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The 3DO had an interesting, albeit an ambitious concept behind its design. It was meant to be a 32-bit, set-top multimedia system, and would be licensed to numerous hardware manufactures allowing for multiple versions to be made. The idea was started by Trip Hawkins, one of the founders of Electronic Arts prior to founding the 3DO company, with the help of RJ Mical and Dave Needle who would go onto draft the design for the 3DO. The creators hoped it would become as common as the VCR and as fun and entertaining as any other video game system while being coupled with numerous non-game features making it a true multi-media device. The idea was sound. Unfortunately, the execution of this idea was not.
The 3DO console was intended to be made by any manufacturer who signed a licensing agreement with the 3DO company. These companies included some of the world’s largest electronics companies at the time: Goldstar, Sanyo, Samsung, AT&T, Creative Labs and even Matsushita/Panasonic (the largest electronic manufacturer at the time). Also part of 3DO’s business strategy was to be extremely liberal when it came to manufacturing the system. The idea was that there would be no designated system specs that had to be followed for the manufactures, giving manufactures the freedom to create an entertainment system that they wanted to design and for any audience they saw fit. In concept it would give consumers more choices as the 3DO would be extremely upgradeable. The idea was to make the 3DO as easily to manufacture as a CD player, but the console would function as a home entertainment system, a PC, a music player, and most importantly a video game system. The 3DO would also allow third party developers to push new technology like wireless and DVD remote style controllers as well as numerous multi-media features. However as it has already been hinted the execution for the 3DO system was a complete failure.
With the idea that the 3DO was to become a multifunctional part of everyone's home entertainment centers, the unit was released in 1993 with an MSRP of $700, and it was this price tag the ultimately doomed the console from the start. Even though the system was touted as being a do-all set-top box of the future, most people saw it as an extremely expensive video game system for gamers with extra money to spare. With a controller that looked like it was designed for a video game console, and a lack of non-game based multi-media features, the perception of the 3DO as an expensive videogame system was forever planted in the minds of consumers. At $700 to $800, most people steered clear of the 3DO and continued to purchase the much cheaper and more established 16-bit game consoles (e.g. Sony’s Playstation, & Nintendo’s N64). Goldstar released their version of the 3DO with a far lower price tag of $399. However, the rocky launch and poor first impression had essentially doomed the 3DO and the system was unfortunately never able to recover from this.
With constant delays for promised expansions and features the 3DO system and all of its games were placed in clearance bins by 1996. By the time of the system's discontinuation by 1997 the 3DO was only able to sell approximately 2 million units. This number was easily dwarfed by the number of units sold by Sony’s Playstation and Nintendo’s N64, each of which sold 102 million and 33 million units respectively.
Each system had its own version of the digital video cartridge, although the Goldstar version was the only one to be released in the United States. Both Panasonic versions were released in Japan, however. These expansion modules allowed people to play Video CDs or VCDs on their systems, effectively giving them most of the functions of a VCR. VCDs never caught on, however, and many Panasonic 3DO owners never had the chance to purchase these devices.
There were many accessories for the 3DO, some of them standard (like gamepads, wireless controllers and a lightgun). Then there were more unique items like the mouse, steering wheel, flight stick and the Super Nintendo controller adapters which allowed the cheaper Super NES controllers to be used on the 3DO. However, there were even more impressive items available that truly allowed the 3DO to stand alone.
The Panasonic memory expansion module added 256k of much needed storage memory to the 3DO. The 3DO only had 32k of internal storage memory, and system owners soon clamored for this much needed accessory. Unfortunately, it was only released in Japan which made it very difficult to obtain anywhere else.
Regrettably, many highly anticipated accessories never made it out of the prototype stage. Most notable were the memory card add-on, the modem and the massively promoted 64bit M2 system upgrade module.
Games and Development Support
Amazingly, for a system with such a short life span, there were hundreds of titles released worldwide. Of course the liberal licensing policy has much to do with this. As a result the 3DO received a significant amount of third-party support. However the policy was both a blessing and a nightmare as the 3DO saw both masterpieces and games that were in pieces. There are gems like Gex, Captain Quazar, and Star Control 2. Need for Speed and Road Rash need no introduction. Those two made their debut on the 3DO and the 3DO versions for these games are considered far superior to their Playstation ports. Also the 3DO has one of the most popular arcade games ever: Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. These titles, for a while, excited and captivated audiences and drew a significant amount of hype to the system.
So unlike many other failed consoles the 3DO didn’t fail due to a lack of third party support. Quite the contrary, for a while the system recieve some truely dedicated support from third party video game developers. instead it was the original $700 price tag proved to be the barrier of entry that killed the system.
-32-bit 12.5Mhz RISC CPU (ARM60) made by Advanced RISC Machines
(Roughly equivalent to a 25Mhz 68030)
-640x480 pixel resolution at 16.7 million colors
-Two Accelerated Video Co-Processors with the following features:
25Mhz clock rate.
Capable of producing 9-16 million REAL pixels per second (36-64 Mpix/sec
interpolated), distorted, scaled, rotated and texture mapped.
Able to map a rectangular bitmap onto any arbitrary 4-point polygon.
Texturemap source bitmaps can be 1,2,4,6,8, or 16 bits per pixel and are
RLE compressed for a maximum combination of both high resolution and small storage space.
Supports transparency, translucency, and color-shading effects.
-Custom 16-bit Digital Signal Processor (DSP) with the following features:
specifically designed for mixing, manipulating, and synthesizing CD
quality sound.
Can decompress sound 2:1 or 4:1 on the fly saving memory and bus
bandwidth.
25Mhz clock rate.
Pipelined CISC architecture.
16-bit register size.
17 separate 16-bit DMA channels to and from system memory.
On chip instruction SRAM and register memory.
20-bit internal processing.
Special filtering capable of creating effects such as 3D sound.
-Separate BUS for video refresh updates (VRAM is dual ported)
-Super Fast BUS Speed (50 Megabytes per second)
-Math Co-Processor custom designed by NTG for accelerating fixed-point matrix
operations. (Note: This is *not* the ARM FPA)
-CD-ROM Drive with the following features:
320ms access time
Doublespeed 300kbps Data Transfer
32kbyte ram buffer
-2 megabytes of DRAM
-1 megabyte of VRAM (also capable of holding/executing code and data)
-1 megabyte of ROM
-36 Separate DMA Channels for fast data processing and efficient bus usage
-2 expansion ports:
1 High-speed 68 pin x 1 AV I/O port (for FMV cartridge)
1 High-speed 30 pin x 1 I/O expansion port
-1 Control port, capable of daisy chaining together up to 8 peripherals
-Multitasking 32-bit Operating System
-16-bit Stereo Sound
-44.1KHz Sound Sampling Rate
-Fully Supports Dolby(tm) Surround Sound
-32kb battery backed up SRAM
3DO was a video game console manufactured by Panasonic, Goldstar, and Sanyo.
Summary
Panasonic made 3DO
Development and History
Goldstar made 3DO
The 3DO console was intended to be made by any manufacturer who signed a licensing agreement with the 3DO company. These companies included some of the world’s largest electronics companies at the time: Goldstar, Sanyo, Samsung, AT&T, Creative Labs and even Matsushita/Panasonic (the largest electronic manufacturer at the time). Also part of 3DO’s business strategy was to be extremely liberal when it came to manufacturing the system. The idea was that there would be no designated system specs that had to be followed for the manufactures, giving manufactures the freedom to create an entertainment system that they wanted to design and for any audience they saw fit. In concept it would give consumers more choices as the 3DO would be extremely upgradeable. The idea was to make the 3DO as easily to manufacture as a CD player, but the console would function as a home entertainment system, a PC, a music player, and most importantly a video game system. The 3DO would also allow third party developers to push new technology like wireless and DVD remote style controllers as well as numerous multi-media features. However as it has already been hinted the execution for the 3DO system was a complete failure.
Sanyo made 3DO
With constant delays for promised expansions and features the 3DO system and all of its games were placed in clearance bins by 1996. By the time of the system's discontinuation by 1997 the 3DO was only able to sell approximately 2 million units. This number was easily dwarfed by the number of units sold by Sony’s Playstation and Nintendo’s N64, each of which sold 102 million and 33 million units respectively.
Design
The 3DO sported some very innovative features. The fact that it was a CD-based system gave developers nearly limitless space to store their games and programs, something cartridge-based systems lack. While there was only one controller port this wasn’t a problem since players could easily link up to 8 controllers together as each controller has its own controller port. The original Panasonic controllers have a built-in stereo headphone jack along with a volume control dial. The system has its own internal memory to save games and other information. It has 2 expansion ports which were to be used for future upgrades such as memory cards, modems, digital video cartridges and the M2 system upgrade. Many of these features you won't find on any game system on the market today. The 3DO was definitely ahead of its time and designed for the long haul.
Inside a Goldstar 3DO
Each system had its own version of the digital video cartridge, although the Goldstar version was the only one to be released in the United States. Both Panasonic versions were released in Japan, however. These expansion modules allowed people to play Video CDs or VCDs on their systems, effectively giving them most of the functions of a VCR. VCDs never caught on, however, and many Panasonic 3DO owners never had the chance to purchase these devices.
3DO controller
The Panasonic memory expansion module added 256k of much needed storage memory to the 3DO. The 3DO only had 32k of internal storage memory, and system owners soon clamored for this much needed accessory. Unfortunately, it was only released in Japan which made it very difficult to obtain anywhere else.
Regrettably, many highly anticipated accessories never made it out of the prototype stage. Most notable were the memory card add-on, the modem and the massively promoted 64bit M2 system upgrade module.
Games and Development Support
3DO version of Burning Soldier
So unlike many other failed consoles the 3DO didn’t fail due to a lack of third party support. Quite the contrary, for a while the system recieve some truely dedicated support from third party video game developers. instead it was the original $700 price tag proved to be the barrier of entry that killed the system.
Guardian War
System specifications
(Remember that a lot of the 3DO was highly upgradeable and can differ between manufacturer)-32-bit 12.5Mhz RISC CPU (ARM60) made by Advanced RISC Machines
(Roughly equivalent to a 25Mhz 68030)
-640x480 pixel resolution at 16.7 million colors
-Two Accelerated Video Co-Processors with the following features:
25Mhz clock rate.
Capable of producing 9-16 million REAL pixels per second (36-64 Mpix/sec
interpolated), distorted, scaled, rotated and texture mapped.
Able to map a rectangular bitmap onto any arbitrary 4-point polygon.
Texturemap source bitmaps can be 1,2,4,6,8, or 16 bits per pixel and are
RLE compressed for a maximum combination of both high resolution and small storage space.
Supports transparency, translucency, and color-shading effects.
-Custom 16-bit Digital Signal Processor (DSP) with the following features:
specifically designed for mixing, manipulating, and synthesizing CD
quality sound.
Can decompress sound 2:1 or 4:1 on the fly saving memory and bus
bandwidth.
25Mhz clock rate.
Pipelined CISC architecture.
16-bit register size.
17 separate 16-bit DMA channels to and from system memory.
On chip instruction SRAM and register memory.
20-bit internal processing.
Special filtering capable of creating effects such as 3D sound.
-Separate BUS for video refresh updates (VRAM is dual ported)
-Super Fast BUS Speed (50 Megabytes per second)
-Math Co-Processor custom designed by NTG for accelerating fixed-point matrix
operations. (Note: This is *not* the ARM FPA)
-CD-ROM Drive with the following features:
320ms access time
Doublespeed 300kbps Data Transfer
32kbyte ram buffer
-2 megabytes of DRAM
-1 megabyte of VRAM (also capable of holding/executing code and data)
-1 megabyte of ROM
-36 Separate DMA Channels for fast data processing and efficient bus usage
-2 expansion ports:
1 High-speed 68 pin x 1 AV I/O port (for FMV cartridge)
1 High-speed 30 pin x 1 I/O expansion port
-1 Control port, capable of daisy chaining together up to 8 peripherals
-Multitasking 32-bit Operating System
-16-bit Stereo Sound
-44.1KHz Sound Sampling Rate
-Fully Supports Dolby(tm) Surround Sound
-32kb battery backed up SRAM
3DO games
Edit
| Platform Name: | 3DO |
| Release Date: | Aug. 27, 1993 |
| Online Support: | False |
| Install Base: | 2,000,000 |
| Original Price: | $700 |
| Producing Company: | Matsushita Electric Corporation of America (Panasonic) |
| Total Games: | games |
|
Mad Dog McCree first in Mad Dog McCree |
3
|
|
Dhalsim first in Street Fighter II |
2
|
|
Zangief first in Street Fighter II |
2
|
|
M. Bison first in Street Fighter II |
2
|
|
Ryu first in Street Fighter |
2
|
|
E. Honda first in Street Fighter II |
2
|
|
Sagat first in Street Fighter |
2
|
|
Balrog first in Street Fighter II |
2
|
|
Vega first in Street Fighter II |
2
|
|
Ken Masters first in Street Fighter |
2
|
|
Space first in Spacewar! |
8
|
|
China first in |
4
|
|
Jungle first in |
4
|
|
Earth first in |
3
|
|
The United States of America first in The Oregon Trail |
3
|
|
Japan first in |
3
|
|
Castle first in |
3
|
|
Hell first in Kid Icarus |
3
|
|
Las Vegas first in |
2
|
|
Russia first in |
2
|
|
E3 1995 first in |
34
|
|
Full Motion Video first in Dragon's Lair |
29
|
|
2D first in Tennis for Two Simulator |
12
|
|
Health first in |
10
|
|
Death first in |
9
|
|
Point and Click first in Enchanted Scepters |
9
|
|
Cutscene first in Maniac Mansion |
8
|
|
Jump first in Donkey Kong |
8
|
|
First-Person Perspective first in Night Driver |
8
|
|
Melee first in |
7
|
