Post by @0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange

2026-09-20 19:37 UTC

I randomly stumbled on one of my old twitter posts where I marveled at one of the most clownshoes technical advertisements ever published: the Atari Jaguar's marketing materials claimed "an incredible 850 million pixels per inch rendering speed." Read that again if your brain glossed over it. I googled this quote to get a better image to make a new post about it. And Google's AI helpfully popped up to "inform" me that this is a "humorous misquote" and obviously the original said "850 million pixels per second." No it didn't. That's a lie. Google is fucking gaslighting me. It clearly says "inch" right there in the scan of the marketing materials on archive dot org. My old post about it far predates this higher-quality scan, so I saw it in a completely different scan. This post is taking a stand. A stand that Atari's marketing team, burdened with trying to pitch a horrible product, made a stupid typo 31 years ago and it's funny because it's REAL, dammit. The AI apocalypse can't take that from us. https://archive.org/details/atari-jaguar-over-50-new-64-bit-games-previewed/page/n1/mode/2up

Replies (15)

@lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me 2026-09-20 19:44

@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange At least table does say per second but in a very tiny font and abbreviated. Which is also a bit funny when you notice they also use a tiny font for the 16.8 million colors bit, so a bad print / quick read would make it look worse than the others.

Open ##4782959
@SpaceLifeForm@infosec.exchange 2026-09-20 22:33

@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange I see. The hype, not the pixels.

Open ##4786158
@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange 2026-09-20 19:47

@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange I can both imagine writing that and reading it in proofreading and missing it.

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@Perrin42@mastodon.social 2026-09-20 20:03

@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange Like making the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs?

Open ##5167384
@rotopenguin@mastodon.social 2026-09-20 20:04

@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange the 32X doesn't have a bus bandwidth. Few people know this.

Open ##5167385
@pulkomandy@mastodon.tetaneutral.net 2026-09-20 20:24

@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange this ad is so sad. The only screenshot is the cd visualisation thing that's not even part of the base console. Not a single game to show? An entire paragraph for the 18 button controller desperately pretending that more is better (it doesn't bode well for the whole "do the math" argument). Putting the Genesis VDP in the 32x CPU count but not in the Genesis one.

Open ##5167388
@Laukidh@infosec.exchange 2026-09-20 22:22

@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange I recently heard when the Sega Saturn launched in Japan, the marketing added two 32 bit chips together and called it 64

Open ##5167390
@Taffer@mastodon.gamedev.place 2026-09-20 23:35

@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange I still have my Jaguar and can confirm that it’s pixels per inch speed was unmatched!

Open ##5167410
@MontgomeryGator@fouroclockfarms.club 2026-09-21 00:52

@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange Google keeps sending me to what looks like news articles but instead is just a suggested prompt for Gemini. And Gemini is the himbo of the clankers, what the fuck is Google doing?

Open ##5167411
@jsatk@sfba.social 2026-09-21 01:44

@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange every time I’ve brought up the Jaguar people never remember it. It was so expensive!

Open ##5167412
@jsatk@sfba.social 2026-09-21 01:45

@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange oh and the 64 bit was genuinely a big jump in power back then.

Open ##5167413
@sawaba@infosec.exchange 2026-09-21 02:56

@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange I had a Jaguar in my collection for a while and “clownshoes” is the right word. The drugs someone must have been on to approve that controller design!

Open ##5167414
@grapeshot@mastodon.social 2026-09-21 16:23

@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange even the "correct" number in pixels per second is ridiculous because that's four times the console's actual memory bandwidth (Maybe they're assuming 2 bpp?) and ten times the rate that it can output to a standard def TV

Open ##5167415
@thinkb4coding@mastodon.social 2026-09-21 18:42

@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange who cares the console was not a success... You could play tempest 2K on it !

Open ##5167417
@bachimusprime@estradiol.city 2026-09-24 12:40

@0xabad1dea@infosec.exchange "do the math" more like "do the meth" lmeow

Open ##5167418