[quote name='mykevermin']Launch Jaguar? :shock: No wonder you're hesitant.
If you don't want to drop a lot of money on the 360, you could always sign up in the CAG "free360xbox" conga line, and finish a pyramid scheme with 8 referrals.[/QUOTE]
I had high hopes for it then. I'd had some contact with the people behind the chipset and knew they were putting a lot in there. Unfortunately, it was never fully debugged, creating endless frustration for the few developers they had. But even so the potential was there. The few instances of mainstream companies doing titles showed that. Rayman originated on the Jaguar, for instance. Anything Capcom or Konami was doing on the SNES they could easily surpass on the Jaguar if that incarnation of Atari had posessed the capital needed to get the ball rolling. The Jaguar version of Doom was far and away the best console version of that generation and the only one produced by Id itself.
Anyways, my Jaguar, possibly the first one sold in LA County (it had a serial number under 4000 but had to be traded in for a later unit due to a chipset update needed for Doom) since I convinced TRU to let me have before they put out any floor display, was nowhere near full price. TRU had a much looser exchange policy then and I was very good at finding games on blowout that could be taken in for much more store credit (the old Geoffrey money) value than my cost. The Jaguar, and later the Saturn that I picked up on the way home from E3 where its surprise launch had been announced, were both purchased with Geoffrey money acquired at a very steep discount.
Later on, I had the TRU Visa card, which pays back 1% on all purchases outside TRU and 4% on purchase within TRU. At the time this generation was coming to market my job involved frequent purchases of equipment for clients and assorted travel expenses. So long as I was recompensed before the bill was due, I was, as you can imagine, more than happy to allow my TRU Visa to be used for this purpose. The entirety of my PS2 and most of my Xbox and GameCube cost were covered by this.
Even so, I could have used the credit for other things than launch price hardware and accompanying games that might have served me better in the long run. Since I no longer have the same work situation I would be covering more of any new machine out of pocket unless another scheme like the TRU/EB trade-in leading up to the PSP launch came about. That, along with the mountain of unplayed games I already own, makes me disinclined to jump in early on the next generation. The Jaguar's failure isn't a factor. It's still part of my collection along with other also-ran platforms like the 3DO and CD-i. The CD-i was a freebie, however.
