Short recap for anyone interested: In that era, 16-bit was a marketing term that referred to the data bus size (with an unspoken assumption that the internal r

Short recap for anyone interested: In that era, 16-bit was a marketing term that referred to the data bus size (with an unspoken assumption that the internal registers of the CPU were at least the same width). Being able to push more bits to the CPU in one operation was a MAJOR source of speed at the time, and became a defining characteristic for consoles. When 32-bit systems came out, it was more of the same reasoning. The Jaguar controversy came about because, while the data bus of the Jaguar was indeed 64 bits wide, none of the chips could make use of all 64 bits other than the blitter and object processor (general CPU operations and fetches were 32-bit). So Atari was breaking with the reasoning of the time to boost their marketing campaign, thus the ridicule (especially given the performance of the Jaguar and their marketing slogan "do the math").