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Panasonic 3DO Review – It Could Have Been So Much More…

Good evening guys and welcome to this weeks vintage console review, this week I’m taking you back to a time that a console was released and it was around for such a short time you may have missed it.

Panasonic 3DO… and its gone!

The console I am referring to is Panasonic’s 3DO (I can already hear you saying the what?), this is another console that could have been incredible and was actually put to Sony to see if they wanted in on the development – but Sony had already started work on a little console called the PlayStation and declined.

How much!?

Well lets not beat about the console bush here and get to the nitty gritty, in my opinion (and remember this is just my opinion) this console was doomed from its launch (oh and why), for the simple reason it was nearly £700! I mean you could have bought yourself a fairly decent PC at this time for that price and had a few years worth of games to choose from to go with it.

Problems from day one…

This leads nicely to my second issue with the 3DO; the games or should I say lack of, the 3DO was released with a massive array of 1 game called crash,n,burn soon to be followed by Fifa, Road Rash, Return Fire and Jurassic Park. These titles should have been available at launch but were not ready and not due to any fault of the developing companies.

The problem was caused by the 3DO specifications being changed almost right up to release, so the developing companies had no idea how their games would run on the already difficult to develop for 32-bit system. Obviously this added to the poor sales of the console (why would you want a console with no games).

After a year on sale the console was dropped dramatically in price to try and recoup losses but it was too little too late, probably due to the release of the Sony PlayStation.

Star Struck Gaming Rating

The 3DO was discontinued in 1996,the whole thing was such a disaster Panasonic even scrapped the M2 which was going to be their next console, in fact they closed down everything to do with consoles altogether!

Again we have a console that could have been something special but due to poor decisions and what I would call greed at that ridiculous price tag it was never meant to be, and the 3DO now sits in our what might have been pile.

Keep an eye on our website as I’ll be adding more trips down memory lane for those who appreciate a weekly dose of nostalgia!

Bad
  • Not enough launch titles, expensive
3
Average

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