Atari Panther

Reasons of cancellation

Atari Panther is a canceled home console that was going to be released in 1991 by Atari. The console was actually cancelled because Atari wanted to focus on Atari Jaguar, a much superior console, while the gap between the release of Atari Panther and Atari Jaguar would be only six to nine months. Atari Panther was going to compete with SNES and Sega Mega Drive when Nintendo already dominated the market with NES and Sega with Mega Drive in Europe.

Development

Atari Panther was developed by Flare Technology, a British company that was working with Amstrad and on two more cancelled projects: Flare One and Konix Multisystem. The Panther was planned to be a combination of the Atari ST and the Atari Transputer Workstation Blossom video hardware, while development kits had already been sent out to several developers before the cancellation.

Technical Specifications

Atari panther was going to rely on the enhanced 3D graphics manipulation that was more powerful than its competitors promising that would avoid slow downs. Some of the tech specification of the console are the following:

• CPU: Motorola 6800 microprocessor running at 16 MHz

• RAM: 32 KB

• ROM: 64 KB

• 29bit Digital Signal Processor with various filters

• Display: 320x200 resolution, 32 colors per line, 32bit graphic processor running at 32MHz, ability to process 2000 sprites on the screen at any one time