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[RAIDEN1]

I was watching an episode of Game Informer's look at a few 3DO games, and it got me thinking on the face of it, it was a pretty poweful console circa 1993, Saturn came out 2 years later, both had impressive titles yet both sank without a trace...

Even Digital Foundry mentioned in their retrospective on the conversions of Doom, that there were certain things the 3DO had trouble with? I think it was 2d related issues? Anyone know anymore about it?

 

[AmyS]

Saturn, easily, and it actually came out 1 year after 3DO, in Japan in November 1994.

That said, 3DO M2 was due out by Christmas 1995 (realitically 1996). it was a generational leap beyond the original 3DO, and alot more powerful than Saturn & PS1, and even 2-3 times more powerful than Nintendo 64 (but still a fraction of what Dreamcast hardware was in 1998)

 

[RAIDEN1]

I see, but was it easier to make 3d games on 3DO than the Saturn?

 

[shouamabane]

Yeah, I owned both. Saturn was a beast, especially regarding 2D games. Look at the Saturn Quake DF Retro if you want to learn more about Saturn.

I see, but was it easier to make 3d games on 3DO than the Saturn?

Saturn was a complicated system. Look at Saturn Virtua Fighter 2 if you want to see the full potential of Saturn 3D.

 

[Sapiens]

Saturn was able to do Quake respectably. 3D0 had no chance of even getting close.

 

[Bay Area Guy]

Can a mod ban my account?

Sorry for derailing but I don't know who to PM.

Thanks.

 

[AmyS]

M2 was at first going to be an add-on accelerator for the 3DO. But as time went on, the M2 spec was upgraded and was to be a standalone console released by Matsushita who had bought the M2 technology from 3DO in late 1995 for $100M

Here are some EDGE / Next Generation articles & news on M2.

 

[RAIDEN1]

It is interesting though what gave Matsushita/Panasonic the jitters to pull the plug on releasing the console? Were they THAT afraid of Sony? We will probably never know...To think that the M2 was even MORE powerful than the N64...

 

[Ubername]

M2 was at first going to be an add-on accelerator for the 3DO. But as time went on, the M2 spec was upgraded and was to be a standalone console released by Matsushita who had bought the M2 technology from 3DO in late 1995 for $100M

Here are some EDGE / Next Generation articles & news on M2

Does anyone know who the "An aristocrat by name, this man is one of the most successful game designers ever" is?

From the "Who is it" blurb on the last image

 

[deadscreensky]

Does anyone know who the "An aristocrat by name, this man is one of the most successful game designers ever" is?

From the "Who is it" blurb on the last image

It's almost undoubtedly Lord British.

 

[Clockwork]

3do and Saturn both utilized quads for rendering 3d graphics. In terms of technology the Saturn was simply a more powerful console (and having released much later there is no reason it shouldn't be).

With that being said the reason for the poor 3do version of Doom came down to development time and publisher incompetence.

See more about that here:

https://youtu.be/rBbIil2HPSU

 

[Futaleufu]

For a 32 bit 12 Mhz RISC multimedia center the 3d0 was punching above its weight.

 

[DiscoJer]

When programmed well, the Saturn could do some amazing stuff.

Unfortunately, apparently it was hard to program.

 

[lensoftruth]

3DO both in 2D and 3D

 

[notBald]

3do and Saturn both utilized quads for rendering 3d graphics. In terms of technology the Saturn was simply a more powerful console (and having released much later there is no reason it shouldn't be).

With that being said the reason for the poor 3do version of Doom came down to development time and publisher incompetence.

See more about that here:

https://youtu.be/rBbIil2HPSU

Yeah, I think the hardware power goes 3DO > 32x > GBA, and the GBA got a decent version of Doom.

Doom on the Saturn wasn't amazing either, but that was apparently due to John Carmack's dislike for distorted rendering. Damn perfectionists, the enemy of good enough.

 

[celsowmbr]

When programmed well, the Saturn could do some amazing stuff.

Unfortunately, apparently it was hard to program.

Nowadays... It's easy thanks to this: http://jo-engine.org/

 

[chemicals]

Dude. No. The Saturn smoked it. The 3DO was a joke. I was there. I seen some things.... I wouldn't recommend it.

 

[Heath V]

Saturn easily! And thanks for those M2 articles, those are great! Brings me back to my childhood, I was so hyped for the M2 back in the days. Shame nothing ever came of it.

 

[notBald]

Saturn easily! And thanks for those M2 articles, those are great! Brings me back to my childhood, I was so hyped for the M2 back in the days. Shame nothing ever came of it.

Well, there was a coffee vending machine...

There' also this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocaTno8iYVU

 

[AmyS]

Although this was never actually running real-time on M2, I fell for the hype when I saw this cave portion of the FPS demo.

https://youtu.be/A2tnKdmvG2E?t=7m31s

The textures, the lighting. Too bad it was pre-rendered.

Edit: I saw that ^ in motion on TV on one of those technology news shows of the mid-late 90s. I was like "holy fuckballs" with my jaw hitting the floor. Like I said, I fell for the pre-rendered CGI.

D2 on the M2 - A completely different game not like the later Dreamcast version.

And yeah, M2 was later used for a variety of non-gaming applications.

 

[Metzhara]

Those feels.
People bringing up the M2 and Next Generation Magazine. I do have to wonder however if we weren't saved...
D2 as supposed to come out for the M2.
Bullet dodged... until Dreamcast.

 

[shpankey]

I love 3DO. I’ve still never been wowed like the first time I seen The Need for Speed. Much, much better than the eventual Playstation version even and was a landmark title for gaming, imo. Though this is the Genesis/SNES days.

Also loved:
Fifa (also better on 3do, amazing)
Return Fire
Way of the Warrior
Killing Time
Gex
Captain Quazar
Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger
Primal Rage
Alone in the Dark
Flashback
Madden (not as good as Playstation a year and a half later, but still)
Battlesport



The other biggest wow was Tomb Raider on PC via 3dfx.

 

[PantsuJo]

Saturn was a more capable machine compared to 3DO, easily.

But Satutn programming was a lot more complicated than 3DO, for what I read in these years.

A lot of co-processors, specialized hardware and memory tricks to consider and understand.

I love 3DO. I’ve still never been wowed like the first time I seen The Need for Speed. Much, much better than the eventual Playstation version even and was a landmark title for gaming, imo.

Digital Foundry made a comparison some time ago and it resulted that the Playstation version was capable of maintaining higher average fps count, offering better performance.

In comparison the 3DO version seems to run really bad, often 15 (?) fps.

 

[AmyS]

Could someone please make a gif of this, from 7 min 31 seconds to 7:37 ?

https://youtu.be/A2tnKdmvG2E?t=7m31s

Thanks!

 

[shpankey]

From what I remember first hand, at least initially...

2d: Saturn by miles
3d: 3do (prob due to programming skill and lod)

...Saturn obviously had more support and overtook it

 

[shpankey]

Saturn was a more capable machine compared to 3DO, easily.

But Satutn programming was a lot more complicated than 3DO, for what I read in these years.

A lot of co-processors, specialized hardware and memory tricks to consider and understand.


Digital Foundry made a comparison some time ago and it resulted that the Playstation version was capable of maintaining higher average fps count, offering better performance.

In comparison the 3DO version seems to run really bad, often 15 (?) fps.

I played both, 3do for countless hours, trust me, 3do was way way better gameplay wise. Psx version played like arcade crap and felt awful. 3do was a masterpiece in how the cars drove, responded to input and overall realism (for the time, for a console). You could even turn sharper by diag down left-right on the dpad. Something I still catch myself doing to this day. Lol

Ps the sound on 3do always seemed way better to me on most games for some reason

 

[Vulkar59]

3DO both in 2D and 3D

This is sarcastic, right?

 

[120v]

thing about the 32/63 bit era is no console succeeded well enough for anybody to take any console to its limits, sans ps1

it gets more complicated with saturn since it was bafflingly 2D centric. but probably safe to say it was more capable in aggregate as it was truly designed as a mid to late 90s console

 

[RainblowDash]

I have a Saturn and a couple games like Virtual On and Virtual Fighter, pretty cool little system especially if you have the memory cartridge.

The 3D0? No idea, never played one nor had the desire to. Would be cool to have though for collection sake.

 

[Heath V]

Well, there was a coffee vending machine...

There' also this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocaTno8iYVU

Thank you, I don't think I've ever seen that game before. Didn't Matsushita lease the M2 technology to car dealerships as well?

 

[nephilimdj]

Saturn prob was more powerful, but had shit ports

NFS is a big example

 

[AmyS]

I played both, 3do for countless hours, trust me, 3do was way way better gameplay wise. Psx version played like arcade crap and felt awful. 3do was a masterpiece in how the cars drove, responded to input and overall realism (for the time, for a console).

Same here. 3DO version was far better gameplay wise, more like a simulator. PSX version had a smoother framerate but more arcadey and pretty forgettable.

 

[nush]

Saturn by far was the more powerful.

 

[Beerman462]

Saturn, easily, and it actually came out 1 year after 3DO, in Japan in November 1994.

That said, 3DO M2 was due out by Christmas 1995 (realitically 1996). it was a generational leap beyond the original 3DO, and alot more powerful than Saturn & PS1, and even 2-3 times more powerful than Nintendo 64 (but still a fraction of what Dreamcast hardware was in 1998)

M2 was at first going to be an add-on accelerator for the 3DO. But as time went on, the M2 spec was upgraded and was to be a standalone console released by Matsushita who had bought the M2 technology from 3DO in late 1995 for $100M

Here are some EDGE / Next Generation articles & news on M2

Although this was never actually running real-time on M2, I fell for the hype when I saw this cave portion of the FPS demo.

https://youtu.be/A2tnKdmvG2E?t=7m31s

The textures, the lighting. Too bad it was pre-rendered.

Edit: I saw that ^ in motion on TV on one of those technology news shows of the mid-late 90s. I was like "holy fuckballs" with my jaw hitting the floor. Like I said, I fell for the pre-rendered CGI.

And yeah, M2 was later used for a variety of non-gaming applications.

Thanks for the info dump. So much nostalgia.

I remember going to the local Electronics/Furniture store. They had a huge games section with every console on demo. PS1, and Saturn on big screen. A 3DO, Panasonic CDI, Jaguar, SNES, Genesis and I think maybe a 32X. It was amazing.

 

[Freshmaker]

From what I remember first hand, at least initially...

2d: Saturn by miles
3d: 3do (prob due to programming skill and lod)

...Saturn obviously had more support and overtook it

Yeah no. 9fps Wolfenstein clones vs Tomb raider?

 

[Sanctuary]

Saturn without a doubt. I grabbed a 3DO in '94 for a near arcade perfect version of SSF2T, but the Saturn (especially with a ram cart) ran circles around the 3DO in 2D. For 3D I'm not really sure since both were lacking compared to the PSX, and not many 3D games looked great on the Saturn. I'd say they were probably about equal, even though the Saturn had more games that I wanted to play that happened to be 3D, so maybe there's no fair way to judge it.

 

[Freshmaker]

Saturn without a doubt. I grabbed a 3DO in '94 for a near arcade perfect version of SSF2T, but the Saturn (especially with a ram cart) ran circles around the 3DO in 2D. For 3D I'm not really sure since both were lacking compared to the PSX, and not many 3D games looked great on the Saturn. I'd say they were probably about equal, even though the Saturn had more games that I wanted to play that happened to be 3D, so maybe there's no fair way to judge it.

There certainly is. Just look at the specs. The 3D0 was Jaguar territory.

 

[Ocirus]

From what I remember the Saturn was certainly better, and had better games. I only played the 3DO once when it came out, several games I can no longer recall. I think one of them was a game called Horde... In any case, Saturn was great.

 

[MrCunningham]

3DO specs:

CPU:
32-bit 12.5 MHz RISC CPU
Custom Math co-processor (It does not use the stock ARM FPA unit.)
32 KB SRAM

Display:
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.
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.

System board:
50 MB/s bus speed (synchronous 32-bit @12.5 MHz bus)
36 DMA channels
2 MB of main RAM
1 MB of VRAM
2 expansion ports

Sound:
16-bit stereo sound
44.1 kHz sound sampling rate
Supports Dolby Surround sound
Custom 20-bit digital signal processor (DSP) – 20-bit accumulator with 16-bit parameter registers for extended precision


Sega Saturn specs:

CPU's:
Hitachi SH2 32-bit RISC CPU @ 28 MHz
Hitachi SH2 32-bit RISC CPU @ 28 MHz
Hitachi SH1 32-bit RISC CPU (used as a disc drive controller)

Graphics Processor's:
VDP1 32-bit GPU - Texture Mapping, Gouraud Shading, 200,000 Texture Mapped Polygons/Second, 512K Cache for Textures, Virtually Unlimited Sprites on a Line, Virtually Unlimited Sprite Images, Dual 256K Frame Buffers for Rotation, Scaling Effects
VDP2 32-bit GPU - Five Simultaneous Scrolling Backgrounds, Two Simultaneous Rotating Playfields, 24-bit Backgrounds. 704x480 maximum resolution Backgrounds

Audio:
16-bit Motorola 68EC000 Sound CPU
Yamaha Sega Custom Sound Processor

Memory:
CPU RAM - 2 MB
Video RAM - 1.54 MB
Sound RAM - 540 KB
CD-ROM Cache RAM - 512 KB
Addition system RAM can be added with 1 - 4 MB RAM expansion cartridges.


Basically the Sega Saturn is a beast of a console for it's day, and the 3DO doesn't really stack up at all when it comes to raw processing power. The 3DO ARM CPU is pretty slow in comparison, but the 36 DMA channels probably did help the machine if they were used correctly to aide the CPU. The CPU in this machine is about on par, or perhaps weaker than the ARM7TDMI in the Game Boy Advance. The 3DO is probably a little more comparable to the Sega 32X or Atari Jaguar, in many ways.

 

[Burn0ut]

The OP reads like it says the PSX and Saturn where more powerful than the N64... ?

 

[PantsuJo]

I played both, 3do for countless hours, trust me, 3do was way way better gameplay wise. Psx version played like arcade crap and felt awful. 3do was a masterpiece in how the cars drove, responded to input and overall realism (for the time, for a console). You could even turn sharper by diag down left-right on the dpad. Something I still catch myself doing to this day. Lol

Ps the sound on 3do always seemed way better to me on most games for some reason

This is an opinion and I respect that, even if I disagree completely.

But my comment was specifically directed about performance and, as DF measured in their video without any doubt, the performance of 3DO version were bad.

Of course: first times of 3D age and the novelty of the racer were wonderful, I can understand your emotions.

But Digital Foundry talks about tech facts, nor emotions

 

[deriks]

But Digital Foundry talks about tech facts, nor emotions

Ouch! Haha

 

[fury]

The Shenmue Saturn version footage really blows me away with how powerful it was with the right people who knew how to use the hardware. Sucks there was never a playable version.

 

[Chinbo37]

Xmen vs Street fighter was awesome on the Saturn.

 

[Diablos]

Saturn was a beast. Also a beast to program for so it was a bit of a double edged sword.

 

[jpadula]

3DO M2

 

[shpankey]

From what I remember the Saturn was certainly better, and had better games. I only played the 3DO once when it came out, several games I can no longer recall. I think one of them was a game called Horde... In any case, Saturn was great.

Oh wow, the horde I remember that. Really fun game!

 

[shpankey]

This is an opinion and I respect that, even if I disagree completely.

But my comment was specifically directed about performance and, as DF measured in their video without any doubt, the performance of 3DO version were bad.

Of course: first times of 3D age and the novelty of the racer were wonderful, I can understand your emotions.

But Digital Foundry talks about tech facts, nor emotions

That’s completely fair and I understood your point fine. 😀 But your DF comparison wasn’t the Saturn, so we’re re both OT here and I wasn’t contending 3do was better than a psx, that’s insane. So it seems you misunderstood my comment.

Anyhow, did you play the 3Do version and psx, and are saying you liked the latter better? You would be the first that I’ve ran into myself that did. It was just terrible (imo of course). And again, no doubt psx ran circles around 3do so fps difference would be expected.

Ps my point about Saturn earlier was technical vs realized and that it took awhile for the 3d games to really show how it was better technically due to the difficulty in programming 3d for it.

 

[PantsuJo]

That’s completely fair. 😀 But your DF comparison wasn’t the Saturn, so we’re re both OT. But did you play the 3Do version and psx, and are saying you liked the latter better? You would be the first that I’ve ran into myself that did. It was just terrible (imo of course). And no doubt psx ran circles around 3do so fps difference would be expected.

Ps my point about Saturn earlier was technical vs realized and that it took awhile for the 3d games to really show how it was better technically due to the difficulty in programming 3d for it.

Well, you know, if I play a game, I'd like to have good-consistent performance on my platform, especially in racing game ^^"

That's why I consider every other version of NFS (PS1 for example, but PC too, aside from the resolution problem) good, compared to the 3DO ones. Despite their different problems and bugs, sure.

It's the same with other racing game of course, arcade, sim-like, full simulation, no matter the genre or the platform.
Just from a technology standpoint, of course.

At least, that's my opinion.

 

[shpankey]

So you didn’t play it then. Right. I understand your technical point but disagree in this particular case having played both extensively. Imo, as always.