Three Days of 3DO: A Look Back

[98PaceCar]

Nice to see somebody else that appreciates Icebreakers! That game is the single reason I don't have my 3DO anymore.. My mom found it in my collection, tried it, and laid claim to my system a few years back. I still haven't been able to get it back from her!!

Return Fire is a brilliant 2 player game! I can remember spending way too much of my time in college playing this! The sequel wasn't quite up to snuff, but the first was pure gaming bliss!!

What about Shockwave? I remember being more impressed with this than the early releases of Wing Commander. Shockwave was a bit more arcade like, but still a great game.

And Need For Speed, the reason I bought the system in the first place! Once I saw the FMV of the cars, it was just a matter of time before I had one!! Spent many an hour playing this one too!!

Don't forget about Road Rash.. Killer soundtrack and bikers with weapons. What more does a game need??!!

[le geek]

Well I can comment on Need for Speed since that was in my wheelhouse over those three days. Though the game still LOOKS good, it's got some real serious frame rate issues. Read my comments about Star Fighter above but replace with Need for Speed... same exact deal, right up the PSX port.

I'll have to pull it out again, but I'm sure you're right. I was surprised at how unkind time has been to Cybermorph on the Jag, which at the time was an okay break from T2K...

I did plug in Zhadnost but unfortunately that game REQUIRES 2 or more players. It's gonna have to wait until the gang is here. I haven't played the game in five years but both that and its predecessor Twisted were party favorites here for quite some time.

Both Twisted and Zhadnost got a lot of play when I got my Used 3DO for $50 in '99 (Sorry Joe! I'm sorry! ) I liked the gameplay of Zhadnost better, but Twisted had it's moments ("Run Otis! RUUN!")
The kid game show game sucked, well... because it was for kids...

Ben

[Ed Oscuro]

The fact that you can stomach half those games, shows dedication, heh.

This is boot camp..."Veekend of VIS" is the equivalent of BUD/S ;)

[digitalpress]

Nothing about Road Rash??

If I commented on every title you wouldn't need to read the book. Read the book, it will have the penultimate praise for 3DO Road Rash that any game has ever gotten from me. I have to keep a few surprises.

[icbrkr]

Please don't ever make me fire up "It's a Bird's Life" again. Admittely, it's good for a few laughs (and cringes after watching my friends writh in pain) but.. what were they thinking? I don't think I've ever gotten a game to run, I've been too terrified of just the main menu.

[Drexel923]

Joe, thanks for not giving me much reason to get a 3DO :P ...cause I don't think I could handle another system right now. I did get to play a couple games at Jeff's (Kid Ice) house though and I'd have to say that I enjoyed playing Twisted and The Need for Speed, but the other games we played were pretty crappy.

*remembers Doom... *

[kainemaxwell]

I have a couple 3D0 games up for sale if anyone's intrested still: Cannon Fodder and Sid Meiser's CPU Bach.

[Kid Ice]

Yours truly is just about to wrap up a "rekindling" session with my 3DO and its game library, done mainly for the book research

Don't fall for a word of this BS story people. Joe is a total closet 3DO freak. 3 Days? He has probably been on a non-stop 3DO playing binge since the last time you saw him. And when exactly was the last time you actually SAW Joe?

Here's what happens; someone drops by to see Joe, a gaming friend. We'll use John Hardie for convenience.

Joe makes his wife answer the door. John and Liz make small talk. Liz tells John that Joe is playing some Japanese PS2 games he just imported, because she is embarassed to tell him what is really going on down there.

John, ever stealthy, creeps down the stairs. There he witnesses Joe playing Blade Force. He looks on as Joe drops the controller so he can air guitar that cool part in the soundtrack. "Danana naaa naaa naaa nanananaaa" Joe sings.

John can hold back on opening his beer no longer and cracks one open, startling DP. Joe quickly presses a button on his system selector to change to a PS2 game already in progress.

"Hey John," he calls out casually. "Have you tried Champions of Norrath yet?"

"Dude, I just totally watched you playing 3DO or something."

Joe turns beet red and desparately tries to redirect the conversation. "Don't you think we should consider Neptune for the next CGE?"

"What's this, Blade Force?" John questions, picking up a nearby box that clearly has "Blade Force" written on it.

"What's that, what's what?" Joe stammers, snatching the box from John and lamely "hiding" it behind his back.

Joe seems to be caught, but for some reason John sits down and forgets anything happened. Remember this story next time Joe starts this "I'm doing research" or "I'm writing a book" stuff.

[digitalpress]

Joe seems to be caught, but for some reason John sits down and forgets anything happened. Remember this story next time Joe starts this "I'm doing research" or "I'm writing a book" stuff.

That's the funniest goddamned thing I've read in weeks! Thanks for the Friday morning laughs, Kid.

Perhaps lending credibility to your story, I am now on SIX DAYS of 3DO

I have to add two games to my "random thoughts" list...

- Though largely ignored, probably because the 3DO was already collapsing when the game was released, Scramble Cobra is a surprisingly competent helicopter sim, if you could call it a sim. It's more of an arcade-style sim, like the Thunderstrike series. Really good stuff!

- I forgot just HOW good Shockwave 2 is. See, I'm not a big fan of the original game - I found the levels to be a little too long against the difficulty involved, and too many times I'd get smoked at the end of a level and have to go through that long conquest all over again from the start. Well Shockwave 2 still has pretty long levels but they're much more diverse with three different types of units to control and lots of sub-missions within the missions. I got hooked on this one last night and a simple screen shot exercise became a two hour Shockwave 2-fest.

Maybe Jeff is right!

[kainemaxwell]

Wow, Jeff's tale is a LORE story in itself!

[Swiftman007]

thanks for the review !! pretty interesting !!! By the way , Dont forget me If you have some extra 3do games complete in box, let me know

[Kid Ice]

I'll be curious on your "new" takes on Need For Speed and Zhagnost: The Peoples Party...

Well I can comment on Need for Speed since that was in my wheelhouse over those three days. Though the game still LOOKS good, it's got some real serious frame rate issues. Read my comments about Star Fighter above but replace with Need for Speed... same exact deal, right up the PSX port.
.

Actually, I played the PSX Need for Speed for the first time recently and it is significantly different (worse IMO). They changed it into a "race against the clock" type of thing. The thing I always found most compelling about 3DO NFS is the direct competition with one other driver (the dreaded FMV "X-Man"). Also the PSX lost the weighty physics and spectacular crashes of the 3DO version. Yes the game looks better, but lost a lot of character in the process.

[Jagasian]

I recently got Return Fire for Playstation and it reminded how i loved to play it on a friend's 3DO.

Games like Road Rash, Need for Speed, Guardian War, Wing Commander games, are really great games of the 3DO.

I was a big Return Fire fan back in the 90s. I even won a local competition held by a local game store. The 3DO version was better than the Playstaiton port. One of the main things that I didn't like about the Playstation port was how they changed the jeep into a hummer. The jeep seemed smaller and more nimble, especially when it came to fighting jeep versus armored support vehicle (ASV) or against the Apache heliocopter.

You could drive up real close to the ASV with the jeep, and the ASV was unable to hit you with its missles because they shot over your jeep. Even better, you could drive into the side of the ASV with the side of your keep perfectly sandwiched into the side of the ASV, and you could literally lock the ASV's wheels preventing it from moving. Then all you had to do was throw grenades and try to entice the ASV to plant a mine. Then you had to hold the ASV in place almost until the mine blows, and you drive away for the explosion gets you too.

An even better trick is with the jeep versus apache. When the apache was just taking off, you could ram the front of your keep into the front of the apache while it was still taking off. This caused the front of the apache to get stuck under the front of your jeep, preventing the apache from taking off. Furthermore, the apache couldn't shoot the jeep, let alone move. So you could finish off the apache with a full set of grenades.

My friends and I called is the "king takes queen" move, in reference to a chess king taking a queen. The jeep is the king and the apache is the queen. Its a very hard move to do, but EVERYONE will be laughing when somebody pulls it off.

I also own the Playstation version, but it doesn't seem to be possible to do the above two tricks. There were also two other tricks that you could do only in the 3DO version. They had a big impact on the gameplay, especially multiplayer games. They are both tricks for the apache helocopter.

1. Fly without using fuel trick: The copter could be flown without consuming fuel as long as you only used strafe left/right and rotate left/right for movement. You also didn't consume fuel when you stood still in the air. Of course this will cause drones to be released. It definitely decreases the agility of the helicopter to fly like this, but in 2-player battles it is sometimes necessary to be able to keep your copter in the air without being attacked by the flying drones. For example, your opponent is about to steal your flag and the only vehicle you have left is a copter or maybe you can't get a better vehicle into position to guard your flag in time, so you need to keep the copter out. Then you can use the copter to strafe left right between your opponent and the flag. You can also use it to cover large distances without spending fuel, and then when you need to engage in combat, you can use normal flying.

2. Helicopter ultimate attack trick: Some people believe that the ASV is the most power offensive vehicle. It is too slow for that. The ASV is best used for mining your opponents bunker and for mining your flag. The Helicopters are best (if you are skilled) for offensive action. Skilled players almost always begin by bringing out their copter first, quickly fly to each flag holder and locate the flag, poke a small hole in the defensive walls, and return with a jeep. Of course, your opponent will do the same, or even try to stop you with their copter. This is where the ULTIMATE ATTACK trick comes into play. By quickly switching back and forth between machine gun and missles and by quickly hitting the shoot button, you have effectively unlimited fire rate. That is, you can dump massive amounts of ammo into your opponent because the second a bullet leaves, you switch to missles and shoot a missle, then switch back to bullets and shoot another, etc. I have been able to destroy an undamaged copter in a real world second with this trick. You can also use it on ground vehicles. Your enemy will be surprised when their tank or ASV is destroyed in a matter of seconds. The main drawback of this trick is that you will run out of ammo really quickly as you are doing more damage by dumping all of your ammo really quickly.

[Iron Draggon]

It is amazing how poorly Need for Speed has aged in regard to "speed", but the 3DO version is definitely the best, for the reasons that Kid Ice stated. I own the 3DO, Saturn, & PSX versions, and I would have to say that of the other two, the Saturn version is much better. The graphics are much more crisp and detailed than in the muddied blurriness of the PSX version, and this is true for all games that exist on both Saturn & PSX. If all the Sony fanboys had ever taken the time to actually compare those two systems side by side, the Saturn might very well be alive and well today. Amazingly though, I like the look of 3DO graphics better for 2D games. One of these days I'm gonna have to get Casper for Saturn & PSX, so I can compare them to the 3DO. It would be really cool to see the same game compared on all 3 systems. Kinda like doing a side by side comparison of XBOX, PS2, & Gamecube. That would rock too. But I still don't own any of those systems yet, so I remain neutral.

[digitalpress]

Reviving an old thread for you 3DO fans. In case you missed it, Greg Wilcox is doing a really nice series here at DP in his bi-monthly "Did You Know?" column. This weekend's first installment is about import 3DO games. Some great insights here if you're looking for something different!

http://www.digitpress.com/columns/didyouknow.htm

[sharp]

I remeber the day the local toystore got some german flyers, yes it was in the Netherlands. It as somewhere in 1995 and I asked if they could order me one. A week later my Goldstar 3DO arrived with 3 games: FIFA, Road Rash and one I forgot about. Although soon Playstation and Saturn stormed the market and I was anyway the only person who bought a 3DO it became hard to get titles. There only were two stores left in the Netherlands to buy games, so I forgot the system and sold it. Currently I realy want it back for games like Return Fire , Road Rash, Need for Speed oh and also really liked Power Kindoms.

Some good memories of the first taste of 32-bit, oh and back then Gex was also great.

[Trevor Belmont]

These posts really bring back the memories. While my friends were playing SNES and Playstation, I was busy with my Turbo Duo and 3DO. My mom got me a Duo for christmas because she thought it looked more interesting than the SNES. A ballsy move at the time, but today, I wouldn't love the Duo if it wasn't for her. I remember getting made fun all the time for having those two systems, but I defended them and even managed to change the minds of non-believers when I would toss Road Rash into the 3DO and fire it up. Nobody was able to withstand Road Rash when it came out. Even if you hated 3DO with a passion, that game caught you in its web and wouldn't let you go. The FMV scenes after each race, the incredible soundtrack (which I still love to this day), and, best of all, the great gameplay and the amount of fun you could have with this game ... it's still one of the best, even today. The PSX version doesn't even come close. IIRC, it seemed more choppy than the 3DO version.

Need for Speed was awesome too. I remember HATING the X-Man; god, whoever played him was great at making you hate him. That was my favorite feature of the game; beating him was such a great feeling. Another incredible game for the 3DO.

The last game I remember fondly was one that rarely ever gets talked about. I remember picking up the game Strahl at a local small video game chain because the screenshots looked incredible. Essentially, it was an FMV game that was entirely done in anime. I'm sure playing it today would kill all of my nostalgia, but at the time, even for an FMV game, it was awesome just because stylistically it was so much different than the other ones. I had a soft spot for this game for some reason.

Obviously there are a lot of other great games, but these three stick with me for some reason. The 3DO was a great system though and unfairly maligned.

[Lothars]

I just wanted to thank Joe for the excellent topic,

I now am going to look for a 3DO, I've been thinking of it for a while now, but really would like to play some return fire one of the games I've always wanted to play.

[Fuku-san]

It seems that nobody has mentioned demolition man yet that is one of my 3DO favourites

[Jmill]

Alone in the Dark I LOVE - it's a great port and still fun to play.

My comment was that Alone in the Dark 2 should have never been made. They added all kinds of silly gunfighting. Combat is hard enough with that game engine without having to concern yourself about the aim!

Yeah the gunplay in that game is hard but what killled that game for me was how slow the game ran on the system. I had it on the pc before I got it on the 3do, so I was used to it going at a normal speed. On the 3do, the animation seemed so choppy and loads between screens took forever.

Also, has anyone played through Hell? I like graphic adventure games so I was wondering how that one played out.