3DO

The 3DO is not, like most other consoles, the love child of one giant corporation. It is in fact, a brain child of no less than seven partners - among these the Japanese electronics giant Matsushita, EA, Time Warner and AT&T - and is in fact more a definition of a console platform. The idea was that all companies could produce consoles and games, and that everyone would be working on the same platform. Only Panasonic, Goldstar and Sanyo ended up producing consoles, but thankfully the choice of games was more divert. The ideological platform never got its breakthrough - among other things due to a very high prices - and ended up with other similar consoles, in the empty space between the classic 2d consoles and the beginning of the 3d revolution, ruled by the PlayStation. Panasonic planned an update of the system, called the M2, but it was never realised in console format.

Technically, the 3DO is built around an ARM60 RISC-processor (being very similar to a 68030) and a number of specially designed video and audio chips, combined with 3 MB RAM. Compared to the consoles of the day, the 3DO was the strongest in 3d graphics. Of other technical commodities is the controller. The base unit only has one controller port, but each controller could be connected with each other, making it possible to connect up to 8 players at the same time. The controllers even have their own separate mini-jack, so all players could choose their own sound volume.

The 3DO was launched in a time where 'multi media' and 'cd rom technology' was the mantra of all. Unfortunately this came to show in a long row of movie-sequence based games, that has little value game wise today. Apart from this, the console can offer a mixed array of 2d and early 3d games, whereof many were average and anything below. The 3DO was also home of many multi platform titles, where Need For Speed is considered the best version of all. Among the dedicated 3DO games, Return Fire, Gex and Star Control II is worth a mentioning.