3D-Ohh... yeah!
Released in 1994 the 3DO was not just a console, it was one of the first examples of an all in one (for the time) media player home entertainment solution box. A master of all trades as they say.
The brain-child of the former CEO of EA, Mr Trip Hawkins this was a machine you could do anything with, play music CD's, FMV Video Disc's and of course the state of the art 3D games. Trip you see was a visionary who predicted where all of this emerging technology was going. He turned out to be right even though the console failed badly. Machine Costs and the PS1 was it's downfall.
There are several makes of 3DO, Panasonic, Goldstar, Sanyo and a Creative Labs card for PC. It's a 32-Bit beast and deserves play.
How to get the most out of Trip's legendary machine
The excellent 3DO console is just a click away if you decide to go the emulation route. There are several emulators available but I find the one that works best for me is 4DO. This can be downloaded from any good emulation site or its developer's home page. www.fourdo.com
For the 3DO you will need the Console ROM file to be able to play any of the games, this can be found from many sites across the web.
You can use Game ROMS or the actual CD-ROMs from a 3DO system to play a game of your choice. Once the 4DO emulator is downloaded unzip all the contents to a directory.
Launch the 4DO executable and you will be presented with the following screen.
From here we'll be configuring the options for our system. First thing we need is to setup the BIOS for the software to work properly in emulating a 3DO system.
Go to File -> Choose BIOS ROM.
Locate the ROM file you downloaded and select open from the file viewer that pops up.
Next we're going to configure this bad boy, go into Options -> 4DO Settings -> Advanced.
Here you can leave the CPU settings and audio buffer size at their default level or adjust them if you wish.
You can also render High Resolution Rendering which is good for 3D rendered games but is very CPU intensive.
Next Hop over to the display options.
Make sure all three items are checked as this gives the optimal image quality with the resolutions of today.
Next we will hop over to the General tab.
You can choose the options that appeal to you, here you can configure whether the emulator automatically runs the last game played, whether the last state saved is automatically loaded when a game is ran, and how the emulator behaves when you go to another program while it is running.
Once you have configured the software click okay to save the settings. Now we need to configure your controls.
Go to Options -> Configure Input Settings and set up your controller.
Left click on 'Add Set,' then set all and press the buttons that you want to emulate whichever button the emulator shows in red as it cycles through each item.
Once satisfied with your settings click ok to save the control settings.
Restart the emulator now by hitting F12 to reset, the 3DO should now boot up.
Go to the file menu and you can open the drive that has the disc in if you're using physical media or choose 'Open CD Image File.' If Physical media, once you select the drive, the game will launch automatically. For the file you find your downloaded image and click open.
Your game should now load. For full screen click the menu button on the bottom right that says 'Display Options' and choose full screen.
Enjoy your game!
