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[VGEsoterica]

I admit it...I am a sucker for rare and obscure games. The harder to find...the more they interest me...and the 3DO M2 is at the top of that list. Ten years of hunting and dumping prototypes and betas for fun...but even then finding hardware to play anything on. Like unobtainium rare

So lets emulate it instead! Because even if the 3DO M2 never got a home console release...it got five arcade games that you can actually experience. And if plans go according...to...well...plan I guess? A LOT more will work this fall / winter

But I do love retro gaming and the crazy effort people put in to get it working for all! People making an effort to make the unplayable actually playable!

Plus I can't be the only one on GAF that was disappointed back in the day when the M2 was cancelled by panasonic

 

[Nikodemos]

Man, the M2 is one of the great "what if"s of game industry history.

 

[BlackTron]

For some reason when I read the title I was like "it's gonna be that dude with the Al Bundy avatar", sure enough lol.

 

[nkarafo]

Man, the M2 is one of the great "what if"s of game industry history.

Not really though. The M2 sounded impressive in magazines in 1994. But in reality, the hardware was never ready or even close to ready. It was just hype and some unrelated hardware footage thrown in, not different than the Ultra 64 "T2/Jurassic Park VFX hardware" that would have the same capabilities as the Killer Instinct and Cruisin' USA arcade boards, not to mention a Silicon Graphics computer. We saw how well that went.

Instead, the M2 hardware was ready in 1997! The same year the M2 standalone console was canceled ofc. By then, the PS1 was a mainstream success, like the NES before it. It was like a trend. Videogames were synonymous with the word "Playstation". The Saturn and N64 were also already out, struggling against it. There was no room for another 5th gen console, it was too late. Who would want to compete with the PS1 that late into the same generation it was dominating?

And there is no doubt it's a 5th gen console. It's not even "cross-gen". The graphics don't seem all that great for a console that would be released a year after the N64. It doesn't seem like it's pushing that many more polygons than your average 5th gen game and the graphics engine even isn't as stable as on the N64, you still see wobbling textures. Plus, the Dreamcast would be released a year and something later, blowing it out of the water in terms of graphics. There was no point releasing it when the next generation was only a year away.

Maybe, if it was released as a 3DO add-on (like it was to be originally) and had those graphics in late 1994/early 1995, maybe that would turn some of the attention to the 3DO camp and steal some of the PS1 early thunder, before it became the beast it would become. Maybe then it would make some kind of difference, or at least that would be it's only chance while the hype in magazines was still hot. But it's still doubtful. You would still need a 3DO, which was still expensive even after all the major price drops and you would have to add the price of the add-on. And the 3DO player base that already existed wasn't exactly huge either, to support the add-on by themselves. And what other add-on was ever a success anyway? The Sega CD? 32X? Jaguar CD? The 64DD?

Oh, and as an arcade board, the M2 was embarrassing. Probably even worse than the Neo-Geo 64. A new 3D capable arcade board in 1997 that can't even compete with boards that Sega and Namco released in 1993? Something like Daytona USA on Model 2 or Ridge Racer completely decimates anything the M2 shits out and they did so 4 years earlier. Who would even care about such tech sensation in the arcades, in 1997? Maybe it could compete with the STV, which was Sega's secondary/cheap arcade board based on the Saturn hardware but even that was released in 1994 so the M2 was, again, too late.

In conclusion, no, the M2 was just hype and a waste of time reading about it back then.

 

[Drew1440]

I didn't know M2 emulation in MAME was possible. Hopefully the M2 demos will be playable in MESS, which shares a lot of cores with MAME.

Not really though. The M2 sounded impressive in magazines in 1994. But in reality, the hardware was never ready or even close to ready. It was just hype and some unrelated hardware footage thrown in, not different than the Ultra 64 "T2/Jurassic Park VFX hardware" that would have the same capabilities as the Killer Instinct and Cruisin' USA arcade boards, not to mention a Silicon Graphics computer. We saw how well that went.

Instead, the M2 hardware was ready in 1997! The same year the M2 standalone console was canceled ofc. By then, the PS1 was a mainstream success, like the NES before it. It was like a trend. Videogames were synonymous with the word "Playstation". The Saturn and N64 were also already out, struggling against it. There was no room for another 5th gen console, it was too late. Who would want to compete with the PS1 that late into the same generation it was dominating?

And there is no doubt it's a 5th gen console. It's not even "cross-gen". The graphics don't seem all that great for a console that would be released a year after the N64. It doesn't seem like it's pushing that many more polygons than your average 5th gen game and the graphics engine even isn't as stable as on the N64, you still see wobbling textures. Plus, the Dreamcast would be released a year and something later, blowing it out of the water in terms of graphics. There was no point releasing it when the next generation was only a year away.

Maybe, if it was released as a 3DO add-on (like it was to be originally) and had those graphics in late 1994/early 1995, maybe that would turn some of the attention to the 3DO camp and steal some of the PS1 early thunder, before it became the beast it would become. Maybe then it would make some kind of difference, or at least that would be it's only chance while the hype in magazines was still hot. But it's still doubtful. You would still need a 3DO, which was still expensive even after all the major price drops and you would have to add the price of the add-on. And the 3DO player base that already existed wasn't exactly huge either, to support the add-on by themselves. And what other add-on was ever a success anyway? The Sega CD? 32X? Jaguar CD? The 64DD?

Oh, and as an arcade board, the M2 was embarrassing. Probably even worse than the Neo-Geo 64. A new 3D capable arcade board in 1997 that can't even compete with boards that Sega and Namco released in 1993? Something like Daytona USA on Model 2 or Ridge Racer completely decimates anything the M2 shits out and they did so 4 years earlier. Who would even care about such tech sensation in the arcades, in 1997? Maybe it could compete with the STV, which was Sega's secondary/cheap arcade board based on the Saturn hardware but even that was released in 1994 so the M2 was, again, too late.

In conclusion, no, the M2 was just hype and a waste of time reading about it back then.

True, but it was seen as more powerful than the PS-X, and to most of the gaming press that's all what had mattered. That said, it would have possibly run into the same issue as the Saturn with the dual PowerPC 602's making it difficult to program for instead of putting a fast 604 instead.

 

[Nikodemos]

Instead, the M2 hardware was ready in 1997! The same year the M2 standalone console was canceled ofc. By then, the PS1 was a mainstream success, like the NES before it. It was like a trend. Videogames were synonymous with the word "Playstation". The Saturn and N64 were also already out, struggling against it. There was no room for another 5th gen console, it was too late. Who would want to compete with the PS1 that late into the same generation it was dominating?

It was only "ready" in 1997 because development slowed down to a crawl from 1995 onward, due to 3DO not having anymore money. Had they been able to afford sustained development, it would've likely been ready for a mid-late '96 launch, at which time it would have definitely been competitive.

And there is no doubt it's a 5th gen console. It's not even "cross-gen". The graphics don't seem all that great for a console that would be released a year after the N64. It doesn't seem like it's pushing that many more polygons than your average 5th gen game and the graphics engine even isn't as stable as on the N64, you still see wobbling textures. Plus, the Dreamcast would be released a year and something later, blowing it out of the water in terms of graphics. There was no point releasing it when the next generation was only a year away.

VGEsoterica , who owns about 8 units, ~98% of the SDK libraries, a bunch of alphas, and has dissected a couple of them, believes it's quite a bit more potent than the N64 and PS1. He believes its capabilities are about 40% of the way between the combined 5th gen and the Dreamcast. He also found mentions of original 3DO circuitry baked into the M2 chips, which would make it natively backwards-compatible. This would point to the idea of a 3DO add-on being dropped relatively early in its development.