IF DOOM had been as good on 3DO as it was on Jaguar . . .
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- T2KFreeker
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IF DOOM had been as good on 3DO as it was on Jaguar . . .
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?
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?
This is a stick up! Put all of your 3DO games in the bag and nobody gets hurt!
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.
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.
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.
- T2KFreeker
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- Martin III
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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.
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.
- Austin
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Was DOOM for the 3DO really released in '96? Yikes!
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.
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.
- Martin III
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I'm sure the GBA version is a port of the Jaguar version.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.
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- T2KFreeker
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DOOM 64 isn't a port.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.
This is a stick up! Put all of your 3DO games in the bag and nobody gets hurt!
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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
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
- Austin
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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.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 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.
but yeah. Even TODAY, as an adult, I look at $700 as a huge amount of cash.
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- Dr.Enceladus
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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.
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.
...eat well, stay fit, look good, feel great - die anyway...
- Martin III
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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.Austin wrote: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.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.
There were other factors, but I have little doubt that the $700 price tag was the cause of the 3DO's commercial failure.
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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.
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.
- 3DOKid
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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.
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.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.
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.
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