20 replies to this topic

[Lord Thag]

I just found out a neigbor has one of these. He worked at 3do when it went under. Any idea of wht this might be worth? It's complete and working...

[SteveW]

Wow, that would be a seriously cool collector's item. What games are with it?

[Lord Thag]

Not sure of the names, but I believe one is a fighting game, and the other is a primitive FPS. He's going to bring ot over once he gets it out of storage. It's on par with the PS1, from what I've heard. Anyone know what it's worth?

[guitarmas]

...Just my 2cents...

I thought the 3DO m2 was used primarily for marketing purposes???

If there are games for then that is even more unbelievable...in a good way of course.

[Ferris]

If he is willing to sell it please have him get in touch with me. I am willing to pay a decent price for an M2 and any dev software.

Justin

[SteveW]

I would hope that it would be a little better than PS1 quality. I remember seeing screenshots from a racing game that looked antialiased. The game looked like Dreamcast quality.

[ASSEMbler]

If he has pics and it's a real working unit I'll give him $2400 for it.

[Lord Thag]

Quote

If he is willing to sell it please have him get in touch with me. I am willing to pay a decent price for an M2 and any dev software.

Justin

Actually, he's thinking of giving it to me as a favor, which would be cool. I'll proably be keeping it as a centerpiece of my collection. Or sell it and pay off my car. If I get it, I may let you guys know. I'd rather sell it to someone here rather than deal with ebay anyway. I'll keep you posted. You know how these things work. One out of ten people who promise me stuff follow through, so we'll see.

[Ferris]

To say that M2 is "on par with PlayStation 1" is underestimating the M2's power. The earliest demos of D2 looked superior to Dreamcast and at very least on par with the early PS2 titles. The M2 was a powerful machine.

Pictures of the machine and a demo of D2 from 1996 pictured here - http://geocities.yah...etto2000/m2.htm

I picked one up on ebay for $999.99 last week, complete with system, software, and Macintosh with dev card. Good catch, especially since we are working with technology similar to the M2, I thought we could analyze this little machine and see if we cant put it to some use.

http://cgi.ebay.com/...ssPageName=WDVW

That should give you a rough idea of some value. Certainly not a $299 system by any measure.

[Ferris]

Actually try out this page, there is a ton of information on the M2 development, as well as some great crystal clear pics!

http://assembler.roa...nasonic_m2.html

D looked awesome. I'm trying to get my hands on a beta version of that title to play on my own. I may be posting a special M2 development page with software etc. for other M2 owners to download from and load to and share general M2 information.

Justin

[guitarmas]

Ferris, on Wed Jun 1, 2005 7:19 PM, said:

Actually try out this page, there is a ton of information on the M2 development, as well as some great crystal clear pics!

http://assembler.roa...nasonic_m2.html

D looked awesome.  I'm trying to get my hands on a beta version of that title to play on my own.  I may be posting a special M2 development page with software etc. for other M2 owners to download from and load to and share general M2 information.

Justin

This M2 system...is it in a black case??? Or is it a white console?

[SteveW]

I'll never understand why Matsushita would spend a hundred million dollars for the technology, and then just let it die.

[ASSEMbler]

SteveW, on Wed Jun 1, 2005 11:10 PM, said:

I'll never understand why Matsushita would spend a hundred million dollars for the technology, and then just let it die.

They had a change in corporate structure.

the man responsible was sent to run a fish cannery on a remote island in Japan.

Matsushita is a multi billion dollar company.

they also turned the hardware into ATMS, corvette kiosks for chevy (fz-35s)
and a semi cd-i type unit.

[Lost Monkey]

M2 on eBay

[Ferris]

Most M2 units you find are white because they are the dev systems. Panasonic had three other colors that varied slightly from the dev systems. The first was white just like the dev system except it only said "Panasonic" square in the center of the cd lid, and the power and open buttons were a misty blue. There was also a unit that was crayola blue and had the same "Panasonic R-E-A-L" badging on the system that the previous units had. This system was fairly ugly, to me anyway. The third and best looking unit was solid black and with all the lines of the M2 it looked like a stealth. Again it just said Panasonic on the unit but it looked serious. I think I may be able to get my hands on one of these black units but we'll see.

Justin

[Bruce Tomlin]

The thing I'm curious about is if we'll ever see the encryption show up for 3DO. As I understand it, the 3DO uses digital signature encryption like the 7800 did, and the signature program (or at least the master key) has to be found to open up the 3DO to homebrews. I'm presuming 3DO kept this pretty close and you won't find it in a dev system.

Finding the 7800/Lynx/Jag keys was a lot of luck, and a bit of dumpster diving too. (And I seem to recall hearing that the 7800 encryption was "found" again last year in a different place from the original find.) I just hope we get lucky again with the 3DO. Or maybe someone can at least come up with a hack to an existing game which opens up a backdoor to homebrews.

[Flojomojo]

Bruce Tomlin, on Thu Jun 2, 2005 11:00 AM, said:

The thing I'm curious about is if we'll ever see the encryption show up for 3DO.  As I understand it, the 3DO uses digital signature encryption like the 7800 did, and the signature program (or at least the master key) has to be found to open up the 3DO to homebrews.  I'm presuming 3DO kept this pretty close and you won't find it in a dev system.

Finding the 7800/Lynx/Jag keys was a lot of luck, and a bit of dumpster diving too.  (And I seem to recall hearing that the 7800 encryption was "found" again last year in a different place from the original find.)  I just hope we get lucky again with the 3DO.  Or maybe someone can at least come up with a hack to an existing game which opens up a backdoor to homebrews.

That's an exciting thought ... like the Sega CD, there's no disc checking mechanism in the 3DO, which makes it possible to easily and cheaply distribute code, unlike a cartridge system like the Jaguar. I'd love to see some homebrews or at elast hacks on this old console.

[Jess Ragan]

Before you sell that M2, get some footage of the games, or even better, look into having them dumped.

If I properly recall, the M2 was distributed in Japan as arcade hardware. I think there was a review of one of its games on Shmups.com... it was a vertically scrolling Konami shooter that looked surprisingly primitive. All the characters were made from simple, flat-shaded polygons with obvious edges. They looked like they came straight from the movie Tron... they certainly weren't Dreamcast quality if you ask me.

JR

[Ferris]

I have a few complete development systems including the original Macintosh computers with all the software loaded. Whatever encription exists is on one of these hard drives as I have everything needed to develop games for a phantom console that never existed.

Hey anyone up for playing some Panther??

[Ferris]

Scored the M2 development console on ebay!

http://cgi.ebay.com/...8196392180&rd=1

[sflynn]

Check out the Panasonic FZ-21S1 that I found recently

http://sflynn.info/fz-21s1.html


EDIT - Moved to http://fz-21s1.blogspot.com

Attached Thumbnails

• 

Edited by sflynn, Thu Jan 11, 2007 3:21 PM.