3DO in Your country.

All general 3DO chat here please.

Moderators: 3DO Experience, Devin, Bas, 3DOKid

Post Reply
User avatar
3DOKid
3DO ZONE ADMIN
Posts: 4683
Joined: Sat Jan 13, 2007 4:21 pm
Location: Cambridgeshire, UK
Contact:

3DO in Your country.

Post by 3DOKid » Mon Oct 12, 2009 8:43 pm

Alright, so I'm thinking of vanity publishing a coffee table book for the 3DO. I wanted to gather together a multinational view of the 3DO in your countries.

For the UK (you can disagree with me by-the-way)

The 3DO was seen as niche machine and quite expensive, probably similarly in some ways to the Neogeo AES/CD - most people adopted a wait-and-see approached and were waiting for either the Saturn or a Playstation, thanks in no small part to the games press - particularly Edge Magazine.

User avatar
Lemmi
3DO ZERO USER
Posts: 1189
Joined: Sat Jan 13, 2007 11:10 pm
Location: Mich

Post by Lemmi » Tue Oct 13, 2009 12:19 am

well the same could be said about the US i think
but since i didnt give the 3do any thought when it came out because it was $500+ higher then all other systems out or comming out, and i played my Genesis/Atari 7800 untill 1997, i wouldnt be much help :D
Ex-3DO collector extraordinaire , but i still have my collection
Villagephotos is dead, need to find my old pics and find another host

User avatar
3DO Experience
3DO ZONE ADMIN
Posts: 3686
Joined: Sun Jun 24, 2007 8:47 am
Location: U.S.A.

Post by 3DO Experience » Tue Oct 13, 2009 12:53 am

Pretty close to the USA. I wouldn't use the word niche during '93-'95 more like, "God damn, I wish I had the money for something like that!" of course during the release it was like, "$700??? My god it must be a powerhouse! But where are the games?".
"Wait. You don't have a bag of charcoal in your gaming room???"

Tears of Ash
3DO ZERO USER
Posts: 24
Joined: Thu Jan 29, 2009 8:39 am
Location: Nashville, Tennessee
Contact:

Post by Tears of Ash » Tue Oct 13, 2009 5:57 am

I don't know how normal people thought of the system, but as a kid I always though it was "that cool system I'll never get" because of the price. I put it up there with the likes of big screen TVs, and surround sound stuff. It just wasn't gonna happen.
Rising Stuff - import 3DO games :3

User avatar
Plissken
3DO ZERO USER
Posts: 25
Joined: Mon Oct 05, 2009 1:36 pm
Location: Outer Space

Post by Plissken » Tue Oct 13, 2009 11:56 am

In Italy the 3do and it's games were ridicously expensive: the medium price of a game was around 200.000 lit (more or less 100€), the double of the medium price for other systems. Also 3do never had an huge space in console magazines and was considered more a weird curiosity than a system with big potential.

User avatar
3DOKid
3DO ZONE ADMIN
Posts: 4683
Joined: Sat Jan 13, 2007 4:21 pm
Location: Cambridgeshire, UK
Contact:

Post by 3DOKid » Wed Oct 14, 2009 9:07 am

Plissken wrote:In Italy the 3do and it's games were ridicously expensive: the medium price of a game was around 200.000 lit (more or less 100€), the double of the medium price for other systems. Also 3do never had an huge space in console magazines and was considered more a weird curiosity than a system with big potential.
WOW! 100 Euro's! :shock:

User avatar
Plissken
3DO ZERO USER
Posts: 25
Joined: Mon Oct 05, 2009 1:36 pm
Location: Outer Space

Post by Plissken » Thu Oct 15, 2009 10:20 am

Yes, 100€ more or less. I still have a lot of old console magazines, so if you want to i can do a scan of the catalogues of the videogames stores that advertised there.

User avatar
Devin
3DO ZONE ADMIN
Posts: 330
Joined: Sat Jan 13, 2007 2:04 pm

Re: 3DO in Your country.

Post by Devin » Thu Oct 15, 2009 11:38 am

3DOKid wrote:The 3DO was seen as niche machine and quite expensive, probably similarly in some ways to the Neogeo AES/CD - most people adopted a wait-and-see approached and were waiting for either the Saturn or a Playstation, thanks in no small part to the games press - particularly Edge Magazine.
This is true. Also I find Philips CD-i and Panasonic 3DO are often confused as one of the same thing by people who were not interested in each respective format.

Mainly the SEGA, Nintendo and PlayStation crowd!

User avatar
jesus 666
3DO ZERO USER
Posts: 73
Joined: Mon Aug 25, 2008 3:40 pm
Location: UK
Contact:

Re: 3DO in Your country.

Post by jesus 666 » Thu Oct 15, 2009 7:12 pm

3DOKid wrote:Alright, so I'm thinking of vanity publishing a coffee table book for the 3DO. I wanted to gather together a multinational view of the 3DO in your countries.

For the UK (you can disagree with me by-the-way)

The 3DO was seen as niche machine and quite expensive, probably similarly in some ways to the Neogeo AES/CD - most people adopted a wait-and-see approached and were waiting for either the Saturn or a Playstation, thanks in no small part to the games press - particularly Edge Magazine.
I think this is pretty accurate, though personally I didn't even know what a 3DO was until after they were dead, around 1996 probably.

The UK 3DO wouldn't have been as shocking an expense as in the US, over here it was released at something like £399 with a game whilst for instance the Saturn was released for £399 without a pack in title a year later.

One thing I'd like to add, is that someone I was talking to recently on a forum from the UK (who could possibly already be a member here) stated that in his area the 3DO had some success as a budget machine during 1995, which I would also find believable, as in my Games Master console guide from that year the 3DO is rated as an alright console with some stand out titles and average survival prospects for the future, whilst its price is £100 cheaper than the PS1's was at that time.
Juffo-Wup is the hot light in the darkness

User avatar
3DOKid
3DO ZONE ADMIN
Posts: 4683
Joined: Sat Jan 13, 2007 4:21 pm
Location: Cambridgeshire, UK
Contact:

Post by 3DOKid » Sat Oct 17, 2009 6:48 pm

£399 wasn't that big a deal in the UK. I remember seeing a Commodore 64 hit that price on release and definitely the Amiga Batman pack did and it certainly didn't hurt them

User avatar
bonefish
3DO ZERO USER
Posts: 351
Joined: Thu Mar 22, 2007 9:22 pm

Re: 3DO in Your country.

Post by bonefish » Sat Oct 17, 2009 11:14 pm

jesus 666 wrote: One thing I'd like to add, is that someone I was talking to recently on a forum from the UK (who could possibly already be a member here) stated that in his area the 3DO had some success as a budget machine during 1995, which I would also find believable, as in my Games Master console guide from that year the 3DO is rated as an alright console with some stand out titles and average survival prospects for the future, whilst its price is £100 cheaper than the PS1's was at that time.
That is the gist I was going on when I got my 3do back then. I know some people long for that 16-32 bit interchange era but I sure don't. Too many hands in the cookie jar. Some of the consoles had too short of lifespans back then. Usable lifespans reduced that a little more. Kinda sad when you never see what a console really can do.

Anonymous

Post by Anonymous » Sun Nov 22, 2009 2:51 am

In Hungary, I remember reading game reviews in '95-96, but I have never even seen a 3do until recently, when I bought one. The only thing I remember that was mentioned was its price, as more than top-PC's, of course, at the time. When I saw pictures from Snow Job I really wanted one:)

extra_anchovy
3DO ZERO USER
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat May 10, 2008 8:40 am
Location: australia

Post by extra_anchovy » Mon Jan 04, 2010 8:58 am

couple people had them in Australia. but not many because of the cost. when I was a kid my friend's dad had one though. he would only use it very rarely so when we played it, it was a rare treat. the game of choice for us we chose most often was definitely Road Rash. played on a massive rear projection tv with a loud stereo system - all 3do games we played seemed very impressive and atmospheric.

can't tell you much about the retail side of things though. however you could find out from one store which sold 3do stuff back in the day. it's is still in business - GameBiz in South Australia. that is where my friend's dad got his 3do system and games. in fact they still have new 3do games in stock which they never sold from back then.

User avatar
awbacon
3DO ZERO USER
Posts: 260
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 12:01 am
Location: Vermont
Contact:

Post by awbacon » Mon Jan 04, 2010 6:01 pm

In the US, or at least in New England (I am a Vermonter) the 3DO was something a select few people bought into, since we only had one game store, and it was tiny. The shelf space just wasnt there to accomodate every system in existence.

My father bought the 3DO for me, new, because I convinced him it was the 'next best tech thing'. He was a sucker for everything 'new and exciting'. Luckily my mom was a manager at Sears at that time, and they had the consoles, so she got her discount of like 30% on the thing, so it ended up being more like $490 or so

My perspective of the console : Having gotten a Sega CD a few Christmas' back, I always wondered where the 'good games' were for the system. Sure I had Sonic CD, but in equal measure I had shit games like Corpse Killer and Sewer Shark. I saw the 3DO as having many more playable games

When I first got my 3DO, I was blown away. It was the FMV of the Sega CD with actual playable content. I saw polygons that weren't just flat shaded tectures like in Star Fox.

Then once I ended up playing and beating the first games I had multiple times, I wanted more. Thats when I realized, not many of the new games were very good. Alot of them were quite honestly crap. Just like the Sega CD.

So my recollection of the 3DO....awesome hardware with some amazing games for the time, just hard to sift through all the garbage getting published for the system.

It reminds me alot of the Wii...new genre changing hardware, and a huge amount of shovelware that fills the shelves. Especially considering 3DO's publishing fees per title, its no suprise the console ended up w/ a reputation for some bad games (not as bad as the Jaguar, but not glowing either)

Although the 3DO did give me my hands down, all time, favorite game - Killing Time

So in summary : Awesome hardware that was too far ahead of the curve cost wise, with too many titles that just didn't pan out, and press that seemed against it from the start

GameCubed
3DO ZERO USER
Posts: 66
Joined: Wed Jan 27, 2010 2:37 am

Post by GameCubed » Thu Feb 04, 2010 9:07 am

I'd agree that owning the 3DO in the US was sort of a status symbol amongst gamers who wanted to be at the "cutting edge" of technology at the time. It boasted capabilities that were mind-boggling if you were emerging out of the 16-bit era.

The people I knew who actually bought new 3DO's when they first came out were the people who had every system. The funny thing is, I remember thinking of the system as being ahead of the time, but now it seems more like it was stuck out of time. That is to say, FMV was way advanced at the time, but that is really not the direction that modern games went. But the 3DO really had great appeal for people wanting more immersive racing or flight games, or for people dazzled by the idea of "this could be playing on my home TV?"

What's funny to think about is the video game market in those days. Today, there's only Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony contending for console gaming retail space. In the mid-90's, it was so darn confusing. You still had carry-over SNES and Genesis stuff, plus all the competing next-gen systems like Saturn, Jaguar, CD-i. Personally, I was unable to commit to any of the new breed of consoles. I don't remember ever seeing a Neo-Geo or 3DO in any stores. How the heck were stores supposed to display all the different consoles and the big cumbersome game boxes?

That was really a weird time to be a gamer. You had so many different companies telling you their product was amazing and that the competition was crap. CD-ROM was supposed to be the wave of the future, but you had Nintendo sticking with cartridges and the failures of Sega CD and other CD add-ons. At the time, it was pretty hard to make sense of what constituted a good value or investment. I was thumbing through an old game magazine from the 90s and there was a letter from a reader complaining about how they spent too much on the 3DO and that there weren't enough good games, plus they were upset that the price dropped right after they got it. The magazine's response was, basically "why didn't you do more research before you spent $600?"

User avatar
Austin
Master Poster & Pricing Expert
Posts: 1839
Joined: Sun Dec 20, 2009 11:30 am
Location: Fairfax, VA
Contact:

Post by Austin » Sun Feb 07, 2010 8:04 am

The 3DO's popularity in America was hard to gauge. I didn't know a single person that ever owned one, exept the guy I eventually bought my Goldstar off of. Not one. Single. Person. But our local Best Buy had a large 3DO selection, and I remember really getting interest in the system when the shelves were filled with FZ-10 units being marketed at $89, or some ridiculous price like that (Bundled with GEX). Electronics Boutique, Babbages, and Funco Land I believe all carried them as well, and there were plenty of those stores in my area. Magazine articles also gave the impression that it was at least doing well-enough in the marketplace. It didn't share as much space as the Saturn, Playstation, and N64 news, but it had much more space dedicated to it than the Jaguar, 32X, SCD, etc.

User avatar
Superhero360
3DO ZERO USER
Posts: 28
Joined: Thu Apr 01, 2010 3:03 pm
Location: Germany

Post by Superhero360 » Fri Apr 02, 2010 10:58 pm

I live in Germany and bought the Panasonic 3DO FZ-1 as an US NTSC import. I had to have it right away. The press was all over this thing even here in Germany though it wasn't going to be released over here any time soon. I remember going to Toys R Us and I saw somebody wrote in their guest book that this person wants them to sell 3DOs already lol.
When it finally did get to Germany the only 3DOs I saw in the stores were the Goldstar ones and it was way overpriced too. The Panasonic FZ-10 was out here too but never saw them in person.
And not long after it was already on sale to be pushed out of the store shelves for good. That's were I bought my second 3DO, a Goldstar PAL version (no S-VHS) bundled with Fifa soccer for 99 DM and I was able to pick up a lot of games for really little money too.
Considering friends and people I knew around me locally never heard of the 3DO so it has always been an insider console.
When the stores finally did a blow out sale they even had trouble getting rid of the games and Goldstar 3DOs being at a tenth of its original price tag.

User avatar
ILUV3DO
3DO ZERO USER
Posts: 79
Joined: Sat Jul 04, 2009 1:54 am
Location: United States

Post by ILUV3DO » Tue Apr 06, 2010 5:19 am

I agree with the above posts... in the U.S. I remember the 3DO as absolutely amazing for it's time. Not just for it's FMV but also for the way it handled polygons with textures. Being weaned from NES to SNES/Genesis, the 3DO was really able to produce incredible looking graphics for it's time. In my circle of friends it was not talked about much because we all knew we could never afford something like that (our parents would never have bought it for us) but when we found out someone had a 3DO they became heroes to us. The 3DO was a sophisticated piece of sleek cutting edge machinery where our systems were toys. I remember not having much of an opinion of my older half brother who lived apart from me, but after the one time he brought his 3DO by to show it off, (that's what 3DO owners did in 1993 in the U.S.... show it off... it WAS a status symbol) he was permanently just a tad bit cooler. I was an early teen in the early nineties and for most of us, owning a 3DO was a pipe dream. Still it hovered around at the back of my videogaming consciousness. Much later when the 3DO had dropped significantly in price and I picked one up I remember achieving the envy of my videogaming friends (and these were people who already had PSX's and N64's) even if only for a little while. They were awed that I had actually found and obtained one of those really expensive consoles we used to dream about owning.

ILUV3DO

Post Reply