Rare 3DO Games
DaVeDeMoN
-Dave
EMAIL: wdem...@rochester.rr.com
LockdownX
LockdownX gkim...@home.com
TomSe...@webtv.net
Having learned from the poor launch of the $750+ 3DO, MATSUSHITA wanted
to release a machine to compete with the PSX & Saturns original price or
less ($300-$400). However, it just wasn't feesable. The proposed DVD
drive, the modem connections & much more, all were running up the bill.
They were in the process of watering it down when they realized how bad
it was getting. So, it got shelved.
If you're wanting to hear the latest on the machine though, try this URL
:
Haven't been there in months, but it used to have info on the watered
down version.
As to rare games, I'd have to say the following are tough to find :
*Lucienes Quest (with everything)
*Woody Woodpecker CDVs (just because no one wanted them in the first
place)
*The 95% completed BETA version of PENN & TELLERS Smoke & Mirrors from
ABSOLUTE. Actually, ANY 3DO beta versions.
*Most imports, including Dr. Hauser, Life Stage:Virtual Ballet, Wacky
Races & more.
*3DO Game Guru
TS3K
Bojay1997
"watered down" is just plain incorrect. It is possible to order an M2 with
DVD-rom capability if you're willing to spend the money. There are of course
no games for it, but it is a very powerful presentation system and is great for
employee training applications.
TomSe...@webtv.net
I couldn't find my NEXT GENERATION. To be honest, I never really liked
the mag, got a year subscription for a present. I also tried to search
their website, but had no luck on tech specs.
I found most of an old game club newsletter that also contained the
specs. However, part of these pages were aparently drowned in coffee a
while back, and are difficult to read.
CPU speed : 88 Mhz
1.4 Million Polygons Per second
Memory : 16 Megs SDRAM. Plus internal NV RAM & Removable External Cards
for game data.
Graphic : 640x480 resolution. Supports
MPEG-1 & JPEG decompression.
Sound: 66 Mhz DsP 32 channel.
Supports MPEG audio
Graphic Effects:
Texture mapping
MIP mapping at multiple levels.
3D Perspective Correction.
Alpha Special Effects
Multi level MIP Mapping
Gourad Shading
Other data is here, but it's really illegible.
DVD Rom Drive
(editors note says : DVD Rom Drive proposed.
Probably will not make final unit)
Thats about all thats legible. Along with a list of about 10 games that
were coming to the machine.
2 titles from Capcom (all I can read of that is (CAPCOM) at the end of
it.)
D2
Madden
Iron & Blood
Clayfighter
Rocket Sled (?? best I can make out)
Sorry, but thats all I have at the moment. My Next Gens must be in
storage. I rarely through a game mag away, even a bad one. Or in the
case of this newsletter, a REALLY messed up one
Certainly from what I've read though, the present M2 is watered down
from what it was (or at least what it was touted to be).
Frankly though, I thought the processor was even faster (100 mhz+).
Perhaps I need a memory upgrade. ha!
I'd still rather have seen the original M2 make the scene as a game
machine.
TS3K
Mike Tortorici
presentations. They couldn't even find an arcade app for it. Of course,
when they were proposing it, it was the first to openly say they were
going to use DVD. Add $400 bucks to the price right there.
By comparison, the Playstation 2 is going to upgrade a g_a_m_e
c_o_n_s_o_l_e to DVD, up the processing power, increase connectivity
and peripherals, and is going to be BACKWARDS-COMPATIBLE - which in
itself is like the Holy Grail for gamers. Mashusita wouldn't dare
releasing something like that as competition. Especially not for a "cult
following."
Also, in regards to the specs. Half of the WebTv boxes out there run at
~167 Mhz. Of course, you can't do very much with them, but still.
Todd Allendorf
TomSe...@webtv.net wrote:
> Ok, here's the specs.
I'm not sure I want to get into this, but I did work on the M2 at 3DO and I
can clear up some of this pretty easily.
>
>
> I couldn't find my NEXT GENERATION. To be honest, I never really liked
> the mag, got a year subscription for a present. I also tried to search
> their website, but had no luck on tech specs.
>
First of all, never believe anything you read in any videogame magazines
without some kind of confirmation (and other videogame magazines don't
count!). Most of the times, the people who write for these things:
1) Don't know what they are talking about and are just repeating specs they
THINK they heard. For example, multiple game magazines referred to the N64
as having a revolutionary rendering technique called MIT-mapping. It was
supposed to be MIP-mapping and it is a standard technique that has been
around for over a decade but somewhere it was misspelled and then every
magazine misspelled it after that (because the writers had no clue what it
was). They thought it was some new technology (invented by M.I.T.
perhaps?) and ran with it like so many media whores. The myth that was
"SGI graphics" is another one of these.
2) Repeat stuff they heard on the Internet and call it news. It was funny
watching magazines making up stuff about the internals of 3DO and the M2
when working there, because I knew they were wrong and had to wonder how
they came up with such bogus information. It made me wonder how much stuff
they got wrong about other companies.
3) When they don't know the answer to the reader's question, they will
make something up rather than say they don't know. My favorite example of
this was when a reader asked (I think it was in GameFan magazine) how Super
Metroid could be a 24Mbit cart when the SNES was a 16-bit system. The
"answer" the editor gave was "Well 16-bit systems can only address 16Mbit
of memory at a time but you can use bank-switching to address 24 Mbit or
more." If the editor had taken a basic computer course in High School, he
should have known the correct answer.
I'll admit magazines have gotten better over the past few years in terms of
technical info (probably due to getting swamped with email when they make
mistakes), but I still don't think they are quite as "connected" to the
inside of the industry as they claim to be. Experience has shown me
otherwise.
>
> I found most of an old game club newsletter that also contained the
> specs. However, part of these pages were aparently drowned in coffee a
> while back, and are difficult to read.
>
Since these didn't come from 3DO or Panasonic, what makes you think they
are accurate?
>
> CPU speed : 88 Mhz
> 1.4 Million Polygons Per second
>
Okay. The original 3DO specs were for a 66 Mhz PPC 602, the final M2 specs
were for two 66Mhz 602s. I don't know if Motorola/IBM ever made a faster
602.
>
> Memory : 16 Megs SDRAM. Plus internal NV RAM & Removable External Cards
> for game data.
>
The original 3DO specs were for 4MB of RAM, the final Panasonic specs were
for 8MB of SDRAM. The system could take up to 128MB RAM but that was never
going into a consumer unit (they were going up against a $150 N64,
remember?). Developer units had two times the final RAM (so that games can
be developed freely and then scaled back to the RAM footprint more
easily). So a final M2 developer unit would have had 16 MB of RAM but not
a consumer unit.
>
> Graphic : 640x480 resolution. Supports
> MPEG-1 & JPEG decompression.
>
> Sound: 66 Mhz DsP 32 channel.
> Supports MPEG audio
>
> Graphic Effects:
> Texture mapping
> MIP mapping at multiple levels.
> 3D Perspective Correction.
> Alpha Special Effects
> Multi level MIP Mapping
> Gourad Shading
> Other data is here, but it's really illegible.
>
These have never changed.
>
> DVD Rom Drive
> (editors note says : DVD Rom Drive proposed.
> Probably will not make final unit)
Not in the original consumer unit. Panasonic added this for the business
unit.
>
> Thats about all thats legible. Along with a list of about 10 games that
> were coming to the machine.
>
> 2 titles from Capcom (all I can read of that is (CAPCOM) at the end of
> it.)
> D2
> Madden
> Iron & Blood
> Clayfighter
> Rocket Sled (?? best I can make out)
>
> Sorry, but thats all I have at the moment. My Next Gens must be in
> storage. I rarely through a game mag away, even a bad one. Or in the
> case of this newsletter, a REALLY messed up one
>
The M2 did end up in two arcade machines by Konami. Fly Polystars (sort of
like Panzer Dragoon) and Battle Tryst (a fighting game).
>
> Certainly from what I've read though, the present M2 is watered down
> from what it was (or at least what it was touted to be).
>
Not at all. If anything the added the DVD-ROM (which wouldn't have been
available for the original M2 game console launch).
>
> Frankly though, I thought the processor was even faster (100 mhz+).
> Perhaps I need a memory upgrade. ha!
>
Yep. Maybe you saw 2x 66Mhz and turned that into 132Mhz?
>
> I'd still rather have seen the original M2 make the scene as a game
> machine.
Me too. BTW, the M2 didn't launch because it was too expensive. It was
very competitive price wise (the thing was made up of three chips plus RAM
plus glue so it wasn't expensive at all) but Panasonic got cold feet. They
believed Nintendo was going to dominate the market and they thought
bringing out a unit that was twice as powerful as the N64 (and a lot easier
to develop for) wasn't good enough. They didn't anticipate that cartridges
were going to really stunt the N64's growth. In hindsight, I can safely
say the M2 would have buried the N64 if Panasonic actually launched it.
The reasons are pretty simple. The dev system was dirt cheap and easy to
use (Sony released the Net Yarouze because it got some early info on the
M2's dev system which was essentially an M2 unit with an extra ROM and a
parallel port cable for the PC). A developer familiar with an API like
Glide would be right at home so ports of 3DFX games would be easy. The OS
made streaming a dream. Today I have trouble getting Windoze with a
PII-450 and a TNT card to do what I could on an M2 four years ago. Every
developer that used the final M2 system preferred it to any other console
for ease of development. Unfortunately, everything in the universe (or so
it seemed) conspired to keep the unit off the shelf. The main causes were:
1. Panasonic was overly worried about Nintendo. They couldn't see that
cartridges were going to doom that system to being a (relative) niche
market.
2. Trip Hawkins had a mid-life crisis and wanted to get out of the console
hardware business. He wanted to go back to what he believes he knows best-
games. Of course looking at some of the stinkers coming out of Studio (New
World and Cyclone excluded) you have to wonder. He basically told
Panasonic they would have to pay for any help with M2 (in addition to the
$100 million). Trip wouldn't be evangelizing the system anymore and 3DO
could theoretically nickel-and-dime Panasonic to death. After all, the
braintrust for the M2 was still at 3DO (before being amputated into
Cagent). Panasonic would have to put their faith in something they didn't
invent nor knew all that much about. For all they knew, there could have
been a fatal flaw in the system that wouldn't reveal itself until after
they spent a billion dollars on a launch.
3. The guy who was head of the Interactive Media division of Panasonic
(actually MEI) was retiring shortly after the time M2 was originally to
have launched. Only he could authorize the money (500 million to a billion
dollars) needed to launch the unit. He didn't want to commit his company
to such an expensive venture and then leave. So he didn't do it. His
successor inherited M2 and was reluctant to commit to it since it wasn't
"his baby". He was interested in MX but apparently he couldn't work out a
deal with Cagent (the M2 hardware group) for it. This was probably due to
an arrogant individual at Cagent who shall remain nameless who said "I
don't like MEI's table manners, so I don't want to deal with them." I
swear to God that I'm not making the last sentence up!
These are, I feel, the main reasons we never saw the M2. Scary isn't it?
It wasn't technology or costs or the market. It was key individuals that
deprived the world of a great game console. We often hear how an
individual can have a profound impact for good on the rest of the world (or
at least a large chunk of it). If it weren't for John Carmack, game
developers be doomed to using an inferior version of Direct3D for game
development instead of having a choice (Thanks, John!). Unfortunately, an
individual can bring an equally negative effect on the world. An
individual can undo the work of thousands of man-years with the stroke of
pen. Remember that when you work on a project. Don't let a few
individuals (if you can) undo what you and your fellow workers have slaved
months and years for.
Don't even get me started on how the M2/Sega deal fell through.
>
> TS3K
-Todd Allendorf
tod...@wco.com
Bojay1997
unreleased software protos lying around do you ;)
Bojay
TomSe...@webtv.net
got those specs from, was REALLY old. I think it predates the sale of M2
to Matsushita by almost a year. And its a fan-zine style newsletter.
Nothing more. But it's all I could find for an example.
Personally, I don't believe much the game mags have to say. But when
dealing with VAPOR-WARE you don't have much else to go on. Personally I
was remembering an article rating it at 108mhz, not 136 as you
suggested.
I'd probably still buy an M2 if the mood hit me right, just to say I
have one. But, from all the "hype", and basicly from all the CRAP I've
read about it..... It would have to be cheap. heh.
I agree with Bojay though, wheres the free samples of the un-released
software? LOL!
TS3K
Bill Baker
wrote:
> First of all, never believe anything you read in any videogame magazines...
> They thought it was some new technology (invented by M.I.T.
> perhaps?) and ran with it like so many media whores.
Well, it's hard to fault the media for being inaccurate when we were
doing our best to snow them. Somewhere in a tape vault there is
footage of me on Entertainment Tonight at the '93 SCES demonstraiting
the ability of the soon-to-be-released 3DO Multiplayer to do "real-time
rendering of live video and audio input!" And yet, you will search in
vain for the A/V inputs on your FZ-1 'cause there never was a true
Opera with the bus architecture to handle A/V input, let alone the
ADC's. That demo was basically a lie. Our flacks tried to steer the
ET reporter to a safer demo but he took a perverse delight in picking
my station to feature in his bit. I think he sensed that I was the one
guy our gladhanders didn't want on national TV representing the
company.
> In hindsight, I can safely
> say the M2 would have buried the N64 if Panasonic actually launched it.
> The reasons are pretty simple....The OS
> made streaming a dream.
Todd, was this an M2 I/O interleaving follow-on from the Datastreaming
lib of the Opera OS? I've got a vague memory that the early M2 dev
team was going to take Joe Buzcek's lib wholesale and make it the focal
point of their title development model, but I left before any major M2
element was finalized.
Joe's lib was a great piece of work. In many ways the Opera OS, though
never truly complete, was the best thing about the box. The DMA memory
system was truly remarkable, but it was a temporary solution to system
requirements that were being met not long afterwards by gross increases
in CPU power and bus speeds. You could get the same results with a
standard architecture.
> 2. Trip Hawkins had a mid-life crisis and wanted to get out of the console
> hardware business.
Ugh, the scariest thing about having Trip at the helm was the
overwhelming degree to which his personal quirks affected corporate
strategy. Which messiah complex is in charge today? For instance,
Trip ruling that the Jaguar would have no effect on the Opera rollout
because he couldn't bear to think that the Trammiels might sink him.
"Uh, Trip? The business plan doesn't allow for a niche-competitor
during the rollout phase. We're supposed to have the market sector to
ourselves for the sales projections to pencil." "Bah, away with you,
idolator!"
Same thing with SGI when they signed to do the N64. Trip was
essentially dismissive of the venture, despite SGI having worked for
years previously to redevelop their rendering technology cheaply enough
to be cost competitive in the low-end PC marketplace (viz. their
ill-fated ESD division), and the possibility that they could go even
further and come up with an Onyx-in-a-box if the stars aligned
correctly and they had tons of Nintendo cash to burn. But no, Trip
loathed Ed McCracken so he wouldn't permit N64 to be considered as a
serious rival even though the mere potential of it coming to market two
or three years down the road was cutting into our current Opera sales
noticeably.
> Panasonic would have to put their faith in something they didn't
> invent nor knew all that much about. For all they knew, there could have
> been a fatal flaw in the system that wouldn't reveal itself until after
> they spent a billion dollars on a launch.
Gack, that makes twice around the block for them. Their engineers and
management never understood the Opera, other than how to physically
manufacture them. MCA, which MEI owned/owns?, had grandiose plans for
a wave of big-budget titles leveraging on our vaunted Hollywood-Silicon
Valley synergy, but no one there had any idea how to do a title, let
alone launch a campaign of titles exploiting the advantages the Opera
had (then) over market competitors.
Same thing with all our early major investors, save EA. Time-Warner?
By the time they really understood the platform the tepid rollout had
killed their real interest in it. AT&T? Ugh, don't get me started
about AT&T.
> 3. The guy who was head of the Interactive Media division of Panasonic
> (actually MEI) was retiring shortly after the time M2 was originally to
> have launched. Only he could authorize the money (500 million to a billion
> dollars) needed to launch the unit. He didn't want to commit his company
> to such an expensive venture and then leave. So he didn't do it. His
> successor inherited M2 and was reluctant to commit to it since it wasn't
> "his baby". He was interested in MX but apparently he couldn't work out a
> deal with Cagent (the M2 hardware group) for it. This was probably due to
> an arrogant individual at Cagent who shall remain nameless who said "I
> don't like MEI's table manners, so I don't want to deal with them." I
> swear to God that I'm not making the last sentence up!
That sounds like something RJ would have said, but I think he was gone
by then.
> Remember that when you work on a project. Don't let a few
> individuals (if you can) undo what you and your fellow workers have slaved
> months and years for.
I'm sure most of the original NTG crew will have this engraved on their
tombstones.
> Don't even get me started on how the M2/Sega deal fell through.
Let me guess: Trip got into a pissing contest with whatshisname, the
head of Sega of America. That's what bilged the original Opera/Sega
deal, so I heard.
Man, I had no idea that so many of the same bad ideas, micalculations
and personal pecadillos sank the M2 as well as the one we did get out
the door, the Opera.
JLebesque
Now it's very difficult to find games and console. personnaly , i think this
console isn't bad but as atari with the jaguar it's very
difficult ,there is nintendo sega and sony...
3do is dead in 1996 and now for the games .....
I have 3do too with 22 games but i search samourai shodown and rpg games and
it's
impossible mission!!!!!
see you next time !
Mike Tortorici
with CD really cheaply. 3DO's, on the other hand, are like shards of the
True Cross or scraps of the Shroud of Turin - you just don't find them
laying around. Not to say they're holy relics, but just my example.
TomSe...@webtv.net
sale, and my local Game Masters has 3 in stock.
As to RPG fare, Guardian War (strategy game with RPG elements, minimal
story line) and Luciennes Quest (not a bad RPG) are the better of the
sparce few RPG-style games on the 3DO. AD&D Slayer & Deathkeep didn't
fare well in my opinion. Not really bad games, but not really thrilling
either.
There are more RPG style games in the Japanese market, but unless you
can read japanese, you're kinda up the creek.
Good luck in your search.
TS3K
TomSe...@webtv.net
new at K-Bee toys.
Even the local Tower Outlet store has a couple 3DO titles. (Twisted,
Shockwave & something else I cannot remember off the top of my head).
Guess it just depends on where you shop & where you live. I even bought
out one local dealer at $3 an item. Anyone need a boat load of new 3DO
controlers? LOL!
Anyhow, if you cannot find games where you live, try a larger city near
you, or a game dealer on-line like GAMES TO GO or GameDude.
Also if you're really desperate theres always TELEGAMES. On of the
highest priced places I've ever seen. But they do have a large selection
of games.
Here's those URLs :
Good luck.. and happy hunting.
TS3K
Genie Werner
Mike Tortorici wrote in message
<14792-36...@newsd-144.iap.bryant.webtv.net>...