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IF DOOM had been as good on 3DO as it was on Jaguar . . .

Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 2:05 am
by T2KFreeker
Yes, so I have to put a hypothetical question here for yous guys that know and were around at the time. "IF" the 3DO DOOM had turned out as nice as the Jaguar version had and with that awesome soundtrack it had, do you think it would have helped to keep the 3DO above the water for a little longer or would Matsushita still have pulled the plug when they did?

Just to clarify things a bit . . . as we all know, with the price drops and the like towards the end of the 3DO and the pack in of GEX, things started to pick up for the system. It was selling much better and 3DO's were finally vanishing off of the shelves as were games. DOOM, at the time, would have been conside3red a console seller. In MY opinion, I really think that Jaguar DOOM is easily the best console version of the game from a purist point of view. No weird colors and crap like the Playstation version has. No screwed up frame rates like the Saturn version and no funky screen sizes like the 3DO and 32-X version. I will not comment on the SNES version. DOOM, I really believe could have been accomplished quite nicely on the 3DO had a programming group that knew what they were doing had worked on it and DOOM would have possibly sold some more units off of the shelves and we might have even seen some of the unreleased stuff come out due to seeing the sales of the console rise. Do you think that this would have been possible, or just wishful thinking as the Playstation was just destined to rule the world? :roll:

Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 2:21 am
by Jones
Hm...

And if the Jaguar version was really that good, why didnt it help the
platform either? Just because of the lacking sound?

Putting the question other way round:
I still dont quite get, why the Jaguar version is said to be that good!
Just because of fullscreen at a sensible framerate?
Okay, but come on - it runs at a low detail level with quite blocky resolution and all the sprites dont have the full amount of frames.

What this version benefits from on one hand, it lacks therefor on the other hand.

Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 2:25 am
by Silanda
I don't think it would have helped. By the time Doom was released the Saturn and Playstation had already launched and the 3DO was in a terminal decline. Doom wouldn't have had enough of an impact at that point to really help. If a good port had been released at the same time as the Jag version it may have given the 3DO more momentum, but although Doom has been a great seller over the years I don't believe it has really sold any system other than the PC.

Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 3:01 am
by T2KFreeker
Jones wrote:all the sprites dont have the full amount of frames.
Hows that? It has the same amounts of animations to the sprites as the Playstation and Saturn versions. It is missing a couple of the monsters though.

Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 4:16 pm
by 3DO Experience
DOOM would not have been enough to save the 3DO. And as I have read it the cancellation of the M2 was due to not wanting to compete with SONY.

Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 8:47 pm
by bonefish
I'm not sure if any software would have helped the 3do. It had plenty of software, you could always have more of course. I think the price and competing manufacturers killed it more than anything.

Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2011 8:55 pm
by Martin III
If a good port of Doom couldn't save a console back in 1994, there's no way it could have saved a console in 1996.

The quality of the 3DO version, while unfortunate for 3DO enthusiasts, isn't what kept the game from being a bestseller. At that point, anyone who wanted Doom for a home console already had the Playstation version. Heck, even if the greatest version of Doom was released for the 3DO in 1994, people would have responded the same as they did to the Jaguar version: Waited a few months for the Playstation version to arrive.

Posted: Wed Mar 09, 2011 12:45 am
by Austin
Was DOOM for the 3DO really released in '96? Yikes! :shock:

If it was a solid version and had it been put out earlier (at least around the same time of the PlayStation version), I think it could have helped a tiny bit. Not a huge deal, but it certainly wouldn't have hurt. I knew several people back then that bought a PlayStation for DOOM.

Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2011 12:20 am
by Martin III
Austin wrote:Was DOOM for the 3DO really released in '96? Yikes! :shock:
Well, it could have been worse... The Saturn didn't get its version of Doom until 1997.

Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2011 3:08 am
by swaaye
My fav Doom port is probably Doom 64 because it was very unique. I didn't need inferior PC ports because I was playing it on the PC anyway! ;)

Although my fav GBA experience was playing linked Doom to completion with my bro. I've read that version is very similar to Jaguar.

Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2011 9:12 pm
by avanteproject
swaaye wrote:My fav Doom port is probably Doom 64 because it was very unique. I didn't need inferior PC ports because I was playing it on the PC anyway! ;)

Although my fav GBA experience was playing linked Doom to completion with my bro. I've read that version is very similar to Jaguar.
I'm sure the GBA version is a port of the Jaguar version.

Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2011 9:07 am
by T2KFreeker
swaaye wrote:My fav Doom port is probably Doom 64 because it was very unique. I didn't need inferior PC ports because I was playing it on the PC anyway! ;)

Although my fav GBA experience was playing linked Doom to completion with my bro. I've read that version is very similar to Jaguar.
DOOM 64 isn't a port.

Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2011 1:23 am
by swaaye
T2KFreeker wrote: DOOM 64 isn't a port.
True. :D I like that about it. But it is a port of Doom gameplay to N64. It's a reimagining of the looks, sounds, new episode but it is still Doom.

Posted: Sat May 07, 2011 6:27 pm
by OfManNotMachine
Would a perfect port of Doom helped had it come out in say...1994? Sure it couldn't have hurt.

I think what would've really helped 3DO would've been an arcade perfect port of Mortal Kombat 2

But what REALLY would've helped 3DO was a smaller price tag to own the console. That's really the singular reason the console failed. All the great software in the world can't help you if the entry point to get the actual console is out of reach for most consumers, or simply aren't willing to spend that much money to get it.

I think if 3DO launched at say...$499 instead of $799 that would've got you a fair amount of more people picking one up, then by the the time the console dropped to $399.... it should've been $299

Get yourself an acrade perfect port of MK2, and a FAR superior version of Doom out sooner and perhaps things would've been different.

But sadly...things didn't quite work out that way

Posted: Sat May 07, 2011 7:17 pm
by Jones
When the Microsoft X-Box was released in Germany, a price
of 480 Euros was set.
And this isn't very far from what the 3DO had cost when it was
released.

So the price cannot be the major reason.

Posted: Sat May 07, 2011 7:35 pm
by sneth
doom was not a killer app at this point.

All these console ports were years after the PC release. In some cases, many many years later.

Posted: Sat May 07, 2011 9:53 pm
by Austin
Jones wrote:When the Microsoft X-Box was released in Germany, a price
of 480 Euros was set.
And this isn't very far from what the 3DO had cost when it was
released.

So the price cannot be the major reason.
I'm not sure what the value of your currency was back then compared to now, and maybe your statement is true over there. Having grown up as a kid in middle-class America myself, I can personally vouch that there's no way in hell my parents would have spent $600/$700 on a game console for me, especially in the early '90s when they made much less money than they do now. I think it's a safe bet to say that that's how it was for a good portion of the kids in the US at that time, hence why a greater majority of the people my age had a Genesis or SNES back then, not a 3DO, Neo-Geo, or an expensive Genny/Sega CD combo.

Posted: Sat May 07, 2011 11:19 pm
by awbacon
I had a 3DO when they first came out, but that's just cause I was an only child, and my parents were doing pretty well back then. It also helped my dad was a tech junkie in the 90's haha

but yeah. Even TODAY, as an adult, I look at $700 as a huge amount of cash.

Posted: Sun May 08, 2011 1:26 am
by sneth
Well an Atari 2600 cost $200 at launch in 1979. With inflation it was pretty expensive as well.

Same goes for a Commodore 64 setup

Posted: Sun May 08, 2011 6:31 am
by Dr.Enceladus
wow man, i have adds somewhere around here still...3DO's price was around $1200 AUS WITH a trade in system!

I think i paid 100 bux each for my two FZ10s 2nd hand and my sister got me a FZ1 in the states for about $120 new in 1999 and it cost me $30 odd dollars to ship it back to the land down under.

:!:

Posted: Sat May 14, 2011 11:03 pm
by Martin III
Austin wrote:
Jones wrote:When the Microsoft X-Box was released in Germany, a price
of 480 Euros was set.
And this isn't very far from what the 3DO had cost when it was
released.

So the price cannot be the major reason.
I'm not sure what the value of your currency was back then compared to now, and maybe your statement is true over there. Having grown up as a kid in middle-class America myself, I can personally vouch that there's no way in hell my parents would have spent $600/$700 on a game console for me, especially in the early '90s when they made much less money than they do now. I think it's a safe bet to say that that's how it was for a good portion of the kids in the US at that time, hence why a greater majority of the people my age had a Genesis or SNES back then, not a 3DO, Neo-Geo, or an expensive Genny/Sega CD combo.
Besides inflation, you also have to consider competition. The only current generation console released in Germany that is cheaper than the X-box 360 is the Wii, whereas mid-90s consumers had nearly a dozen cheaper alternatives to the 3DO.

There were other factors, but I have little doubt that the $700 price tag was the cause of the 3DO's commercial failure.

Posted: Sun May 15, 2011 1:00 am
by 3DO Experience
Well if you adjust the price for inflation a 3DO would cost you around $1,050 in today's US money. Plus in the 90's everyone and their mother was coming out with a console so there was much more competition than there is today.

Posted: Sun May 15, 2011 1:01 am
by Austin
3DO Experience wrote:Plus in the 90's everyone and their mother was coming out with a console so there was much more competition than there is today.
Ah, yes.. The good old days! :lol:

Posted: Mon May 16, 2011 10:22 pm
by johnwbyrd
I don't think Doom would have saved 3DO. The engine was originally written for a PC, and all the rendering was assumed to have been conducted on the main CPU. 3DO used its cel engine for everything. And IIRC the Doom engine rendered everything as a series of vertical stripes... not as textures per se.

However, I remember talking to a cool young programmer at the time named John Carmack, when I was trying to get support for the M2 system. He said that he was working on a totally new, triangle-based rendering engine. I tried my damndest to get Carmack on board with M2, but I couldn't get any traction from within 3DO to help him more.

And that is how I failed to get Quake as an exclusive on the M2 platform. :(

Posted: Tue May 17, 2011 9:05 pm
by 3DOKid
I agree, I don't think Doom would have saved 3DO. However, I do think a good conversion would have been a shot in the arm for it.

Whether people bought Doom on the 3DO or not was immaterial, however, Doom was a benchmark of sorts. Doom was like the 3D Mark of it's day: doesn't really mean all that much, but it's a solid indicator.

At the time I couldn't abide Doom (more fool me) but I appreciated the technology behind it.

Posted: Thu May 19, 2011 12:23 am
by johnwbyrd
3DOKid wrote:I agree, I don't think Doom would have saved 3DO. However, I do think a good conversion would have been a shot in the arm for it.

Whether people bought Doom on the 3DO or not was immaterial, however, Doom was a benchmark of sorts. Doom was like the 3D Mark of it's day: doesn't really mean all that much, but it's a solid indicator.

At the time I couldn't abide Doom (more fool me) but I appreciated the technology behind it.
Depends on what you mean by a "good" conversion. I think Monster Manor was a good object proof that 3DO was perfectly capable of doing this type of game.

Doom was essentially a fast vertical rasterizer over a BSP tree, IIRC. The Doom engine assumed that you had a very fast CPU and no specialized graphics rendering hardware. Monster Manor assumed the opposite. If Monster Manor had the tuning and development time that Doom did, Monster Manor would have been competitive or superior.

I recall meeting with Bill about the port. Logicware had just gotten the license to do the port and so Bill spent a lot of time trying to convince me that he could get the software running without using the cel engine at all.

(Trivia question: Who was Bill, what was Bill's nickname in the day, and what is Bill called today?)

So in short, the Doom game logic would have needed to have been maintained, while the texture rendering stuff would have needed to have been totally rewritten, which would have taken a good chunk of time.

And IMHSNO, Doom was not the "benchmark" of its day, except for within the world of PC gaming. The divide between PC and console gaming was wide in 1995 -- you didn't compare a Sega CD game versus its PC counterpart. There were only a handful of ports to and from the PC from the 3DO and from other game consoles.

Posted: Thu May 19, 2011 5:23 pm
by 3DOKid
Burger Bill Heineman now Rebecca Ann Heineman who was mentioned in the (opinion turning in my case) book: Masters of Doom. Which everyone should read. As it is ace, and very well written.

Posted: Fri May 20, 2011 4:29 am
by 3DO Experience
I think I've heard about him! Is he the same "Burger" who had something to do with the Ultimate Wizardry Archives?

Posted: Fri May 20, 2011 7:28 am
by Jones
Founding member of Interplay!
(Thanks, Wiki. :) )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Heineman

Posted: Fri May 20, 2011 11:22 pm
by Austin
Matt Barton on YouTube did an in-depth interview with her not too long ago. The series on YT is "Matt Chat" and generally the interviews he does are pretty interesting.