3DO Games - Taking another look with old reviews.

[Rogue Trooper]

Great scans!

You guys are welcome.

Despite all the space it takes up, been very glad i kept my scrap box, not book, lol, but box of pages i'd kept back from years back.Thought some site in future might like'em, so loaned 'em to Laird to scan+put up, now community is enjoying'em.

way it should be.

[guest4826]

Who the hell would give Star Control 2 a 58%?  :43: Yeah, I was gonna' say! Star Control II on the 3DO was outstanding. I'm happy that Return Fire got high numbers though too as that game is amazing. Anyone I have ever put that game on for has not been able to resist playing it. That's one I like to hook up to the Stereo as you just can't hate the music!

3DO, easily one of the most under appreciated consoles of all time. That system was begging for more A+ titles to release on it so they could really show what it could do!

[Rogue Trooper]

Bladeforce was supposed to be pretty much maxing out the hardware in terms of a 3D engine went, not sure just how much more could have been squuezed out via optimisation, hardware tricks.

[guest4826]

Bladeforce was supposed to be pretty much maxing out the hardware in terms of a 3D engine went, not sure just how much more could have been squuezed out via optimisation, hardware tricks.

This is true, however, one great point that could have been brought to the forefront; The 3DO has two expansion ports. A chipset in a case with more RAM and a full on 3D processor could have been released for the system to keep it fresh with the competition until the M2 was ready. Not saying it is even something that was being talked about because there were so many rumors where the 3DO were concerned, so I don't even know if it's true, especially since so many proto's are out there for the M2, but nothing for a 3DO expansion exists, so I'll put it down as rumor, or maybe it was planned if the 3DO system sold so many systems? I know that Trip Hawkins called the 3DO Hardware "Future Proof" when it was first releasing and there was much talk about upgrading the system as needed when the industry changed, so who knows? It's surely possible that this was in the pipeline for a bit, but due to abysmal sales, it never came to fruition. Hell, knowing that both Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain and Pandemonium were both in development for the 3DO, it makes one wonder. Also, when you look at the fact that Legacy of Kain amde it to a Beta and Pandemonium made it to a Alpha stage, and I think that Pandemonium is more 3D heavy than Blade Force is. Still, no way in knowing how well it played without seeing it.

[Rogue Trooper]

Bladeforce was supposed to be pretty much maxing out the hardware in terms of a 3D engine went, not sure just how much more could have been squuezed out via optimisation, hardware tricks.

This is true, however, one great point that could have been brought to the forefront; The 3DO has two expansion ports. A chipset in a case with more RAM and a full on 3D processor could have been released for the system to keep it fresh with the competition until the M2 was ready. Not saying it is even something that was being talked about because there were so many rumors where the 3DO were concerned, so I don't even know if it's true, especially since so many proto's are out there for the M2, but nothing for a 3DO expansion exists, so I'll put it down as rumor, or maybe it was planned if the 3DO system sold so many systems? I know that Trip Hawkins called the 3DO Hardware "Future Proof" when it was first releasing and there was much talk about upgrading the system as needed when the industry changed, so who knows? It's surely possible that this was in the pipeline for a bit, but due to abysmal sales, it never came to fruition. Hell, knowing that both Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain and Pandemonium were both in development for the 3DO, it makes one wonder. Also, when you look at the fact that Legacy of Kain amde it to a Beta and Pandemonium made it to a Alpha stage, and I think that Pandemonium is more 3D heavy than Blade Force is. Still, no way in knowing how well it played without seeing it.

And as i mentioned on another thread Soviet Strike started out on 3DO, but switched to PS1 development as soon as it became apparent which was the horse to back from a marketing point of view.


In terms of add-ons...think you only have to look at history of those that have had such devices, did any really turn the fortunes of the system around? the M2 was planned at 1 stage to be avaiable as an add-on for the 3DO, but it'd use little more than the CD drive of the 3DO.Something offering more Ram alone would have been costly as Sega soon found out with it's Ram Cart for the Saturn and in all honesty creates a headache for coders and publishers.

Do you really poor time+money into coding enhancements to a game for that small % of the userbase who own the Ram upgrade? and if developers did'nt really make use of Ram enhancements, what incentive for 3DO users to buy 1? chicken+egg situation.


Plus look at the MD/Genesis-Sega desperate to 'keep up' with Nintendo in the power race so initally wanted to be the 1st with a CD drive for the console and takes the opp.to put in a much more powerful sound chip to bring it in line with one in the SNES, adds another CPU etc, allowing for parallel processing, allows it to do limited texture-mapping, sprite scaling etc the SNES Mode 7 could never do as CPU just far too slow (given Core design's quotes from Thunderhawk in the MCD thread on here), yet it never had the support from Sega themselves, let alone the mass of 3rd parties (Core, Virgin few others did best..) and you needed to fork out again, set everything up, another power outlet required.


Then Sega really took it a step too far with 32X....another upgrade, more powerful, yes...but again just seen as a stop-gap.


Your 3DO:you've been caught out at trade show, jurno's flipped open lid, no CD inside, follows wires back, Apple Macs running demo's.Not best start.Your machine is bloody expensive as the O/S is so bloated, you've had to up the cost to cover  doubling the Ram, your claims of screen resolution been found to be fake (3DO just upscales and then sends upscaled image to TV), you've key industry figures like Jez San moaning 3DO is'nt as all that, worse 2D abilities than SNEs, it's good at texture-mapping, but not as fast as equiv.PC, suddenly your wonder machine is'nt quite as wonderful as you claimed, your user base is starting to feel just a little cheated, they paid a lot of $'s for this hardware....

Would you really want to appear to be the next Sega-ie keep buying extra hardware, it'll all be fine.

Trip+3DO talked....and talked a lot about add-on's as did Atari, as did CBM with CD32.Multi-media was the buzzword, all had promised things like home V.R helmets....all it did was give rival P.R a field day.


Sony back in PS1 days described the 3DO as the Swiss Knife of gaming:It had a knife a fork a spoon etc, but you would'nt eat your dinner with it.

I feel they'd have been far better learning where 3DO went wrong and making sure the M2 came in at sensible price, with powerful, easy to use hardware (which it looked like it was packing) and killer software and made sure it was an N64 beater as it'd have a few years head start before Sega and Sony came out with replacements for their 32 Bit CD consoles.