3DO Blaster

The early 90s were an amazing time for gamers. The Sega Mega Drive, Super Nintendo and (at least in Japan) the PC-Engine were all going strong. Over in the IBM PC-compatible land, a company by the name of Creative Labs had just released the first Sound Blaster card that allowed for higher quality sounds and music in games than the boops and bleeps we were used to coming out of the rudimentary PC speaker.

While all of this was going on, a consortium of companies led by Electronic Arts (EA) founder Trip Hawkins got together to discuss and design a new gaming console to enter the market. It would be CD-ROM based and offer high quality videos and gameplay, but without the price tag IBM PC-compatible machines had commanded. So, in 1993 the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer was born.

As the 3DO was a set of hardware specifications and not a physical console, it meant anyone could make one! It was this arrangement that allowed Creative Labs (Creative) to release their own variant in the form of the Creative 3DO Blaster.

As they were experts in making PC components, Creative made the bold choice to cram an entire 3DO onto a gigantic PC card that would then plug into a 386 or 486 computer. The card had all of the 3DO’s graphics and sound chips, which allowed it to handle all of the heavy lifting instead of the motherboard on the PC. After installing the card and connecting it to the video card, the included software allowed playing of 3DO games from within Windows 3.1 – Road Rash was definitely a far cry from Solitaire or Minesweeper!

Sounds like a pretty impressive feat of engineering, right? It was, but it suffered from some pretty hefty drawbacks, and that’s not just a crack at its size. The first major hurdle was the price tag. Retailing for $US399 in America and over $600 in Australia, the card was as expensive as a standalone 3DO system! Considering a 486 computer in the early 90s still cost upwards of $1500, dropping another $600 or more was a huge ask, even for gamers with deeper pockets.

4 years after launching for several hundred dollars, whoever bought this one for $75 must’ve thought it was a bargain!

Getting past the issue of price, there was one more roadblock to jump over – the CD-ROM technology. When designing the 3DO Blaster, Creative made an odd decision to only allow a particular type of drive to work with the card: A Creative CR-563 (a rebadged Panasonic drive). Without one of these drives, the 3DO Blaster card was utterly useless (and as a collector, this is why I’ve never been able to get mine running!).

Creative had also planned to release a second version that would support additional types of CD-ROM drives in addition to a special full motion video daughter-board, but the lack of popularity led to these never seeing the light of day.

One plug for the monitor, one plug to connect to your video card and a single controller port

Given the 3DO ended up being an expensive failure that never had the impact Trip originally envisioned, it is little wonder the 3DO Blaster also ended up tragically relegated to a footnote of gaming history. For now, gaze upon a gaming curiosity from the 90s and wonder what may have been!

The full PAL retail bundle

Shockwave and Gridders were the two pack-in full games, along with demos of other 3DO games like Alone in the Dark, Jammit & Road Rash (to name a few!)