I think Trip Hawkins was trying to achieve what Sony eventually did with the Playstation, but the 3DO was a transitionary console, much like the Dreamcast years later. They were both useful for teaching console manufacturers what exciting things could be achieved in the future, as well as what mistakes they should avoid.
He definitely had some great ideas and really helped to pioneer some things that lifted Electronic Arts into their golden age! It'd be a real shame if the values and ideals of the foundation they built upon would be sullied years later along with any shred of credibility among consumers.... EA used to constantly innovate with yearly sports games back then so it was exciting to see the new Madden or NBA Live! But yeah, like you said, it's nice that Tripp's failure with the 3DO provided more information those afterwards could use to succeed.
@@Ex0rz in the US the dreamcast stopped and microsoft started to make the xbox. And future dc titles and sequels made for the dreamcast overseas ended up on the xbox here.
@@mikemoss9559 Well they're still making SNES/Genesis games too so that doesn't mean anything. Dreamcast was definitely a transitionary console. I mean look at the overlap of games it got, it had quite a few PlayStation titles on it that looked better. I liked the Dreamcast but it was definitely a transitionary console.
@@FantasyVisuals That's the point, hardly anyone has. It was a massive flop. Not so much a hot mess but a mediocre mess. Didn't you watch the video? One controller port! Daisy chaining! FFS.
@Lassi Kinnunen 81 I think most negative things people say about it are mostly true. But it did have potential and was useful in many ways as you stated. But it's like it didn't know what it wanted to be, a Phone that can function as a game console, or a game console that can function as a phone. Emulators could also be an interesting topic as well!
They’re currently extremely cheap from China. They’re the real units, but I guess some warehouse bought them and they never sold them until now. I got one myself and I’m trying to design an SD card adapter similar to ones like AceKard and the more popular adapter for the Nintendo DS. I’m planning on creating a Doom port to the N-Gage as it’s definitely capable of running Doom thanks to its adequate GPU.
My mom had one, it was cool and I loved playing with it when I was bored outside Unfortunately it was lost as part of her habit of losing/breaking a phone every year
15:15 Rebecca Heineman is an incredibly talented developer, and also did the port of Wolfenstein 3D for the 3DO. Unfortunately, for reasons outside of her control, she had a little over a month to produce a working port of Doom, which is why it's so crappy.
Step 1: build own developer tools, without any guidance. Step 2: figure out how to run Doom on a machine much slower than the Super FX2. Step 3: Demand the boss's band play the entire soundtrack. There's a reason she's regarded as a legend. A shame this time she couldn't pull off the impossible.... But. She knew it would be lost cause. Since the M2 was supposedly on the way, she thoughtfully included a way to play the game at full screen with an uncapped frame rate. Today, it means an overclocked emulator can play the game as it was originally intended. I guess that's a partial symbolic victory?
@@juststatedtheobvious9633 I don't think the 3DO hardware is "much slower" than Super FX2. In fact, most 3D 3DO games obviously demonstrate that this was not the case.
@@rars0n I'm referring to raw cpu clockspeeds. They're easy to look up, and things aren't looking good for your theory. But clockspeeds are also misleading. A ZX Spectrum has one higher than an SNES.
"Road Rash machine" that's a pretty decent legacy TBH, that game is really good and quite unique even for its series. I just wish EA had called it Road Rash 4, it'd have made talking about it a lot less confusing.
A headphone jack on the controller is genius. Why did nobody else do that!? The only other console I've seen with that feature was the Xbox 360 and even then, it wasn't really a headphone jack but a separate headset port for voice chat; you didn't get game audio through it.
FIFA Soccer is what sold me on the 3DO. I was walking past a Babagges when I saw a TV displaying a Soccer game (Football to the rest of you). It was so real that I didn't realize it wasn't a game on a poorly tuned TV until I looked at what was running it.
When it comes to Need For Speed (the first game), it's the frame rate that makes the difference between the different versions. But it's not just that. The later releases are also more arcade-style than the 3DO game. This is why I still prefer the 3DO version over the faster alternatives. The way the cars handle carry more weight, and therefore even with the lower frame rate, the sense of speed is still conveyed. This is something that I will never, ever be able to explain to people who never played Stunt Race FX back when it was new. It has a VERY low frame rate but expertly-crafted controls that make it work, and pacing that manages to convey a real sense of speed once you get a feel for the game. I'm all for higher frame rates in most games. 30+ is good, 60+ is better. But for me, more important is CONSISTENCY and both of these games manage that despite the lower frame rates, and that makes them infinitely playable for me. I'm more than happy to deal with a lower frame rate if it's at least consistent. I've never liked the arcade feel of NFS on Playstation. Also, compare screen shots between the two and the 3DO version just looks a lot better. The 3DO has quite a few more games for it as well that you won't find anywhere else, like Doctor Hauzer and Battle Blues, and while EA was struggling to bring Madden to the Playstation for 1996, they had no problem making a GREAT version of it for 1994 on the 3DO. The same can be said of FIFA and Slam 'n' Jam. Don't be mistaken that the 3DO has nothing but ports. Especially when it comes to EA. And while yes, some of these games got ported to later systems, there's no mistaking the fact that at the time, EA was putting their maximum effort into the 3DO versions of games. Other companies like Interplay and Crystal Dynamics were doing their part to support the console as well. Also, there's currently a port of Tomb Raider that someone is working on... but you didn't hear that from me!
I kind of doubt it. I think the fundamental flaw with the 3DO was the fact that really anyone could publish software for it. You get a handful of good games underneath a mountain of shovel ware.
Hey ! I wanted to say i'm not quite proud of the post that i made, as even some other devs corrected me on the nature of the 3DO. :P (I invite you to look at their response to that post) Yes, it has a CEL engine that would fit the description of a sprite based engine : it can do rotations, scaling... all in hardware and the CEL engine by itself is 2D by nature but the reality is that most of the 3D calculations are done on the CPU as it was described in Doom 3DO by the developer. I was really confused looking at the 3D examples in the SDK because i didn't see much dedicated hardware which led me to this conclusion. In my opinion, the CEL engine makes it very good for 2D games... even though it has weird quirks. One quirk that i recall from the SDK documentation (and that i've experienced) was the fact that having the CEL engine move a huge picture through the CEL engine could make the hardware choke but dividing it into several parts could make it much faster. It's actually quite annoying to deal with when you have huge sprites that you want to move so you need to take careful considerations when targetting the 3DO. With all of that said, the 3DO is much better than say, an FM Towns 1/Marty (which is effectively just like a VGA based DOS computer except with more colors and dedicated sprites as well as a slow 386SX processor) or a PC-FX (which can do some nice video decompression in hardware but is completely incapable of 3D aside from having a decent CPU that could do some 3D in software). I also wanted to point out that 3DO emulators are still quite inaccurate and it's quite easy to make a game that would not work in real hardware but would on an emulator. I'm hoping the MAME project makes more progression on that. Cheers
To add to this post, the CEL hardware is really doing the final rasterization step of a 3d engine pipeline, so in the case of 3DO you provide some vectors that tell where the upper left corner of a bitmap starts and how to stretch horizontally and vertically to fit a quad polygon area. It's a little bit more involved than other hardware that will take directly vertex coordinates, but at this final pipeline stage after the 3D projection, it's not much different than PS1 rasterizing triangles (at this stage we have 2d final points on the screen and just want to fit a bitmap). There are some other significant difference though, the 3DO is a forward renderer (it has read every texture pixel and fill the screen, instead of the reverse that PS1 and most renders do) and so it can't support texture coordinates, while the PS1 does. I do remember a video in Digital Foundry I think where it presented what happened in Tomb Raider if you reset the CEL vectors, and it was like a mesh of random sprites, so people where naturally "OMG, what a horrible idea these 3DO engineers thought?!". But it really is not that bad, it's just another way of rasterizing a bitmap over a polygon (being it quad or triangle in the case of PS1). I thought that take on the video was, while cute, misleading in it's perception that they thought something alien for something that should be simple. Meanwhile, one would claim that PS1 is 3D because it also had hardware matrix math, but I did found that the same exists in 3DO too (the math matrix functions are running on the hardware and proved to be in some cases 4 times faster than my pure CPU equivalent). Yet, obviously there are no direct functions on the API that just take a mesh and do all the work, I bet even in the PS1 one had to do some work, construct the 3d rotation matrix on the CPU before giving it to the hardware (something I also do on 3DO). The 3DO really suffers on the CPU side, but for a complete 3D engine more things have to be done anyway. The CEL on it's own, if used properly, was quite good for it's time I think. The issue with the bigger texture, wasn't necessary that you have to split in many textures. You could have the same big texture in the screen as long as it wasn't going out of bounds. If you render the same amount of pixels/texels in both cases, it wouldn't matter if it's 1 big quad with the whole texture, or more quads with the same texture split in pieces. I think what happened in your game was that there a was big texture that was going out of bounds on all sides of the screen. And I realized, in a new project the CEL capability of "super-clipping" is not enabled by default (and needs some more extra steps to really get it working, there is a CEL flag but then one needs to enable a bit in the framebuffer creation too, I don't know why in the original init functions they didn't enable this by default). This means, a big portion of the quad that is outside the screen would still be interpolated (but later the pixels discarded) instead of early terminating. Now, if the whole quad is outside the screen, there is a different kind of clipping which will discarded, but if it's partially out it's not doing a good work skipping those pixels unless one enables the feature. It was even not enabled in the original Doom source and would make the framerate too slow if I stuck my view in front of a very tall wall (very tall columns rendered with CELs extended very high outside the framebuffer). If the big screen is split in small pieces, some of them will be whole out the screen so the first clipper (not the super-clipper) will at least work. The advice in the SDK docs I think was rather talking about a different bottleneck, where if you have a very small polygon in the distance that could be few pixels, yet the texture it tries to render is very big, it will still read every pixel of the texture (because of forward rendering) which is a waste. Then you have to switch to a lower version of your texture. But in the case of your 2d game, probably enable super-clipping was another easier solution.
@@Optimus6128 I still don’t get how a forward renderer concept survives the software stage. Like you code up forward and backwards. You find out the backwards (Gouraud) needs less iterations. Winner! Forward renderer can use a write queue max of address-value pairs, while a backwards renderer needs a queue of source-target pairs. Then especially for pixels with less bits than a system word, some circuitry would find duplicated addresses. In both cases. Rendering two lines at the same time is difficult on polygons ( screen or UV mapping). I say: if consecutive lines touch each other on screen, go left-right over them (zig zag of the polygon) to at leas produce dupes near the edges.
Completely right. This idea that only tri-based rendering is 'proper' 3D is nonsense. Using quads instead of triangles means that you don't have to spend as much processing budget mapping square textures to flat planes, but each individual plane uses more memory as there's an additional point to plot relative to the other 3. As a result you can render less polygons on screen but those polygons can be more efficient and less prone to texture warping, so it's as if you were just using the raw textures as the polygons. That's literally the only difference and it's really frustrating seeing people with limited technical knowledge repeating this fallacy. The 3DO name also has nothing to do with the 3D rendering of the system (Audio+Video+Games=3DO. It's a play on words and the system was supposed to be a replacement for CD players, game consoles and VHS players as justification for the launch price. Once the hardware standard was licensed to multiple third-party manufacturers the price to the consumer went down in line with the aforementioned media players. It's basically a modern console made with technology 2 generations too early to be good enough for the job. The implications of what could have happened to the industry if it had succeeded are incredible) I'm really disappointed that the information in this video is still completely wrong.
@@casanovafunkenstein5090warping is worse with low polycount and wide field of view. Inevitably, with faster hardware and higher resolution the faster filling of a polygon will win. So it was meant as a stop-gap technology? PS1 warps, but already the next polygon console (N64) does not. Polygon APIs have triangle strips and fans. The hardware can be implemented to scanline rasteriser multiple polygons at once to avoid loss of memory bandwidth on unaligned edges. I think 3do only specified the API. Panasonic could have made a triangle list with shared edges and a flag for shared vertex as fast as they want. Games would have increased polycount as new hardware refocusing come out. Ah, need a z-buffer for this. Like on Jaguar and N64. Jaguar just needs a single Bit to switch between quads and polygons. I think, Tempest 2000 show cases some quads. On the other hand: smaller polygons lead to better z-sort. Then again those pointy triangles are more difficult to sort than compact quads. Hm, could sort pairs of triangles joint on their long shared edge.
Bucket sort is the only sorting fast enough for real time z-sort. When polygons reach over multiple buckets, you can easily clip them, but quads cannot.
The M2 tech was sold and used in medical equipment and display kiosks. It was not cancelled. 🙄 Also I believe Konami used it as an arcade board for a game or two.
I own a 3DO with around 40ish titles and I've had a really good time trying out the library. My current favorite is Escape from Monster Manor, its not stellar but I always love the Halloween and Horror style it brings to the table even if its cheesy. Not all games are going to be good no doubt, but what's considered quality is fairly nice. Many games did get ports to other consoles like the PS1 and Saturn, but the original 3DO ports are more often than not still the best versions to get. Need for Speed on 3DO was an interesting case and has its fans. I admittedly like it more than the PS1 and Saturn versions because of its approach to being a more realistic racer. By turning it into a faster more arcade-like title it competed with the likes of Daytona USA on Saturn and Ridge Racer on PS1, both of which are far better than PS1/Saturn Need for Speed. Those versions also didn't have X-Man like the 3DO did, lol.
A system I always wanted as a child (I was HUGE Gex fan and knew about the first game originally being on 3DO with a few bells and whistles) but never wound up getting. Not sure I'd want one today because of the stupid retro game bubble making everything too expensive, but I can appreciate it for that and def agree that it seems like an early PS1.
I'm glad you came back to this. Shame the burns didn't work, I've got the same model and it's been very co-operative with any random cdr I throw at it. Maybe it's console dependent rather than the burning method.
Very well done, i was a teenage gamer at the time of 3do release in Australia. it was a strange beast being demonstrated at any video store or game convention going. it was impressive but too expensive. love the nostalgia. Thanks.
I never owned a 3DO and for a long time also considered it a joke since it was a distant 4th in it's console gen but over the last several years, I've come around to the system. It's home to a lot of unique and interesting titles, some of which, as you pointed, were eventually ported to other consoles and something about early 3D titles that I find charming now. I would of liked to see what the M2 was capable of, if it ever was released.
I don't agree with the statement that it "couldn't do real 3D." That claim is based on an absurd definition of what "real 3D" is. It operates using quads, and lacks the ability to texture-map its surfaces apart from having an image fixed exactly corner-to-corner. People try to make the claim that it isn't real 3D because it is actually just using mathematical computations to skew the quads and then align them in clever positions to look like 3D objects, but guess what? That's literally EXACTLY what every polygonal 3D rendering system does with triangles! They just use mathematical computations to stretch and warp the triangle positions in a way to look like a 3D object. Those 3D games on the 3DO (and the Sega Saturn, which also used quads) are operating in 3D space, and calculating numbers for a 3D representation. It doesn't matter if that's done with quads, tris, vectors, or just floating pixels. It's still a 3D space being rendered on a screen.
Now just show me perspective correct quads ( isometric is also 3d, but easy ). Why does the CEL not have Division and Multiply to split up quads in baby quads with properly projected vertices in a regular grid (not mesh). Or just project ever texel correctly. Wikipedia has a section how division can be done iteratively using MULs. So you could subdivide until warp isn’t too extreme, but noticeably. Then reduce it with as many iterations as you like. Of course it may cut into the fill rate. But guess what: you can have a lot of multipliers on a die, but memory bandwidth is really expensive.
When I bought my first 3DO about 15 years ago, it was incredibly rare to find any games for it. Then a few years ago every retro game store I went into had 3DO games in their glass cases, sometimes huge amounts of them. It sucks that I could never find anything to play on it when I was interested in it, and now there's piles of games available around me and I just don't care. Plus, I don't want to buy common, used old disc-only games that start out around $40 and get drastically higher after that.
The $699 price was only for the first few months the console was available in 1993. I remember very distinctly trying to save up enough money to buy a 3DO in early 1994 and the Goldstar verson was $399 and the (cooler, in my opinion) Panasonic one was $499. I couldn't get that much together and ended up buying a Jaguar for $199. By the end of 1994, though, Panasonic released the FZ-10 for $299 and by 1995 when the Playstation and Saturn were available, the 3DO was actually cheaper than either of them.
I wish I didn't sell my 3DO. I got it in 2010 and had some good complete in box games. It's worth so much more nowadays. I had Samurai Showdown and Way of the Warrior.. Killing Time and Super SF 2.
No. FM Towns has only 16bit data bus. Amiga CD32 (released month before 3DO) is fully 32bit. If we go that "partially 32bit" route, then Amiga CDTV, CD-i and Sega Megadrive are also (partially) 32bit.
EDIT: This is now being trimmed out with the YT editor. That comment was taken from my older video. Surprisingly, I have no memory of anyone pointing this out last time. I didn't double check that part as a result... clearly I should have. My mistake.
@@jpjokela1 Sadly, the main memory controller of the CD32, the Alice chip, is also only 16-bit, which is why 2D graphics throughput is so poor. Having a 32-bit data bus isn't enough if only the CPU can access the full bus (and even then, could never get more than 50% of available memory cycles). The CD32 was a weird mix of cutting-edge, ancient, expensive, and cost-reduced hardware all in one box.
I remember playing Road Rash on my step-dad's 3DO back in 1995... I so badly miss playing that and my step-dad. I don't know what he did with the console and he died almost 8 years ago, so I can't ask him...
Whenever he said most note worthy titles have been ported onto other consoles, he forgot to mention 1 note worthy title that is a 3do exclusive that being Immercenary. Immercenary is a great fps made by EA that was only released on the 3do and not anywhere else. It is also extremely cheap, I got my copy for $15 in long box.
I remember majority of the 3DO games would be on what would be considered the set top boxes around 1996-1999 (those boxes that would allow you more channels on your default cable subscription (they also had a random selection of games you could play using the remote)
I had Gex, Off-World Interceptor, and Solar Eclipse for Sega Saturn, which were vastly improved for SS. I had Doom for 32X, Saturn, and PC, which I'd have to give the win to PC for the ability to import .wad files.
Mid-generation consoles like this one always seemed to end up doomed, but I think we all secretly wanted them when we saw the screenshots in EGM and GamePro (at least until games like Star Fox and Stunt Race FX showed us that the SNES consoles we already had could do fake 3D just fine).
The console was seriously underrated for its time. If you’re not happy with the Sega CD games with grainy video the 3DO done a great job for games like Night Trap, Sewer Shark and Star Wars Rebel Assault. Also some other pc games don’t look too bad including laser disc titles the machine was more catered for the mature market if you can afford it at the time. Assuming any fans of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo port was awesome not to forget Road Rash it’s hilarious to play.
I never owned a 3DO and have no nostalgia for it, but let's face it. Even adjusting for inflation, its retail price in 1993, it's not THAT expensive, specially considering the many phones and devices people buy for over 1000$ to barely use 3% of what they are capable of doing. It may not sound enticing now, but being able to watch VCDs, check your digital pictures, insert educational\encyclopedia discs and a few games here and there, such as Need for Speed and Road Rash is interesting. While the system couldn't compete with the then established gaming companies, it doesn't seem fair to bash on is price today, it was too early for that kind of technology, the PS2 and the Xbox delivered on that front being great DVD players alongside capable 3D machines.
We had a 3DO FZ-1 when I was a kid and I don't remember Crash 'N Burn looking that bad! haha. I played that game for more hours than I can remember. I also used to love Road Rash, and Who Shot Johnny Rock.
This was absolutely excellent from beginning to end. If you get the chance you should check out Wing Commander for the 3DO for something truly out of this world. It's a title that almost feels forgotten but in its heyday it was monumentally huge.
Fun fact. Konami used the M2 hardware for some of its arcade games. These were Battle Tryst (1998), Evil Night/Hell Night (1998), Heart of Eleven '98/The World Soccer Championship (1998), Tobe! Polystar (1997), and Total Vice (1998). As far as I know, none of these games got a home release. Tobe! Polystars[29] (1997) Total Vice (1997) Battle Tryst (1998) Evil Night / Hell Night (1998) Heat of Eleven '98 / The World Soccer Championship (1998)
You can use the Panasonic CD Sampler that came with the system to manage the saved gave data. It's the one with the Photo Samples and Cartoons like Batman. Not sure if it came with all Panasonic models or not. I got mine when the price first dropped to $499.
The version of NFS for the 3DO was supposed to incorporate realistic vehicle handling much more than the later versions, which is why it feels slow in comparison. So, in terms of console racing games with an emphasis on realistic handling, it actually predates Gran Turismo by a few years.
I got a 3DO (FZ-1) with the MPEG DEcoder, two controllers, and a bunch of games while in college (circa 2007) for real cheap and I'm really happy with it. I was able to get the memory expansion, two of the Capcom fighting gamepads, and a bunch of more games online not long after. Gex, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, Road Rash, and the Alone in the Dark games are great. Crash n' Burn and the Need for Speed aren't as bad as people online make them out to be. I also don't mind saying that Plumbers Don't Wear Ties is a guilty pleasure of mine.
I own approximately 50 boxed and complete 3DO games. Had them since the 90s. A few stories... I had this machine when I was in university living in a house full of guys and we routinely played Fifa Soccer with 3 to 5 players. At least a couple of times we managed to get 8 crowded around the TV to play 8 players. As I recall it "zooms" out pretty far when you get that many players at once making the game less fun. If my memory serves correctly (it might not) 4 players was the sweet spot for the game. Also, I almost thought you were going to overlook Road Rash... thankfully you got there. It was the best version of the game, and probably the best game for the system. Great soundtrack, played well, and at the time the graphics were unparalleled.There is one game you didn't mention that I remember enjoying a lot- "Wing Commander" (I think it was the first one), it had Mark Hamill in the FMV cutaways. The space "3D" shooting part of the game was ok, but I remember thinking the cutaways having a "choose your own adventure" decision making process made it good. I remember a friend of mine telling me at the time that if you make the right choices you could even get some "late night" as we called it, better known as hooking up. Thanks for the video, brought back some good memories. I may have to pull one of my 3DO machines from the basement along with the games and dust it off and give Road Rash a play...
I remember how badly I wanted one of these things. There was a retail store called Speaker City out by where I live, and they had an FZ1 model hooked up to this MASSIVE television, and they had this really sweet golf game to use as a demo machine. I never did get one, and something tells me I dodged one, big-time.
I think the 3DO would have been much more successful if it had the ability to play Video CDs built-in instead of requiring the add-on card. Similar to the hugely expensive PS3 being a success because it had a Blu-ray player, it would have given even the game-hesitant and excuse to tell themselves that they were buying in to the future. Likewise, I think Video CD would have been much more successful outside of Asia if it didn't always require dedicated hardware.
This is so cool, I just find the 3DO and the other consoles I couldn’t get as a kid so fascinating. I wonder if this thing is emulated. Guess I know what I’ll be looking up today. Great video! Definitely a good follow up to the last one. :)
You really missed out on the fun games for the system. Get your hands on Need for speed, it had as cheat that required you to have three controllers plugged in for the moped computer opponent. There was an adapter for the 3DO that allowed you to use SNES controllers with the system making the very first Street Fighter direct arcade port extremely fun. All earlier ports of street fighter games to the SNES and genesis had cuts and modifications done. Samurai showdown was also very fun. Twisted metal was also first on the 3DO. Also you can't count GEX sales as anything much as it was later given away with systems replacing crash and burn.
I've Had a 3DO Around 6 Year's Love It. I Have Around 17 Game's For It Really Enjoye Collecting For It Game Prices For The Most Part Are Not That Bad Unlike Collecting For Sega Saturn 😓.
I did mention something about NFS on the 3DO... Oh yeah, it has no multiplayer, it's strictly single-player. I had to check the NFS wiki on the game, and yep, the original release had no multiplayer to speak of.
I wish some more of those games got ported over or something. My mom got a 3DO from my dad as a gift and it was the first console I have some memories of before they got me a 64. Escape From Monster Manor was one of the first FPS I ever played. The music and atmosphere still suck me in. Like, it's old, it's cheesy, it's frustrating in design cause you can get stuck in levels because you don't get enough keys to open all the doors... but the world in that game always gets the hair on my neck to stand up no matter what. Battle Sport was bonkers. Floating bumper car looking ships playing deadly matches with lasers in an arena of you and some other poor sap trying to play a game that reminds me of soccer. And the announcer...I can't forget his lines even if I wanted. "He's got the ball!" is embedded in my mind. There's another one I can never remember the name of, but it was like you're sent into a virtual world and you can punch out these energy balls. I just thought it looked cool. I didn't know there was a way to play those on a computer though. That's dope. Gonna have to look into that. Great video!
3DO hardware was never the issue -- Road Rash and FIFA Soccer are two examples that showing how great the system could be. However, their business game plan destroyed any chance for the system. Nintendo, Sega, and Sony could sell their hardware at a loss and make it up licensing and selling games. Not 3DO. They allowed anyone to make the hardware, assuring that systems would cost a fortune and no one would make money. The even bigger problem was allowing nearly anyone to publish games, so they never made a dime while the system had way too many crappy releases. It's a shame because the 3DO system is very close to PS1 quality long before the PlayStation was released.
Just the other day I was at a game store which sold 3DO games, and it got me thinking of the original video you did back in 2019, ironically enough it was the copy of Blade Force that I saw that got me thinking about it due to the one segment where you purposefully made it seem like the video was being played on a damaged disc that kept skipping. Still a great video here Frame!
For some reason Capcom was planning to port Mega Man X3 to the 3DO, despite the fact that the first two games had not been released for it. Sure said port would have been a port of the PSX/Saturn version, but it's still odd they even considered it.
My only experience with the 3DO is the show "It's Alive!" which aired on YTV in the 90s. It was an hour and a half long, covering a few different genres. It had a lot of sketch comedy, but it also had a game show segment called "Uh-Oh!" Canadians may be familiar with the name "Uh-Oh!", as that segment got spun off into its own half hour show. Anyway, whenever there were prizes to give out I recall there was always a 3DO (specifically the Panasonic FZ-1 R·E·A·L model) given to the overall winner. Because of this, I suspect that London Ontario may have the highest concentration of 3DOs on the planet.
London probably has the highest concentration of houses filled to the brim with junk accumulated over decades, so I wouldn't be shocked if some hoarder down by the Fairgrounds has like 6 of them, new in box, sitting under 25 years of crap.
One thing to note about Crash n Burn is the draw distance... That was incredibly impressive for the time. Also, the port of Super Street Fighter II Turbo was incredible... Of course, the best way to play it would be with a 3rd party controller with more buttons. (Which I don't have...) It was WAY overpriced and doomed to fail, but it does have a lot of great games. (Also way more bad games :-)... Luckily, I've never had an issue getting burned games to play on my FZ1... Thanx for the vid...
![ลองสุ่มไอโฟน 990 โกงมั้ย? [ โกงมั้ยครับ ep.101 ] | DOM](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/bfsWe0j492k/mqdefault.jpg)
I think Trip Hawkins was trying to achieve what Sony eventually did with the Playstation, but the 3DO was a transitionary console, much like the Dreamcast years later. They were both useful for teaching console manufacturers what exciting things could be achieved in the future, as well as what mistakes they should avoid.
He definitely had some great ideas and really helped to pioneer some things that lifted Electronic Arts into their golden age! It'd be a real shame if the values and ideals of the foundation they built upon would be sullied years later along with any shred of credibility among consumers.... EA used to constantly innovate with yearly sports games back then so it was exciting to see the new Madden or NBA Live!
But yeah, like you said, it's nice that Tripp's failure with the 3DO provided more information those afterwards could use to succeed.
Dreamcast wasnt a transition console. Games are still being made for it.
@@mikemoss9559 Yes it kinda was a transition console, since it was the first 6th gen console that was released TWO YEARS before PS2.
@@Ex0rz in the US the dreamcast stopped and microsoft started to make the xbox. And future dc titles and sequels made for the dreamcast overseas ended up on the xbox here.
@@mikemoss9559 Well they're still making SNES/Genesis games too so that doesn't mean anything.
Dreamcast was definitely a transitionary console. I mean look at the overlap of games it got, it had quite a few PlayStation titles on it that looked better. I liked the Dreamcast but it was definitely a transitionary console.
Panasonic should release a 3DO mini classic. It would be a nice addition to the retro mini classic consoles.
Panasonic don't own the rights to the 3DO and lost a fortune on it.
The system was a convoluted joke of a system.
@@bigbabatunde1218 you've clearly never used one son
@@FantasyVisuals That's the point, hardly anyone has. It was a massive flop. Not so much a hot mess but a mediocre mess.
Didn't you watch the video?
One controller port! Daisy chaining! FFS.
No one would buy that
It would be cool to see you cover the Nokia N-Gage.
@Lassi Kinnunen 81 I think most negative things people say about it are mostly true. But it did have potential and was useful in many ways as you stated. But it's like it didn't know what it wanted to be, a Phone that can function as a game console, or a game console that can function as a phone. Emulators could also be an interesting topic as well!
They’re currently extremely cheap from China. They’re the real units, but I guess some warehouse bought them and they never sold them until now. I got one myself and I’m trying to design an SD card adapter similar to ones like AceKard and the more popular adapter for the Nintendo DS. I’m planning on creating a Doom port to the N-Gage as it’s definitely capable of running Doom thanks to its adequate GPU.
@@NikoKourouklisBut can it run Namco Museum?
My mom had one, it was cool and I loved playing with it when I was bored outside
Unfortunately it was lost as part of her habit of losing/breaking a phone every year
15:15 Rebecca Heineman is an incredibly talented developer, and also did the port of Wolfenstein 3D for the 3DO. Unfortunately, for reasons outside of her control, she had a little over a month to produce a working port of Doom, which is why it's so crappy.
Step 1: build own developer tools, without any guidance.
Step 2: figure out how to run Doom on a machine much slower than the Super FX2.
Step 3: Demand the boss's band play the entire soundtrack.
There's a reason she's regarded as a legend. A shame this time she couldn't pull off the impossible....
But.
She knew it would be lost cause. Since the M2 was supposedly on the way, she thoughtfully included a way to play the game at full screen with an uncapped frame rate. Today, it means an overclocked emulator can play the game as it was originally intended.
I guess that's a partial symbolic victory?
@@GeeCee-pv7ik
Yes, she.
@@juststatedtheobvious9633 I don't think the 3DO hardware is "much slower" than Super FX2. In fact, most 3D 3DO games obviously demonstrate that this was not the case.
William Salvador Heineman
@@rars0n
I'm referring to raw cpu clockspeeds.
They're easy to look up, and things aren't looking good for your theory.
But clockspeeds are also misleading. A ZX Spectrum has one higher than an SNES.
On a related note, I feel bad for 3DO's Trip Hawkins & what EA has become.
Yes. I almost forgot the good sensation of buying an EA Game... That feeling only lives in my memory
@@lacuevadegolum9448 The last EA game I bought was .skate back in 2007
Trips doing fine I have him on Facebook and he’s currently traveling around the world atm.
"Road Rash machine" that's a pretty decent legacy TBH, that game is really good and quite unique even for its series. I just wish EA had called it Road Rash 4, it'd have made talking about it a lot less confusing.
A headphone jack on the controller is genius. Why did nobody else do that!? The only other console I've seen with that feature was the Xbox 360 and even then, it wasn't really a headphone jack but a separate headset port for voice chat; you didn't get game audio through it.
You need to burn the discs at 1x speed from what I've been told
"Respect in the internet is everything" ~ 3DO Godfather
The 3DO M2 was also an arcade system.
The 3DO, CD-i, and PlayStation. I thought all of these mid-90s platforms would fail. Two out of three ain't bad, right?
Coincidentally, they're my top 3 favourite systems of all-time! Almost entirely due to nostalgia and the impact they had on my life as a teenager.
0:26 ... that was mindblowing for most households 30 years ago, slow loading or not :)
FIFA Soccer is what sold me on the 3DO. I was walking past a Babagges when I saw a TV displaying a Soccer game (Football to the rest of you). It was so real that I didn't realize it wasn't a game on a poorly tuned TV until I looked at what was running it.
When it comes to Need For Speed (the first game), it's the frame rate that makes the difference between the different versions. But it's not just that. The later releases are also more arcade-style than the 3DO game. This is why I still prefer the 3DO version over the faster alternatives. The way the cars handle carry more weight, and therefore even with the lower frame rate, the sense of speed is still conveyed.
This is something that I will never, ever be able to explain to people who never played Stunt Race FX back when it was new. It has a VERY low frame rate but expertly-crafted controls that make it work, and pacing that manages to convey a real sense of speed once you get a feel for the game. I'm all for higher frame rates in most games. 30+ is good, 60+ is better. But for me, more important is CONSISTENCY and both of these games manage that despite the lower frame rates, and that makes them infinitely playable for me. I'm more than happy to deal with a lower frame rate if it's at least consistent. I've never liked the arcade feel of NFS on Playstation. Also, compare screen shots between the two and the 3DO version just looks a lot better.
The 3DO has quite a few more games for it as well that you won't find anywhere else, like Doctor Hauzer and Battle Blues, and while EA was struggling to bring Madden to the Playstation for 1996, they had no problem making a GREAT version of it for 1994 on the 3DO. The same can be said of FIFA and Slam 'n' Jam.
Don't be mistaken that the 3DO has nothing but ports. Especially when it comes to EA. And while yes, some of these games got ported to later systems, there's no mistaking the fact that at the time, EA was putting their maximum effort into the 3DO versions of games. Other companies like Interplay and Crystal Dynamics were doing their part to support the console as well.
Also, there's currently a port of Tomb Raider that someone is working on... but you didn't hear that from me!
3DO could have been a contender with some better pricing strategy
Absolutely! 👍
I kind of doubt it. I think the fundamental flaw with the 3DO was the fact that really anyone could publish software for it. You get a handful of good games underneath a mountain of shovel ware.
Hey ! I wanted to say i'm not quite proud of the post that i made, as even some other devs corrected me on the nature of the 3DO. :P (I invite you to look at their response to that post)
Yes, it has a CEL engine that would fit the description of a sprite based engine : it can do rotations, scaling... all in hardware and the CEL engine by itself is 2D by nature but the reality is that most of the 3D calculations are done on the CPU as it was described in Doom 3DO by the developer.
I was really confused looking at the 3D examples in the SDK because i didn't see much dedicated hardware which led me to this conclusion.
In my opinion, the CEL engine makes it very good for 2D games... even though it has weird quirks.
One quirk that i recall from the SDK documentation (and that i've experienced) was the fact that having the CEL engine move a huge picture through the CEL engine could make the hardware choke but dividing it into several parts could make it much faster. It's actually quite annoying to deal with when you have huge sprites that you want to move so you need to take careful considerations when targetting the 3DO.
With all of that said, the 3DO is much better than say, an FM Towns 1/Marty (which is effectively just like a VGA based DOS computer except with more colors and dedicated sprites as well as a slow 386SX processor) or a PC-FX (which can do some nice video decompression in hardware but is completely incapable of 3D aside from having a decent CPU that could do some 3D in software).
I also wanted to point out that 3DO emulators are still quite inaccurate and it's quite easy to make a game that would not work in real hardware but would on an emulator. I'm hoping the MAME project makes more progression on that. Cheers
To add to this post, the CEL hardware is really doing the final rasterization step of a 3d engine pipeline, so in the case of 3DO you provide some vectors that tell where the upper left corner of a bitmap starts and how to stretch horizontally and vertically to fit a quad polygon area. It's a little bit more involved than other hardware that will take directly vertex coordinates, but at this final pipeline stage after the 3D projection, it's not much different than PS1 rasterizing triangles (at this stage we have 2d final points on the screen and just want to fit a bitmap). There are some other significant difference though, the 3DO is a forward renderer (it has read every texture pixel and fill the screen, instead of the reverse that PS1 and most renders do) and so it can't support texture coordinates, while the PS1 does. I do remember a video in Digital Foundry I think where it presented what happened in Tomb Raider if you reset the CEL vectors, and it was like a mesh of random sprites, so people where naturally "OMG, what a horrible idea these 3DO engineers thought?!". But it really is not that bad, it's just another way of rasterizing a bitmap over a polygon (being it quad or triangle in the case of PS1). I thought that take on the video was, while cute, misleading in it's perception that they thought something alien for something that should be simple.
Meanwhile, one would claim that PS1 is 3D because it also had hardware matrix math, but I did found that the same exists in 3DO too (the math matrix functions are running on the hardware and proved to be in some cases 4 times faster than my pure CPU equivalent). Yet, obviously there are no direct functions on the API that just take a mesh and do all the work, I bet even in the PS1 one had to do some work, construct the 3d rotation matrix on the CPU before giving it to the hardware (something I also do on 3DO). The 3DO really suffers on the CPU side, but for a complete 3D engine more things have to be done anyway. The CEL on it's own, if used properly, was quite good for it's time I think.
The issue with the bigger texture, wasn't necessary that you have to split in many textures. You could have the same big texture in the screen as long as it wasn't going out of bounds. If you render the same amount of pixels/texels in both cases, it wouldn't matter if it's 1 big quad with the whole texture, or more quads with the same texture split in pieces. I think what happened in your game was that there a was big texture that was going out of bounds on all sides of the screen. And I realized, in a new project the CEL capability of "super-clipping" is not enabled by default (and needs some more extra steps to really get it working, there is a CEL flag but then one needs to enable a bit in the framebuffer creation too, I don't know why in the original init functions they didn't enable this by default). This means, a big portion of the quad that is outside the screen would still be interpolated (but later the pixels discarded) instead of early terminating. Now, if the whole quad is outside the screen, there is a different kind of clipping which will discarded, but if it's partially out it's not doing a good work skipping those pixels unless one enables the feature. It was even not enabled in the original Doom source and would make the framerate too slow if I stuck my view in front of a very tall wall (very tall columns rendered with CELs extended very high outside the framebuffer). If the big screen is split in small pieces, some of them will be whole out the screen so the first clipper (not the super-clipper) will at least work. The advice in the SDK docs I think was rather talking about a different bottleneck, where if you have a very small polygon in the distance that could be few pixels, yet the texture it tries to render is very big, it will still read every pixel of the texture (because of forward rendering) which is a waste. Then you have to switch to a lower version of your texture. But in the case of your 2d game, probably enable super-clipping was another easier solution.
@@Optimus6128 I still don’t get how a forward renderer concept survives the software stage. Like you code up forward and backwards. You find out the backwards (Gouraud) needs less iterations. Winner!
Forward renderer can use a write queue max of address-value pairs, while a backwards renderer needs a queue of source-target pairs. Then especially for pixels with less bits than a system word, some circuitry would find duplicated addresses. In both cases.
Rendering two lines at the same time is difficult on polygons ( screen or UV mapping). I say: if consecutive lines touch each other on screen, go left-right over them (zig zag of the polygon) to at leas produce dupes near the edges.
I had the 3DO graphics card back in the days. Such a good card for its time.
there's no "illusion of 3D" or "genuine 3D", the 3DO is real 3D, it just uses its own way of rasterizing shapes
Completely right.
This idea that only tri-based rendering is 'proper' 3D is nonsense.
Using quads instead of triangles means that you don't have to spend as much processing budget mapping square textures to flat planes, but each individual plane uses more memory as there's an additional point to plot relative to the other 3. As a result you can render less polygons on screen but those polygons can be more efficient and less prone to texture warping, so it's as if you were just using the raw textures as the polygons.
That's literally the only difference and it's really frustrating seeing people with limited technical knowledge repeating this fallacy.
The 3DO name also has nothing to do with the 3D rendering of the system (Audio+Video+Games=3DO. It's a play on words and the system was supposed to be a replacement for CD players, game consoles and VHS players as justification for the launch price. Once the hardware standard was licensed to multiple third-party manufacturers the price to the consumer went down in line with the aforementioned media players. It's basically a modern console made with technology 2 generations too early to be good enough for the job. The implications of what could have happened to the industry if it had succeeded are incredible)
I'm really disappointed that the information in this video is still completely wrong.
@@casanovafunkenstein5090 ikr
true and honest
@@casanovafunkenstein5090warping is worse with low polycount and wide field of view. Inevitably, with faster hardware and higher resolution the faster filling of a polygon will win. So it was meant as a stop-gap technology? PS1 warps, but already the next polygon console (N64) does not.
Polygon APIs have triangle strips and fans. The hardware can be implemented to scanline rasteriser multiple polygons at once to avoid loss of memory bandwidth on unaligned edges.
I think 3do only specified the API. Panasonic could have made a triangle list with shared edges and a flag for shared vertex as fast as they want. Games would have increased polycount as new hardware refocusing come out. Ah, need a z-buffer for this. Like on Jaguar and N64. Jaguar just needs a single Bit to switch between quads and polygons. I think, Tempest 2000 show cases some quads.
On the other hand: smaller polygons lead to better z-sort. Then again those pointy triangles are more difficult to sort than compact quads. Hm, could sort pairs of triangles joint on their long shared edge.
Bucket sort is the only sorting fast enough for real time z-sort. When polygons reach over multiple buckets, you can easily clip them, but quads cannot.
I honestly wish the SNES version of Wolfenstein wasn't the only one to have an actual map.
The jaguar version has a map too.
@@WickedElement oh cool
@@junethefox5834 3DO version has a map too lol (press A+C)
@@DoggoneNexus oh
Honestly, I think the 3DO version of Star Fighter is by far the best. The other ports just don't look as nice to me.
I have played over 130 games on 3DO and Star Fighter is one of my favorites.
Definately a top ten must have!
The M2 tech was sold and used in medical equipment and display kiosks. It was not cancelled. 🙄 Also I believe Konami used it as an arcade board for a game or two.
I own a 3DO with around 40ish titles and I've had a really good time trying out the library. My current favorite is Escape from Monster Manor, its not stellar but I always love the Halloween and Horror style it brings to the table even if its cheesy. Not all games are going to be good no doubt, but what's considered quality is fairly nice. Many games did get ports to other consoles like the PS1 and Saturn, but the original 3DO ports are more often than not still the best versions to get. Need for Speed on 3DO was an interesting case and has its fans. I admittedly like it more than the PS1 and Saturn versions because of its approach to being a more realistic racer. By turning it into a faster more arcade-like title it competed with the likes of Daytona USA on Saturn and Ridge Racer on PS1, both of which are far better than PS1/Saturn Need for Speed. Those versions also didn't have X-Man like the 3DO did, lol.
Who shot Johnny Rock , Starfighter , SpaceHulk were amazing fun on 3DO. I had so much fun on the system.
Never got far on Sherlock Holmes tho ......
A system I always wanted as a child (I was HUGE Gex fan and knew about the first game originally being on 3DO with a few bells and whistles) but never wound up getting. Not sure I'd want one today because of the stupid retro game bubble making everything too expensive, but I can appreciate it for that and def agree that it seems like an early PS1.
Here's the real question. Has anyone ever made it past the first level in a Gex 3DO review?
A few seconds into the video, lemme drop a comment. Welcome back :)
You could also delete save files with the 3DO sampler disk.
I'm glad you came back to this. Shame the burns didn't work, I've got the same model and it's been very co-operative with any random cdr I throw at it. Maybe it's console dependent rather than the burning method.
I am guessing weak laser. I have the fz-10 and it works with cd-r's just fine.
I see Putt-Putt, I click
Also GEX, of course. The 3DO and its library are an interesting piece of nostalgia for me.
Putt-Putt & Freddy Fish
Very well done, i was a teenage gamer at the time of 3do release in Australia. it was a strange beast being demonstrated at any video store or game convention going. it was impressive but too expensive. love the nostalgia. Thanks.
I never owned a 3DO and for a long time also considered it a joke since it was a distant 4th in it's console gen but over the last several years, I've come around to the system. It's home to a lot of unique and interesting titles, some of which, as you pointed, were eventually ported to other consoles and something about early 3D titles that I find charming now. I would of liked to see what the M2 was capable of, if it ever was released.
I don't agree with the statement that it "couldn't do real 3D." That claim is based on an absurd definition of what "real 3D" is.
It operates using quads, and lacks the ability to texture-map its surfaces apart from having an image fixed exactly corner-to-corner. People try to make the claim that it isn't real 3D because it is actually just using mathematical computations to skew the quads and then align them in clever positions to look like 3D objects, but guess what? That's literally EXACTLY what every polygonal 3D rendering system does with triangles! They just use mathematical computations to stretch and warp the triangle positions in a way to look like a 3D object.
Those 3D games on the 3DO (and the Sega Saturn, which also used quads) are operating in 3D space, and calculating numbers for a 3D representation. It doesn't matter if that's done with quads, tris, vectors, or just floating pixels. It's still a 3D space being rendered on a screen.
Now just show me perspective correct quads ( isometric is also 3d, but easy ). Why does the CEL not have Division and Multiply to split up quads in baby quads with properly projected vertices in a regular grid (not mesh). Or just project ever texel correctly.
Wikipedia has a section how division can be done iteratively using MULs. So you could subdivide until warp isn’t too extreme, but noticeably. Then reduce it with as many iterations as you like. Of course it may cut into the fill rate. But guess what: you can have a lot of multipliers on a die, but memory bandwidth is really expensive.
I would have loved to see you cover the 3DO's three best games: Wing Commander 3, Star Control 2, and The Horde
Hey FR, the Extron AVT 100 is your perfect demodulation box for your Balley Astrocade and Atari 2600.
When I bought my first 3DO about 15 years ago, it was incredibly rare to find any games for it. Then a few years ago every retro game store I went into had 3DO games in their glass cases, sometimes huge amounts of them. It sucks that I could never find anything to play on it when I was interested in it, and now there's piles of games available around me and I just don't care. Plus, I don't want to buy common, used old disc-only games that start out around $40 and get drastically higher after that.
3do was an ok system for its time, but the $1300 price tag really held it back from achieving success
Okay, at best. It was really underpowered for what it was trying to achieve. .
PC prices without PC power isn't a good look.
I paid $100 for a brand new one in 1996 * Edited, i didnt realize i put "1906", lol.
Hey floppa
The $699 price was only for the first few months the console was available in 1993. I remember very distinctly trying to save up enough money to buy a 3DO in early 1994 and the Goldstar verson was $399 and the (cooler, in my opinion) Panasonic one was $499. I couldn't get that much together and ended up buying a Jaguar for $199. By the end of 1994, though, Panasonic released the FZ-10 for $299 and by 1995 when the Playstation and Saturn were available, the 3DO was actually cheaper than either of them.
@@Louie_The_Dago "The last time I bought a 3DO was in nineteen-aught-seven. What a wild year that was."
(cheers to anyone who gets the reference)
I wish I didn't sell my 3DO. I got it in 2010 and had some good complete in box games. It's worth so much more nowadays. I had Samurai Showdown and Way of the Warrior.. Killing Time and Super SF 2.
Wasn't the FM Towns Marty the first ever 32 bit CD console?
No. FM Towns has only 16bit data bus. Amiga CD32 (released month before 3DO) is fully 32bit.
If we go that "partially 32bit" route, then Amiga CDTV, CD-i and Sega Megadrive are also (partially) 32bit.
EDIT: This is now being trimmed out with the YT editor.
That comment was taken from my older video. Surprisingly, I have no memory of anyone pointing this out last time.
I didn't double check that part as a result... clearly I should have. My mistake.
Hello you.. You 're Guru Larry.... 😆 love that every time
@@jpjokela1 Sadly, the main memory controller of the CD32, the Alice chip, is also only 16-bit, which is why 2D graphics throughput is so poor. Having a 32-bit data bus isn't enough if only the CPU can access the full bus (and even then, could never get more than 50% of available memory cycles). The CD32 was a weird mix of cutting-edge, ancient, expensive, and cost-reduced hardware all in one box.
I remember playing Road Rash on my step-dad's 3DO back in 1995... I so badly miss playing that and my step-dad. I don't know what he did with the console and he died almost 8 years ago, so I can't ask him...
Whenever he said most note worthy titles have been ported onto other consoles, he forgot to mention 1 note worthy title that is a 3do exclusive that being Immercenary. Immercenary is a great fps made by EA that was only released on the 3do and not anywhere else. It is also extremely cheap, I got my copy for $15 in long box.
I remember majority of the 3DO games would be on what would be considered the set top boxes around 1996-1999 (those boxes that would allow you more channels on your default cable subscription (they also had a random selection of games you could play using the remote)
Great to see you getting back at these videos
I had Gex, Off-World Interceptor, and Solar Eclipse for Sega Saturn, which were vastly improved for SS. I had Doom for 32X, Saturn, and PC, which I'd have to give the win to PC for the ability to import .wad files.
Glad you got a few more games for this system to work. Especially Wolfenstein.
I remember the thirty minute infomercial for this. Watched it all the time, haha.
I'll always remember the line, "Variety is the spice of life!"
Man it's great to have you back you are Canada's natural treasure
Holy cow he’s Canadian?😮
missed this channel videos
Mid-generation consoles like this one always seemed to end up doomed, but I think we all secretly wanted them when we saw the screenshots in EGM and GamePro (at least until games like Star Fox and Stunt Race FX showed us that the SNES consoles we already had could do fake 3D just fine).
Killing Time -- Interesting FMV FPS. I'd love to see something like that make a return.
The console was seriously underrated for its time. If you’re not happy with the Sega CD games with grainy video the 3DO done a great job for games like Night Trap, Sewer Shark and Star Wars Rebel Assault. Also some other pc games don’t look too bad including laser disc titles the machine was more catered for the mature market if you can afford it at the time. Assuming any fans of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo port was awesome not to forget Road Rash it’s hilarious to play.
Life in the ol boy yet, great have you back
I never owned a 3DO and have no nostalgia for it, but let's face it. Even adjusting for inflation, its retail price in 1993, it's not THAT expensive, specially considering the many phones and devices people buy for over 1000$ to barely use 3% of what they are capable of doing.
It may not sound enticing now, but being able to watch VCDs, check your digital pictures, insert educational\encyclopedia discs and a few games here and there, such as Need for Speed and Road Rash is interesting. While the system couldn't compete with the then established gaming companies, it doesn't seem fair to bash on is price today, it was too early for that kind of technology, the PS2 and the Xbox delivered on that front being great DVD players alongside capable 3D machines.
I love the 3DO it’s so fascinating happy to see another video!
I have no intention to ever buy a 3DO, but like the CD-I, I find it a fascinating failed system and I love watching videos about it.
Oh, and KITTY! :D
Real talk, your videos just keep getting better and better. I love your content!
I have played Saturn Bomberman with 7 players local. Never played 3DO with more than 2. Do have a full PAL game set.
We had a 3DO FZ-1 when I was a kid and I don't remember Crash 'N Burn looking that bad! haha. I played that game for more hours than I can remember. I also used to love Road Rash, and Who Shot Johnny Rock.
I believe the original Gex was ported to the PlayStation & Maybe the Sega Saturn...
Yes, and the PC.
3DO controllers allowing you to enjoy music as well as complying with social distancing? Wow, the 3DO really was ahead of its time.
This was absolutely excellent from beginning to end. If you get the chance you should check out Wing Commander for the 3DO for something truly out of this world. It's a title that almost feels forgotten but in its heyday it was monumentally huge.
Also the 3do version was the best console version.
HELL YEAH, FRAME IS BACK, AND BETTER THAN EVER.
1:13 I had a demo disc with Two Stupid Dogs on it. Talk about random.
Fun fact. Konami used the M2 hardware for some of its arcade games. These were Battle Tryst (1998), Evil Night/Hell Night (1998), Heart of Eleven '98/The World Soccer Championship (1998), Tobe! Polystar (1997), and Total Vice (1998). As far as I know, none of these games got a home release.
Tobe! Polystars[29] (1997)
Total Vice (1997)
Battle Tryst (1998)
Evil Night / Hell Night (1998)
Heat of Eleven '98 / The World Soccer Championship (1998)
Happy to see more uploads
You can use the Panasonic CD Sampler that came with the system to manage the saved gave data. It's the one with the Photo Samples and Cartoons like Batman. Not sure if it came with all Panasonic models or not. I got mine when the price first dropped to $499.
You still have it?
The version of NFS for the 3DO was supposed to incorporate realistic vehicle handling much more than the later versions, which is why it feels slow in comparison. So, in terms of console racing games with an emphasis on realistic handling, it actually predates Gran Turismo by a few years.
I have the fz-10 and all my burned games work no problem might be your laser needs replaced I am sure they are cheap.
I got a 3DO (FZ-1) with the MPEG DEcoder, two controllers, and a bunch of games while in college (circa 2007) for real cheap and I'm really happy with it. I was able to get the memory expansion, two of the Capcom fighting gamepads, and a bunch of more games online not long after. Gex, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, Road Rash, and the Alone in the Dark games are great. Crash n' Burn and the Need for Speed aren't as bad as people online make them out to be. I also don't mind saying that Plumbers Don't Wear Ties is a guilty pleasure of mine.
I own approximately 50 boxed and complete 3DO games. Had them since the 90s. A few stories... I had this machine when I was in university living in a house full of guys and we routinely played Fifa Soccer with 3 to 5 players. At least a couple of times we managed to get 8 crowded around the TV to play 8 players. As I recall it "zooms" out pretty far when you get that many players at once making the game less fun. If my memory serves correctly (it might not) 4 players was the sweet spot for the game. Also, I almost thought you were going to overlook Road Rash... thankfully you got there. It was the best version of the game, and probably the best game for the system. Great soundtrack, played well, and at the time the graphics were unparalleled.There is one game you didn't mention that I remember enjoying a lot- "Wing Commander" (I think it was the first one), it had Mark Hamill in the FMV cutaways. The space "3D" shooting part of the game was ok, but I remember thinking the cutaways having a "choose your own adventure" decision making process made it good. I remember a friend of mine telling me at the time that if you make the right choices you could even get some "late night" as we called it, better known as hooking up. Thanks for the video, brought back some good memories. I may have to pull one of my 3DO machines from the basement along with the games and dust it off and give Road Rash a play...
I remember how badly I wanted one of these things. There was a retail store called Speaker City out by where I live, and they had an FZ1 model hooked up to this MASSIVE television, and they had this really sweet golf game to use as a demo machine. I never did get one, and something tells me I dodged one, big-time.
I think the 3DO would have been much more successful if it had the ability to play Video CDs built-in instead of requiring the add-on card. Similar to the hugely expensive PS3 being a success because it had a Blu-ray player, it would have given even the game-hesitant and excuse to tell themselves that they were buying in to the future. Likewise, I think Video CD would have been much more successful outside of Asia if it didn't always require dedicated hardware.
As a matter of fact, Video CDs were popular in my country from the late 1990s to the late 2000s.
This is so cool, I just find the 3DO and the other consoles I couldn’t get as a kid so fascinating. I wonder if this thing is emulated. Guess I know what I’ll be looking up today.
Great video! Definitely a good follow up to the last one. :)
You really missed out on the fun games for the system. Get your hands on Need for speed, it had as cheat that required you to have three controllers plugged in for the moped computer opponent. There was an adapter for the 3DO that allowed you to use SNES controllers with the system making the very first Street Fighter direct arcade port extremely fun. All earlier ports of street fighter games to the SNES and genesis had cuts and modifications done. Samurai showdown was also very fun. Twisted metal was also first on the 3DO. Also you can't count GEX sales as anything much as it was later given away with systems replacing crash and burn.
yeah framerater!
I was gonna dislike this video, but then I realized “Oh SHIT this person owns TRUXTON”
would be cool to see you cover the Memorex VIS, fail of fails of its time
I've Had a 3DO Around 6 Year's Love It.
I Have Around 17 Game's For It Really Enjoye Collecting For It Game Prices For The Most Part Are Not That Bad Unlike Collecting For Sega Saturn 😓.
I did mention something about NFS on the 3DO...
Oh yeah, it has no multiplayer, it's strictly single-player.
I had to check the NFS wiki on the game, and yep, the original release had no multiplayer to speak of.
I always wanted a 3do
That chad on the DVM box is my hair goals
I wish some more of those games got ported over or something. My mom got a 3DO from my dad as a gift and it was the first console I have some memories of before they got me a 64.
Escape From Monster Manor was one of the first FPS I ever played. The music and atmosphere still suck me in. Like, it's old, it's cheesy, it's frustrating in design cause you can get stuck in levels because you don't get enough keys to open all the doors... but the world in that game always gets the hair on my neck to stand up no matter what.
Battle Sport was bonkers. Floating bumper car looking ships playing deadly matches with lasers in an arena of you and some other poor sap trying to play a game that reminds me of soccer. And the announcer...I can't forget his lines even if I wanted. "He's got the ball!" is embedded in my mind.
There's another one I can never remember the name of, but it was like you're sent into a virtual world and you can punch out these energy balls. I just thought it looked cool.
I didn't know there was a way to play those on a computer though. That's dope. Gonna have to look into that. Great video!
Oh shit, 1000th like lol. Thank you for coming back to take another look at this system!
Amazing video explaining all of the different games without bias or prejudice based on physical limitations! :D
I think I can live without the M2 if it means there will be one less N64 Dong controller in this world
3DO hardware was never the issue -- Road Rash and FIFA Soccer are two examples that showing how great the system could be. However, their business game plan destroyed any chance for the system. Nintendo, Sega, and Sony could sell their hardware at a loss and make it up licensing and selling games. Not 3DO. They allowed anyone to make the hardware, assuring that systems would cost a fortune and no one would make money. The even bigger problem was allowing nearly anyone to publish games, so they never made a dime while the system had way too many crappy releases. It's a shame because the 3DO system is very close to PS1 quality long before the PlayStation was released.
God, I need one of those Robo 3DOs in my life
Road Race looks like it takes place in the same universe as Ena.
Just the other day I was at a game store which sold 3DO games, and it got me thinking of the original video you did back in 2019, ironically enough it was the copy of Blade Force that I saw that got me thinking about it due to the one segment where you purposefully made it seem like the video was being played on a damaged disc that kept skipping. Still a great video here Frame!
The Road&Track NFS was one of the first racing games I played bootleg on PC.
Just so you know, the Saturn version of Return Fire was cancelled. The Saturn version of Star Fighter was a dumpster.
2:39
It’s so weird to see a black plastic CRT portrayed as “the future”
Great video, more CD-I videos please!🙂
Everyone comes for the dancing Shantae and stays for the great reviews! 10/10
So hyped when I saw this uploaded!
I like this channel. It’s like… the good kind of boring. Like, interesting.
So looking at the pictures of the 3DO M2 controller which I’ve never seen before was this before or after the N64 controller was released ?
After
For some reason Capcom was planning to port Mega Man X3 to the 3DO, despite the fact that the first two games had not been released for it. Sure said port would have been a port of the PSX/Saturn version, but it's still odd they even considered it.
My only experience with the 3DO is the show "It's Alive!" which aired on YTV in the 90s. It was an hour and a half long, covering a few different genres. It had a lot of sketch comedy, but it also had a game show segment called "Uh-Oh!" Canadians may be familiar with the name "Uh-Oh!", as that segment got spun off into its own half hour show. Anyway, whenever there were prizes to give out I recall there was always a 3DO (specifically the Panasonic FZ-1 R·E·A·L model) given to the overall winner. Because of this, I suspect that London Ontario may have the highest concentration of 3DOs on the planet.
London probably has the highest concentration of houses filled to the brim with junk accumulated over decades, so I wouldn't be shocked if some hoarder down by the Fairgrounds has like 6 of them, new in box, sitting under 25 years of crap.
Nice video, we still have our 3do. The Horde is awesome, road rash is the best.
Gotta ask, what's the music you used at 0:04 when introducing the 3DO? Heard it in a few of your vids and can't help but think it's a cozy track
Oh wow it's actually not in the description, I should fix that. It's an instrumental of "Fancy" by Drake, made by Swizz Beatz.
One thing to note about Crash n Burn is the draw distance... That was incredibly impressive for the time.
Also, the port of Super Street Fighter II Turbo was incredible... Of course, the best way to play it would be with a 3rd party controller with more buttons. (Which I don't have...)
It was WAY overpriced and doomed to fail, but it does have a lot of great games. (Also way more bad games :-)...
Luckily, I've never had an issue getting burned games to play on my FZ1...
Thanx for the vid...