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Atari Panther Prototype Explored

Posted by simoniker on from the love-the-controller dept.

Thanks to Atari Explorer for their updated article revealing concept pictures of the Atari Panther, the 1991-era machine which "was going to be the first new Atari console since the launch of the 7800 by Atari Inc. in 1984", before the console "was shelved at the last minute as a parallel project within Atari showed much more promise and much more power - that project gave birth to the Atari Jaguar nearly 2 years later." The new pictures reveal that "The unit is much smaller than a stock Jaguar... [and] the cartridges would be inserted flat into the front of the Panther like a front-load VHS tape recorder."

5 of 23 comments (clear)

  1. What a painful analogy. by Inoshiro · · Score: 3, Informative

    "The unit is much smaller than a stock Jaguar... [and] the cartridges would be inserted flat into the front of the Panther like a front-load VHS tape recorder."

    Don't you mean like a Nintendo Entertainment System? Come on, it's a video game system, this is a video game system.. it should be obvious! :p

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    Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
  2. Re:Panther, Jaguar by Meowing · · Score: 4, Informative
    Is it coincidence that Apple named the last two OS X releases Jaguar and Panther, or is Steve an old Atari fan?
    Steve was an old Atari employee. The kitties were likely just coincidence, all the OS X releases have been getting names like that.
  3. Re:like a VHS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    after a while the little lock holding it down would wear out.

    Connecting games through a Game Genie should fix that (the Game Genie is designed so that you don't need to push it down to play a game). A more common problem is worn-out connector pins, and that's not difficult to fix either.

  4. Since the site is dotted... by suyashs · · Score: 2, Informative

    here's a similar site about the Panther... http://www.homecomputer.de/pages/panther.html

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    http://chrono.posterous.com/
  5. article details by mzs · · Score: 2, Informative

    The article itself has very little technical details about the Panther console. By looking at the drawings and the tech specs linked from the article it is easy to conclude what the three mystery ports were for. The mini-DIN on the back, that is the S-VHS connector. The two ports on the side, that would be the two stero headphone jacks and most likely have nothing to do with COMLynx. Both these ports are listed as standard on the tech specs. The small panel on the back, that was most likely where a connector was concealed where you could attach options such as genlock, COMLynx, and modem, none of which were probably ever developed.