Welcome to 30 Ridiculous Retro Rumors, a brand new series that will run daily between November 26 and December 25, 2015. This is a series where we debunk some of the craziest rumors and predictions of all time. Today we're taking a look at the Atari Jaguar. Long before the 64-bitter hit store shelves, Electronic Gaming Monthly was worrying it would turn into a multimedia computer ... and that's not even the worst part. See for yourself in the seventh episode of 30 Ridiculous Retro Rumors.


This is a real rumor taken directly from the November 1991 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly ...


The year is 1991 and the fear is real. When it came to electronic entertainment, you either sided with console gamers or waited for the personal computer to boot up. Sure, Video Games & Computer Entertainment tried to bridge the divide, but it would take a few decades before this cold war thawed.

Quartermann exemplifies the soft bigotry of console lovers. In his mind, computers are for word processing and calculating taxes, not video games and fun. When he hears that Atari's Jaguar may be a multimedia system, his instinct is to give it a "big thumbs down." He doesn't want to own a video game system that plays computer titles. He must really hate the state of today's games industry.

As it turns out, Quartermann's concern was unfounded. While there were multimedia consoles that attempted to find a balance between fun and education, that's not a charge you can make against the Jaguar. It was a cartridge-based system that emphasized the games and not crunching taxes. It eventually got a CD-ROM peripheral, but that was four years after Electronic Gaming Monthly published this rumor. Sadly, we're still waiting on the Jaguar's VHS adapter.