Man, the 3DO never EVER gets the appreciation it deserves. For a console released in 1993, nothing else even came close to the raw power of the 3DO. Unfortunately, being an early CD based console, it was plagued with plenty of FMV trash games, but just underneath all that crust were games that truly deserve more love and attention nowadays. I often see people lump it together with the CDI, and that has to be the biggest disservice to a console I have ever seen.
My only nitpick to an otherwise excellent video was I don't think Trip Hawkins was mentioned? The founder of EA and 3D0. Could do a video just on his career in gaming.
I was in my mid twenties at the time of the 3DO's release. It was a huge monetary investment but I went ahead and at the time, I wasn't disappointed at all. Graphically and sound quality wise, it was far superior to any of the existing competition. Being strongly backed by EA it was a hit for me. I respected Trip Hawkins far sighted goal for the console. Fifa, Need for Speed, Road Rash and Madden were amazing at the time and still rate high in my nostalgia. Panzer General, Allied General & Wing Commander 3 still rate as my all time favourite games...even after all of these years. Memory management was a major problem though and many games had horrific bugs like Alone in the Dark. It was a great game but crashed 30 minutes in & was unresolvable. The console had a really great Cyborg building spy infiltration game too (the title fails me unfortunately) but it would crash about three hours into it. Extremely frustrating. Growing up in that era of consoles was a fascinating time for me. I loved FMV games as it was unique take on gaming and the good ones were awesome like Prize Fighter and Quarterback Attack for the Sega CD. I loved my Sega CD and the 3DO was cool and highly enjoyable plus it had some great educational yet fun games for my young daughter at the time. Playstation One was great too. My favorite console though was the Dreamcast. The 3DO I believe gets unfairly ripped apart by a lot of gaming historians but interestingly most of these historians seem to be younger guys who didn't live through this era like I did in my mid Twenties and early Thirties. I grew up with all of the consoles and the 3DO was the cutting edge at the time and truly unique system. It had expansion ports that were intended to keep it a revelant system. If Panasonic had fully backed Trip Hawkins...the gaming console could have really blossomed. Thanks again for your efforts. I find this time of consoles really awesome and hold some great memories for me. Thanks for the great videos. You do a phenomenal job of looking back.
Back in the Summer of 1993 my father Louis, his fried Ike, and myself attended the Consumer Electronics Show here in Chicago. That was the first time I had seen it up live. You are spot on about your description about the units. The 3DO section. It wasn't a single booth, but almost like a tiny zone made up of other firms making either units or games or movies. You mentioned the VCD, Paramount Pictures had a table playing Top Gun on it. To this day, I can never forget that, as it was something I had never seen before . There was Star Trek 2 playing on another and something else. There was another movie studio, I think Warner, but I don't recall, I just remember watching Top Gun. They had a weird games booth, as I recall. They were divided into arrays with the TV on top (CRT back then) and the unit was either underneath or under a white or purplish cabinet. One row had that post apocalyptic racing game that was sorta like F-Zero meets Mad Max with video segments after or before each game. There was a spaceship fighter game where you scroll around and shot stuff. There were others, but really half of them were like graphic demos of what the system could do where you manipulated this green ball through a maze or something. The game they hyped that was coming soon was based off of Star Trek the Next Generation. They had many different models sitting on tables, mainly behind plastic or glass. I remember seeing one from AT&T, Gold Star, the Panasonic one, and Sanyo. Also, not sure if you knew this, but there were PCs on the floor that had a version of it you could install. Eventually somehow my father's friend who I mentioned won a unit (not at the show, this was later) and gave it to us. It was by the same folks who made Sound Blaster, it was just a card that you plugged in and you had to get a CD-ROM unit (not cheap back then), but basically your DOS or Windows 3.1 machine (sorry, this was before Windows 95!) could play those games. +AdamKoralik, thank you for posting this video, it really brought back a lot of memories. And thank you for the other videos you've posted. As a disabled person, who could not play outside, video games were a Godsend. Keep up the good work!
The 3DO concept was also highly similar to the "IBM PC clone" concept. They were trying to create a standard for videogame consoles, similar to what Microsoft did with PCs.
Think I am going to write an alternate timeline video where the 3DO was an insane success! Should be fun to think of all the game companies working side by side.
I have a huge soft spot for the 3DO (I even have it as my emblem in Black Ops 1 and 2 and Battlefield 4). Its the system the started off the Need For Speed series, hosted alot of original (some from developers we know and love today from their earlier efforts) titles from multiple companies with games like D, Twisted!, Return Fire, and one of the best ports of Super Street Fighter II Turbo and Wolfenstein 3D. There were plans to upgrade the console from 32-bit to 64-bit via 3DO's M2 (which also was available as a separate console far as I know). The game D2 (which is on Adam's favorite console the Dreamcast) started dev on the M2, which the M2 version is completely different from the DC version. While the console never came out, The 3DO M2 lived on as part of a hardware line for a few Konami arcade games (also a few 3DO powered arcade games too), and used in some teller machines/kiosks. The only M2 game to play (and now mad public) is IMSA Racing, which look great considering the time of its dev.
I cant find anything similar to this series on youtube. Going into such depth about the company and the industry. Super interesting. I hope you eventually do the 3rd and 4th generations as well.
That was really the only thing lacking in this video, the history with Trip Hawkins founding EA, leaving, and then starting the 3D0 company as both a software company and a hardware licenser.
My dad got a 3DO and an Atari Jaguar when I was a kid (I was 6 at the time, Jaguar controllers are not kind to 6 year olds). I loved the 3DO a whole lot. It was so weird compared to everything else(Zhadnost, The People's Party really sticks out, might still hold up as a bizarre party game). It even came with some intro/demo CD that had half an episode of Two Stupid Dogs(among other things I can't really remember) that I watched over and over again. Most of the games I remember really enjoying were ports, but one that wasn't and that I was extremely obsessed with was Guardian War(also called Powers Kingdom apparently). First tactical RPG I ever played and it was damn sweet. Since you mentioned the price is rising, I think it's finally time to get one and revisit my childhood.
If you haven't seen this, you definitely should check out the old G4 Icons episodes from the mid 2000s, there's actually a great episode on Trip Hawkins and the history of EA and a little bit of the 3DO.
Recently subbed, loved the videos and I am hooked on these recaps you do, you get both a pretty interesting history lesson and its always nice hearing about others experiences with various consoles, for most of us it was a very big part of our childhoods. Love your content!
Adam , i think it is time for you to realize that this is what you do best and you should do more of these videos. Not only your observations are spot on, but it's also your videos that gets the most views. Hope to see more of these in the future :)
with the exception of the fm towns Marty & N64 DD , I own all the consoles you have reviewed so far.. I am sure my "do not own" list will grow as I continue watching through the series.. keep up the good work , your outlook on these misunderstood machines is refreshing & its good to know I am not alone,, ;-)
The 3DO was my first and favourite console. My mom bought it for me at $100 at a store because it was on sale. Its interesting with respect to your theory in this video because she didn't understand the concept of different consoles having their own library and thought this machine was a good deal for just $100. I was disappointed at first having wanted a Saturn/PS1 like everyone else but I grew to love it and the 3DO had some awesome games for it too. IMO what would have saved the 3DO was if it was launched for under $400
Interesting to me that RJ Mical, one of the inventors of the Amiga computer also was part of the 3DO, Atari Lynx, and Playstation. Guy makes his rounds.
Gladly to see your new video, Adam. Actually most of my people know 3DO even its console never sold in China.It is well known by its PC games. Such as Might and Magic Francis and Heroes of Might and Magic Francis.
Another reason the 3DO was so expensive is because other console makers (other than Nintendo) sell their stuff at a loss and recoup on software (either first party or the fees you mentioned). Panasonic/Goldstar/Sanyo had no reason to do that, so they charged what was economically feasible. Also Madden came out on the Apple II, then the Genesis well before the 3DO.
I love my 3DO. Sold my Genesis/Sega CD and a ton of games to get one when it first came out. At the time it was cutting edge and had some amazing looking games, so, could you really blame me? Regardless if most of those games didn't play as well as they looked (Way of the Warrior... I'm looking at you), but down the line they managed to get some really stellar software. Wing Commander III, Gex, Return Fire, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Primal Rage, Trip'd, Twisted, Blade Force, Wolfenstein 3D and my personal favorite... Star Control II. I still play it to this day and agree with you that it's a highly misunderstood console. It had potential, but the price was a major turn off for every one of my gamer friends. Underrated in my opinion, but I have a nostalgic place in my heart for it.
The memory management on the 3DO was also weird. You needed specific discs from Panasonic or specific games to manage the built in memory; you could not do it from a menu on the system itself. The light gun for this system is also quite expensive. I did not care for the games on the system, but the system itself (front loader Panasonic) looks cool enough and is pretty durable.
I remember going to a friend of a friend's house when I was a kid and they were playing Road Rash on a strange looking console. They said it was a 3DO. It seemed so futuristic to me at the time. I never saw another one after that day.
I had a friend in high school who said that the 3DO was the best console ever. He would go on and on about the good games and say just ignore the crappy ones. The main reason I couldn't pick one up is because I was poor back then, and this friend of mine was well off and his parents had great jobs. There were some very good games on the system and I think it would have been so cool if the 3DO had made it. It's too bad that it didn't though.
Thank you, very good recap and review. You may also wanted to have mentioned, Trip Hawkins, founder of EA, actually left EA to found 3DO, and 3DO was founded in partnership with EA (hence the games). Also interesting is that 3DO gave the out the hardware specs for licensing and manufacturing to nearly anyone who wanted them and Samsung, Toshiba and AT&T (!) actually made prototype 3DOs and brought them to trade shows though they never went any farther than that or produced any "real" working ones as far as I know.
i guess this was after 3DO dropped consoles and just became a game deveoper, but two of my favorite games ever were 'BattleTanx' and the even better 'BattleTank Global Assault.' I never played any other games quite like them . . . they were fast-paced and just a helluva lot of fun.
I think the "disclaimer" part is true, but I cannot independently verfiy it. It makes sense too bc 3D0 was Trip Hawkins vision after he left EA. Nintendo had monopolized gaming during the 3rd generation. Konami had Ultra games as another front, bc Nintendo limited how many games one company could release in a year. Hawkins attempting to control the format rather than just one console manufacturer controlling the 3rd parties would be a game changer had that strategy worked. But 3D0 first came out and priced everyone out and was marketed more as a multimedia device than strictly a game console. Over time it embraced the game console title though.
This was suppose to be the next big thing back in the day. Everyone thought it was going to be huge. I think the price and the fact that it never had a system selling exclusive is what killed it. Allot of people don't realize that the Sega Genesis wasn't really a big hit until around 2 years into it's life. It wasn't until Sonic the Hedgehog came out that it became a really big deal. Before that, the NES was actually outselling it. Gex could have been the 3DO's mascot, and it almost was. Unfortunately, it was soon released for the PS1 and Saturn as well. They should have done whatever it took to get Crystal Dynamics to keep it a 3DO exclusive.
This was an excellent video. I really do think the idea 3DO had was fucking brilliant, & I always thought the overall appearance of the console was kind of neat, it's like a DVD player with that cool 90's VHS design. Would certainly have been interesting to see how everything would have played out had their "plan" worked.
I imported a broken Panasonic model from Japan for £60, paid to get it fixed and now it looks brand new. Turns out I got lucky as the model I have has a switch that changes the output from 480i to 240p. Apparently only some Japanese models had this switch built in on the back. Gex is a great platformer, this system had potential for sure.
I had a 3DO and granted it wasn't the most memorable game console I've had but it wasn't that bad. I played a lot of Mad Dog Mcree, Twisted, Roadrash, and Need for Speed
PC gaming works the same way music and movies do already. It's cool that the 3DO tried to do this, but it would be kind of redundant. Plus, PC you can upgrade whenever you want. The console market has always thrived on that experience you can't get anywhere else but that one platform, while keeping it simple for the consumer.
I saw a 3DO display at Fred Meyer's in the early 90's and not being impressed and outraged at the ridiculous $700 price tag and thinking of all the Gameboy games I could get for that.
I just got a working, FZ-1 3DO for free. My parents found it in a storage building they've been going through and gave it to me. I was really surprised .
I was 11 in 1993 and I remember thinking the 3DO vs the CDi was going to be the next big thing in consoles, lol. I could never afford either one, though I wanted the CDi for the Zelda games, which looked cool to me from the box art (I really dodged a bullet!)
3do would've never convinced Sega. Part of the appeal of the hardware market from a business perspective is that you make all of the profits from the 1st party games sold on your system and get a cut from everyone else who develops on your platform. Sega & Nintendo would correctly see that 3do would gain most of the share from games sold on the system so the obvious move was to decline 3do's offer.
It would have been very interesting to see if the 3DO had panned out and not faded into obscurity. The most unfortunate part of the 3DO was a product of one of the best things about it; the fact that any idiot could program something and sell it as a game. There were some gems, though nearly all of them except maybe Captain Quazar were multiplats, like Gex, Samurai Shodown, Wolfenstein 3d, Road Rash and Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo to name a few. There were some real stinkers, but that was symptomatic of all of the newcomers (even Sony had some pretty awful games) and Atari during that generation. I had a Panasonic FZ-1 back in 1997 that was a hand-me-down, so I got it and a bunch of games, and I really enjoyed it.
What I always think about the 3DO is the dumb way you would connect a second controller. We had a Goldstar VCR and remember trying to convince my dad that he needed a Goldstar 3DO.
15:06 - Sorry Adam but the Madden NFL series did not start with 3DO, I knew this cause my friend had a Madden NFL 92 on the Sega Genesis back in 1991 but it's not entirely your fault as the 3DO version did not had a year number on it so I could see why you may had mistake it as such.
good concept. maybe if the big names worked with panasonic on the hardware dev , so they each had input and each company added features that highlighted the specific companys pros (and cons ) and integrate those features to work together. (there is still time to do this as well) it could be/have been an awsome universal console.
I still have a 3DO in the box brand new w/ Gex game included. I remember the TV ads and articles on Gamepro. Always wanted one and got it I'm gonna open it one day.
oh i loved my 3do, i still have it. you forgot to mention that ea was so involved because the 3do ceo was the founder of ea. Also most games of the 3do that later became multiplat had the best version on the 3do, mainly because it supported a mixture of image formats that was impossible on the ps1 for example. so if you compare games like roadrash you will notice more colors and better graphics
I remember my family's DVD Player being a Sanyo back in the day. The Fifth Generation was so hard to understand all of.. All the companies were experimenting and taking their own kinds of risks with 3D gaming. I can see why Playstaion was the most successful, but I still think PS1 was designed in a sort of "boring" way despite having a great games library. Crash Bandicoot deserves a circle pad!
I had a Goldstar-3DO back in the days for a few days. This pre-LG-thing was notorious comming defective out of the box, what also mine did. 130DM (round about 65€) was really too much for a console, that doesn't work. I got my money back and bought Manx TT instead. I wished then and still wish today to have an FZ-1, but the Goldstar was the only variation reaching the continent, while the hard-power-wired Panasonics stayed in 110V-UK and stayed expensive untill the disappeared. To be honest, I also feared the concept of a unified video game market. You could see how the live and variations of "home computer games" died thanks to the PC in that time - and the IBM-PC then needed years to reach the quality in gaming that for example Commodore already had achieved (ah, that pre-3dfx-days). It felt a bit like the Nazis trying to make the whole world arian. You forgot to talk about M2, the successor of the 3DO that should have been released only 2-3 years after the 3DO - so long, video game standard for at least a decade. M2's power was something between SAT and DC. You can imagine how long it would have taken until more than one much better standard-breaker had arrived. I would have also said, that Trip Hawkings founded both, EA and 3DO, but the story you told was correct so far I can recall. P.S.: the only "video game standard" that had succeed, was DVD Video, but only few pure games like "Who wants to be a Millionare?" or "Dragon's Lair" were released. The most games were quizzes as a bonus of some movies/series ;)
Given the fact that you hadn't heard of this back then, and were too young to follow what was going on, your misconstrued vision of the 3DO's goals and efforts are forgiven.
I absolutely loved my 3do ! i Had the chance to have a goldstar 3do back then, and it was a fantastic system. I always own some games for it (wing commander II, which was vastly superior to the pentium version, doom, samourai showdown with the snes controller adapter, crash n burn.... Except for the price point, it was a fantastic machine for its time.
These have been very interesting videos to watch. While I've heard about a lot of this information from various ones, there are bits I haven't heard elsewhere. After watching half of this retrospective, you've earned another subscriber. Keep it up.
I originally had a 3DO made by Goldstar. Got it in 1995 for $299.00. A worker at Funcoland trade me for a Panasonic FZ-10 and 200.00 for it. Still have it today. The gun games are my Fave's.
Partners and licencees that manufactured the 3DO consoles had to pay royalties to the 3DO company and did not make anything on software sales. so, in order to turn a profit, they had to make money on the hardware itself. Thats why the 3DO was so expensive. It was an interesting idea, but I think if the 3DO company had decided to have the hardware manufactured themselves, it would have really kept the cost down and given them a chance to succeed in the 5th Gen. Sony proved it could work without Sega and Nintendo. After all, it wasn't 2 years later that Sony released the PS1 and dominated the market without them. If the 3DO's MSRP had been lower, with the installed base it built before the launch of the PS1 and Saturn, it could have been the console that led the 5th gen. 3rd party software developers for the 3DO paid a $3 royalty fee per game (Which was much lower than Nintendo and Sega were charging at the time.) I agree. when someone tells me they want to collect 3DO, I tell them the time is now! It's getting harder and harder to find the games at reasonable prices and it's only going to get harder! thanks for the video. I always love to hear what others have to say about the 3DO :)
I think that would be overflow (which could led to console disaster) if Nintendo, Sega and a bunch of 3rd Party Companies will make games for 3DO at the same time cause it’s similar to the Atari 2600 when Activision make games and 3rd Party Companies have their eyeballs being looked to Activision and they’re making games in a rush with no prior experience, then Companies will led to a bankruptcy eventually because if 3DO can’t handle too much time schedule on their arms. The 80’s and 90’s should’ve got Quality Control and company follows of the manufacture guidelines instead of getting pissed and go all the way around (kinda similar with Tengen didn’t follow Nintendo License Policy). Plus Life is not always about freedom cause without Quality Control or Rules, that’s Chaos.
As far as why this failed - you mention all of the parts of this just without putting it all together; it was SO expensive for the time - it was also really advanced for 1993, but $700 in 1993 is about $2k in 2023 money. This was an unavoidable consequence of 3DO's model - Panasonic, Sanyo, LG/Goldstar and Samsung (who didn't come along until 1997) only made the hardware, and therefore had to generate profit on the consoles as they didn't make anything on software. Unfortunately for 3DO (and those manufacturers) Sega and Nintendo had both simultaneously brought in with the SG-1000 and Famicom (way back in Feb 1983!) the business practice of selling your console at a loss but making it back off software licencing fees. So while the 3DO was $700, the Jaguar (yuck) was $250, the Genesis and SNES were selling for under $100, and the Playstation and Saturn would be less than half the 3DO's price by late '95. It never stood a chance, even without a ridiculously crowded market, limited support and Sony's entrance to video gaming. I do reckon it's got a clear claim on 4th place out of the 5th generation though - just so long as you ignore all the budget porn "games". You're right that most of the software is weak and/or aforementioned softcore interactive porn, but I've come across *one* 3DO-exclusive title worth playing - Immercenary, by EA. Kind of an early FPS mixed with RPG elements, FMV cut scenes (of course) and this weird kind of offline-MMO thing before MMOs really existed. Worth checking out if you haven't already; I normally hate FMV too but thanks to EA's involvement the production values are decent. There are a couple of others I've read people love but that's the only one I've played that's worth revisiting.
AdamKoralik great episode. i've never actually played one myself, but used to own lots of game magazines from different game magazine sources, and remember seeing this in quite a few reads over time. Can't wait to hear the interesting story behind the Sony PlayStation/PSOne. and also Atari Jaguar/CD most definitely (in which i havn't played either if I must add).
Thanks for the video, Adam. The daisychaining of the controllers makes sense with your explanation of trying to make the console last for many years. The main thing I knew about the 3DO before watching this video was AVGN complaining about the daisychaining, but now it makes sense.
I had a friend who briefly owned a 3DO in 1996; I thought it was okay (I knew next to nothing about video game history at the time). Yeah, we played "Road Rash", "John Madden Football", and some other games I can't remember. Yeah, Sony just kind of threw their hat in the ring, and hit paydirt.
Main reason 3DO was so expensive was because the hardware manufactures had no incentive to sell it at a loss like Sega, NEC, and Nintendo did. They made up loses in hardware sales through developers/license fees and software sales. Panasonic, Sanyo etc, didn't get to play in that side of the business end. Probably the main flaw of 3DO's model. Nothing hinders getting that install base like an astronomical price. The 3DO is an okay system but most of it's best games were later made available on Saturn and PlayStation. There really isn't much need for gamers to go out and get one save for if you have some personal nostalgic love for it. Great video Adam!
I'm a big fan of the 3do, very underrated system. Ahead of it's time, brilliant design, really good ports of some great games (including the only console port of star control 2). It's such a Interesting piece of gaming history, and it feels like it really was the playstation before the playstation. Shame the 3DO successor, the M2 never quite made it, but the M2 tech did managed to find it's way into a few late 90's arcade games, polystars being one of them, and a few dev consoles have been spotted in the wild.
I got a 3DO a few months ago very cheaply, and was curious about it. The only thing I remember about it back when it was new was that Tips and Tricks magazine would have 1 or 2 token pages of codes for the system. Like the sega CD, you can play burned copies of games on it, which allows me to get a good feel for the system. The problem is that I just can't get into it. It's really only good for being a novelty at this point. The Sega CD at least has a few games that I can get really into, but I haven't found the same joy with my 3DO.
Yeah, that's the problem. The best games on 3DO are available on other consoles (Street Fighter 2, Road Rash, Samurai Shodown), and honestly I still prefer Road Rash on Genesis.
As a 3DO fan I can give you a few great and fun games you can only get on the 3DO (and maybe PC/arcade/other obscure consoles) not including japanese exclusives, of which there are a lot and quiet a few good ones. Guardian War/Powers Kingdom (repetitive but fun) Trip'd (really fun puzzle game, made by Kenji Eno and WARP, who also made D) Captain Quazar (isometric action game, really fun) Kingdom: The Far Reaches (FMV Adventure game. It's a lot better than it sounds) Lucienne's Quest (obvious choice and great game. Semi-sequel to Guardian War) Star Control 2 (essentially Mass Effect in 2D) You can check out my channel if you want, I Cover the 3DO from time to time. And the Master System if you're into that too.
3DO is nostalgic for me because I played Gex, Wing Commander (the Mark Hamill one), and Jurassic Park on it. JP creeped me out when you were running around the dark halls trying to restart the power grid.
I have an nostalgia for 3do in an odd way. I wanted one really badly but my parents wouldn't buy one cause of the price. Some store had one to play though. I remember playing monster manor and star fighter there, it was so awesome. I eventually got one as an adult. A lot of the games are on par with 1st generation ps1 games, and they came out 2 years before ps1 in 93, 94. Killing time, shockwave, deathkeep, samurai showdown, road rash, need for speed, po'ed, crash and burn, myst, immercenary and a couple others I can't think of at the moment. Full 3D texture mapped games easily ps1 quality in 93. Had developers kept supporting it for several years they could had squeezed out a lot more too
i dont know you knew this but did you know that there was actually a computer card that you can install inside your old windows pc and play 3DO games?! this card was known as the creative labs 3DO blaster card All i can say is that it's pretty hard to find this thing on ebay or other sites since this thing is kind of rare to find now :p
Is it possible to do a video on the m2? It's a Panasonic console that was cancelled at the last minute. D2 was originally made for the m2 before moving to the dreamcast.
I had one on the center, bought it in 1995 for $370, tried to recall the exchange rate on that year, fast forward today, the rate took twice. Damn that is almost 2 brand new ps4 now. My favorite games are sailormooon, yuyu hakusho, need 4 speed. Oh yeah bribed that store clerk to sell me that rock, paper scissors game. Was a funny and fun game.
I'm sure someone must have said this before, but you realize the reason EA was a supporter of the 3DO was because of video game icon, and founder of EA and 3DO, Trip Hawkins. He actually left EA in the early 90s to form 3DO, with the intention of creating a video game console to compete with Nintendo and SEGA.... Supplementing the start-up cost of creating a competitive video game console by having low fees for 3rd party games, and using companies such as Panasonic to actually build versions of his console, as you said, just like different companies made the same VHS players, or DVD / BluRay players today. Trip Kawkins was a true visionary in the industry, a lot of people don't realize just how futuristic the 3DO was in its concept.
lmao this reminds me of the first time i heard about this console... Me and my brother first saw an advertisement for this in a magazine and somehow my brother ended up thinking that this was a console that would let you put any movie in it and it would become a game... As you can agree this would have been insanely awesome. Years later i was still waiting for this movie to game machine to come out and finally figured out that we were completely confused and the 3do didn't do anything like what we thought.
Man, the 3DO never EVER gets the appreciation it deserves. For a console released in 1993, nothing else even came close to the raw power of the 3DO. Unfortunately, being an early CD based console, it was plagued with plenty of FMV trash games, but just underneath all that crust were games that truly deserve more love and attention nowadays. I often see people lump it together with the CDI, and that has to be the biggest disservice to a console I have ever seen.
Preach brother.
A 3DO in depth analysis by the great Adam K? Best lunch break ever! :D
Thank you sir.
DreamcastGuy I know!
I watch your channel too, lol. Hello, 3 years ago version of DreamcastGuy!
My only nitpick to an otherwise excellent video was I don't think Trip Hawkins was mentioned? The founder of EA and 3D0. Could do a video just on his career in gaming.
I was in my mid twenties at the time of the 3DO's release. It was a huge monetary investment but I went ahead and at the time, I wasn't disappointed at all. Graphically and sound quality wise, it was far superior to any of the existing competition. Being strongly backed by EA it was a hit for me. I respected Trip Hawkins far sighted goal for the console. Fifa, Need for Speed, Road Rash and Madden were amazing at the time and still rate high in my nostalgia. Panzer General, Allied General & Wing Commander 3 still rate as my all time favourite games...even after all of these years. Memory management was a major problem though and many games had horrific bugs like Alone in the Dark. It was a great game but crashed 30 minutes in & was unresolvable. The console had a really great Cyborg building spy infiltration game too (the title fails me unfortunately) but it would crash about three hours into it. Extremely frustrating.
Growing up in that era of consoles was a fascinating time for me. I loved FMV games as it was unique take on gaming and the good ones were awesome like Prize Fighter and Quarterback Attack for the Sega CD. I loved my Sega CD and the 3DO was cool and highly enjoyable plus it had some great educational yet fun games for my young daughter at the time. Playstation One was great too. My favorite console though was the Dreamcast. The 3DO I believe gets unfairly ripped apart by a lot of gaming historians but interestingly most of these historians seem to be younger guys who didn't live through this era like I did in my mid Twenties and early Thirties. I grew up with all of the consoles and the 3DO was the cutting edge at the time and truly unique system. It had expansion ports that were intended to keep it a revelant system. If Panasonic had fully backed Trip Hawkins...the gaming console could have really blossomed.
Thanks again for your efforts.
I find this time of consoles really awesome and hold some great memories for me.
Thanks for the great videos. You do a phenomenal job of looking back.
Back in the Summer of 1993 my father Louis, his fried Ike, and myself attended the Consumer Electronics Show here in Chicago. That was the first time I had seen it up live. You are spot on about your description about the units. The 3DO section. It wasn't a single booth, but almost like a tiny zone made up of other firms making either units or games or movies.
You mentioned the VCD, Paramount Pictures had a table playing Top Gun on it. To this day, I can never forget that, as it was something I had never seen before . There was Star Trek 2 playing on another and something else. There was another movie studio, I think Warner, but I don't recall, I just remember watching Top Gun.
They had a weird games booth, as I recall. They were divided into arrays with the TV on top (CRT back then) and the unit was either underneath or under a white or purplish cabinet. One row had that post apocalyptic racing game that was sorta like F-Zero meets Mad Max with video segments after or before each game. There was a spaceship fighter game where you scroll around and shot stuff. There were others, but really half of them were like graphic demos of what the system could do where you manipulated this green ball through a maze or something. The game they hyped that was coming soon was based off of Star Trek the Next Generation.
They had many different models sitting on tables, mainly behind plastic or glass. I remember seeing one from AT&T, Gold Star, the Panasonic one, and Sanyo. Also, not sure if you knew this, but there were PCs on the floor that had a version of it you could install. Eventually somehow my father's friend who I mentioned won a unit (not at the show, this was later) and gave it to us. It was by the same folks who made Sound Blaster, it was just a card that you plugged in and you had to get a CD-ROM unit (not cheap back then), but basically your DOS or Windows 3.1 machine (sorry, this was before Windows 95!) could play those games.
+AdamKoralik, thank you for posting this video, it really brought back a lot of memories. And thank you for the other videos you've posted. As a disabled person, who could not play outside, video games were a Godsend. Keep up the good work!
The 3DO concept was also highly similar to the "IBM PC clone" concept. They were trying to create a standard for videogame consoles, similar to what Microsoft did with PCs.
Think I am going to write an alternate timeline video where the 3DO was an insane success! Should be fun to think of all the game companies working side by side.
Write it like a comic.
Someone wrote one where the NES failed and Sega didn't, and by 1995 they ended up with the 3DO vs the Sega Pippin. And Alex Kidd was mario.
@@starfrost6816 i haven't seen that in years and i still know exactly what are you talking about
I have a huge soft spot for the 3DO (I even have it as my emblem in Black Ops 1 and 2 and Battlefield 4). Its the system the started off the Need For Speed series, hosted alot of original (some from developers we know and love today from their earlier efforts) titles from multiple companies with games like D, Twisted!, Return Fire, and one of the best ports of Super Street Fighter II Turbo and Wolfenstein 3D. There were plans to upgrade the console from 32-bit to 64-bit via 3DO's M2 (which also was available as a separate console far as I know). The game D2 (which is on Adam's favorite console the Dreamcast) started dev on the M2, which the M2 version is completely different from the DC version. While the console never came out, The 3DO M2 lived on as part of a hardware line for a few Konami arcade games (also a few 3DO powered arcade games too), and used in some teller machines/kiosks. The only M2 game to play (and now mad public) is IMSA Racing, which look great considering the time of its dev.
I cant find anything similar to this series on youtube. Going into such depth about the company and the industry. Super interesting. I hope you eventually do the 3rd and 4th generations as well.
Thank you for watching!
Fun Fact, Trip Hawkins (EA CEO/Founder) designed the 3DO, so in a way it was EA's entry into the consoles circle.
That was really the only thing lacking in this video, the history with Trip Hawkins founding EA, leaving, and then starting the 3D0 company as both a software company and a hardware licenser.
My dad got a 3DO and an Atari Jaguar when I was a kid (I was 6 at the time, Jaguar controllers are not kind to 6 year olds). I loved the 3DO a whole lot. It was so weird compared to everything else(Zhadnost, The People's Party really sticks out, might still hold up as a bizarre party game). It even came with some intro/demo CD that had half an episode of Two Stupid Dogs(among other things I can't really remember) that I watched over and over again. Most of the games I remember really enjoying were ports, but one that wasn't and that I was extremely obsessed with was Guardian War(also called Powers Kingdom apparently). First tactical RPG I ever played and it was damn sweet. Since you mentioned the price is rising, I think it's finally time to get one and revisit my childhood.
I feel like if Nintendo would have been on board with this, video games would have taken a major halt in progression.
Very likely to be true, yes.
I love watching these recaps, I always get something new after the 3rd or 4th watch. We need maybe a game series recap or something. Itll be so good.
I picked up my 3DO about a year ago for $150 with 30 boxed games and 2 arcade sticks and I absolutely love it!
If you haven't seen this, you definitely should check out the old G4 Icons episodes from the mid 2000s, there's actually a great episode on Trip Hawkins and the history of EA and a little bit of the 3DO.
Recently subbed, loved the videos and I am hooked on these recaps you do, you get both a pretty interesting history lesson and its always nice hearing about others experiences with various consoles, for most of us it was a very big part of our childhoods. Love your content!
The first Need For Speed was amazing on the 3DO (looking back from memory) used to play it constantly.
I own the 3do version and the ps1 version but sadly I don’t own a 3do and they’re pretty hard to find at a decent prize
Adam , i think it is time for you to realize that this is what you do best and you should do more of these videos. Not only your observations are spot on, but it's also your videos that gets the most views. Hope to see more of these in the future :)
Appreciated. But it's hard to make videos about this since there are such a finite amount of game consoles.
Had the 3DO’s concept existed LONG before it did, it probably would’ve been no contest. I think that’s the universe where this scenario works.
with the exception of the fm towns Marty & N64 DD , I own all the consoles you have reviewed so far.. I am sure my "do not own" list will grow as I continue watching through the series.. keep up the good work , your outlook on these misunderstood machines is refreshing & its good to know I am not alone,, ;-)
paulspydar Thanks for watching!
The 3DO was my first and favourite console. My mom bought it for me at $100 at a store because it was on sale. Its interesting with respect to your theory in this video because she didn't understand the concept of different consoles having their own library and thought this machine was a good deal for just $100. I was disappointed at first having wanted a Saturn/PS1 like everyone else but I grew to love it and the 3DO had some awesome games for it too. IMO what would have saved the 3DO was if it was launched for under $400
Back in the 1990s: we wouldn't spend $700 on a new eletronic
Iphone X: hold my beer
Interesting to me that RJ Mical, one of the inventors of the Amiga computer also was part of the 3DO, Atari Lynx, and Playstation. Guy makes his rounds.
Gladly to see your new video, Adam. Actually most of my people know 3DO even its console never sold in China.It is well known by its PC games. Such as Might and Magic Francis and Heroes of Might and Magic Francis.
Another reason the 3DO was so expensive is because other console makers (other than Nintendo) sell their stuff at a loss and recoup on software (either first party or the fees you mentioned). Panasonic/Goldstar/Sanyo had no reason to do that, so they charged what was economically feasible.
Also Madden came out on the Apple II, then the Genesis well before the 3DO.
So far I've heard the exact same thing about developers about every single console. With every one they say "It's so hard to program for!"
I love my 3DO. Sold my Genesis/Sega CD and a ton of games to get one when it first came out. At the time it was cutting edge and had some amazing looking games, so, could you really blame me? Regardless if most of those games didn't play as well as they looked (Way of the Warrior... I'm looking at you), but down the line they managed to get some really stellar software. Wing Commander III, Gex, Return Fire, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Primal Rage, Trip'd, Twisted, Blade Force, Wolfenstein 3D and my personal favorite... Star Control II. I still play it to this day and agree with you that it's a highly misunderstood console. It had potential, but the price was a major turn off for every one of my gamer friends. Underrated in my opinion, but I have a nostalgic place in my heart for it.
Yeah, very misunderstood game console with several gems on it. Thanks for watching!
The memory management on the 3DO was also weird. You needed specific discs from Panasonic or specific games to manage the built in memory; you could not do it from a menu on the system itself. The light gun for this system is also quite expensive. I did not care for the games on the system, but the system itself (front loader Panasonic) looks cool enough and is pretty durable.
I remember going to a friend of a friend's house when I was a kid and they were playing Road Rash on a strange looking console. They said it was a 3DO. It seemed so futuristic to me at the time. I never saw another one after that day.
I had a friend in high school who said that the 3DO was the best console ever. He would go on and on about the good games and say just ignore the crappy ones. The main reason I couldn't pick one up is because I was poor back then, and this friend of mine was well off and his parents had great jobs. There were some very good games on the system and I think it would have been so cool if the 3DO had made it. It's too bad that it didn't though.
Thank you, very good recap and review.
You may also wanted to have mentioned, Trip Hawkins, founder of EA, actually left EA to found 3DO, and 3DO was founded in partnership with EA (hence the games). Also interesting is that 3DO gave the out the hardware specs for licensing and manufacturing to nearly anyone who wanted them and Samsung, Toshiba and AT&T (!) actually made prototype 3DOs and brought them to trade shows though they never went any farther than that or produced any "real" working ones as far as I know.
Me & my friend that had that exact 3D0 Panasonic FZ-1 & used to play “WAY OF THE WARRIOR”.
i guess this was after 3DO dropped consoles and just became a game deveoper, but two of my favorite games ever were 'BattleTanx' and the even better 'BattleTank Global Assault.' I never played any other games quite like them . . . they were fast-paced and just a helluva lot of fun.
I think the "disclaimer" part is true, but I cannot independently verfiy it. It makes sense too bc 3D0 was Trip Hawkins vision after he left EA. Nintendo had monopolized gaming during the 3rd generation. Konami had Ultra games as another front, bc Nintendo limited how many games one company could release in a year. Hawkins attempting to control the format rather than just one console manufacturer controlling the 3rd parties would be a game changer had that strategy worked. But 3D0 first came out and priced everyone out and was marketed more as a multimedia device than strictly a game console. Over time it embraced the game console title though.
This was suppose to be the next big thing back in the day. Everyone thought it was going to be huge. I think the price and the fact that it never had a system selling exclusive is what killed it. Allot of people don't realize that the Sega Genesis wasn't really a big hit until around 2 years into it's life. It wasn't until Sonic the Hedgehog came out that it became a really big deal. Before that, the NES was actually outselling it. Gex could have been the 3DO's mascot, and it almost was. Unfortunately, it was soon released for the PS1 and Saturn as well. They should have done whatever it took to get Crystal Dynamics to keep it a 3DO exclusive.
This was an excellent video. I really do think the idea 3DO had was fucking brilliant, & I always thought the overall appearance of the console was kind of neat, it's like a DVD player with that cool 90's VHS design. Would certainly have been interesting to see how everything would have played out had their "plan" worked.
Thanks for watching!
Lol ! Nipples the enchilada.
If the VCD was intergrated I feel it could of done better. Also if it had a 6 button design with 2 shoulders that would of been nice too.
I imported a broken Panasonic model from Japan for £60, paid to get it fixed and now it looks brand new. Turns out I got lucky as the model I have has a switch that changes the output from 480i to 240p. Apparently only some Japanese models had this switch built in on the back. Gex is a great platformer, this system had potential for sure.
Does it read burned cds?
I had a 3DO and granted it wasn't the most memorable game console I've had but it wasn't that bad. I played a lot of Mad Dog Mcree, Twisted, Roadrash, and Need for Speed
This is like Antiques Roadshow for nerds.... And I'm okay with that
Appreciated.
PC gaming works the same way music and movies do already. It's cool that the 3DO tried to do this, but it would be kind of redundant. Plus, PC you can upgrade whenever you want. The console market has always thrived on that experience you can't get anywhere else but that one platform, while keeping it simple for the consumer.
I always loved their full page magazine ads, had this very edgy feel to them. I like that it had stereo and s-video stock - pretty rare at the time.
I saw a 3DO display at Fred Meyer's in the early 90's and not being impressed and outraged at the ridiculous $700 price tag and thinking of all the Gameboy games I could get for that.
I just got a working, FZ-1 3DO for free. My parents found it in a storage building they've been going through and gave it to me. I was really surprised .
Weeeeeell you could argue that every PC does it like this, they all adhere to a few standards, starting from the IBM PC
I loved it, My friend and I played Strahl and Wolfenstein, Super Street Fighter 2 turbo and Samurai Showdown.
I was 11 in 1993 and I remember thinking the 3DO vs the CDi was going to be the next big thing in consoles, lol. I could never afford either one, though I wanted the CDi for the Zelda games, which looked cool to me from the box art (I really dodged a bullet!)
I'm glad we have variety because it encourages innovation through the need to stay relevant...
3do would've never convinced Sega. Part of the appeal of the hardware market from a business perspective is that you make all of the profits from the 1st party games sold on your system and get a cut from everyone else who develops on your platform. Sega & Nintendo would correctly see that 3do would gain most of the share from games sold on the system so the obvious move was to decline 3do's offer.
The 5th generation was the wild west of gaming consoles. So many companies, so many consoles.
wow the 3DO sure as hell had some potential
I liked my 3DO, I think Road Rash (the game I played on it the most) was the best version I saw on any console.
It would have been very interesting to see if the 3DO had panned out and not faded into obscurity. The most unfortunate part of the 3DO was a product of one of the best things about it; the fact that any idiot could program something and sell it as a game. There were some gems, though nearly all of them except maybe Captain Quazar were multiplats, like Gex, Samurai Shodown, Wolfenstein 3d, Road Rash and Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo to name a few. There were some real stinkers, but that was symptomatic of all of the newcomers (even Sony had some pretty awful games) and Atari during that generation. I had a Panasonic FZ-1 back in 1997 that was a hand-me-down, so I got it and a bunch of games, and I really enjoyed it.
What I always think about the 3DO is the dumb way you would connect a second controller.
We had a Goldstar VCR and remember trying to convince my dad that he needed a Goldstar 3DO.
15:06 - Sorry Adam but the Madden NFL series did not start with 3DO, I knew this cause my friend had a Madden NFL 92 on the Sega Genesis back in 1991 but it's not entirely your fault as the 3DO version did not had a year number on it so I could see why you may had mistake it as such.
Ah the 3do, so expensive that you couldn’t afford it even if you had enough money
good concept. maybe if the big names worked with panasonic on the hardware dev , so they each had input and each company added features that highlighted the specific companys pros (and cons ) and integrate those features to work together. (there is still time to do this as well) it could be/have been an awsome universal console.
I never get tired of hearing this story.
Thanks for watching.
I still have a 3DO in the box brand new w/ Gex game included. I remember the TV ads and articles on Gamepro. Always wanted one and got it I'm gonna open it one day.
oh i loved my 3do, i still have it. you forgot to mention that ea was so involved because the 3do ceo was the founder of ea. Also most games of the 3do that later became multiplat had the best version on the 3do, mainly because it supported a mixture of image formats that was impossible on the ps1 for example. so if you compare games like roadrash you will notice more colors and better graphics
One of my favorite quirky systems. Figure it out!
I sensed that might be the case.
I remember my family's DVD Player being a Sanyo back in the day.
The Fifth Generation was so hard to understand all of.. All the companies were experimenting and taking their own kinds of risks with 3D gaming.
I can see why Playstaion was the most successful, but I still think PS1 was designed in a sort of "boring" way despite having a great games library. Crash Bandicoot deserves a circle pad!
Road rage and gex on the 3do, I loved.
Maybe the 3DO might have taken off if they had convinced Sega and Nintendo to make their own version of the console.
I had a Goldstar-3DO back in the days for a few days. This pre-LG-thing was notorious comming defective out of the box, what also mine did. 130DM (round about 65€) was really too much for a console, that doesn't work. I got my money back and bought Manx TT instead.
I wished then and still wish today to have an FZ-1, but the Goldstar was the only variation reaching the continent, while the hard-power-wired Panasonics stayed in 110V-UK and stayed expensive untill the disappeared.
To be honest, I also feared the concept of a unified video game market. You could see how the live and variations of "home computer games" died thanks to the PC in that time - and the IBM-PC then needed years to reach the quality in gaming that for example Commodore already had achieved (ah, that pre-3dfx-days). It felt a bit like the Nazis trying to make the whole world arian.
You forgot to talk about M2, the successor of the 3DO that should have been released only 2-3 years after the 3DO - so long, video game standard for at least a decade. M2's power was something between SAT and DC. You can imagine how long it would have taken until more than one much better standard-breaker had arrived. I would have also said, that Trip Hawkings founded both, EA and 3DO, but the story you told was correct so far I can recall.
P.S.: the only "video game standard" that had succeed, was DVD Video, but only few pure games like "Who wants to be a Millionare?" or "Dragon's Lair" were released. The most games were quizzes as a bonus of some movies/series ;)
Given the fact that you hadn't heard of this back then, and were too young to follow what was going on,
your misconstrued vision of the 3DO's goals and efforts are forgiven.
I absolutely loved my 3do !
i Had the chance to have a goldstar 3do back then, and it was a fantastic system. I always own some games for it (wing commander II, which was vastly superior to the pentium version, doom, samourai showdown with the snes controller adapter, crash n burn....
Except for the price point, it was a fantastic machine for its time.
What the 3DO was supposed to do to console gaming, happened to PC gaming with x86 based CPUs and Windows.
These have been very interesting videos to watch. While I've heard about a lot of this information from various ones, there are bits I haven't heard elsewhere. After watching half of this retrospective, you've earned another subscriber. Keep it up.
Zombie Gadget
I originally had a 3DO made by Goldstar. Got it in 1995 for $299.00. A worker at Funcoland trade me for a Panasonic FZ-10 and 200.00 for it. Still have it today. The gun games are my Fave's.
It might sound mental, but because I loved Star COntrol on the Megadrive I wanted one of these just for Star Control2. :D
I'm LOVING these recaps.
Keep em coming! :D
Thanks for watching!
Had they brought something like this out in the mid-late 90's with a DVD player, then things could have been very different.
Mitjitsu
... ps2...
I love the look of the FZ1 3DO. Its one of my favorite looking consoles.
hahah thanks for the shout out bro! and yes I have one and love it, especially Twisted and Psychic Detective =)
Got the FZ-10 model? Saving up for StoneAge's USB mod. Check that out when u can
Partners and licencees that manufactured the 3DO consoles had to pay royalties to the 3DO company and did not make anything on software sales. so, in order to turn a profit, they had to make money on the hardware itself. Thats why the 3DO was so expensive.
It was an interesting idea, but I think if the 3DO company had decided to have the hardware manufactured themselves, it would have really kept the cost down and given them a chance to succeed in the 5th Gen.
Sony proved it could work without Sega and Nintendo. After all, it wasn't 2 years later that Sony released the PS1 and dominated the market without them. If the 3DO's MSRP had been lower, with the installed base it built before the launch of the PS1 and Saturn, it could have been the console that led the 5th gen.
3rd party software developers for the 3DO paid a $3 royalty fee per game (Which was much lower than Nintendo and Sega were charging at the time.)
I agree. when someone tells me they want to collect 3DO, I tell them the time is now! It's getting harder and harder to find the games at reasonable prices and it's only going to get harder!
thanks for the video. I always love to hear what others have to say about the 3DO :)
Very informative video Adam! Thanks a lot for sharing. Enjoying this fifth generation recap!
Thanks for watching!
I think that would be overflow (which could led to console disaster) if Nintendo, Sega and a bunch of 3rd Party Companies will make games for 3DO at the same time cause it’s similar to the Atari 2600 when Activision make games and 3rd Party Companies have their eyeballs being looked to Activision and they’re making games in a rush with no prior experience, then Companies will led to a bankruptcy eventually because if 3DO can’t handle too much time schedule on their arms. The 80’s and 90’s should’ve got Quality Control and company follows of the manufacture guidelines instead of getting pissed and go all the way around (kinda similar with Tengen didn’t follow Nintendo License Policy). Plus Life is not always about freedom cause without Quality Control or Rules, that’s Chaos.
Dude, I really love this channel, keep up the good work!
Thanks for watching!
As far as why this failed - you mention all of the parts of this just without putting it all together; it was SO expensive for the time - it was also really advanced for 1993, but $700 in 1993 is about $2k in 2023 money. This was an unavoidable consequence of 3DO's model - Panasonic, Sanyo, LG/Goldstar and Samsung (who didn't come along until 1997) only made the hardware, and therefore had to generate profit on the consoles as they didn't make anything on software. Unfortunately for 3DO (and those manufacturers) Sega and Nintendo had both simultaneously brought in with the SG-1000 and Famicom (way back in Feb 1983!) the business practice of selling your console at a loss but making it back off software licencing fees. So while the 3DO was $700, the Jaguar (yuck) was $250, the Genesis and SNES were selling for under $100, and the Playstation and Saturn would be less than half the 3DO's price by late '95. It never stood a chance, even without a ridiculously crowded market, limited support and Sony's entrance to video gaming. I do reckon it's got a clear claim on 4th place out of the 5th generation though - just so long as you ignore all the budget porn "games".
You're right that most of the software is weak and/or aforementioned softcore interactive porn, but I've come across *one* 3DO-exclusive title worth playing - Immercenary, by EA. Kind of an early FPS mixed with RPG elements, FMV cut scenes (of course) and this weird kind of offline-MMO thing before MMOs really existed. Worth checking out if you haven't already; I normally hate FMV too but thanks to EA's involvement the production values are decent. There are a couple of others I've read people love but that's the only one I've played that's worth revisiting.
AdamKoralik great episode. i've never actually played one myself, but used to own lots of game magazines from different game magazine sources, and remember seeing this in quite a few reads over time. Can't wait to hear the interesting story behind the Sony PlayStation/PSOne. and also Atari Jaguar/CD most definitely (in which i havn't played either if I must add).
Thanks for the video, Adam. The daisychaining of the controllers makes sense with your explanation of trying to make the console last for many years. The main thing I knew about the 3DO before watching this video was AVGN complaining about the daisychaining, but now it makes sense.
Thanks for watching!
I had a friend who briefly owned a 3DO in 1996; I thought it was okay (I knew next to nothing about video game history at the time). Yeah, we played "Road Rash", "John Madden Football", and some other games I can't remember.
Yeah, Sony just kind of threw their hat in the ring, and hit paydirt.
Main reason 3DO was so expensive was because the hardware manufactures had no incentive to sell it at a loss like Sega, NEC, and Nintendo did. They made up loses in hardware sales through developers/license fees and software sales. Panasonic, Sanyo etc, didn't get to play in that side of the business end. Probably the main flaw of 3DO's model. Nothing hinders getting that install base like an astronomical price. The 3DO is an okay system but most of it's best games were later made available on Saturn and PlayStation. There really isn't much need for gamers to go out and get one save for if you have some personal nostalgic love for it. Great video Adam!
Thanks for watching!
I'm a big fan of the 3do, very underrated system. Ahead of it's time, brilliant design, really good ports of some great games (including the only console port of star control 2). It's such a Interesting piece of gaming history, and it feels like it really was the playstation before the playstation. Shame the 3DO successor, the M2 never quite made it, but the M2 tech did managed to find it's way into a few late 90's arcade games, polystars being one of them, and a few dev consoles have been spotted in the wild.
really interesting! i've been meaning to look up info and background around the 3do as it's probably the console i'm least savvy with.
Thanks for watching!
I got a 3DO a few months ago very cheaply, and was curious about it. The only thing I remember about it back when it was new was that Tips and Tricks magazine would have 1 or 2 token pages of codes for the system. Like the sega CD, you can play burned copies of games on it, which allows me to get a good feel for the system. The problem is that I just can't get into it. It's really only good for being a novelty at this point. The Sega CD at least has a few games that I can get really into, but I haven't found the same joy with my 3DO.
Only real gem it had is Road Rash for me. Probably the best version of it ever. Rest is trash emoji
+Ben Pin oh and SF2 port was a solid one
Yeah, that's the problem. The best games on 3DO are available on other
consoles (Street Fighter 2, Road Rash, Samurai Shodown), and honestly I
still prefer Road Rash on Genesis.
As a 3DO fan I can give you a few great and fun games you can only get on the 3DO (and maybe PC/arcade/other obscure consoles) not including japanese exclusives, of which there are a lot and quiet a few good ones.
Guardian War/Powers Kingdom (repetitive but fun)
Trip'd (really fun puzzle game, made by Kenji Eno and WARP, who also made D)
Captain Quazar (isometric action game, really fun)
Kingdom: The Far Reaches (FMV Adventure game. It's a lot better than it sounds)
Lucienne's Quest (obvious choice and great game. Semi-sequel to Guardian War)
Star Control 2 (essentially Mass Effect in 2D)
You can check out my channel if you want, I Cover the 3DO from time to time. And the Master System if you're into that too.
3DO is nostalgic for me because I played Gex, Wing Commander (the Mark Hamill one), and Jurassic Park on it. JP creeped me out when you were running around the dark halls trying to restart the power grid.
I have an nostalgia for 3do in an odd way. I wanted one really badly but my parents wouldn't buy one cause of the price. Some store had one to play though. I remember playing monster manor and star fighter there, it was so awesome. I eventually got one as an adult. A lot of the games are on par with 1st generation ps1 games, and they came out 2 years before ps1 in 93, 94. Killing time, shockwave, deathkeep, samurai showdown, road rash, need for speed, po'ed, crash and burn, myst, immercenary and a couple others I can't think of at the moment. Full 3D texture mapped games easily ps1 quality in 93. Had developers kept supporting it for several years they could had squeezed out a lot more too
i dont know you knew this but did you know that there was actually a computer card that you can install inside your old windows pc and play 3DO games?!
this card was known as the creative labs 3DO blaster card
All i can say is that it's pretty hard to find this thing on ebay or other sites since this thing is kind of rare to find now :p
Is it possible to do a video on the m2?
It's a Panasonic console that was cancelled at the last minute. D2 was originally made for the m2 before moving to the dreamcast.
Other than showing pictures and saying a handful of things, I don't know what that video would be.
Found a copy of space ace for 3do at a small game shop a few days ago.
I'm very *very* tempted to get it...
I had one on the center, bought it in 1995 for $370, tried to recall the exchange rate on that year, fast forward today, the rate took twice. Damn that is almost 2 brand new ps4 now. My favorite games are sailormooon, yuyu hakusho, need 4 speed. Oh yeah bribed that store clerk to sell me that rock, paper scissors game. Was a funny and fun game.
I really like this series. Looking forward to your PS1 and N64 videos.
Thanks!
You come off half like a really cool history teacher and half like a really cool economics teacher in these videos
I'm sure someone must have said this before, but you realize the reason EA was a supporter of the 3DO was because of video game icon, and founder of EA and 3DO, Trip Hawkins. He actually left EA in the early 90s to form 3DO, with the intention of creating a video game console to compete with Nintendo and SEGA.... Supplementing the start-up cost of creating a competitive video game console by having low fees for 3rd party games, and using companies such as Panasonic to actually build versions of his console, as you said, just like different companies made the same VHS players, or DVD / BluRay players today. Trip Kawkins was a true visionary in the industry, a lot of people don't realize just how futuristic the 3DO was in its concept.
I can see the '3DO' idea of making a standard platform coming up in the future. It has 'corporate and anti-consumer greed' written all over it.
What's with that short buzzing noise around 19:06?
Clipping.
ah
For some reason the game Way of the Warrior comes to mind when I think of the 3DO. Smh
Maybe a review of the 'Retron Maroon 5', which plays multiple cartridges from different systems...mostly Sega and Nintendo
I miss 3DO they were my favorite third party company next to THQ but they made the best game series the Army Men series
lmao this reminds me of the first time i heard about this console... Me and my brother first saw an advertisement for this in a magazine and somehow my brother ended up thinking that this was a console that would let you put any movie in it and it would become a game... As you can agree this would have been insanely awesome. Years later i was still waiting for this movie to game machine to come out and finally figured out that we were completely confused and the 3do didn't do anything like what we thought.