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

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.