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Atari Jaguar
The Atari Jaguar is a console developed by Atari. It was released in 1993.
It featured 64-bit graphical accelerators, making it technically the only console of its competitors (the Saturn and the PlayStation) as it was proudly advertised as. However, this was just the graphical accelerators, the GPU itself was 32-bit and the CPU was only 16-bit, leading to some controversy. The console itself was capable of 3D polygonal graphics, but the quality of the titles that utilized them were more comparable to the SNES's SuperFX chip than the Saturn's and PlayStation's graphical fidelity.
The Jaguar was a commercial failure, selling less 150,000 units than and having only 50 cartridge games in its library. This would mark Atari's last major home console release, relegating themselves to producing plug and play TV games.
On May 14, 1999, Hasbro Interactive announced that it had released all patents to the Jaguar, declaring it an open platform, opening it up for homebrew developers to make their own software for it.
Emulation for the Jaguar is not that mature yet, there will be many instances of incompatible games.
The Atari Jaguar also received a CD add-on later in its life, with a total of twelve official games released using it. Currently, no emulators on Batocera support running Jaguar CD-ROMs.
This system scrapes metadata for the “jaguar” group and loads the atarijaguar set from the currently selected theme, if available.
Quick reference
- Emulator: RetroArch
- Core: libretro: virtualjaguar
- Folder:
/userdata/roms/jaguar - Accepted ROM formats:
.j64,.jag,.zip,.7z
BIOS
No Atari Jaguar emulator in Batocera needs a BIOS file to run.
ROMs
Place your Atari Jaguar ROMs in /userdata/roms/jaguar.
Saves
When performing an in-game save, the Virtual Jaguar core creates both a Cartridge EEPROM save file and a CD-ROM EEPROM save file, regardless of the game type.
Emulators
RetroArch
RetroArch (formerly SSNES), is a ubiquitous frontend that can run multiple “cores”, which are essentially the emulators themselves. The most common cores use the libretro API, so that's why cores run in RetroArch in Batocera are referred to as “libretro: (core name)”. RetroArch aims to unify the feature set of all libretro cores and offer a universal, familiar interface independent of platform.
RetroArch configuration
RetroArch offers a Quick Menu accessed by pressing [HOTKEY] + 
which can be used to alter various things like RetroArch and core options, and controller mapping. Most RetroArch related settings can be altered from Batocera's EmulationStation.
Standardized features available to all libretro cores: jaguar.videomode, jaguar.ratio, jaguar.smooth, jaguar.shaders, jaguar.pixel_perfect, jaguar.decoration, jaguar.game_translation
ES setting name batocera.conf_key | Description ⇒ ES option key_value |
|---|---|
| Settings that apply to all cores of this emulator | |
GRAPHICS API jaguar.gfxbackend | Choose which graphics API library to use. Vulkan is better, when supported. ⇒ OpenGL opengl, Vulkan vulkan. |
AUDIO LATENCY jaguar.audio_latency | In milliseconds. Can reduce crackling/cutting out. ⇒ 256 256, 192 192, 128 128, 64 64, 32 32, 16 16, 8 8. |
THREADED VIDEO jaguar.video_threaded | Improves performance at the cost of latency and more video stuttering. ⇒ On true, Off false. |
libretro: virtualjaguar
Virtual Jaguar is an Atari Jaguar emulator. You can check its compatibility near the bottom of their webpage. This is the libretro port of it.
libretro: virtualjaguar configuration
ES setting name batocera.conf_key | Description ⇒ ES option key_value |
|---|---|
| Settings that apply to all systems this core supports | |
FAST BLITTER (LESS COMPATIBLE) global.usefastblitter | For weak machines. Some games will not work with this. ⇒ Off disabled, On enabled. |
SHOW BIOS BOOTLOGO global.bios_vj | Off is safer, On for specific games. ⇒ Show enabled, Skip disabled. |
DOOM RES HACK global.doom_res_hack | Enable for Doom to run at its correct resolution. ⇒ Off disabled, On enabled. |
BigPEmu
This emulator is only available for X86-64 versions of Batocera, due to the use of a wine layer for its execution.
Informations
Created by Rich Whitehouse, BigPEmu is the first Atari Jaguar and Jaguar CD emulator to offer compatibility with the entire library of commercially sold cartridges, along with excellent performance and a wide variety of unique features. It's worth noting that it was originally a closed-source emulator that was integrated into the Atari50 compilation. Without a doubt, it is the best Jaguar emulator.
Jaguar CD
The BigPEmu emulator also supports the Jaguar CD format (Bin/Cue). For now, you can copy your bin/cue files to the /userdata/roms/jaguar/folder to display them in EmulationStation.
Jaguar Game Drive
BigPEmu has the great advantage of having perfect compatibility for homebrew games. However, it is worth noting that some games are locked to be used on the Jaguar Game Drive (a hardware extension for the Jaguar console). BigPEmu has an option to emulate this hardware and allow these locked games to be played. You can enable this option in the settings of BigPEmu by accessing it via the ESC key on your keyboard.
System –> Settings –> Force JGD Emulation
Per-Game Profiles
BigPEmu supports per-game profiles. This is accomplished by creating a BigPEmu configuration file of the same name as the software image you're loading, with a .bigpcfg extension. For example, if your software image file is named Cybermorph.j64, you would create a Cybermorph.bigpcfg file alongside it.
In order to create the per-game configuration file, it's recommended that you just make a copy of your central BigPEmu configuration file. Under Windows, you can find this file at /userdata/saves/bigpemu-bottle/drive_c/users/root/AppData/Roaming/BigPEmu/BigPEmuConfig.bigpcfg
It's sufficient to simply copy this file and rename it.
Once you've created the game-specific configuration file, all configuration changes made through the menus while the game in question is loaded will apply and be saved only to this configuration file. If the software is unloaded, the central configuration will be loaded again.
Controls
Here are the default Atari Jaguar's controls shown on a Batocera RetroPad:
Troubleshooting
Further troubleshooting
For further troubleshooting, refer to the generic support pages.
- systems/jaguar.1680806585.txt.gz
- Last modified: 3 years ago
- by modhack