The Panasonic 3DO - A Console before it's time?
The 3DO get's little to no respect, but I truly believe that is was a truly innovative system, that was way before it's time. Unfortunately, the ridiculously high cost of the unit, during it's exclusive period as the only "REAL" next generation machine (Sorry Jaguar and 32X fans), kept the 3DO out of reach of everyone but the extreme early adopters. Then on top of that was the misguided idea behind Matsushita and 3DO of marketing the system as anything more than a games machine. If the focus early on was more on games and less on multimedia and interactive and all that crap, then the 3DO could have been a contenda.
But still, regardless or that, the 3DO system was definitely a watershed video game product. It took video gaming to a whole new level. It gave a true glimpse of the future of gaming, way back in late 1993 when everybody was playing their 16 bit cartridge based consoles.
I can remember, way back in late 1993, playing Crash N Burn for the very first time. Man that was an amazing experience back then. Sure you might play Crash N Burn now, and think it's total garbage, but back then, in 1993, with the fact that Sega and Nintendo 16 bit action was where it was at, when one first saw a game like Crash N Burn or Total Eclipse, one was and should have been totally amazed.
You have to put it in context.
It was a huge dramatic leap forward from the previous generation of video game systems. People had experienced the Sega Genesis, and the Super Nintendo and the Sega CD, but when somebody first played a game like Total Eclipse or Crash N Burn, that was a huge leap in terms of graphics and sounds at a whole nuther level entirely.
I think it was a much larger jump than 8 bit to 16 bit.
I can remember when John Madden Football first came out on the 3DO. As a huge fan of Madden on the Genesis, I was absolutely blown out of the water when I first saw Madden running on the 3DO. It was like going from a cartoon to real life. Sure, if you play the game now, it seems kinda crappy, but back then, when all you had experienced was these little tiny cartoon characters, it was a huge leap to these giant football players running around on the screen.
And then take a game like Slayer. This was a Castle Wolfenstein type game, but taken to a whole new level. I had never experienced anything like it.
A lot of the games don't really seem that great, when you play them now, and in hindsight, but at the time when they very first hit the shelves, they were huge leaps beyond anything that had come before.
Sometimes the gameplay wasn't very good, or the game wasn't very long, and had a limited number of enemies and textures.
