About the 3DO

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A old article from Wired about the 3DO and either or not it could succed. (Spoiler: It did not.)

http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/1.02/3do_pr.html

Particulary telling.

The main reason why the 3DO failed was mainly due to the ludicrously high price of the system itself, as well as the lack of decent software available for it. Now, it did allegedly have a few decent games, but I think it would have had a lot more if the system itself sold better, and the system itself would have sold better if it were cheaper. It's kind of a vicious circle; it would have needed good games to sell well, and it would have needed to sell well to have good games.

People predicted that the PS1 would fail as well, but because of excellent marketing and games that could offer more than just improved graphics (you now got games with good storylines, cut-scenes, voice-acting, and so on), it did not. The fifth generation was the first time consoles could keep up with computers, and many gamers didn't want to pay extra for that.

I first became interested in the world of gaming and consoles at about the time the 3DO was gasping for breath. All I recall were the endless "Dodo" jokes!

Strangely enough, the first console I bought was the Amiga CD32. How many punters would remember that?

I started with Sega Genesis and then jumped to N64 years later. Consoles like these blew right past me. All I knew was Sega, Nintendo, and Sony. It wasn't until I got on the internet that I learned about the 3DO. In recent years, I began looking at reviews of bad video games of the past. I came across a title called Plumbers Don't Wear Ties. I could expect this from some crappy 1990s website but not an actual retail game.

I have a 3DO, it's actually a pretty fun console. I got it years later for like 80 bucks off of kijiji and it came with like 80 games, most of which are like interactive movies and educational games. There are a few gems though, such as Crash N Burn (racing game where you could shoot the crap out of your opponents and with characters whose catch phrases were something like "Let's kick some tail!"), Soccer Kid (platformer where your main weapon is a soccer ball, you tour around the world to different locations, fun gameplay and tight controls), Icebreakers (you play as a triangle whose primary goal is to smash or shoot other triangles, eliminating all of the stationary ones before the ones that move could kill you. Sounds crazy and it was, there were 150 different levels) and Space Pirates (a crappy real life action game, my friends and I had a riot playing it because the acting was so bad it was hilarious).

I can see why it died out, but it clearly was ahead of it's time with superior graphics to the competition and the real life cut scenes. It was big too, like almost original Xbox huge. Thing weighed like 10 pounds.

I've heard that the 3D0 versions of Wolfenstein 3D and Street Fighter II are supposed to be pretty decent. Return Fire is supposed to be pretty good too.

I had a 3DO - one of the original Panasonic ones. I don't miss it. There were few decent games: the version of Street Fighter was superior to what other consoles of the time offered but the 3DO pad was awful for it. Return Fire got good reviews but was exclusively multiplayer which didn't suit me. The most fun I had I think was with a game called The Horde which was a "tower defense" style game before this was a thing. It even had (quite) funny cut scenes as I remember.

The 3DO, like the Atari Jaguar (yes, I had one of those too) and the Sega Mega CD and 32X all came at a time in gaming when 2D games were (unfairly) considered outdated but the consoles didn't have enough power for real 3D environments. The PS1 could only barely manage 3D games but the marketing made it a hit and started the process of making gaming "cool".