Gamer Successfully Completes the Ultimate Atari Jaguar Upgrade

Years of dust and neglect left one Atari Jaguar looking far from its original form when Tito of Macho Nacho Productions decided it deserved better treatment. A console that launched in 1993 with bold claims of 64-bit power and then faded after modest sales sat filthy and unused. Tito took it apart, vacuumed out the accumulated grime, cleaned the internals thoroughly, and put it back together with a fresh set of capacitors from a Console5 kit to address the aging power and signal components that fail over time on machines this old.

Once the board had been thoroughly cleaned, the focus switched to three upgrade boards from Zaxour, each designed to address long-standing flaws. Hairball replaces the previous choke with a Schottky diode and a new choke, preventing a mismatched power supply from destroying the entire system. Meanwhile, JaguWATT replaces the entire power circuit with a sleek new modern replacement that maintains voltage stability and can even resuscitate a console that has been knocked out by using the incorrect adapter.

The 64BP board is required to fix the faulty original video route, which was resulting in a ghosted, smeared image, however not as terrible as some of the older Nintendo models. Instead, it bypasses the previous video path entirely and sends a beautiful clean RGB signal straight through, tapping the audio earlier in the chain so it comes out nice and loud and clear, all without modifying any of the original traces. So the better video is still available at the back, where the old cables and adapters will continue to function properly.

The modifications do not stop there, as even more components are required to truly bring this console into the twenty-first century. Humble Bazooka’s JagAIOA Plus plugs into the back and outputs composite, S-Video, stereo audio, and, as a nice touch, amplified RGB via a standard Genesis 2-style mini-DIN. It also has a built-in network adapter and a simple switch that allows RetroHQ’s Jaguar GameDrive to boot without any issues. The GameDrive loads your entire cartridge library and pretty much any CD title from a microSD card, stores your save data on the same card, and supports homebrew.

We’re almost there with a Jag BT adapter that allows you to plug in your modern Bluetooth controllers from a PlayStation, Xbox, or Switch and connect wirelessly, as it’s even cleverly mapped the Jaguar’s numeric pad to the sticks and shoulders, allowing you to use those fancy new controllers with no problem at all, and with low latency. Tito conducted a quick comparison with Humble Bazooka’s adapters and saw how much clearer the image was once the original buffering transistors were removed. If you really want to go all out, there’s an optional Jag2HD that provides direct 720p HDMI along with all of the standard analog connectors, allowing you to keep your old CRT or simply connect to a current monitor or capture card if that’s your thing.

After all of this work, the same old console that once struggled with a soft video feed and a faulty power supply now delivers a nice sharp RGB picture, stable voltage, some proper modern controller options, and, to top it all off, pretty much every game ever released on cartridge, all from the same old console. Tito showed out the results on stream with James from RetroHQ, and it was fantastic to see that all of the upgrades worked seamlessly together. I mean, it’s pretty obvious that this system, which tanked in the 1990s, is still receiving this degree of community love because the owners and makers can’t seem to let it go, and that’s what happens when you try to polish a diamond, I guess. As it stands, this little old console plays vintage games much clearer and with far less constraints than it was originally meant for.