Der kurze AUFSTIEG und schnelle FALL des 3DO

Many of us grew up with fifth generation consoles. I myself bought a Nintendo 64 in the '90s and love the console to this day. It's probably the same for those who grew up with the Sony Playstation or the winning Saturn, but it had the fifth generation of consoles. There is much more to offer than the three systems mentioned: the Amiga CD 32, the Atari Jaguar and the 3DO, which are also consoles of the same generation, but they are not as popular as products from Sony, Nintendo and Sega. One of those forgotten consoles today is the 3DO. Many people probably know the console as the Panasonic 3DO, but Panasonic was not the only supplier and certainly not the inventor of the 3dio.

Travel back in time and build the short climb. and the rapid decline of 3D what exactly 3D EU was why the console failed and why it was still so important for the entire industry let's discover together, let's have fun the history of the 3du and the associated free campaign is strongly connected According to the story of a man named Trip Hawkins. You may have heard of Trip in relation to another well-known studio that still sells games today, Electronic Arts. In 1982, the boy Hawkins founded Electronic Arts and quickly built it into one of the largest publishers. In the US, the reason for success is easily explained.

Hawkins understood like no other that not only the games, but also the creative people behind them were in the right light. According to his statements, the developers of good games should be treated as stars who created a new art form. Games under the auspices of Electronic Art appeared mainly for home computers and later also for home consoles such as Mega Drive, where sports games in particular had achieved great success, but especially the Nintendo and Sega consoles, the integrated technology was increasingly a thorn in Trip Hawkins did not meet current standards, so his players were behind their graphic capabilities and the Very high licensing fees were also a nuisance for Hawkins.

Players of Nintendo's NES or Sega's Master System or Mega Drive had to pay $15 to Nintendo and $13 in Sega copies for each module sold. Of course, for this and other reasons, the businessman was already thinking about releasing his own game console. The market in the late 80s, which would externalize his criticism of the Nintendo and Sega systems and, furthermore, would introduce a new standard in the living room. It should be more than a games station. Trip Hawkins wanted to combine music, film and video games in a system that spoke to the latest in technology. Almost at the same time, in 1989, two extremely creative minds from the new technology group dreamed of a new video game system after having developed the Amiga 1000 four years earlier and in 1989 the Atari on the left we are talking about Dave Needle and Robert Jay Michael after his successes with the Amiga 1000 and the Atari on the left.

According to several sources, they were sitting in a restaurant in 1989 when the first draft of a new video game system was published. created on a napkin, a disc drive and the ability to play CDs and both music and video players were just some of the key points Needle and Michael thought about. In the late '80s, with the first draft in hand, he went to look for sponsors for us and also met with Hawkins who, as already mentioned, was pursuing a similar idea. The interests came together and at that point Star Hawkins was more than willing to break into the console market with his idea and launch an attack on Seeger. and Nintendo, along with Lidl and Michael, is launching a joint venture, and in case you're wondering what the hell a joint venture is.

Basically, it is nothing more than a commercial cooperation between two or more associated companies and that is exactly what The 3 O company was the one that Trip Hawkins founded on September 12, 1991 together with Lidl Mikal and other businessmen who participated in the company 3 along with Trip's own company, Electronic Arts, the new technology group to which Needle and Mikal belonged, as well as five other American companies. The company's goal was to bring to life the CD-based console that Hawkins and Mikal dreamed of and that would shape the gaming landscape. It was dominated by Japanese companies, but there was a high point in the development of the hardware. - the production of this new hardware was going to be outsourced to third-party suppliers who, once again, had the capacity for the company and still wanted to assemble their new console themselves.

They wanted to outsource the hardware and to have it produced externally, the third company Regarding game licensing, I found two contradictory statements, some sources report that there was no licensing fee for the company as a whole Developers and publishers wanted others Journalists also talked about $3 as well as the hardware, which I thought was plausible anyway, the license was much cheaper than Sega and Nintendo, which was a first plus point and the hardware itself should. It won't be from either of the two bad parents while Lidl and Mikael worked on the hardware with other engineers and then Trip Hawkins made two important business trips to the land of the rising sun because he had two very specific manufacturers in mind who would produce and sell his 3DO. console for it, Panasonic and Sony Manoshita, Panasonic's parent company, quickly expressed interest and jumped on the 3DO bandwagon, while Sony was initially interested and actually considered entering the 3DO business after Nintendo partnered with Philips, but after several negotiations Sony decided The reason for this on 3DO's part was a young Sony employee named Kentucky who had worked on a console and Sony was now fully committed to supporting it.

What many people don't know is the fact that, in addition to Panasonic and Sony, there was a third party that was interested. Former CEO of Säge auf America, Tom Calinsky, spoke about it in an interview and confirmed that there was a time when Sieger He was thinking about licensing the radios. In the end, Sega's gassio at the time decided against the 3DO hardware because it was too expensive in production, so kölnsky, if you want to know more about Sega, its erratic CEO and the history of the creation of the winning Saturn, you can check out take a look at my comment. in the Saturn mountain range.

You can find a link to it in the information card above, but go back to Trip Hawkins in 1992, company 3 spent so that the hardware for the console of the same name could be designed, while Hawkins himself was able to sign. Panasonic, the first known manufacturer, at the beginning of 93 Rip Hawkins blew up the bomb and presented it in 3D, at least on paper, at the largest consumer electronics fair of the time. There is no prototype yet, but the ambitious plan was for Panasonic's FZ1 model to be an all-in-one entertainment system that would become the standard in the living room: the Panasonic 3DO was to be able to play music.

CD, video CD and players were at that time an absolute novelty, if you ignore the Philips CDI, which was already in trouble in early '93, but in Hawkins' eyes the CDI was no competition, while the Philips system It focused on video and music and the games were considered more of an accessory for 3DO. According to Hawkins, it is a real console from next January that could do everything, including in the future it would be possible to surf the Internet. The announcement caused a stir among the visitors of the CIS and the press present and the incorporated technology spoke for itself, so the 3DO had a 32-bit processor with an unbeatable speed of 12.5 MHz, 2 MB of RAM with an additional video room and 32 chapters of internal memory, something that no console had before.

It was equipped with a disc clock mechanism, which was already talked about back then, when most of us were still around. With its 16 machines from Nintendo and Sega, the 3DO was actually the next milestone in the video game industry in early '93 and was proof of a generational leap compared to today's food and Mega Drive Micro and if you're wondering what really meant 3DO, the slogan was supposed to mean. Back then, AUDIO VIDEO 3DO, you know, the 3DO combined audio, video and games in a single system and was at the same time the first console designed for true 3D, or due to low licensing costs and promising technology, Hawkins spoke at CES about the fact that more than 80 developers were already on board and developed games that definitely sparked interest.

The Winter is fair was a success and guaranteed the free-o company not only a lot of media interest but also money, which is why they announced their initial public offering just a few weeks later, in April. about 3D, why gamers were already impressed, other formats in the entertainment industry also talked about the upcoming 3DO console, it was a magazine, TV shows and people saw the entire US burning for the new baby by Trip Hawkins in June 93. see more At the summer CES, the buzz was already so big at the time that Hawkins had the honor of opening CES with a keynote speech, an honor only Bill Gates had ever had .

Hawkins took the opportunity and spoke at length about it. Six months ago, this time he also had the final hardware with him, which he proudly presented to the press representatives present and announced that Panasonic had also beaten TNT and Sanyo, while AT&T told one of the largest electronics companies in USA that Sanjo was a major player in Japan. Hawkins also talked about the launch period and named October as the time from which the 3DO would be available for sale, at least in the US. Europe and Japan would soon follow in the spring of 1994, so the CEO was responsible for In June, the 80 developers who had already developed for 3DO had become more than 300 studios that were equipped with 92 defkets and were supposed to get a wide release.

All the ads made you want more, but they also had a price. Also on Hawkins' trip At the end of the conference, the 3DO was supposed to be available for a proud $700, which caused quite a stir: Tom Klinski, then CEO of Sieger auf America, once said that a video games should not exceed the magic limit of $300 to be successful. 3D EU was miles away, but Hawkins was still sure that the price of an all-in-one system was definitely justified. After all, the 3DO was not just a games console but a multimedia center Hawkins wanted to introduce a standard with the 3DO as JBC had done before him with the VHS cassette.

It was successful, See visitors could see it with their own eyes at a huge 3DO booth, where several stations offered all kinds of demonstrations aimed at illustrating the console's graphic capabilities, and the media presence did not diminish, even after CES In June, the 3du seemed to be everywhere. Tech fans longed for the launcher, although many gamers were still quite skeptical, which was increasingly due. On October 4, 1993, the time finally came and the 3DO was released in the US, although initially only The Panasonic model was available, it was presented at the CS. AT&T had the licensing rights for its production, but the company held back and planned to reorganize production status only to the state of Japan in the spring of 94.

However, promising games such as Crash and Burn Return Fire Road Rash FIFA Jurassic were promised Park Interactive and many others for the console launch. On October 4, only Crystal Dynamics' Crashion Burn was available as a console show. All other players had to be postponed because the first hardware adjustments of the ohrkompany were only made shortly before launch. The reason was probably the complicated architecture. Only the development studios made it difficult to adapt their players to the hardware. Unfortunately, these hardware adjustments also meant that Panasonic was unable to produce enough devices to begin with. Because production started too late, they couldn't keep up with demand and only delivered one or two consoles per retailer.

What does it mean that many people who pre-ordered and were interested simply didn't get a device? If 1&1 now add up, you will find that the launch was not at all rosy for Panasonic and the Fredi. The stir generated beforehand was enormous. Many gamers and technology enthusiasts paid a lot of money for it, but the low delivery amount and only one game at first ruined the joy of the Next Gent 32-bit console for many 3DOs. Panasonic manages to have a high price, but too high for most customers because there are so many and, apart from Crash Burn, there are almost no other games.

Only 40,000 consoles were sold by the end of the year, but the press was quite impressed with the technology, as mampfgli wrote about electronic games in issue #51. Crashen Burn was received positively, but as IGM wrote in issue #53, the game Racing wasn't enough for the console. Crash & Burns was on sale. Great for the time, with graphicsfluids and full motion videos in fashion, but as a long-term obsession it was nothing more than a preview of what the 3DO was capable of Crystal Dynamics, founded in July 92 as a subsidiary of the company with the company Founded with the purpose of developing games for radios, they were already busy creating new supplies, but they were not supposed to appear before the beginning of '94.

A month after Lounge, only one new game was released in November. , a light shooter that could be played with a controller to a limited extent. Ladders was not finished in November, in December there were at least two new players Battle Chest and Stella Seven Dragons Revenge and you can certainly imagine that Battle Chest has no tree team. and the action game Stella Seven only garnered mixed ratings throughout the release. The period until the end of the year was a disaster for 3DO. Furthermore, on October 21, bad news arrived from the Far East. , just three weeks after the 3DO launched in the US.

Sony announced a disc-based console and Sega was still there. By late '93, customers were increasingly unsure whether they should buy an expensive 3DO, get the Amiga CD32, buy the Atari Jaguar, which was released in the United States in November '93, or wait for Sony, Nintendo and Sega. , as 1994 should become a good year for 3DO fans and started for this video company with good news in January, the stopwatch. It could be seen that the 3D console was the product of the year, almost despite the weak black, the technology had 93 updates and the system fulfilled what was promised, it played music, CDs, movies and games, which always pleased young and old. when money was easy in the wallet.

In general, there was still a strong presence in electronics magazines that were still enthusiastic about the all-in-one concept of 3DO Games magazines and, especially, video game fans were no longer so full of praise. Magazines like IGM were increasingly critical and demanding software updates, while gamers who had purchased expensive radios were visibly disappointed that very few, if any, games were released. Total Eclips, a space shooter also from Crystal Dynamics, was the first highlight of the fair. year 94 while Tutorial was exactly the opposite, the fighting game was so bad that it is still considered one of the worst players of all time on March 20 the 3DO finally started in Japan with Sanyo always However, Panasonic was better prepared this time and made 70,000 units available for the Japanese release, which were available with six different players.

At the same time, the European city planned for the spring a few months until June 11 was postponed. In 94, as the day approached, the players of this country I was amazed because the 3DO was supposed to cost D-Mark, which corresponds to an inflationary value of almost €840 in 23. Unfortunately, I could not find out how many Players were on the shelves when Europe started, but from 3DO A there was a wide variety of titles available from trusted import distributors, ensuring we had enough supplies. Additionally, the 3DO had no copy protection. Console owners who owned a PC with a CD burner could easily burn 3DO games to the system, which was also a reason for the failure.

Certainly, the 3dio was not only destroyed by this, but it was definitely an indicator of the success of the measurements. In mid-'94, a second manufacturer joined Panasonic in the race, Goldstar, which is now known as LG has released its own 3D model and Boden is available for $500 to start, which was another $200 cheaper than Panasonic, even If the Goldstar console did not seem so finished compared to PC Gamer Boots and the 3DO for the entire Blaster company to an additional board that allowed playing 3du games on the home computer, but I could not find any reliable source on the price and sales volume.

In Japan, in addition to the Panasonic and Goldstar models, there was also the Panasonic 3DO Robo, which was used in hotels and was equipped with a 5-way disc changer. It was reproduced in the 3DO Robo but, according to various sources, it was not exclusive to the hotel. The 3DO was used for pornographic content, but This does not mean that conventional models have been saved. The production company Vivit fell in love and published several fullmotion interactive content in 3dio, but that is a topic for another video. Basically, '94 was a tremendously good year for the players. , the drought continued to subside and there were several really excellent games for the system, of which I would like to name a few out of the world and Empty Dragons, you can find two excellent cold implementations on the market, the burn pit shooter.

The soldier makes him want more and laughs with the Patrol basket and the drag wars. There were also more supplies for the ladders that also come with the proper control equipment. You could play with demolition. Fans of the movie got an interesting mix of the first-person shooter fighting game Leitgang. Shooting and racing game for which Sylvester Stallone had even filmed separate scenes. The first pure first-person shooter to appear was Wolfenstein Clown, escaping from monstrous men, with smooth scrolling and a terrifying atmosphere that shined and brought the PC personal shooter genre into 3D. Electronic Arts released three very good games throughout the year and showed with FIFA Soccer Road Trash and Need for Speed ​​​​what the console could do, although FIFA and roadrash were still there.

Known on other systems, they were the best versions of the Need for Speed ​​​​games in 3DO, but a completely different caliber was released exclusively for radios. It was the first really great app and for many reasons, buying the racing game not only looked good, but also successfully brought the car culture is conveyed in a video game. The first role-playing game was released with Guardian. The tactical RPG was reminiscent in its structure of games like Fire Emblem and represented a genre rather poorly represented in 3DO with the payoff in the dark that 3DO owners got a spring survival horror adventure long before Capcom started with Resident Evil, Dark Dark is still available exclusively on 3DO consoles today, even if the game has aged a bit from today's perspective with Star Wars and the tablet, so Lukas was a doctor and Nemko On the way to 3DO, what was the strong console support through the supplier spoke in both cases it was a shoe UPS on the tablet it is a near perfect adaptation of the warm arcade originals and even Capcom was represented in 3DO and delivery with Super Street Fighter Two Turbo made an excellent adaptation from the original package, the Japanese even went so far as to release an exclusive soldier that featured a unique design and a six design and these were just a few examples of how good the 3DO was.

A good time to own a 3DO was a good time to own a 3DO, because in '94 you could experience the splendor of the fifth generation of consoles on your home television. In addition to near-perfect arcade implementations, there were also numerous exclusive games that demonstrated the 3DO's strengths, and let's just say one of the 3DOs didn't have any games. In preparation for the Playstation and Saturn Lounge in Japan in late 1994, both Panasonic and Goldstar lowered the prices of their consoles to $299, which ultimately made the 3DO an affordable console with a solid software library, which unfortunately was a detriment to many stakeholders.

At that time, those who had not yet accessed it were now waiting for the Playstation and the Saturn and Nintendo were also around the corner. with more and more information about their old pre-console, which didn't improve the situation for the company, but they still fired on all cylinders on November 11, 94, 11 days before the release of Lego Saturn in Japan. Panasonic launched the fz10 model, a cheaper 3D model to appeal to a wider audience, but this move was not very successful with the launch of the Saturn and the Playstation, Japan remaining firmly in the hands of the two companies and the 3DO. was set aside and used for the aforementioned pornographic content.

The console could no longer be used in Japan because it was technically behind the two new consoles. This trend continued in 1995 and one As a 3D owner, I can't help but feel that the Freedior company had used up all its gunpowder last year. Games continued to appear, but the big hits were missing. In January there was a flight simulator with Flying Nightmares and a collection of minigames with Satnost of the People's Party that no one At least in March 95 it was finally necessary to get Sanjo out from behind the oven and he published the test model in Japan, which no longer exists. could help the radio stations of the country of the Rising Sun.

In April two big players appeared with the and gags, the latter was to become a grandmother's pet in 3D. Unfortunately, the train had gone and, despite the good ratings, Gags soon fell into oblivion because the games could not keep pace with Playstation and Saturn in terms of graphics. , which was released in May, could not change the situation in which the 3DO found itself in free

fall

, both Saturn and the Playstation had not even appeared in the West, but end customers waited patiently for the consoles and left 3D behind. At E3 in May 1995, the successor, the 3DO, was presented with the m2; of course, this one was clearly more powerful and should appear in two versions: one as an add-on for all previous 3D models and another as a standard and console version. for new customers, which was undoubtedly to be understood as an attack on Nintendo and Sega, but the press and fans were also visibly enthusiastic.

The year 95 was not looking very good, only one or two 3DO players appeared each month, which were well rated, but unfortunately remained on the shelf as lead. Syndicate mazer killing time alone in the dark 2 Wolfenstein or Doom were all good players maybe except the stupid ones the implementation was really shit but they were all available for Playstation or announced which of course was the down

fall

of 3dio and when Sony's Playstation launched in the West in September and received a significantly better software update, that was the end of the 3DO sealed. Goldstaria comes with new hardware revisions in Korea and a $199 price discount in the West, which means a proud loss of $100 per unit sold for you, these losses are Goldstar's weakest and the company started the new year in trouble when Panasonic was announced in early '96, having secured exclusive rights to the next m2.

At the console, Goldstar got tired and logged out. Production of the Goldstar 3DO was discontinued. In the West, Creature Shock, the first 3du game of the year 96, was released on March 1st, which reflected well the situation of the console. At that time, more and more developers realized the decline of 3DO and stopped supporting ongoing projects, but there were no more new developments, 3DO games were ported to other consoles, the old Gags mascot or the exclusive were ported. Need for Speed ​​by 3DO. Saturn and Playstation itself, this video company, disconnected and announced in the second quarter of 1996 that there would be no more new 3D players, only Panasonic was the last player to remain involved in new developments, but at that time the 3DO appeared.

In the following months, Cyberdol Johnny and even Toni Starfighter Casper games appeared sporadically, all were average at best and, apart from Cyberdelo, were also available on competing consoles. In late '96, Panasonic also pulled the plug and announced that it would stop producing its 3DO models. Furthermore, the company did not announce the successor. Post more was the continued existence of the 3DO completely and at least the prospects of Panasonic Sanjo and Goldstar were restructured for the or company at the time and aimed to sell the hardware division to Samsung, which they would achieve in early '97 At that time, the company only worked as a publisher and distributed games such as Army Man Battle Tanks or Heroes of Might. and Magic for PC and this topic by Seeger Sony and Nintendo before they went bankrupt in 2003 and disappeared from the market in an interview after Hawkins made numerous mistakes during the production stop, so in his opinion a central manufacturer would have been necessary . of hardware, which would have had to handle sales and marketing instead of different manufacturers, who each cooked their own soup and marketing fell by the wayside in the long term due to poor communication between the free company Panasonic and the Fürth Party developers.

They are to blame for the bad room he had recovered from for college so at least the hardware got some life back in '97. Samsung published the idea of ​​the mb-800 models in Korea with a combination of 3DO and player of video CDs that were available exclusively in Korea until 1999, but after that it was definitive. There were 11 different 3dom models worldwide between 1993 and 1999.and they all sold about 2 million times together. So it wasn't even a big mistake, I don't know. In addition to Panasonic Goldstar and Sanyo, Samsung Toshiba and AT&T also acquired hardware licenses, but the models were never produced, which certainly had something to do with the fact that the 3DO did not arrive as a new standard for the Panini Orca to establish.

In the field of consumer electronics, as Trip Hawkins once said, the 3dio was supposed to be what VHS had managed to distribute as a standard to various manufacturers, but there were many reasons against it. So the high price was undoubtedly one of the reasons why console fleet manufacturers like Nintendo Sega and Sony subsidized their consoles with the sale of games, so they sold them below their value because neither Panasonic nor Sanyo nor Goldstar developed their own games. get anything working, which explains the high price. The tents simply failed and the hall that had been set up previously simply didn't do it justice.

Very few consoles, only one game and the high price is a deterrent from day one. , which of course is a quarter for a market launch and there is Sega Saturn and Playstation, which seemed so far away at the beginning of 3DO, but as soon as the Sega and Sony consoles started, 3DO was obsolete in terms of technology and yet, in 1993 the 3DO was the most powerful console on the market and a marvel of technology. The all-in-one system approach was well thought out and overall the console was more successful. that a Philips CDI 251 officially licensed players appeared, 240 of them in Japan and the rest of Asia, 162 in the US and only 93 games in Europe and these were definitely top titles like Need for Speed ​​or Gags which had their origin in 3du and Crystal Dynamics.

As in-house developers, we started producing good games to this day, without it, to the eyes, there would certainly be no legacy, for example, so 3DO definitely deserves a place in video game history and, in my opinion, It's also the most interesting of the strange video game systems, but where is 3DO from today's perspective? How big is 3DO's legacy or, to put it another way, is there even one? The answer to that varies depending on when it was The system still has fans today who continue to hold 3D EU firmly in their hearts and have warm, visceral feelings about what it was like back then.

Time remembers that we raved about how cool it was and in 1993 we were one of the first to dive into it. "We are in the fifth generation of consoles. For many others, 3D EU is now considered a curiosity that people have heard or read about since childhood, from Seeger to Nintendo and Sony, most people have no contact real with the system and, as a second console, the 3DO was probably unthinkable for most people at the time with its starting price of a thousand German marks, which is quite understandable, since I myself until a few years ago did not know nothing about the 3DO for years like The Nintendo Kid and I knew the Playstation very well at school or in my circle of friends, but it had been a long time since I heard or read anything about the company 3DO or 3DO when I discovered it and got involved involved in the matter, Trip Hawkins' console had a very strange fascination for me, it was somehow magical to know a console that existed at such an important moment in my life and whose players are still highly appreciated by many today due to their devices today Since they are coveted collector's items, for a long time I couldn't get my hands on a cleaning machine until I came across a Ghostar model in the eBay classifieds this year to sell and secure a Panasonic fz10. whether FZ1 or fz10, they are a little more expensive than the Goldstar model.

Now that I've had both versions, I can understand why this is the case. The Panasonic models are simply a bit more valuable. The driver begins and ends with the The overall processing of the devices comes purely from the hardware, but all models are identical, although the connections may differ. All 3D devices are composite and the video cable is compatible with Goldstar, which does not support video output as of '95. Unfortunately, the company was unable to provide the 3DO with an RGB signal, but video is always the best possible alternative. You have the option of displaying the S video signal, for example with an ABS scanner like the OSC or retroting with the 3DO controller.

When it comes to the individual models, the only difference is in size and quality. Here again Goldstar loses out because the control panel is unfortunately too soft and precise commands are therefore quite difficult. All variants have two side buttons, these three button layouts, reminiscent of the early Sega Mega Drive controller over time, but other models appeared that offered a six-button layout, which of course was very useful for fighting games like Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo or Samurai Showdown. Capcom even published its own fighting controller called Soldierpad alongside Super Street. Fighter 2 Turbo The strange design seems strange at first, but you get used to it faster and, above all, fighting games are a real pleasure.

Unfortunately, the Soldierpad is now one of the most expensive accessories, so at this point I say thank you. Go to Christian at Retro Place, who gave me the Soldierpad and the corresponding game I read a while ago at an unbeatable price. By the way, the console itself only has one controller port. The other controllers are connected to each other using the same so-called daisy chain method. The controllers have a controller port on the top, which I have never seen on any other console and somehow I think it is cool when it comes to gaming, so I have already introduced you to many of them. in this video.

Unfortunately, the prices for 3DO titles are also very expensive nowadays. One of the reasons for this is that both the console and the games did not sell millions of copies. That's why nowadays you have to pay between 40 and several hundred euros per game. The good thing is that the 3DO allows you to easily play games from all regions. In addition to Paul Games, I also have American and Japanese titles in America. The CDs were delivered in long boxes that were The games were delivered in regular CD cases, similar to how Sony handled the PS1 in the US and Japan, which I found quite convenient. that the caves take up less space but if you look at the packaging of other manufacturers who tried to give their games a certain recognition value, like Sony with the Playstation 1 or Seeger with the Dreamcast here in Europe, I think it's a bit of a shame that Be it for the entire company that didn't try something similar, I think they just wanted to keep the game CD cases and video CD cases the same.

If the prices of the original games are too high for you, you can also use various alternatives for the 3DO, but I already said that the 3DO models do not have any copy protection, so strictly speaking you can download the games from the Internet, burn them to a Blank CD and play them without any problem, which is definitely the cheapest and greatest version for you. Alternatively, you can use a so-called Audi like I did in my case. I have this here, the export is an external Audi from fixel, it is powered by a micro SD card or USB stick. and connected through the console extension ports.

The advantage is that you get your drive so you can continue playing the original players from the disc and then you can switch to games from the UDI, which works great and is an absolutism for every 3D. owner who does not want to use whitespace. Export also has its price, the Audi is offered by Pixel in the United States for 350 dollars and, if so, if you order it, you have to expect import fees, which brings the price up to just under 450 euros, but when I look at the prices of some 3DO games that I really want to play on original hardware and on a tube television, the 450 euros for the Audi are quite fair.

If you want, you can click on the link in the video description. I've linked the Audi Pixel for you. As for the quality of the 251 officially released games, it is unfortunately very broad, there is a lot of poorly programmed garbage, which is due to the The first experiments with 3D engines are certainly understandable, but there are also countless good games that are still very fun. if you can live with one or two long, technical games, like Need for Speed ​​Gags Roth FIFA Wolfenstein and many more. , many others deserve it even today, it is questionable whether you need an expensive 3DO for this, since most 3DO games were gradually ported to Saturn and Playstation and generally worked better there or were providers of additional content and these versions usually be more affordable anyway.

In our opinion, the 3DO remains an unfairly underrated and often ridiculed console, as the Saturn and Playstation were nothing more than numbers and data on a piece of paper. 3D ships were already the experience of the 32-bit generations in the living room. and they deserve that for everyone, the company and especially the respect of Trip Hawkins with better hardware that would have been competitive even after the launch of Saturn and Playstation and a better coordinated hall would have been more possible, but history has proven otherwise after of just one. Although strong, the 3DO was already obsolete at the end of '94 and behind the Sega and Sony consoles.

The question of whether the 3 Euro will have become obsolete in 2023 or whether it still has the right to exist does not arise for me personally. I like the console for what it is and what it does. The history of video games contributed to the fact that it failed in the end, but of course the question would be much more interesting to me, whether you were there live at that time. and maybe you even took the thousand D-Marks in your hand to be one of the first to enter it 32 with the honor of diving in, please write me your memories and experiences with the 3DO in the comments, although I can well imagine it.

Most people have no contact with 3D, that's all from me. I hope you enjoyed the video and are still interested. If you're in charge of 3D, let me know in the comments and I'll do it if necessary. I am doing an exclusive review of 3D with the best and most important games, but now I have no choice but to thank some of you for your attention and support. Supporting me on patreon or with a membership means a lot to me and motivates me to continue. produce videos like this, thank you until next time here at Spielewelten goodbye to your Andi