3D0 Review

Overall Rating

First real 'next-gen' console

Poor software support
Not powerful enough

The 3D0 is a strange console. As far as I'm aware, it's the only games machine of the modern era to have it's technology licensed out to different companies. I presume Trip Hawkins (father of the 3D0) was trying to create a single gaming standard - the VHS of gaming. Several major companies, including Sanyo, Panasonic and Goldstar all released 3D0 systems, all of which looked radically different but all with the same innards and were compatible with the same games. The most common variation is the Panasonic, which looks like a Sega Saturn, with a front-loading CD tray. The joypad also has a resemblance to the Sega pad of the same era (early to mid 1990s).

For the first part of it's life span, the 3D0 really was an impressive machine. Its games were graphically superior to the 16-bit machines that dominated and were more comparable to the Playstation. The Atari Jaguar also prowled, but the 3D0 offered something rarely seen in the Jag's 3D titles: Texture Mapping.

The 3D0 also had the ability to play Video CDs and music CDS, another advantage it had for utilising a CD drive rather than the cartridge format. The hardware was very impressive for it's time - the 3D0 was only marginally less powerful that the Playstation, but was released three years earlier.

Hardware wasn't the only impressive aspect. The 3D0 is the spiritual home of some of the best-known franchises on today's consoles. The Need For Speed series (that has since evolved to the Underground series) started life on the 3D0 and was renowned for it's exceptional realism and spectacular crashes. The 3D0 also played host to an excellent version of Fifa International Soccer that was fully 3D when the Mega Drive and SNES versions were stuck in only two dimensions. Other notable titles included Killing Time, Alone in the Dark, Road Rash and Shockwave Assault.

It wasn't all rosy in the garden of 3D0, though. There are plenty of awful games available: Off World Interceptor, Doom (this version is a travesty), Demolition Man, Chaos Control and Virtuoso.

By the end of 1995, the death knell was sounding for the 3D0 as developers lost interest and were drawn toward the potential of the Saturn and Playstation (a lot of consoles seem to have suffered at the hands of those two). In time, 3D0 realised their system simply wasn't good enough to compete and in late 1996, the plug was pulled.

The legacy of the 3D0 is still easy to see in today's game's market - many of the big games of today have their roots in 3D0 folklore - not least because of 3D0's strong links with Electronic Arts (EA).


One of the better retro consoles, the 3D0 is a nice machine to own, if you can find one.

Note: There was a rumoured add-on for the 3D0, codenamed 'M-2' that was originally meant to take the form of some kind of cartridge that boosted the machine up from 32-Bit to 64-Bit. The add-on never materialised (although screen shots did), and it all went quiet. In 1998, Matsushita (more commonly known in the West as Panasonic) released mock ups of a new console code-named M-2 and this was believed to be a new, more powerful version of the 3D0 designed to take on the Playstation. Again, it all went quiet and the console was never heard of again.