OMG! There might actually be a Jaguar CD emulator on the way!

The Jaguar CD was an add-on for the Atari Jaguar video game console that allowed the console to play CD-ROM games. The add-on was released in 1995 and included a double-speed CD-ROM drive, as well as a digital audio output. Just 13 games were released for the system in its lifetime.

Emulating the Jaguar CD has traditionally been difficult for several reasons. One of the challenges is that it uses a proprietary file format which is not compatible with the standard ISO format used by other CD-ROM based systems.

Project Tempest was the first Jaguar emulator, which also had limited support for two Jag CD games: Primal Rage and Baldies. However it’s not been updated for for nearly twenty years.

But now some good news! Richard Whitehouse the author of the amazing BigPEmu Jaguar emulators has managed to finally emulate all of the commercial Jaguar CD games! He says on Twitter:

“Every Jaguar CD game in the retail library is now running nicely in BigPEmu! I still need to tie up a few loose ends (Memory Track support, homebrew compatibility tests), but a CD-enabled Patreon build is probably coming sometime in the next couple of weeks.”

If you’re keen to emulate the Jaguar CD, you can sign up to Rich’s patreon here.