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.

i actually owned a 3DO

[johndoejersey]

and i loved it to pieces, however the range of games never ranged above the typical fifa/madden/nhl type games which could be bought for any other console.

Thats plus the 400 uk sterling price tag probably didnt help either...

Re:Restrictions

[lidocaineus]

Remember when the M2 was supposed to bring every other console to its knees, basking in M2 glory? Hrmph.

Least

[n1ywb]

popular thread ever.

wow

[zephc]

jaded by modern graphics, those screenshots look far from impressive.

Interesting to see what happened to the M2 though

How did 3DO manage to do it twice?

[carndearg]

I remember some of the hype surrounding both the original 3DO and this piece of kit. Looking back at it all it amazes me that they managed to get a lot of people all excited about their products not once but twice! How on earth did their hype merchants do that!

I remember people spreading doom and gloom in the Amiga world before the original 3DO came out, aparently it was going to kill all other formats or something:) As if Commodore needed any help killing the Amiga.

Still, it is interesting to see that this particular piece of vapourware made it out in some form. Another "What if..." of computer gaming history sees the light of day once more.

Re:How did 3DO manage to do it twice?

[SophtwareSlump]

I remember a lot of hype at the time was for being the first real console that had 'broadcast quality' graphics. For instance, in Madden they had renders of all the stadiums in the pre-game screen. Sounds like a little detail, but at this point in gaming, people were used to seeing 256 color Sega CD full motion video.

A lot of the other hype with the 3DO (not sure about the M2, all I remember is Trip Hawkins deeming it as the savior) was due to support from Electronics Arts. Even with EA, it still died a horrible death along with the Jaguar and CD-I.

My friend had a 3DO, and we really did have a great time playing Return Fire (an RTS game), Road Rash and the original Need for Speed. Anybody else remember that annoying actor they had playing your opponent in Need for Speed? If I ever see that guy on the street, he's getting clocked. I was pretty disappointed when I played the sequels and he was no where to be found. There were some absolutely awful games at launch.. I can't remember the names of them, but Crystal Dynamics was leading the charge of poopware.

Re:How did 3DO manage to do it twice?

[carndearg]

I wish I could lay my hands on some of the magazines from the time. As I remember the other memorable hype was that they had attracted Matsushita{Panasonic) as a backer and the idea was that with such a big backer everyone would have to bow down before them.

At the time I was working for a multimedia encyclopedia publisher so I saw more of the "educational" consoles like the CD-i and CD-TV, but as I remember one of the other 3DO selling points was that they had an accessable game licencing policy unlike those of Sega or Nintendo who required developers to buy a million plastic bricks.

Re:How did 3DO manage to do it twice?

[SophtwareSlump]

When I was cleaning out the rest of my childhood at my parents house a few years ago, I ran across some old gaming magazines from the early to mid 90's. The first 20 issues of Next Generation (my favorite video game magazine, before they went to the cheap paper), Diehard Gamefan and even some old EGMs. It's hilarious reading some of the old interviews, including the Nolan Bushnell (sp?) one where he says Atari is going to go after Sony for 'dumping' if they launched the PSX below a certain price point. Hilarity. I really do miss nextgeneration.com and dailyradar.com.

From my understanding of the whole debacle, 3D0 wanted to make their console like VHS. License the techonology to different hardware companies and to software publishers. I remember when the Goldstar 3DO came out, it was only $499, which was a huge deal (The flagship Panasonic 3DO shipped at $700).

Does anybody else have any horror stories about the daisy-chaining controllers? (instead of a multitap, each controller top had a controller in jack on it, so you could in theory hook up an infinite amount of controllers). Genius in theory, horrible in practice. Needless to say with my friends and I, it quickly turned into tripwire and unplugging controllers at the most unexpected times :)

Back in the days...

[Man In Black]

I actually bought a Jaguar when they were new. I still own it, and I still play it once in a while (Ahh, Tempest 2000...). At the time, I was a staunch opponent of the 3DO since the two consoles were rivals at the time, and the M2 scared me. I eventually lost interest in the video game industry when the PSX took over, and I stopped buying GamePro's or paying much attention at all to what was going on. It wasn't until years later that I realized that the M2 never came out at all. After all the talk about it, it is (in my opinion) the biggest chunk of vaporware every. Sadly, this is one case where they probably made the right decision by not releasing it. The PSX would have thoroughly trampled them (hell, the Saturn would probably have trampled them). They wasted a lot of money in developing it, but at least they cut their losses in the end.

When I look back, I always think about how silly it was to have such a pro-Jaguar opinion, and be so anti-3DO... little did I know that both would die such a quick death.