The Panther, and why it never came out of the jungle

[guyjin]

I remember back in the day, reading a lot about an alleged new console from Atari called the 'panther'. it was supposed to beat the pants off of everything ever, including the SNES, and was supposed to come out around the same time. but then it got delayed, and delayed again, and then they started talking about the Jaguar, and the panther was quickly forgotten. (I remember friends of mine telling me I made the story up. read a gaming mag, ya jerks!)

Nowadays the internet sez 'the Panther was abandoned because the Jaguar project was moving faster'.
I don't think that was the case, and I think I know the real reason. However, this is all speculation depending on the accuracy of specs that do not match up exactly from place to place.

let's look at the alleged specs of the Panther:

Processor: Moto 68000 @ 16mhz

'32 bit' grfx proc. running at 32mhz

'29 bit' DSP

ram: 32k "fast static";

sound: 25 'voices' (wiki claims 32)

res: 320X200

colors: 7,860 from 262,144 possible (wiki sez 8,192/262,144)

(32 colors per line)

25 'voices' (wiki claims 32 'sound channels')

2000 sprites on screen at a time (wiki claims '65,535 sprites of any size simultaneously'); either may be unrealistic due to 'tearing'

(sources: http://ultimateconsoledatabase.com/unreleased/atari_panther.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Panther; I'll let you decide which is more trustworthy)

Now let's look at some real hardware stats:

SNK Neo Geo

Processor: Motorola 68000 running at 12 MHz

Co-Processor: Zilog Z80 running at 4 MHz. This is also used as an audio controller.

Sound chip: Yamaha YM2610 15 Sound Channels. 7 Digital, 4 FM synthesis, 3 PSG, and 1 Noise Channel.

Memory:

Main Memory (used directly by 68K): 64 KB

Main Video memory : 74 KB

Video Memory: 64 KB (redundant?)

Palette Memory : 8 KB

Fast Video RAM : 2 KB

Sound Memory (used directly by Z80): 2 KB

Display:

Display resolution: 320x224

Color Palette: 65,536

Maximum Colors On-Screen: 4,096

Maximum Sprites On-Screen: 380

Minimum Sprite Size: 1x2

Maximum Sprite Size: 16x512

Maximum Sprites per scanline: 96

Sound:

Sound CPU: Z80 at 4 MHz

Sound hardware: YM2610 at 8 MHz, stereo sounds up to 56 kHz

4 channels FM (4 operators + LFO), 3 PSG, 1 noise

Daring to compare:

main CPU is 4mhz faster on panther
[advantage:panther]
secondary CPU: 4mhz Z80 on neo, 32mhz 'gfx processor' & DSP on panther
[advantage:panther]
ram: 148k on Neo, 32k on panther (less than 1/4th)
[advantage:neo geo]
colors possible: 65,000 neo vs. 262,000 panther
[advantage:panther]
colors on screen: 4,096 neo vs 7,860(maybe 8,192) panther
[advantage:panther]
sprites on screen: 380 Neo vs 2000(maybe 65,535) panther
[advantage:panther]
resolution: 320X224 neo, 320X200 panther
[advantage:neo geo]
sound: 25 'voices' for panther, 3 psg, 4 fm, 7 digital, 1 noise neo (15 'voices?')
[advantage:panther, i think]
Cartridge size: (unknown for panther. I'll be 'generous' and give this category to the Neo Geo.  )

So the Panther has the Neo Geo beat in 6 out of 9 categories, and is close in a 7th.

I don't know what RAM prices were like in 1991, but unless that was the primary factor in the cost of the Neo Geo, the Panther would have been comparable in price to the SNK machine.

So the real reason, IMHO, that the Panther was canceled was the ridiculous cost of the hardware. Atari would have had to take massive losses on the hardware to compete with the SNES and Genny; and they wouldn't have been able to compete on the Neo Geo's level, due to the fact that Panther hardware wasn't used in the arcades, and the Atari name was far more tarnished than SNKs at this time.

Hindsight being 20/20, I'd have preferred to see Atari go out on an ambitious, overpowered machine like the Panther, than the kludgy, cheapass Jaguar.

[rainbow_bright]

I'm not a tech guy, but a lot of people say the reason for the Jag having poor software was because it was really difficult to program for. There were hundreds of companies who signed up to develop for it though, I think it all went belly up, when they saw what they had to work with.

Heres some trivia, apprently (according to someone who worked on Iron soldier *he mentioned this on the Atari age forums) the Jag was going to be a high spec 2d machine, until Atari found out what Sega and Sony were up2.

I would have liked to see a high powered 2d machine from Atari, if only they decided to make the Jaguar as a true alternative to the playstation and saturn.

[guyjin]

I'm not a tech guy, but a lot of people say the reason for the Jag having poor software was because it was really difficult to program for. There were hundreds of companies who signed up to develop for it though, I think it all went belly up, when they saw what they had to work with.

yeah, the only 'dev kits' availiable were for the (then aging) Atari ST computers, and even those weren't much.

[Necromancer]

I don't know what RAM prices were like in 1991, but unless that was the primary factor in the cost of the Neo Geo, the Panther would have been comparable in price to the SNK machine.

So the real reason, IMHO, that the Panther was canceled was the ridiculous cost of the hardware. Atari would have had to take massive losses on the hardware to compete with the SNES and Genny;

I don't think the Panther would've been terribly expensive, at least not based on the cost of Teh Real Deal.  SNK charged that much simply because they could, not because the hardware was really that expensive to build.  As proof, look at the Genesis.  It uses similar bits (though cheaper, less powerful bits), yet its release price was one third the cost of the NeoGeo released nearly three years later.  So, unless Sega was taking a huge bath on the Gennys, SNK had to be making a nice profit off of their machines.

Hindsight being 20/20, I'd have preferred to see Atari go out on an ambitious, overpowered machine like the Panther, than the kludgy, cheapass Jaguar.

The Jag was ambitious and overpowered.  The only console with more raw horsepower out at the time was the 3D0, which was nearly three times as expensive.  Few (zero?) games ever harnessed that power, but that doesn't make the hardware any less ambitious.

I'm not a tech guy, but a lot of people say the reason for the Jag having poor software was because it was really difficult to program for. There were hundreds of companies who signed up to develop for it though, I think it all went belly up, when they saw what they had to work with.

Indeed; supposedly this is why so many Jag games are unimpressive.  Developers couldn't figure out the hardware, so they went with what they knew and made the 68000 do all the work, letting Tom and Jerry sit and twiddle their thumbs.

[MissaFX]

The Jag was ambitious and overpowered.  The only console with more raw horsepower out at the time was the 3D0, which was nearly three times as expensive.  Few (zero?) games ever harnessed that power, but that doesn't make the hardware any less ambitious.

Off the top of my head one title does.  It's possible there might be a handfull that use all of the 3DOs power.  It's kinda sad that the occasional game on the 3DO looks better than it does on the PS1 because if people really had the time to learn how to master all the power of the 3DO, it would have had a much better time standing up against the PS1, even if many of the games were PC ports.

The Jaguar I also remember being sorely under used.  The cart games were imo a joke.  (Ok Tempest, you know I don't mean you)  I cannot remember which shooters I was going to play with a friend one day, but I was excited to see the Jaguar versions...until I saw the Jaguar versions   I am honestly sure the PC-E could have done just as well and we all know that console is hardly close to the "64 bit, do-the-math-sukkas" Jaguar in terms of raw power.

[Lord Thag]

Yeah, the Jaguar is damn near as capable as a PS one. It suffered from the exact same problem the PS3 is having: It had about eight different processors that could be slaved to do numerous things. The dev kit was terrible, and most companies had no idea what to do with this revolutionary design, so they programmed the system to use only the one chip they were familiar with, which was the same one the Genesis used, which is why most of the games look right about Genesis level.

When programmed correctly, however, the system actually handled polygons as well as the PS one, though it was less effective with textures. Check out 'Battlesphere' on youtube to see what I mean. Imagine comparing that to the genesis back in the day, and you'll see what the sucker COULD have done had anyone bothered to program it correctly.

What I heard was that the Panther got dropped in favor of the Jag because of this design. They hurriedly slapped together a dev kit and threw it out the door in typical shoddy Atari fashion, and torpedoed the sucker before it hot the shelves. If the dev kit had been better, the Jaguar would have ruled.

As it is, we got Fight for Life and Club drive 

[guyjin]

update:

if this is to be belived:
http://www.jcmit.com/memoryprice.htm
a megabyte of memory between 1990 and 1991 cost anywhere from $59 to $44.50.
using the high estimate, the ram in a Neo Geo may have cost about $8.50; the ram in a panther would have cost less than $2.25.

so the price of the Neo Geo is coming from elsewhere. Would that apply to the panther? who knows.

[rainbow_bright]

guyjin, are you a jag fan?

[guyjin]

most definitely not.

[Tatsujin]

teh Panther was much feared of the PC Engine's proper arcade ports!

[WoodyXP]

Looks like the Panther didn't make it out of the jungle because it was a decent system.  Atari couldn't handle that.

[rainbow_bright]

most definitely not.

  That clears it up then!

[Turbo D]

I am 

[Tatsujin]

You are

[Michael Helgeson]

Sucks,but no matter the specs Atari would have blundered it due to the Tramiel family. Jag woulda did alot better if Atari would have tried to get better 3rd party support. They were too busy suing folks though to care about much else it always seemed like.