Panasonic 3DO in 2020 - My First Impressions

 

Yesterday afternoon I picked up a Panasonic 3DO from my local independent game shop. This is the first time I've owned a 3DO and one of a few relatively decent consoles I've never owned as well. 

That I was really curious to get my hands on this and I have some thoughts with my first day with the machine along with games I managed to get as well so far.

First the console, I like the look of it personally and nice to see the different connection options to connect to a TV that I had mine running via a Scart to HDMI adapter, decent in terms of picture quality all told.

The OS is basically a screen saver over and over, which is a tad annoying as to get to the saved data for games you have to use certain games or the sampler disc which I do have.

On the sampler disc is just a chap narrating going on about enjoying your new 3DO and what it can do like play Music CD's and VCD's with an adapter which only came out in Japan in the end. Does have 5mins of Batman the animated series which is good but overall this will be only used if I need to delete stuff of the memory. 

Controller has a super long cable, which was handy how I set it up as the power supply is attached to the console I had to put it close to an outlet. Controller is like a big SNES pad, which is fine part from the tiny d-pad.

Now on to the most imported part the games as this is a games console at the end of the day. First up is Starblade which has the honour of being the first 3DO game I've ever finished, Starblade is a port of the arcade game which has two modes on 3DO. First is Arcade Mode which looks like Star Fox with the graphical style of the low 3D polygons but really impressive for something from 1991, this is the mode I finished which takes about 30mins that I may have been annoyed if I bought this new for my 3DO being that short.
 

The other mode is the 3DO mode which adds textures to those low poly graphics. Which in practice looks impressive especially in 1994 yet everything now is grey and boring & harder to see that I prefer the low poly mode instead. The game itself is fun to play it's an on rail's shooter like a Star Fox but in First Person, just be nice if more than two levels unless you really want to chase high scores.

 

Next game I took a look at was Blade Force this has awful poppin and the box mentions how it runs in film like 24fps which I find hilarious as selling point where in 2020 people moan if a game 30fps, will say though the cutscenes with the characters are like the early Fallout games.

PO'ed, I did the first level and seems an okay FPS but the second level due to everything being purple I had no idea where I was going but gives me hope for Wolfenstein 3D which is a near perfect port.

Then the big'un which may have been a system seller back in the day Wing Commander III, I didn't play much but the FMV stuff is fantastic with Mark Hamill so far and the game bit wasn't bad either, can see me coming back to this one soon'ish.

First impressions are mixed as nothing part from Wing Commander III really stood out on why you maybe want one of these but with what I know about the 3DO if I can get my hands on the likes of D, Street Fighter II (like the best console version), FIFA, Road Rash, Gex, Night Trap from the 300+ games then it be a good time.

I can see why at one point this was deemed the best place for games especially for sports titles compared to the Mega Drive and SNES but it's in the same gen as the Saturn, PS1, N64 which will all blow it out of the water.

Feels it either came too late or to early depending on what you compare it to.