3DO's M2 Hardware Revealed

Thanks to NFG Games for their new feature on a rare Konami arcade board using 3DO's M2 hardware. This hardware was intended to be a home-based console successor to the much-maligned 3DO console during the late '90s, but, as the article explains, "The M2 chipset shown was basically over-hyped vaporware. The actual chipset never made it into any console, and aside from three or four arcade releases and one ridiculous real estate viewing system the M2 was basically quietly forgotten." These photos of the hardware itself, plus screenshots of the Konami 'Polystars' arcade game running on it, show that "...the hardware was nothing special for the time, and the only released games bear all the hallmarks of early 3D games: flat shaded polygons with minimal textures."

Comments

Marketing

[patch-rustem]

From the article:

Even if it were all that 3DO promised, without the support of top-notch developers and savvy marketing it would still have failed - the Dreamcast is proof enough of that.

I'm guessing that the Phantom marketeers are happy about the hype they're getting here.