LGR Oddware - Creative 3DO Blaster

Is there any chance the "Freeze" feature actually does a one-shot image capture and skips the overlay, so you can take a Windows screenshot? That would have actually be the one useful thing this card could do - high-quality screenshots of 3DO games. Otherwise I love the addition of the 100% unrelated Aldus software that makes no use of the hardware at all. Shovelware at it's finest!

kalleboo

When I first stumbled on your channel many moons ago my personal wish list was you covering this and Microsoft Bob! Thanks for making this happen!

Can't wait to see this one! Coincidentally I fired up my 3DO this week on a whim. It was ahead of its time.

Lon Seidman

Does the software work in Win 95? I wonder what would happen if you used an .iso file with CD virtualization software instead of a CD.

Jared

I never knew how much I wanted a transparent Solitaire until now. Seriously, how cool would it be to veg out with translucent cards over a YouTube or Netflix video?

Steve Lovelace

I remember seeing talk of them BITD (which was right before I joined the PC world), but gosh… …it's so 90's odd it's glorious. Such a strange bit of history - and of all folks, coming from Creative is quite a thing.

Rob Caporetto

I had just read about this card in Fabien Sanglard's DOOM Black Book last night and thought how cool it'd be if you made an oddware on it. What a trip!

avfusion

Honestly wish they had done more things like that with the PC, it could'a been so fun

Robert Butler

i wish we had these type of pci cards nowadays

My cup of retro tea. I wish there was something like this for DOS that would run on a 286.

Ryan Yoder

Finally got a chance to watch and loved the video. Absolutely had no idea the 3DO Blaster was a thing. I have to say that the 3DO version of Doom looks like an absolute dumpster fire with that tiny window box. Music sounds good though. :)

Joon Choi

wow, if you ever find those, I'm super interested in hearing more about them! You should def do a writeup or a video. I have some official SNES development software I can dig up, but it was def before the FX-2 was a thing.

Jeremy Abel

Of all the boondoggles that came out of that weird "OMG MuLtImEdIa!!!" era, the 3DO Blaster probably takes the cake for being the silliest. I mean yeah, Diamond Edge 3D let you play a subset of Saturn games, but at least it's ALSO a graphics and sound card for PC games!

RetroSwim

I love finding out about cool things I never knew existed.

I own the PC-FX/GA, and the 2 3DO Blasters. One I got from Taiwan and it needs to be recapped. It has the Japanese font IC. The other I paid too much for (but still under 1k), but is complete in box. I also have the Sega Teradrive and aside from outputting 15khz, boy is it sweet. Would like to find these development cards which are consoles on cards: Sony PSX DTL-H2000 (ISA) or DTL-H2500 (PCI) Sega Dreamcast NEC PowerVR ARC1/Sega Katana Set2 (same card, PCI) Nintendo SNES FX-2+ Development System (ISA) Philips CD-I i2m CD-I/PC 2.0 ISA or PCI card Here is a picture of my 486, with both the PC-FX/GA and the 3DO Blaster in use at the same time: https://i.imgur.com/yFNEILp.png

herbius derbius

Ah, the Sentinel. As useless as ever. lmao.

Robert Butler

He does.

SolarstrikeVG

How cow this is a rare gem! I'm so glad it's getting the LGR treatment!

Nathan (PixelPipes)

In the 90s you knew you were doing great if your PC was an endless expanse of ribbon cables.

JennaKay

I've uploaded in 4K since 2015 😁

LGR

So now we're getting the usual LGR Goodness in 4k resolution? We are not worthy, good sir

FairlyLarge

Amusingly enough, I now have two CD-ROMs that work but no card to use them with. Would love to own the card itself still :)

LGR

Man the 3DO was an amazingly weird system. Sad you didn't play Wolfenstein 3D as the 3DO version is actually one of my favourite ports of the game.

Alyxx the Rat

Yesss!! So glad to see you made a video about this!! I dunno if you remember, but I was going to send you one a while back, but I’ve been having trouble locating where I put the CD-ROM drive that it requires. As you probably know (I haven’t watched the video yet), this requires an extremely specific CD-ROM drive to work. Anyhow, sorry I never got around to finding all the pieces to send this to you, but I’m glad to see that someone else beat me to it 😊

Another wonderful video! I love it! I feel like this one will get lots of views. Such a rare piece of hardware.

Chris Love

Now I want to see if those two cards can coexist in the same box and still work properly... IIRC wasn't there a few hybrid x86/ Genesis PCs that Sega made for a while? Though I don't think they were new enough to have the horsepower to run these cards support software properly.

Exos

How many of these console-on-a-cards were made for PCs back in the day? Between this and the Sega Saturn-on-a-card by Diamond, I'm curious if there was a market for that kind of stuff. Thank you for exposing me to yet another never imagined piece of hardware, Sir.

Honorary Octopus

Neat! What magazine was that, do you recall?

LGR

Wait'll you see the others I have to cover, haha. The early 90s were a weird and wild time for consoles on a card.

LGR

Mostly just unscrupulous nonsense.

LGR

I believe the PlayStation versions of Doom and Final Doom also had Redbook audio soundtracks.

LGR

That was very interesting with the Doom soundtrack being remastered for CD Audio there... Kinda reminds me of what they did for the original Descent when they brought it to the Mac. Know if there's any other versions of Doom out there that feature that remixed soundtrack? :o

Kris Asick

Man, I'd love to know what is in the dickfart folder on your computer :D

László Viktor Lajos

Excellent video. I never new this existed.

Whoof, this is another one of those obscure "Console on a card" things you've covered that I want now sooooo much, just like the Sega PC card you covered previously.

Carey Brown

Great timing! I was just reading about this card in one of my old computer magazines just a couple of weeks ago. Interesting to see it demonstrated.

Martin Thoresen

Nice! I was really hoping you'd do this someday. I remember reading about it in a old PC magazine back in the day and wondered if it ever worked as well they said it would. Guess it's time to find out!

I'm honestly not sure if it *was* popular enough, considering the tiny sales numbers! But those lucrative 3DO licensing deals, seems like everyone wanted a piece of that pie for a moment in time.

LGR

YEP. Just so happened to be exactly 8 characters, perfect for FAT16 and DOS short filenames.

LGR

Haha, yeah that made my day when I saw that was possible. What a silly thing.

LGR

I'm still looking for it, argh! I know it's deep in some box somewhere.

LGR

It's true.

LGR

Its programmer, Rebecca Heineman, has a fascinating video about it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBbIil2HPSU

LGR

Impressive! What was your impression of it back then?

LGR

This was a known fact back in the 90s too, from what I've read! But CD burners and blank media were absurdly expensive, making the whole prospect wildly cost prohibitive.

LGR

Yeah this has been a long time coming! Feels nice to finally check something like this off the to-do list :)

LGR

That he is! Wait'll you see what else he sent along with this, there are some neat things to come.

LGR

Nah, they're running at the same speed I get on my NTSC 3DO! Check out the race timer in the bottom left on Need For Speed, it's running at the correct pace. EA sped up the gameplay a bit in later ports. As for the music, it's Redbook CD audio, which doesn't slow down or speed up in different territories. It's just a totally different composition than the original Doom.

LGR

I noticed the music of Doom was playing slower than usual. You also said that the cars drive slower in Need for Speed. Could it it have something to do with difference between PAL and NTSC? Since this card is from Germany, the "console" should run at 50 fps instead of 60, right?

_Maki

oh god, hearing that guy call every gaming device a Nintendo made me cringe

Zachary Outen

Both are indeed required, as indicated in the documentation! Without the loopback cable, if you plug a monitor into the VGA card all you see in the app is a blank screen. And if you plug the monitor directly into the 3DO Blaster itself, you only get footage from the card and nothing from the PC. According to the manual, the loopback is used for passing through video and the feature connector is used "for digital signals required to make the 3DO Blaster work." Not sure what exact digital signals but yeah :)

LGR

Is one of your folders named Dickfart?? Respect.

Nik & Julia Ingrassia

Talk about an obscure piece of tech. I never would have thought the 3DO was popular enough to warrant having a dedicated PC card. Just the thought of playing 3DO Doom on a PC where you can get a superior version of Doom. The mind reels. Also, Lucienne's Quest is one of the more expensive 3DO games, so it's pretty cool you got to experience it.

The Enforcer

Very neat. I had no idea this existed. As far as the VGA feature connector, I suspect you can use that instead of the external loopback connector. I don't think you need both.

The 8-Bit Guy

Honestly, you could photoshop ANYTHING into some of the scenes for Plumbers don't wear ties, and it would not seem out of place.

Hernando Heilbron

Road Rash behind solitare was awesome!

Uncleawesome

Did anyone else pause the video at the end to see if you could find Clint's long box version of Need for Speed? :)

Cyclone

I'll add a note in the final video!

LGR

Man it's so crazy how all the games look pretty fantastic, but that Doom version was given no love...great video Clint, thank you!

John Piscopo

Woof! I can't believe I took my minimum wage high school money combined with birthday money to blow $500 on a real 3DO system back in 1994!

Steve Martin

A piece of urban legend that floats around with this board is that it requires the CR-563 specifically. It doesn't help that it says so on the box. I tested it with the CR-563, the CR-563B, and a 4X Reveal drive. It seems like it will work with any drive you throw at it, as long as it uses the Panasonic/Matsushita interface. Great video!

herbius derbius

Ah whoops, there's supposed to be footage of the sticker there. Will fix it.

LGR

I wish. I own two of this card (one Japanese and not working), and spent significant time figuring out how they work. There's no way to do that but maybe something could have been built off of the video decoder interface.

herbius derbius

Happy Monday!

Joon Choi

The video comes out of the 3DO part of the board as composite, so you do get everything composite has to offer, including an interlaced signal.

herbius derbius

Yes, it works with the regular 3DO controllers.

herbius derbius

Say, does this work with the regular 3DO controllers? Did you test it?

Headset Guy

Maybe if people knew that they could steal the games by just copying discs this wouldve sold better!

I first heard of this when you mentioned it in your original 3DO review. I'm so happy that you were able to find one (even if just on loan) and make a video about it!

Headset Guy

Between 9:38 and 9:48 in the video, there's just pitch blackness, nothing on screen. Not sure if it's intentional or some other visuals were meant to be there, but thought I'd let you know.

When my Dad and I went to the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago in the early 90s (he had wrangled us some press passes), the people at the 3DO booth were apparently very eager to recruit developers, since they tried to sell my Dad on the idea of developing for the 3DO. He was actually kind of interested until I explained what it would involve — he has no programming experience whatsoever. If you knew him, you would know how ludicrous the idea of him being a developer would be, but I think it explains the level of quality of some of the 3DO software. BTW there is a long black screen just before the 10 minute mark that may not be intentional

Mighty Jabba's Collection

Plumbers don't wear ties, haha! Yes, I've tested that in Windows 3.1 and DOSBox-X :) It's surprising how much the PC version of the game is just a bunch of BMP and WAV files combined together as a game, though it's missing the video.

"Surely this is some kinda 3d graphics card Creative put out.... Alrightey then...." :P It did make me giggle to see Solitaire on top of a game console though.

Jason Wellband

I wonder if this card has some interface that allows the host to halt the 3D0, poke at it's state, change state, basically anything that homebrew developers could use to write their own games :)

The overlay keying reminds me of the Creative DXR3 DVD decoder card I bought in the very early 2000s where the card used the same trick to overlay the DVD video you're playing on your VGA output.

I like how the overlay is the 3D0 output without any composite video artifacts. It's like having an RGB out on a 3D0 without modding. It has that proprietary CD-ROM interface that was common with sound cards before ATAPI IDE was a thing, too.

I second everyone else in that I had no idea this was a thing! Looking forward to watching this later!

Vince Fond

God this is exactly what I needed today Clint! I’ve been disassembling my T4900CT to remove the dreaded leaky battery of doom and have been watching LGR videos on the projector in the background.. might take a break and watch this. I love this sort of crazy early 90s thinking.. imagine getting a PS4 on a card today.. nope!

Andrew Kirkby

Holy cow. I've never seen one of these before. Didn't even knew this was a thing. A 3do inside a DOS PC? Ahh, dude. Those were the days. Weird days. Great video.

Deckard Games

And I thought the Saturn card was weird... never even heard of this thing.

moosemaimer

That is awesome! I've never heard of that thing, and it was made by Creative too! I still own my Goldstar 3DO and I have very found memories of that console, even if I was the only one of my friends who owned one. It was way too ahead of its time, plus the price tag was just ridiculous...

Frederic St-Georges

Brandon is such a nice guy. Never seen this before yet along in the box