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The rise and fall of the 3DO

nkarafo

Member
The 3DO was the most powerful "cross-gen" console, it gave the CD32, 32X and Jaguar a run for their money... Games like Crash & Burn, Fifa Soccer, Need for Speed and Road Rush were on par with early PS1 games or better. And definitely better than the launch Saturn games... 3D textured graphics with decent frame rates since 1993. I don't doubt it could compete with the Saturn/PSX graphics wise, assuming the console co existed with them and it didn't fade away.

I'm going through some 1994 game magazines and i laugh at the notion that the Jaguar is more powerful, like many suggested back in the day, even in 1994, a year after both consoles were released. Maybe the Jaguar is a 2D powerhouse but it was shit at 3D, it could barely move some flat shaded polygons, let alone textured ones.

Also, check out the unlimited draw distance of the 3D graphics in Crash & Burn. I get the camera is pretty much on rails but the graphics are still fully 3D. Every other racing game later on would have pop-up on every 5th gen platform (except for Kart racers for some reason) but this game had unlimited draw distance in 1993, which is crazy to me.

Having said that, I never saw anything like AvP on 3DO.

Graphically speaking, this is probably the most overrated game ever. The 3D engine is barely more advanced than Wolfenstein 3D with it's orthogonal rooms and corridors. Also, unlike Wolf 3D, the view distance is short and the frame rate abysmal, around 10-15 fps or so. The only thing it had going for it was the high-res graphics and sprites. But DOOM on the same platform was far more advance technically, pushing a more "modern" engine. DOOM was also shit on 3DO, which would be a better game to compare in favor of the Jaguar VS 3DO, but the 3DO port was botched badly, it wasn't really the system's fault (the Saturn version was really bad as well for similar reasons).
 
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MiguelItUp

Member
A friend of mine had one, and after playing it I realized I wasn't missing too much. Also got to play the kiosk at Media Play a few times.

PO'ed, Road Rash, Return Fire, and Way of the Warrior were just a few games I played that I thought were cool. But, I didn't want it after my time with it, haha.
 

ManaByte

Gold Member
3DO was the only machine to get bigger sprites in Super Street Fighter, Samurai Showdown WITH Q sound.

The pack in racing game WAS really good and Wing Commander 3 heart of the Tiger was available for it as well

gex was okay, the game show game was okay.. I was lucky my parents spoiled me.
It also had the best console port of Wing Commander 3.

Also the Need for Speed series began there.
 

cyberheater

PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
I don't know about the rest of the world but these were very expensive in the UK.
 

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
Also, check out the unlimited draw distance of the 3D graphics in Crash & Burn. I get the camera is pretty much on rails but the graphics are still fully 3D.
That was a bit of smoke and mirrors. Crash and Burn wasn't really doing realtime transform on geometry, it was streaming precalculated vectors and letting the hardware render them. That's why the camera stayed completely on rails, and only moved forward along a set path. Neat looking trick, though.
 
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nkarafo

Member
That was a bit of smoke and mirrors. Crash and Burn wasn't really doing realtime transform on geometry, it was streaming precalculated vectors and letting the hardware render them. That's why the camera stayed completely on rails, and only moved forward along a set path. Neat looking trick, though.
Still, i was pretty impressed because it wasn't pre-rendered like Mega Race. I wonder if there are other similar games like this.
 

nkarafo

Member
I happen to have a Neogeo. Its still kicking and sometimes I hook it up. Its a majestic console still. Hard to believe its from 1990. Playing Shodown 2 or KOF 98 on it is sick as fuck. Back then I couldn't afford it ofcourse, I bought it in the early 2k's.

But the 3DO? Never risen. It was a wreck from the get go. The plan was outsourcing hardware, but the thing was expensive and the games weren't that good. Playstation launched like a year later in Japan and had actually decent 3D for the time and it was cheaper. I felt like 3DO never really came out. It was there, but it went just as silently.
Both the Neo-Geo and 3DO were similarly expensive. The Neo-Geo probably even more if you count the price of the games.

I guess the difference is that the Neo-Geo was never meant to be sold to a wide audience. It even started it's life as a rental machine only AFAIK.

Then again, there was the Neo-Geo CD... But that one lacked the later game releases, which were the best games Neo-Geo had to offer.
 

RAIDEN1

Member
CD32 though despite its name, was more aimed at being Commodore's answer to the Sega CD, so it didn't have a leg to stand on compared to what you were getting on the 3DO....
 

StormCell

Member
I think a better thread would be "The Rise and Fall of 3DO" as in the publisher. My gawd, this company was great in the late '90s and early '00s. They had Might and Magic and High Heat Baseball...
 

ANDS

King of Gaslighting
Fantastic machine when it released. Way of the Warrior. Street Fighter. Road Rash. All good (relative to the era).
 

Romulus

Member
Graphically speaking, this is probably the most overrated game ever. The 3D engine is barely more advanced than Wolfenstein 3D with it's orthogonal rooms and corridors. Also, unlike Wolf 3D, the view distance is short and the frame rate abysmal, around 10-15 fps or so. The only thing it had going for it was the high-res graphics and sprites. But DOOM on the same platform was far more advance technically, pushing a more "modern" engine. DOOM was also shit on 3DO, which would be a better game to compare in favor of the Jaguar VS 3DO, but the 3DO port was botched badly, it wasn't really the system's fault (the Saturn version was really bad as well for similar reasons).

I disagree. I don't think stairs and multiple floors should be some huge points for graphics. That's more complexity of the level design. AvP looked great at the time and was praised for it across the board. Simpler games get praised for visuals all the time and people focusing on the higher-res sprints or textures of that time is perfectly ok. The level design wasn't good, but not because of lack of stairs, etc. Back to the main point, are there any 3DO fps games that are a good comparison to AvP/Doom on Jaguar?
 

RAIDEN1

Member
I disagree. I don't think stairs and multiple floors should be some huge points for graphics. That's more complexity of the level design. AvP looked great at the time and was praised for it across the board. Simpler games get praised for visuals all the time and people focusing on the higher-res sprints or textures of that time is perfectly ok. The level design wasn't good, but not because of lack of stairs, etc. Back to the main point, are there any 3DO fps games that are a good comparison to AvP/Doom on Jaguar?
The irony is despite the Jaguar having it's killer app in AVP it still wasn't enough to get all the big-name publishers on board....and that retro controller for it which looked like from 1983 much less 1993 didn't help matters..
 

nkarafo

Member
I disagree. I don't think stairs and multiple floors should be some huge points for graphics. That's more complexity of the level design. AvP looked great at the time and was praised for it across the board. Simpler games get praised for visuals all the time and people focusing on the higher-res sprints or textures of that time is perfectly ok. The level design wasn't good, but not because of lack of stairs, etc. Back to the main point, are there any 3DO fps games that are a good comparison to AvP/Doom on Jaguar?
No, not really. As i said, the 3DO version of DOOM was completely botched. After that, there isn't anything nearly as good. I guess Escape from Monster Manor could be compared to AVP, it has a similar crappy engine and high res sprites, but it lacks texture on ceiling/floors. But it runs at a higher frame rate and has unlimited draw distance. There's also PO'ed, which has a more advanced engine that allows more complex architecture (it's fully 3D with no restrictions actually) but the game's ugly art direction and low-res textures don't do it any favors. Still, that's a game the Jaguar would never be able to handle.

But you don't need those games to see how the the 3DO was more capable since it has stuff like The Need for Speed and Road Rush that feature graphics and textures similar to what the PS1/Saturn would pump out later on and was ahead of what the Jaguar could do.

Anyway, the complexity of the level design has a HUGE impact on performance and technological requirements. It's not just "stairs". In DOOM you can have all sorts of architectural designs with very few limitations (such as lack of slopes and rooms above other rooms, both added later by the Build engine). Something like Wolf 3D that only has orthogonal rooms requires much less processing power. Even the SNES could run it (but it needed a FX2 chip to run a low res version of DOOM at less than 10 fps). The Jaguar clearly had enough power to run a decent, cut down version of DOOM (while still retaining most of it's level detail) which is why i think AVP is overrated. After playing DOOM, i couldn't be impressed by the endless, samey looking boxy rooms and corridors and short draw distances...

Also, one would expect if the Jaguar can run DOOM at a decent frame rate, surely it can run something like AVP, with it's far simpler engine, at an even faster rate. But no, despite being simpler the game runs slower even. Which is why i think of it as overrated technically. A bunch of high-res sprites aren't enough to cover all of it's shortcomings.
 
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Romulus

Member
No, not really. As i said, the 3DO version of DOOM was completely botched. After that, there isn't anything nearly as good. I guess Escape fro Monster Manor could be compared to AVP, it has a similar crappy engine and high res sprites, but it lacks texture on ceiling/floors. But it runs at a higher frame rate and has unlimited draw distance. There's also PO'ed, which has a more advanced engine that allows much more complex architecture (and also runs faster than AVP) but the game's ugly art direction make it look like crap anyway.

But you don't need those games to see how the the 3DO was more capable since it has stuff like The Need for Speed and Road Rush that feature proper 3D polygonal graphics and textures, similar to what the PS1/Saturn would pump out later on and was ahead of what the Jaguar could do.

Anyway, the complexity of the level design has a HUGE impact on performance and technological requirements. It's not just "stairs". In DOOM you can have all sorts of architectural designs with very few limitations (such as lack of slopes and rooms above other rooms, both added later by the Build engine). Something like Wolf 3D that only has orthogonal rooms requires much less processing power. Even the SNES could run it (but it needed a FX2 chip to run a low res version of DOOM at less than 10 fps). The Jaguar clearly had enough power to run a decent, cut down version of DOOM (while still retaining most of it's level detail) which is why i think AVP is overrated. After playing DOOM, i couldn't be impressed by the endless, samey looking boxy rooms and corridors and short draw distances...

Also, one would expect if the Jaguar can run DOOM at a decent frame rate, surely it can run something like AVP, with it's far simpler engine, at an even faster rate. But no, despite being simpler the game runs slower even. Which is why i think of it as overrated technically. A bunch of high-res sprites aren't enough to cover all of it's shortcomings.


You say the architecture of the levels is a huge factor, but how much? If you don"t know exactly how much, how can describe it as "huge?" Do these slopes and stairs and varations have a huge impact across all engines? Wouldn't it be possible with more competent devs to design something less taxing?

I would imagine have higher resolutions sprites and textures was taxing for AvP, especially at that time. And we're not exactly talking about premium developers either for AvP, so its its highly likely it wasn't optimized or even conceptually sound from the start.

The other games you mentioned, are we talking the same exact developers in those cases? We can't say 3do Doom was botched and just assume every other case is perfectly exploiting the hardware. The 1990s were great, but from my understanding every other title was riddled with ridiculous development issues, so theres alot of assumptions about exactly is being pushed for each system.
 

RoboFu

One of the green rats
The sad thing is that they had a cool model with licensing the hardware to manufacturers and they had the recognition being out first. They just completely fucked up the m2.
We could be living in world with companies like Samsung and lg making different versions of the same hardware.
 
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Havoc2049

Member
3DO didn't do enough to support their own creation and Panasonic botched the launch of their player in 1993. The system was destined to fail at $699 and it launched with just ONE game, the pack-in game, Crash 'n Burn. By Christmas, all they had was Dragon's Lair, Space Ace and a few edutainment titles. Is that worth $699 dollars in 1993? It was such a bad launch that little old Atari, with one foot in the grave and a shoestring marketing budget, sold more Jaguars in 1993 than Panasonic sold 3DOs. It was something like 17k Jaguars to 9k 3DOs for 1993.

I don't know what the 3DO company was thinking either. They published ZERO games for their own players in 1993 and just ONE edutainment game in 1994. It wasn't until 1995 that they got the ball rolling and published a handful of titles.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
3DO didn't do enough to support their own creation and Panasonic botched the launch of their player in 1993. The system was destined to fail at $699 and it launched with just ONE game, the pack-in game, Crash 'n Burn. By Christmas, all they had was Dragon's Lair, Space Ace and a few edutainment titles. Is that worth $699 dollars in 1993? It was such a bad launch that little old Atari, with one foot in the grave and a shoestring marketing budget, sold more Jaguars in 1993 than Panasonic sold 3DOs. It was something like 17k Jaguars to 9k 3DOs for 1993.

I don't know what the 3DO company was thinking either. They published ZERO games for their own players in 1993 and just ONE edutainment game in 1994. It wasn't until 1995 that they got the ball rolling and published a handful of titles.
They were going for the multimedia route trying to act like a stereo maker. Be a branded hardware maker, everyone else do the software/content.
 
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Havoc2049

Member


They were going for the multimedia route trying to act like a stereo maker. Be a branded hardware maker, everyone else do the software/content.
???
They didn't make hardware. They wanted to be the technology behind the hardware. But the big money in consoles is in the games and peripherals, not the hardware. Although I'm sure 3DO took a cut of each game sold.
 

RAIDEN1

Member
Which rise?? It was a disastrous flop Like the Amiga CD 32.
Well unlike the CD32, the 3DO showed the capabilities of 32-bit gaming, where as the CD32 was more targeted as a competitor to a system that debuted 2 years prior...the Sega CD, you'd have never seen a Road Rash on the level it was on the 3DO on Commodore's machine...if it weren't for the price-tag it would have more than held its own against the PSX and Saturn...till the M2 came along....irony being there though that Panasonic were more than happy in releasing the 3DO but then when it came to its successor they ended up getting cold-feet..despite the fact the M2 had N64 beating capabilities..
 

SirTerry-T

Member
I almost crumbled just to play Road Rash on the thing....those upgraded graphics and Soundgarden's "Rusty Cage" on the soundtrack won me over. SS2Turbo looked great in stills but once you started playing it those missing animation frames were clearly evident.
 

Nikodemos

Member
One thing I don't understand about the 3DO's architecture is why did they choose the lowest speed binning for their CPU. That ARM was capable of sustaining 20 MHz, yet they chose the 12.5 version instead. Was it yield-harvesting, to reduce bill of materials?

Other than that, the main reason for 3DO's lack of widespread appeal was the pricing model. Normally, game consoles fall under the loss-leader model. They're generally not expected to return a profit on hardware sold at initial launch, merely sell as close to at-cost as possible, with the profit being returned from games (and, later on, services).
3DO's strategy of using other manufacturers to market the device was doomed to fail from the start, because their partners decided to use the classic consumer electronics model, where a profit must be returned on each unit sold. Hence the sticker shock and bad word of mouth from the first devices. And while eventually the price would come down, the crucial early adopter period was completely fumbled, which would ultimately prove fatal.
 
I wonder which early 90's systems I would have foolishly bought if I was five years older.

My older brother saved me from getting virtual boy. I said I wanted it for Christmas and he shot that down with the quickness.
 

Nikodemos

Member
Also, regarding the FMV craze of the early '90s, I simply can't help but ask: why?

It genuinely made neither financial, nor technical sense.
Financially, it's a poor investment. If you make your clips on the cheap, they look, to use a technical term, shittacular. Low-budget live-action roleplay. This might fit some games, especially if you lean into the style (like the Tex Murphy series), but it doesn't always work. If you go for "Hollywood polish" (that is, good scenography, effects, big-name actors), it's gonna cost you a ton of money.
Plus, unless you're going for a visual novel-tier clickathon (which, admittedly, a solid chunk of them were), you still need to build an actual game to glue your clips together. And said game should, at the very least, be competently adequate. So more money spent.
Finally, there's the technical aspect. Early '90s codecs were hot garbage. Which is why the clips almost invariably tend to look dim, washed out, and heavily pixelated.
 

Ozzie666

Member
Price and being in that classic dead zone period of Jaguar and 32X, so much changed from 93 to 95. That joy stick was also criminal and how it chained together. But at the time as many state the EA efforts were really great, Samurai Showdown and Street Fighter were very decent ports compared to what was out there. The impact of the 3D0 was slightly diminished with the Sega CD and other CD rom efforts, But if you could afford it back in 1994, you were king of the street. Playing FIFA, Madden, NHL, Road Rash and Need for speed where a generation above and more broadcast like. But that Price without the licensing model and the architecture wasn't great for developers.
 

Dr.D00p

Gold Member
Its a shame the 3DO M2 never materialized. It was a serious step up in performance, Somewhere in between a Saturn & PS1, and the you get the feeling its the console they really wanted to release to begin with, had they had the time & resources to do it.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Its a shame the 3DO M2 never materialized. It was a serious step up in performance, Somewhere in between a Saturn & PS1, and the you get the feeling its the console they really wanted to release to begin with, had they had the time & resources to do it.
Performance and pixel quality wise it was a step above both (it supported perspective correct texturing with bilinear and I think trilinear filtering ). I think between N64 and Dreamcast actually.
 

Dr.D00p

Gold Member
Performance and pixel quality wise it was a step above both (it supported perspective correct texturing with bilinear and I think trilinear filtering ). I think between N64 and Dreamcast actually.

The M2 certainly had superior IQ features to both PS1 & Saturn, but it was still quite bandwidth limited when it came to pushing Polygons, bring it closer to the PS1 in that regard.
 

Kamina

Golden Boy
I don’t think there was a rise. At least not in Europa. Back in the day everyone had a nes or a snes, and some odd outs a sega. The stores here in Austria didnt sell any 3DOs.
 
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MairJ23

Neo Member
Looking back at my 90's gaming experiences, those 2-3 years when EA/Crystal Dynamics and the internal teams were fully supporting the system with steady releases was probably my greatest time as a gamer. As has been mentioned, Road Rash, Madden, Need for Speed were unbelievable experiences at the time. Sure it was expensive and that was it's downfall but I don't regret saving up my summer paychecks cleaning tables to play gems like Shockwave, Killing Time and Gex.
 
That thing was expensive, but I recall renting one with a friend just to see... We had three amazing games that were 1 generation above any 16-bit console for sure:
1 - Samurai Showdown, this port was beyond the capabilities of any 16-bit machine
2 - Some 3D fifa game with amazing sound (must have been my friend's fault, because I normally steer away from sports games and I know nothing about soccer)
3 - Need for Speed, that was easily the best home racing game one could have at that time.

Overall it left a good impression to me, the games looked great and were fun too, for me it's certainly more interesting than the Neo Geo (in its own right, I don't like pure arcade games for more than a few minutes here and there)
 

Meowtor

Gold Member
I honestly loved my 3do, there were a lot of cool games at the time. Twisted was a wild Mario party type game, strahl was an anime dragons lair (and also had a decent port of dragons layer too), off world interceptor was a blast
 

Hayabusa83

Banned
I remember playing this at the mall or furniture stores back in the day. I was blown away by Road Rash and Shockwave. I eventually ended up getting on Ebay with Way of the Warrior. I had a guilty pleasure for Mortal Kombat clones back then and the models in Way of the Warrior looked fucking huge and awesome. Naughty Dog should release a re-master! Honor your legacy damn it.
 

Drew1440

Member
The sad thing is that they had a cool model with licensing the hardware to manufacturers and they had the recognition being out first. They just completely fucked up the m2.
We could be living in world with companies like Samsung and lg making different versions of the same hardware.
There's nothing stopping them from doing that with the PC, Value even tried with Steam Machines from 2013-15, but made the mistake of pushing SteamOS rather than Windows, which I fear will be the Steam Deck's downfall.
Fun fact, Samsung and Hitachi had their own branded versions of the Sega Saturn, which were exclusive to Korea and Japan respectively.
 

OmegaSupreme

advanced basic bitch
It's telling that the demo station that I remember for this in toys r us was running a batman animated series episode. It may have been better than the jaguar that I made the mistake of buying but it was still awful.

She's cute. Some real sharp knees energy from some of you about her.
 

Mr1999

Member
i still have night trap for the 3do, pretty sure it was the definitive version of the game back then. i didnt know how rare it was though, i have the box and everything , cant believe how much it sells for now
 
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dcx4610

Member
I somehow convinced my parents to buy me a 3DO. I think it was one of the "charge it and forget about it" purchases. I only had a few games for it but I was blown away by the port of Super Street Fighter and is what sold me on the system. I also got Way of the Warrior and Samurai Showdown. I enjoyed it for what it was. It's basically the system I wanted the Sega CD or 32X to be. The problem was with all of the competitors. (other than price) ... lack of games. There just wasn't much to buy on it that was interesting. Hardware wise though, it was fairly impressive.
 
There's nothing stopping them from doing that with the PC, Value even tried with Steam Machines from 2013-15, but made the mistake of pushing SteamOS rather than Windows, which I fear will be the Steam Deck's downfall.
Fun fact, Samsung and Hitachi had their own branded versions of the Sega Saturn, which were exclusive to Korea and Japan respectively.
There is a big difference between the new Steam OS and the old ones (well a lot of differences)... It runs windows games, without a windows license. In some ways it offers better compatibility with old games than windows, but I don't think it runs games like Fortnite, which limits the adoption of the OS with kids.

I wonder how many millions of dollars Valve saves on this alone.
 
i was pretty excited for the 3DO during the hardware preview days.

then eventually i saw the price tag, and knew my parents would never get me one.

and over time, the game library made me lose all interest.
 
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