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3DO Files For Bankruptcy
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a Reuters report via Yahoo News announcing that game publisher and developer 3DO has filed for bankruptcy. As the article indicates, the former console hardware creator "..has struggled to gain a foothold in the competitive games business and has relied on Chief Executive Trip Hawkins for recent funding." Even a recent attempt to buck their reputation for bad quality games by funding higher-budget titles such as 'Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse' seems to have ended in failure, since industry sources are indicating all except 20 employees have been laid off, effective today, as the company looks to sell its properties.
3DO started as a console company by designing the 3DO game system with the plan of licensing the architecture to other manufacturers (most notably Panasonic) who would build the actual machines. Once that failed (after many attempts and some spectacularly expensive machines), Trip and the gang tried to restyle themselves as kind of "the fresh, new EA" (presumably he felt that he was the reason EA was successful and so he should be able to easily do it again). Instead, they ended up becoming a company of hacks (or at least run by hacks) trying to capitalize on their very few successes by turning out bad sequel after bad sequel (see "Army Men"). They've always been the slowest to catch up with the technology curve (if they ever did) and their game designs did nothing to redeem that deficiency.
Anyway, no, 3DO had little or nothing to do with arcades. Instead, they're a PC/console game developer that's managed to destroy itself despite the fact that video gaming is more popular than ever...Something even Acclaim hasn't managed. Nice job, Trip.
3DO was the maker of many bad games, but they also made the incredible Heroes of Might & Magic series of games. If you haven't played them, you should pick up II or III - III is even available for Linux - because they were an incredible combination of RPG and turn-based strategy that was, and still is, as addictive as Civilization. Honestly.
It's completely coincidental but just two days ago FreeDO (a 3DO emulator dev team) released the public beta of the first 3DO emulator to see daylight. I haven't tried it because I don't have any original 3DO games anymore nor have i access to bootlegs. I am really interested in the quality of the emulated games because i really think the 3D0 console is one of the most underestimated consoles of the early nineties. Back in those days it was pretty hip, just like the NeoGeo, but it suffered from the same drawbacks. That big black box was darn expensive for kids! Anyway it's really weird when you think that for almost every console there has been built an emu while the 3DO had to wait till 2003 before somebody compiled a working emulator! You can find the emulator and information about it here:
http://www.freedo.org/