Is there a 3DO emulator for OP?


Oh, strange, it won't load for me. It would take a lot of effort though to port something like this to linux.
 
The 3DO was terrible, and Trip Hawkins was and is clueless in regards to video gaming. I read an interview with him years ago in Next Gen Magazine(Edge), and I couldn't believe that he was a pioneer of the industry(or at least considered one).


I wouldn't have let him run a Lemonade Stand, let alone given him dime one for the 3DO. It was a $700 door stop when it was released here in the states, complete garbage that should have stayed on the cutting room floor.


Chris
 
The 3DO was terrible, and Trip Hawkins was and is clueless in regards to video gaming. I read an interview with him years ago in Next Gen Magazine(Edge), and I couldn't believe that he was a pioneer of the industry(or at least considered one).

I disagree. When it came out the 3DO was ahead of all the other consoles. They made a big mistake on the price and the positioning of the machine, because they wanted it to be a "multimedia thing" while it was simply a console. Trip Hawkins is certainly not clueless. He wanted to have a single console design that could be copied by several manufacturers. Not so long ago you hear the same idea across the industry when people say "do we really need different consoles?". His vision was ahead of its time for sure.


Plus, in terms of hardware, the 3DO had many innovations. It was designed by some of the best engineers who designed the Amiga in the first place. It was certainly not a terrible system.


The CDi was a terrible system. The 3DO was trying to change things in many ways.
 
I Heard Crash n Burn was awesome for 3DO

Not really. It came bundled with early machines, and had a rolling demo with some FMV that gave a misleading impression of it's awesomeness!


In actual play it sort of feels a bit like Stunt Car Racer (ST/Amiga) for some reason, but without the stunts. Not very smooth. Looked nice, but it was quickly forgotten once Need For Speed and Road Rash hit the shelves.
 
The 3DO also has a bunch of obscure Japanese gamers that never made it to the west, some good, some VERY bad. The Street Fighter 2 version for 3DO was famous because, at the time, it was the BEST version ever on home systems. It was pretty much a perfect port of the arcade. Of course the SNES and Genesis ports were far behind in terms of quality.
 
The Street Fighter 2 version for 3DO was famous because, at the time, it was the BEST version ever on home systems. It was pretty much a perfect port of the arcade.

Yes, it caused a slight surge in sales when it came out, but it was finger straining work on those original pads, they were well made but almost industrial in their feel!


Interesting thing about the 3DO, when competitors (Nintendo, Sega) just fudged a PAL output into their consoles resulting in vertically compressed display (hence slightly compromised Aspect Ratio for PAL machines), the PAL 3DO, with conversions of NTSC titles, also compressed the image horizontally, so you had borders all round - but correct Aspect Ratio. Kind of killed the Arcade feel in games like Street Fighter, unless you had an RGB modded Japanese or American machine - in which case you could probably have afforded a Street Fighter arcade cab anyway ;)
 
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The 3DO was terrible, and Trip Hawkins was and is clueless in regards to video gaming. I read an interview with him years ago in Next Gen Magazine(Edge), and I couldn't believe that he was a pioneer of the industry(or at least considered one).

I disagree. When it came out the 3DO was ahead of all the other consoles. They made a big mistake on the price and the positioning of the machine, because they wanted it to be a "multimedia thing" while it was simply a console. Trip Hawkins is certainly not clueless. He wanted to have a single console design that could be copied by several manufacturers. Not so long ago you hear the same idea across the industry when people say "do we really need different consoles?". His vision was ahead of its time for sure.


Plus, in terms of hardware, the 3DO had many innovations. It was designed by some of the best engineers who designed the Amiga in the first place. It was certainly not a terrible system.


The CDi was a terrible system. The 3DO was trying to change things in many ways.
The 3DO had way more power than the CDi, but in my opinion, it was just a way more expensive Sega CD or CDi. All it did was add very poor FMV to games and longer load times. Street Fighter was just about the best game released, and those terriible 5 button controllers rendered that game unplayable and it still missed the arcade "Perfection" mark(pretty close, but not perfect). The SNES and Genesis versions didn't look as good, but played WAAAAYYYYY better, and cost WAAAAAAAAY less.


I'm not real familiar with any of the import titles, but I'm sure any quality titles where few and far between. If anyone here doubts the 3DO's game quality, just look up some reviews from the period. Almost everything released has reviews on par with the CDi.


Maybe if this system would have been cheaper, more 3rd parties would have jumped on board, but it wasn't and none did. I would choose any of the failed systems of the last 10-20 years above the 3DO. Neo Geo CD, Atari Lynx, Sega 32X, Laser Active(actually this one sucks as bad), Sega Saturn, Nintendo Virtual Boy, Bandai Wonder Swan, Neo Geo Pocket, Atari Jaguar, NUON, ect. I would take any one of these sytems before the 3DO, and I'm sure most of the gaming public at large would do the same.


I played most of the more popular titles(Madden, Way Of The Warrior, Street Fighter), and none of these games made the expensive price tag even close to worthwhile. One of the lowest rated systems of all time.


Chris
 
On par with CDi? Surely you're kidding, if the game library was so awful it wouldn't have seen so many ports and continuations on other consoles - how much could you say that happened for CDi? Hell, CDi barely had any actual games to speak of, just a tiny handful that were all terrible. On the other hand, I distinctly remember GamePro calling 3DO the top console in 1993. And it looks like there were a number of at least decent games: http://retro-sanctua... 3do GAMES.html


3DO was the first home console that had anything resembling actual polygon hardware, and was the first dedicated CD machine where gaming wasn't a clear afterthought like it was with CD-i. It came out before Jaguar, and arguably was more of a real polygon pusher, or at least had a much more sane design. Actually look at 3DO's hardware specs - 32-bit RISC processor, dedicated 3D primitive blitter, math coprocessor, sound DSP, CD-ROM, 2MB of DRAM, 1MB of VRAM.. sound familiar? In a lot of ways it's practically a PS1-lite. Of course it has a much weaker CPU and misses some important features for 3D (namely lack of gouraud shading is a killer, and something Jaguar could at least manage) but it's still pretty decent for a console released over a year earlier.


(SegaCD was not nearly as bad as CDi either)


I never actually played one myself, but I hear that the controller gets a lot more usable if you loosen the screws.


Surely it was the insane price that killed the thing. And I don't think most of the gaming public would choose Atari Jaguar over 3DO - if that were the case why did the former sell an order of magnitude less even though it cost a mere fraction of the price? Almost no one would argue that Jaguar had a superior game library.
 
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When I down play the 3DO, and put it on a level with CDi, it is in regards to having NOTHING worth purchasing game wise, that validates the cost of the console. I doesn't matter if the 3DO could fly a man to the moon and back. If the games sucked, they sucked, and trust me, "THEY SUCKED"! YES, CDi was complete garbage, but it wasn't 700 dollars out of the gate, and it wasn't promoted to be the best video game system of the time.


The reason I compare it to the Sega CD is not to say the Sega CD was bad, but that most of the items released on the 3DO, where nothing more than regular console games of the time with FMV added in(which is what most of the Sega CD games where), but the Sega CD also had some great original games as well.


Every original game released on the 3DO was poorly reviewed and poorly received. I close friend of mine bought it when it was first released, and we played most games released within it's short life, and besides Street Fighter no games where worth paying more than 5-10 dollars for, and trust me, that is to high.


I would put Snatcher on the Sega CD up against anything ever released on the 3DO, and I'm sure there is nothing that comes close. If there was some good games released for the 3DO, I never saw them.


Chris
 
Yep, the street fighter version was really perfect.


About was @Asmo said, my friend that had the 3do had a modified TV set to work out similar to a computer monitor.


In anyways, here we run pal mode, so I never noticed those problems.


Way of the Warrior is great, check out over youtube the full intro, greatly ripped from the Book of Dead from Evil Dead (hail to the king!).


It had the most miserable absurd samples spoken during the fight, the "Come from behiiiinnnd!" has made into an internal joke till this day with our old friends.


:)
 
When I down play the 3DO, and put it on a level with CDi, it is in regards to having NOTHING worth purchasing game wise, that validates the cost of the console. I doesn't matter if the 3DO could fly a man to the moon and back. If the games sucked, they sucked, and trust me, "THEY SUCKED"! YES, CDi was complete garbage, but it wasn't 700 dollars out of the gate, and it wasn't promoted to be the best video game system of the time.


The reason I compare it to the Sega CD is not to say the Sega CD was bad, but that most of the items released on the 3DO, where nothing more than regular console games of the time with FMV added in(which is what most of the Sega CD games where), but the Sega CD also had some great original games as well.


Every original game released on the 3DO was poorly reviewed and poorly received. I close friend of mine bought it when it was first released, and we played most games released within it's short life, and besides Street Fighter no games where worth paying more than 5-10 dollars for, and trust me, that is to high.


I would put Snatcher on the Sega CD up against anything ever released on the 3DO, and I'm sure there is nothing that comes close. If there was some good games released for the 3DO, I never saw them.


Chris

I'm watching a top 50 on Youtube and most of the games are full 3D, so I think the comment that most of the games were nothing more than "regular console games of the time with FMV added in" is unfair, these were clearly a generation ahead of the competition. And don't say 50 games is a minority for a library of this size. A lot of the 2D games are of higher graphical quality than the SNES and Genesis games of the day as well. Your notion that every game on 3DO was poorly reviewed is absurd, just look at this review list for instance: http://videogamecritic.net/3do.htm Do you really think GamePro's praise of 3DO came with no respect for any of the games? Or do you think I'm making that up..?


I get that $700 is too much but the thing was sold nearly 20 years ago, do you really see no merit in looking at the games outside of what the console sold for? I think people today, who might be interested in emulating it, aren't going to care how much it cost then, but are going to care about what games it had and deserve an honest appraisal.


Besides, there were later 3DO versions that were a more reasonable (although still too expensive) $400.
 
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Of the games on that list, I have personally played:Crash N Burn, Doom, Dragon's Lair, Gex, Guardian War, John Madden, Primal Rage, Return Fire, Rise Of The Robots, Samurai Showdown, Super Street Fighter II T., Super Wing Commander, Total Eclispe, Way Of The Warrior, and I'm sure several others I have forgotten over time.


I may have missed a few, but I do have experiance with this console, and yes, 3D was more than you could see at the time, but the games SUCKED. I'm not seeing the argument here. Yes, the machine was POWERFUL for the time. Crash and Burn loked great compared to any racing game of the time, and I would have chosen almost any racing game on the SNES or Genesis before I would play that one.


Great looking crap games, or still crap games! Now if someone here has played these games and think there great, that is their opinion to have, but for anyone here who has yet to play anyone of these so called "great games", please talk to me after you have played the amount that I have, and then tell me this was a great console that needs to be emulated. I personally don't see it, but to each his own I guess?


Chris
 
If anyone here doubts the 3DO's game quality, just look up some reviews from the period. Almost everything released has reviews on par with the CDi.

Too bad, when you write something like that, how can you be taken seriously for the rest? Everything released on the CDi was just garbage, while there were a number of good games released on 3DO.
 
Great looking crap games, or still crap games! Now if someone here has played these games and think there great, that is their opinion to have, but for anyone here who has yet to play anyone of these so called "great games", please talk to me after you have played the amount that I have, and then tell me this was a great console that needs to be emulated. I personally don't see it, but to each his own I guess?

I have a 3DO and I still play it sometimes.


D was a good game. Madden was the first 3D Madden of the time and it was a good game compared to the 2D crap there was out there.


Fifa was good too, and same for Road Rash as I mentioned before.


It seems like you have never heard of Gex either, which one of the best platformers for 3DO. A very solid game.


Another World's version was entirely remade for the system. And plays just as well on 3DO.


Wing commander III plays very well on 3DO, and the cutscenes look better on that system than on the PC.


You had pretty much perfect ports like Street Fighter 2 and Samurai Showdown, and you didnt have to play them with the regular pad, there were sticks and 6 buttons pads sold separately for it. It was impossible to play SF2 on a standard Genesis pad, by the way !!


Star Control II - an upgraded version of the PC game, and it was ONLY on that console.


But yeah, "no good games", huh ?
 
The CDi was such a strange machine.


I remember once reading a long article about it (maybe retrogamer?) and in an interview with a dev he said it was such poor hardware that it could not even scroll properly, just scrolling a map around the screen took up most of the CPU. Adding sprites then made it worse.


He referenced Micromachines as being a fine example of it, and indeed it looks like it's in slow motion on youtube.


I'm guessing it didn't have an 8bit mode and that was what caused it.
 
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Only experience I had with a CDi was playing an fmv scifi game on a supermarket.


You control a ship sprite going on a pre rendered movie, looked pretty but...I had an amiga, so it was crap for me.


Way of the warrior only exists on 3do, like a few other good games too, no where else to play.


Check the intro:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/CUNeKmHvVWM?feature=oembed

That has to be the best voice over tone I have ever heard!


"...under myyy watchfull eye...", what eye flying empty-socket skull?


edit: better video version
 
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