3DO

3DO Interactive Multiplayer · 1993–1996

The 3DO was a concept as much as a console — Trip Hawkins's idea of a licensed multimedia standard that any manufacturer could build, sold at launch for a punishing $699 and dead within three years. The library is small (around 200 titles worldwide) and heavily weighted toward the early-CD-era's full-motion-video experiments, redeemed by a clutch of genuine cult classics and ambitious oddities. The collecting market is led by a few low-print late releases and the platform's better-regarded games, and the 3DO's status as a famous failure gives it a devoted niche following. A platform collected for its strangeness and its place in the brief, bizarre interregnum between the 16-bit and 32-bit eras.