Atari Jaguar was the last piece of videogames hardware released by Atari. A last throw of the dice from a veteran games company which was struggling to compete with the Japanese might of the SNES, Megadrive and impending launch of Sony's Playstation.

Released in the UK in 1994, this was the world's first 64 bit console, although some people argue as to whether it is truly a 64 bit console since it actually contains two 32bit processors called Tom and Jerry.

Games proved to be a problem for the Jaguar. There was simply not enough good ones. It came bundled with Cybermorph, which was a decent enough game, but too many of the other games available simply seemed like straight ports from other formats and didn't have any much of a 64 bit wow factor.

There were, however, standout titles for the system including Tempest 2000, Iron Soldier, the eery Alien vs Predator and an excellent port of Doom.

Another problem for the system seemed to be distribution. I only seemed to remember it being sold in independent stores and also the retail chain Rumbelows. I got mine from a video rental shop of all places.

Ultimately, Jaguar failed and Atari had to get out of the console building business. The brand survives though and retains a cult following. Homebrew developers are still creating new titles for the system and there's a healthy market for it on eBay.

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Speak & Spell was a the distintive yellow and orange electronic toy from Texas Instruments that had a built in speech synthesizer. Released at the end of the 1970s, the Speak & Spell had five games built in: Spell, Say It, Secret Letter, Mystery Code, and Word.

The toy remains popular today and there's a number of websites dedicated to it. Check out this video below to see it in action.

Labels: speak and spell, texas instruments