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In depth: 3DO

Contents

The father of 3DO
History of 3DO
Inside the 3DO

Processor
System board
Video
Audio
Media

All the faces of 3DO
Main game titles
The end

1 The father of 3DO

In 1982, Trip Hawkins, Director of Strategy and Marketing at Apple Computer, left to found Electronic Arts (EA), a video game publisher. EA was successful for many years under his leadership, but was frustrated with having to support multiple console platforms. Though he remained chair of the board, Hawkins transitioned from EA in 1991 to form 3DO (read: three-dee-o), a video game console company, to develop one great platform with a new technology, surpassing the technical capabilities of existing Nintendo and Sega consoles, which evveryone would want to support. 3DO was created in a partnership with seven other companies, including some of the world’s largest electronics companies at the time: Goldstar (now LG), Sanyo, Samsung, AT&T, Time Warner (now WarnerMedia), Creative Labs and even Matsushita (now Panasonic), which at the time of the 3DO's release was the largest electronic manufacturer.

Trip Hawkins in 1991

2 History of 3DO

3DO console was not one specific console, but a standard: the original objective was to create a next-generation CD-based video game system called the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, which would be manufactured by various partners and licensees. Basically, the same idea of the MSX machine. 3DO’s business strategy was to be extremely liberal when it came to manufacturing the system and give the manufacturers the freedom to create anything they wanted for any person or audience. In concept it would give consumers more choices as the 3DO would be extremely upgradeable. The idea was to make the 3DO as simple to manufacture as a CD player, while still functioning 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 multimedia features. Inspired by music industry producers, 3DO would collect a royalty on each console sold and on each game manufactured. 3DO's $3 royalty per sold game was very low compared to the royalties Nintendo and Sega collected from game sales on their consoles. The 3DO console launched in October 1993 at the price of US$699 (equivalent to $1,200 in 2019). Different models were produced by Panasonic, Sanyo, GoldStar (now LG), and Creative Labs, under license from The 3DO Company. The games were supposed to be fully compatible with any 3DO console of any region and the system had no copy protection. "Multiplayer" is as in "plays multiple things" rather than its modern meaning.

While 3DO's business model with attracted game publishers with its low royalty rates, it resulted in the console selling for a price higher than the SNES and Sega Genesis combined. As a result, it failed to sell. Some of the manufacturers attempted to remedy it by manufacturing cheaper versions of the unit, but their attempts were somewhat limited by the fact that the manufactures of the system got paid for systems sold, but not royalties for the game. In fact, while companies that manufactured and sold their own consoles could sell them, at a loss, for a competitive price, making up for lost profit through royalties collected from game publishers, the 3DO's manufacturers, not collecting any money from game publishers, and owing royalties to the 3DO Company, had to sell the console for a profit, resulting in high prices. Audiences everywhere rejected it as an overpriced piece of tech. Consumers also rejected the 3DO due to its lack of quality launch titles. The 3DO was awarded "Worst Console Launch of 1993" by Electronic Gaming Monthly. On Yahoo! Games, the 3DO was placed among the top five worst console launches due to its one-game launch lineup and high launch price. Maybe, the 3DO was misunderstood. It was actually a great hardware at the time, with a good list of games, and its specialty was really in that it had the best ports/versions of just about everything, although it had a few great exclusives of its own. In addition, it continued to improve with success, including winning the 1995 European Computer Trade Show award for best hardware. Its main problem was that the console was sold for $599! In addition, by this time the Sony Playstation and Sega Saturn were entering the market adding new features at lower cost, and having stronger first party support. 3DO Company responded by emphasizing their console's large existing software library, lower price (both the Panasonic and Goldstar models were $299 by this time), and did try to follow up the console with a second video game console design dubbed M2, but this console never made it past the initial design and test system phase, effectively cancelling many titles in development for the system, including the prototype for M2. In January 1996, The 3DO Company sold exclusive rights to its next generation console to Panasonic/Matsushita for $100 million.

3 Inside the 3DO

The 3DO Interecative Multiplayer was conceived by Trip Hawkins and designed by Amiga veterans RJ Mical and Dave Needle. System specifications can differ between manufacturers.

System board of REAL 3DO Interactive Multiplayer FZ-1
Image taken from https://www.the-liberator.net/

Processor

The technical characteristics of the CPU model are listed below:

32-bit 12.5Mhz RISC CPU (ARM60, roughly equivalent to a 25Mhz 68030)
ARM 6 familiy
1 CPU Core
Internal architecture: 32 bit
Working at 12.5 MHz
RISC instruction set
4 KB cache
Custom Math Co-Processor for accelerating fixed-point matrix operations
32 KB SRAM

System board

The technical characteristics of the main board are listed below:

50 MB/s bus speed (synchronous 32-bit @20 MHz bus)
Separate BUS for video refresh updates
Custom 16-bit Digital Signal Processor (DSP)
36 Separate DMA Channels for fast data processing and efficient bus usage
2 megabytes of DRAM
1 megabyte of VRAM
1 megabyte of ROM
2 expansion ports
1 Control port (up to 8 peripherals)

Video

Resolution 640×480 (interpolated), 320×240 (actual) 60 Hz for NTSC version, and 768×576 (interpolated), 384×288 (actual) 50 Hz for PAL version with either 16-bit palettized color (from 24-bit) or 24-bit truecolor.
RF switch.
Composite RCA.
S-Video
Two Accelerated Video Co-Processors capable of producing 9–16 million pixels per second (36–64 megapix/s interpolated), distorted, scaled, rotated and texture mapped.

Video Co-Processors 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.
640x480 pixel resolution at 16.7 million colors

Audio

16-bit Stereo Sound with 4-Channel Dolby(tm) Surround Sound Support.
Stereo CDDA playback.
44.1 kHz sound sampling rate.
Composite RCA.
Custom 20-bit digital signal processor (DSP) specifically designed for mixing, manipulating, and synthesizing CD quality sound.

DSP features:

Can decompress sound 2:1 or 4:1 on the fly, saving memory and bandwidth.
25Mhz clock rate
Pipelined CISC architecture.
20-bit internal processing (accumulator).
16-bit register size.
17 separate 16-bit DMA channels to and from system memory.
On chip instruction SRAM and register memory.
Special filtering capable of creating effects such as 3D sound.

Media

Multitasking 32-bit Operating System
Double-speed (depending on manufacturer) 300 kB/s data transfer CD-ROM drive with 32 KB RAM buffer

The 3DO included the first light synthesizer in a game console, converting CD music to a mesmerizing color pattern.

4 All the faces of 3DO

Different models were produced by Panasonic, Sanyo, GoldStar, and Creative Labs, under license from The 3DO Company. The Panasonic versions are the best known and most common. The original edition of the console, the FZ-1, was referred to in full as the 3DO REAL Interactive Multiplayer.

Panasonic FZ-1 R·E·A·L 3DO Interactive Multiplayer. The first 3DO system for Japan, Asia, North America and Europe markets. A variant of the FZ-1 that functions as a debug unit for use by game developers is the Panasonic FZ-1J 3DO Testing Station.

Panasonic FZ-10 R·E·A·L 3DO Interactive Multiplayer. Released on November 11, 1994 (a year after the FZ-1), it is a less expensive, slimmer, and lighter model and replaced the FZ-1 in Panasonic's portfolio. It has a top-loading CD tray with a lid, an internal memory manager, and repositioned LEDs and controller port. It does not have a headphone jack like the FZ-1 did.

Panasonic N-1005 3DO CD Changer "ROBO". Custom variation of the FZ-1 fitted with a rotating five-disc CD changer. For Japanese market only, it was used in hotel rooms and demo booths.

Sanyo IMP-21J TRY 3DO Interactive Multiplayer. Released in March 1995 for Japanese market only, this model has the pickup head on the tray (resembling a laptop optical drive). Originally, 60,000 units were to be produced, but it was decided that production would be halted at 20,000. The prototype version of the IMP-21J TRY was named Sanyo HC-21.

GoldStar GDO-101 Alive 3DO Interactive Multiplayer. Released only in South Korea, the GDO-101 Alive 3DO is similar to the FZ-1 in which it uses a motorized, front-loading CD tray.

Image taken from https://archive3do.com/

GoldStar GDO-101M 3DO Interactive Multiplayer. A version of the GDO-101 for North America and Europe markets.

GoldStar GDO-202P 3DO Interactive Multiplayer. A later model of the GDO-101.

GoldStar GDO-203P 3DO Alive II. Released in South Korea and Europe only. A top-loading successor to the GDO-101 resembling a rounded PS1. A variation of this design with dual memory card slots was used for GoldStar's version of the unreleased M2 console.

Creative 3DO Blaster. An ISA expansion card with a double-speed CD-ROM drive and a control pad that allows compatible Windows-based PCs to run 3DO games.

DMB-800. It is A 3DO Game/Video CD Player, maybe sold in South Corea. Similarly to the AmigaCD, it is meant to as a home multimedia entertainment more than a video game console.

Image taken from https://archive3do.com/

AT&T 3DO (Unreleased). Since AT&T created GPUs used in the 3DO hardware, it polanned to release its own 3DO console in the mid-1990s, but they had ultimately pulled out. It has an appearance similar to a TV set top box, and was going to be a front-loader with a motorized tray.

Image taken from https://archive3do.com/

Samsung 3DO (Unreleased). Also Samsung was going to release its own 3DO console, but it was ultimately canceled due to the 3DO Company's stock dropping. It has somewhat of a resemblance to a VCR.

Image taken from https://archive3do.com/

Toshiba 3DO (Unreleased). Toshiba had a licensing agreement with 3DO with a combination car navigator/3DO console in the works. However, it was ultimately canceled because of the 3DO Company's stock dropping.

US West Interactive TV. It was a set-top box based on 3DO hardware. It was quickly scrapped because of 3DO stock dropping.

3DO-based Arcade machines. Konami employed Panasonic 3DO M2 architecture for some arcade releases like Battle Tryst, a 1998 3D fighting arcade game, and Polystars, a scrolling shooter arcade game. Also American Laser Games company utilized 3DO-based hardware for a number of arcade titles, like Crime Patrol, Mad Dog McCree, and Space Pirates.

3DO M2 FZ-35S. After 3DO sold the technology to Matsushita (Panasonic), this worked on the base system through 1997, but felt the market was not ready for another videogame console. Having already invested significant capital into the M2, they quickly shifted gears and decided to utilize this new technology within an interactive multimedia player designed for corporate use. So in 1998 Matsushita released the Panasonic M2 Interactive Media player. The device was used as an interactive hub for consumers in various consumer public Information and display terminals, sales promotions, exhibit presentations and educational (training) kiosks. The FZ-35S is the more high end featured model that features a DVD-ROM drive for increased content storage capability, as well as expanded input/output device connectivity, expanded SRAM, a built-in Infrared Receiver, LS-120 SuperDisk, Flash Memory, Modem, or LAN card. The system was released in three commercial versions.

Image taken from https://atariage.com/

3DO M2 FZ-55. It was the version used for kiosks.

Image taken from http://videogameconsolelibrary.com/

3DO M2 FZ-21S. It was the more compact gaming version of M2 that featured a 4X CD-ROM (Plays M2-CDs, as well as VideoCD 2.0) and a PCMCIA Type III slot for use with modem, Ethernet, memory, hard drive or other compatible PC card devices. The prototypes of this machine were named Panasonic 3DO M2 DR-21. and Panasonic 3DO M2 FZ-21S1.

Image taken from http://www.revistapushstart.com

5 Main game titles

Just like their manufacturing policy, the 3DO Company was extremely liberal when it came to ensuring quality games on their console. A few of the systems highlights include Doom, Samurai Shodown, Lemmings, and Road Rash. On top of that, the 3DO benefited from having ports of arcade games such as the immensely popular Super Street Fighter II Turbo in its catalog. Also, the Need for Speed series got its start on the 3DO. In fact, the original Need for Speed was first released on the 3DO in 1994, along with Gex. However, quality games for the 3DO came in inconsistent bursts. Also, due to the console's adoption of the CD format, it saw a large number of questionable Full Motion Video (FMV) games that were becoming popular at the time. The company's biggest hit was its series of Army Men games, featuring generic green plastic soldier toys. Its Might and Magic and especially Heroes of Might and Magic series from subsidiary New World Computing were perhaps the most popular among their games at the time of release. During the late 1990s, the company published one of the first 3D MMORPGs: Meridian 59, which survives to this day in the hands of some of the game's original developers.

6 The end

In the 1996, the company exited the hardware business and became a third-party video game developer, making games for the PlayStation, PC, and other consoles. Due to poor sales of its games, it went bankrupt in May 2003. After bankruptcy, the company's game brands and other intellectual properties were sold to rivals: Microsoft bought High Heat Baseball, Ubisoft bought Might and Magic, Take Two bought Army Men, Namco and Crave bought other titles, while Trip Hawkins retained ownership of the 3DO console hardware and software. In April 2020, Ziggurat Interactive, a leading publisher of modern and retro-games for PC and console platforms, announced the acquisition of more than 30 titles from Prism Entertainment. These titles originally owned by The 3DO Company include: Captain Quazar, Killing Time, Requiem: Avenging Angel, Uprising: Join or Die, and Uprising: Lead and Destroy.