What Was the Codename for the Cancelled Atari Jaguar II?

This article explores the history of the Atari Jaguar’s cancelled successor, known commonly as the Jaguar II, and reveals the specific codename associated with the unreleased hardware. Readers will learn about the context of Atari’s decline in the mid-1990s, the technical ambitions for the next-generation console, and the trivia surrounding the project’s internal designation before the company merged with JTS Corporation.

The Atari Jaguar, released in 1993, was marketed as the first 64-bit console, but it struggled against competitors like the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn. Despite its commercial difficulties, Atari Corporation began planning a successor to keep pace with the rapidly evolving gaming market. This successor was publicly referred to as the Jaguar II, but within Atari’s development teams, it was assigned a specific internal codename. According to retro gaming historians and archived documentation from the era, the codename for the cancelled successor to the Atari Jaguar was Tempest.

The Tempest project was intended to address the architectural limitations of the original Jaguar. While the first console relied on a complex multi-processor setup that was difficult for developers to utilize, the Jaguar II aimed to streamline performance and improve 3D capabilities. Development was in its early stages when Atari announced it was leaving the hardware business in 1996. The merger with JTS Corporation shortly thereafter halted all ongoing console projects, leaving the Tempest hardware as nothing more than a concept.

Today, the Tempest codename remains a significant piece of trivia for collectors and enthusiasts of retro gaming history. While no physical prototypes of the Jaguar II are known to exist in public hands, the existence of the project confirms that Atari had plans to continue the lineage before their exit from the market. The legacy of the Jaguar and its cancelled successor serves as a reminder of the turbulent transition from cartridge-based systems to CD-ROM technology during the fifth generation of video game consoles.