The Atari Panther

[Rogue Trooper]

Joking aside, such passionate debate as there has been in this thread should be encouraged here, if anything. Thank heavens this place isn't like certain other forums where spirited debate gets confused with argument by the intellectually challenged and where threads are locked as a result. No insults were bandied about, no snide comments were made * and no forum rules were broken. All's good.




* apart from me having branded Laird an Atari fanboy but that's just plain fact, not an insult! 

IF we tried a debate on the Panther on certain other forum, what do we think? 5 posts or less before the Jaguar=Shite was brought up and thread derailed by people who'd never played on a Jaguar, let alone owned one and had no interest in topic, just posting in it for the trolling.

You know on here you can have very active debate with all sides putting across well thought on views and counter points of view etc and no-ones hitting the report button or giving 1 line replies how everything was shit.

The sighing? well. we're all getting older, comes with age....

:-)

[Gorf]

Not trying to be harsh but we've seen this before and it would have been the same reason Panther failed and part of the reason Jaguar failed.

Trouble is people think just because its a console it's automatically competing with Sega and Nintendo, when in fact the CD32 was carving its own market based obviously on the back of the Amiga's success, to say it wouldn't have succeeded is a little short-sighted esp given it didn't get a chance to succeed, and I hate the fact that people tend to think if a console doesn't sell 20 million+ it's deemed a failure....the success of a console from a consumer pov is the amount of decent games a console gets not the sales figures.

Clearly you are an Amiga hardware fan and that's fine.  I'm just willing to bet, given the chance it would have
done ok at best. I think the market was destined for PC, 3DO, Jaguar and those that followed. Not all of them did
well either, hence Jag and 3DO. I base it more off what people were looking for and CD32 was not it. Not enough
to keep it viable for very long anyway.

As the ST fan, I do not think an ST game console would have done well either. Ok at best. It is why I believe the
Panther would not have done all that well either. I base this off of how it went down with the Jaguar. Not likely
after blowing it with the 5200, 7800, Lynx and Jaguar, that the odds of Panther doing any better would be rather
low at best. This has nothing to do with which brand you like but mostly the direction gaming took in the 90's.

that, and the ability to get titles to these systems that people really wanted a the time.

[Aaendi]

This is an old thread but it is interesting.  The Panther's technical specifications leaves so many unanswered questions.  Why are there only 32 colors per line?  If it has 2,000 sprites how big are they, and how many per line?

[TL]

This is an old thread but it is interesting.  The Panther's technical specifications leaves so many unanswered questions.  Why are there only 32 colors per line?  If it has 2,000 sprites how big are they, and how many per line?

From my understanding of the machine and from things different people have told me, the graphics hardware in the Panther was based heavily on the Lynx. The Lynx can draw 16 colours per scanline with up to 1024 sprites on screen of any size with no restrictions. So as far as I am aware the Panther was very similar in the way the graphics hardware worked. Several people I spoke with pretty much described the Panther as a "monster sprite machine". There is no doubt that it would have destroyed the Mega Drive/SNES as far as pushing sprites and 2D graphics go.

[Aaendi]

So it is possible to have 2,000 overlapping BG layers?  How is that possible?

[TL]

So it is possible to have 2,000 overlapping BG layers?  How is that possible?

If you are using sprites as background layers, in theory yes. But of course this is still going to have an impact on performance as all that drawing and shifting is going to use a lot of system resources.

[Gorf]

2000 BG layers is beyond anything you'd get even in real life. And please don't get me started on why the panther was a waste of time and resources that could have been better spent on getting the Jaguar bug free and a decent tool set.

[TrekMD]

Here are two videos that talk about the Panther.  The first is more of a "what if" video but does discuss the system.  The second discusses the console proper and some of its history.

https://youtu.be/kxNknap9uPU

https://youtu.be/_99ZqjlrGJQ

[Cryptic33]

2000 BG layers is beyond anything you'd get even in real life. And please don't get me started on why the panther was a waste of time and resources that could have been better spent on getting the Jaguar bug free and a decent tool set.

I tend to agree with you. To my memory and experience, Atari per say never understood the global market or should I say, their customer base. Yes, they produced some fantastic machines that were ahead of the competition, but the support was always lacking. To clarify, any system, computer or console, needs great software. The VCS was ahead of its time or first out there, and was new and exciting and, at first, support seemed good, plenty of games. However, the games were expensive (I guess they always are) and there was a far great supply in America than anywhere else. I’ll get back on track, the home computers and consoles that followed (eg 7800) were all poorly supported compared to the competition. Now the Pantha may or may not have helped Atari but for the fact they screwed everyone over, looking only for profit. I know business is about profit but it is also about giving people what they want.
As I say, the Pantha may have helped but they had the Falcon out which, was heralded by many as a superb machine. Especially loved by the music industry but they Never capitalised on this and software was sparse.
Without 3’d party support the Pantha was never going to make it and I absolutely agree that this lack of support impacted hugely on its successor.
I am not an expert, I regard myself as someone who experienced some of the history from a consumer/customer’s viewpoint and felt cheated by Atari time and again. As an optimist, if the Pantha had been released and I could have afforded it, I would have been first in the queue.

Here are two videos that talk about the Panther.  The first is more of a "what if" video but does discuss the system.  The second discusses the console proper and some of its history.

https://youtu.be/kxNknap9uPU

https://youtu.be/_99ZqjlrGJQ

Very nice Trek, I will watch these tonight.

Oh I forget who said it but yes, this topic on so-called Atari fan forums elsewhere would have been de-railed. A big thank you for all the contributions, the Pantha was a still birth and that is very sad. However, we must never forget her or him (<<<do you see Atari, emotional connection. Nintendo understand this and are still a household name).

[TrekMD]

Here is another video looking at the Atari Panther...

https://youtu.be/bnB7I5Doge4

[Dreamcast Gamer]

Here is another video looking at the Atari Panther...

https://youtu.be/bnB7I5Doge4

LOL, I already had this in my "watch later" playlist.  Top Hat Gaming Man is certainly getting a lot of attention lately and these unreleased console videos are definitely helping him.

[TrekMD]

He does a pretty good job with these.  Well worth watching.