Playing 3DO at the archive

As a part of our job to preserve the games for future generations to come, we every now and then sit down together and try out our consoles and games to check the functionality of it all. This week, we decided to sit down and work through some games from our 3DO collection.

Mikel is our very own expert on 3DO, so he’s the one who’s been setting it up for us, which has been great for the rest of us as we are not as familiar with the console.

The 3DO Company was formed by Electronic Arts founder XX in 1991. This company’s aim was to create a grand new console, and thus the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer system was born. At first though, the company sought out different brands including SEGA and Sony, but ultimately Panasonic was the company that produced the first version of the console, the FZ-1 model in 1993.

Goldstar and Sanyo would come to produce consoles as well in a later time. Panasonic ended up producing four other consoles, one being a Japan exclusive, Goldstar created four for various regions (primarily Korea) and Sanyo made one for Japan.

The reception of the console wasn’t great – For one thing it was generally viewed as too expensive on release but moreover, Sony launched the Playstation just the following year. Another contributing factor was the lack of quality which some witness about when looking back. Despite its very mellow success, there were quite a few good games coming out to it  – titles such as Myst and Street Fighter 2 which had amazing ports to the console. During our play-session, we tried out GEX, Mad Dog McCree, Killing Time and Road Rash. We had an absolute blast trying out this gem.