpina]

I Actully had a Atari Jaguar, when they where new, Had Cybermorph, AVP, Kasumi Ninja, And one other game's i can't recall for the life of me.

The games where not much better than any other game at the time, Tho Kasumi ninja had some funny Fatality's. The Controller... Sucked all the Ass tho. i mean... they could have just put a pair of shoulder Buttons on it... but NOOOO... Put more or less the Equivalent of a Full push-button Phone on the front of the Controller...
i traded it half a year/Year later for a CD-i... and well that thing was another POS i had XD

Was a great CD player tho, on par with the PS1's CD Player

 

[TheREALBLUEdragon]

To me it’s the Jaguar it could’ve been a contender if Atari didn’t botched it. I mean it’s a 64bit console more powerful than the 3D0, PS1 or Saturn but they couldn’t deliver.

There’s a long conversation to be had about that but this is the short version. The Jaguar was actually 32bit. The claim that it was 64bit was all marketing bull. The hardware is incapable of executing any 64bit code.

 

[Zerpina]

@TheREALBLUEdragon
Technically it had two custom 32-bit coprocessors named Tom and Jerry
So it Technically was a 64 bit machine, tho you are 100% correct

 

[SkunkyBeaumont]

@TheREALBLUEdragon
Technically it had two custom 32-bit coprocessors named Tom and Jerry
So it Technically was a 64 bit machine, tho you are 100% correct

Post automatically merged: Jan 4, 2025

 

[Somnia]

i traded it half a year/Year later for a CD-i... and well that thing was another POS i had XD

Was a great CD player tho, on par with the PS1's CD Player

Hot damn, going from the Jaguar to the CD-i is wild. Did it not have any kind of infamous bad reputation by the mid 90s or did you get it because you wanted a CD player and this one happened to play games?

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

There’s a long conversation to be had about that but this is the short version. The Jaguar was actually 32bit. The claim that it was 64bit was all marketing bull. The hardware is incapable of executing any 64bit code.

View attachment 8404

True.

However, I appreciate how Atari took a look at the direction gaming was heading and decided to capitalize hard on it.

You nerds want a high bit number on your console? Here's 64 of the things!

 

[Zerpina]

Hot damn, going from the Jaguar to the CD-i is wild. Did it not have any kind of infamous bad reputation by the mid 90s or did you get it because you wanted a CD player and this one happened to play games?

Nah at that point, it didn't
have the Stink of the Horrible Zelda and Link games yet.
it had the VCD <think that was it> add on for movies disc's if i recall, and that crappy joystick controller.
but yeah it was a fairly ok Early CD-r player and music player. Shit-Tier for a game system.
And i traded to, yeah kinda wanted it for burnt CD-rs and i was kinda Broke at the time

 

[SkunkyBeaumont]

 

[Xdqwerty Xdqwerty]

3DO doesnt have Rayman, Jaguar does...
I think the winner is clear

 

[Somnia]

3DO doesnt have Rayman, Jaguar does...
I think the winner is clear

Ah but the 3DO has Gex, and the Jaguar doesn't! Also Another World (I think it got homebrewed onto Jaguar eventually but idk for sure).

(Rayman is definitely the one I prefer of the two though)

 

[BassForever]

3DO has more games I'd want to go back and play in 2025 in a vacuum. Even if many of them can be played elsewhere, the 3do version is often the best console version.

Jaguar has more unique exclusives you can't play anywhere else, however a lot of those exclusives are mid games like Cybermorph and Kasumi Ninja.

 

[newageretrohippie]

I think the reason a lot of jaguar games were underwhelming is that developers didnt have much incentive to learn the intricacies of programing the two custom chips and using them alongside the 68000 and whatever else was in there.

My understanding is that many jaguar games ended up running mostly on the 68000 because everybody knew how to program that (at the time).

really they should have tried licensing the jaguar out to arcade developers as a poor man's neo geo. that would have been a way better angle at the time, and a few good arcade games with perfect home versions would have helped devs understand the hardware and would have been very attractive to consumers at the jaguar's price point.

i really wanted a Jaguar at first, but i just couldnt justify a 250 dollar Rayman and AvP player (and Tempest 2000, of course). i just bought more snes games with all that money i didnt spend on a jaguar.

 

[AnonymousCookieMonster]

Technically it had two custom 32-bit coprocessors named Tom and Jerry
So it Technically was a 64 bit machine, tho you are 100% correct

Under that logic, the Genesis/Megadrive was a 24bit machine...

 

[newageretrohippie]

Under that logic, the Genesis/Megadrive was a 24bit machine...

And the TurboGrafx was a 16 bit machine

::whistles::

 

[IyoTheHelpfulWolf]

Under that logic, the Genesis/Megadrive was a 24bit machine...

Made by a 2-bit company without 1-bit of sense because they were two busy arguing like stereotypical Twitter users to follow up their success because they get 0-bit(ches)

 

[newageretrohippie]

Made by a 2-bit company without 1-bit of sense because they were two busy arguing like stereotypical Twitter users to follow up their success because they get 0-bit(ches)

Dang, sick burn

 

[fishboneKiller]

the 3do has D making it the better console . but the jag has the best version of rayman so i cant decide