Game Guide to the Atari Jaguar by Karl Morris - Book Review

Blimey! Four years since I reviewed the first books I'd ordered from Zafinn Books. Time flies and all that, but here we are with their latest publication, a guide (and love letter writ large) to Atari Corporation's final piece of gaming hardware, the Jaaaaaaaaaaaag! Aka Jagwahr, for our North American readers. 

The last time I featured the Jaguar was a review of Boris Kretzinger's highly readable history of the console and its fate due to the ultimate demise of Atari. In this tome, the title says it all, with a complete guide to all of the officially released titles that graced the machine. Of course, a little introduction doesn't hurt, so the first thirty-ish pages gives you a potted history of the console, a bit of focus on hardware and accessories, as well as the joyousness that is the Virtual Light Machine. Then we get to the games. 

As with the previous Lynx volume, each title receives a two page spread, comprising of a half page of text description, a screenshot (framed in a good old CRT TV this time), and a quartet of scores from the author for Graphics, Sounds, Playability, and Overall. These are subjective and, whilst you may disagree with some of them, the stinkers really are stinkers... (looking at you, Club Drive!). The other page offers an image of the title/loading screen, the box art, and a factoid linked to the game in question. These are highly informative, and where Mr Morris quotes sales figures, it's really surprising as to just how low some of those numbers were. Yeah, I get it, this was before the true mass market of the 32-bit generation, and the Jag itself was a sales disappointment/flop, but wow! And no, I ain't telling you any of them, you'll have to buy the book. 

There's numerous Jag-related adverts dotted around too, and for fans of the financial side of video games history, pages 76 and 77 show internal Atari documents detailing costs and payments for various titles. Hugely interesting when combined with some of those sales figures...

A quartet of interviews (Doug Engel, - Battle Sphere, James Boulton - Retro HQ, Rich Whitehouse - BigPEmu, and Lawrence Staveley - Reboot-Games) follow the games guide, with a page of Jag-related resources and some more artwork/design docs to finish off this 220-plus page effort. 

Combined with Kretzinger's history, Zafinn's latest offers Jaguar fans and video games enthusiasts alike the perfect combo on this 64-bit wonder, and I'd be lying if I said i wasn't thinking about firing up Atari 50 or an emulator and re-visiting some of the rather better titles the Jag had to offer. For the hell of it, I think a dip into Club Drive may be in order too. Can't have nice things all of the time, you know! 

Game Guide to the Atari Jaguar is another fine release from Zafinn Books and kudos to author Karl Morris for putting this together. Maybe we might see 5200 or 7800 themed guides in the future? (Which would be cool, I would certainly buy them, but we are getting in to the niche side of Atari now. Still, shy bairns and all that...)

You can buy the Game Guide to the Atari Jaguar directly from Zafinn Books here, as well as follow them via the following social tags:

Bluesky - @zafinnbooks.bsky.social

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