The original arcade version of Area 51 was developed using the Atari CoJag, a coin-operated arcade board based on the Atari Jaguar chipset, as a relatively inexpensive alternative to the higher-end development tools Atari Games was using at the time, albeit with a faster processor and more memory than the base console. Despite being released on very similar hardware, as well as being ported to other platforms, Area 51 never saw a release on the Jaguar console; by the time the arcade version was released, Atari Games felt that it was "too late to save the system".