Silanda

FWIW, my FZ-1 never liked CD-Rs much. The brand of media and the model of drive made some difference, and lowering burn speed actually made things worse, but it was always a little flaky despite working just fine with pressed discs. As best as I can tell, 3DOs in general seem to be pickier with CD-Rs than most consoles.

Yes, and at least one of those required the MPEG video card.

That's an interesting question. KoF '95 and Ultraman use ROM carts, so the images can't be supplied with the Polymega and the system has no way of dumping them. I can only assume that the system won't support those games. It's just an emulation box though, so it'll probably handle the RAM carts like Mednafen does: the games just work.

An announcement of an announcement of a new shipping date for a product that's already years late? Are they having a laugh?

Bit late but there are, as others have mentioned. Case in point: that all time classic "Rise of the Robots". The music in the intro slows down if you play it on NTSC hardware. Also, on the defeated robot screen that appears when you win a match, the screen will turn red in time with the music. On NTSC systems this is mistimed. I wonder if the problems, alongside the game's stunning quality, helped to prevent a US release. As a PAL gamer, the most annoying games are ones that were partially optimized. What I mean by that are games where they speed adjusted some things to be correct at 50Hz but not everything. Take Streets of Rage 3: Sega optimized the gameplay speed so that it was the same as that on NTSC consoles, but they didn't fix the tempo of the music, which is too slow on PAL consoles. That means that you are left with the problem that if you switch to 60Hz on a modded console to fix the music, the gameplay's too fast, but at 50Hz the music sounds laboured. To make matters worse, by ear alone I'm 50/50 on whether the music's just to slow, or too slow with slight tempo fluctuations. I might just be hearing things.

Pah! The game was flawed but ahead of its time. Stuff like deteriorating/double vision in first person mode were pretty innovative. The Fight Night games did things much better a decade later, but Foes of Ali was a pretty good attempt at a realistic boxing game for 1995.

My FZ-10 had a problem like this. Some games were fine, others would start out fine but have difficulty reading as the console warmed up, some were always trouble. Replacing the laser fixed the issue. Strangely, the old Playstation fix of standing the console on its side also improved matters. The mechanisms are different between the two consoles so the problem obviously couldn't have been the same, but in my case it makes me wonder if there was a physical problem with the pickup (not the laser diode itself) that was affecting its ability to focus.

My FZ-1 does this, my FZ-10 doesn't. My thinking is that the characteristics of the pickup change very slightly as the system warms up, but change enough to make reading CD-Rs unreliable. Perhaps some of the pickups were right on the edge specs wise. I'm sceptical about it being due to the laser overheating due to increased power output because I can't seem to find evidence that the power output can even be dynamically changed. The output of writing lasers can be calibrated to produce optimal quality burns, but I can't seem to find documentation that the power output of reading lasers can be outside of manually adjusting pots. I'd be grateful if someone could point me in the direction of some if I'm mistaken. Try burning at different speeds, and maybe even on different drives, to see if that helps. I'm of the opinion that the whole "it's best to burn at 1x" thing is an old wives tale with little scientific basis, and what likely matters is how accurately the writer lays down the track. Slower isn't automatically better. If your problem's the same as mine, speed won't make a difference here though. What drive you burn with might make a difference. For example, my Mega-CD always struggled with discs produced with one particular Lite-On drive I had in the past. Speed, burn type, etc, were all irrelevant; it would always struggle to seek to the audio tracks. The discs worked fine in various PC drives. What happened with the same media but written in a different drive? Worked perfectly.

I'll just mention that the PC version isn't a port, it isn't really the same game at all. It has the same plot and setting, and uses some of the FMV from the 3DO version, but it appears to have been pretty much built from the ground up. The engine's different, the maps are entirely different, it plays differently, the enemies look completely different, etc.

Just to double check: there's no sign of a hairline crack in the cog gear is there? That's an extremely common point of failure in the 3DO's drive mechanism, and as it's probably caused by plastic becoming more brittle or shrinking over time, it can occur even when the console hasn't been used for years. The crack can be so small that it looks like it wouldn't cause a problem, but it does.

I haven't played very far but I believe so. It's got what basically amounts to a trainer menu at the start, so you can turn invulnerability, infinite ammo, debug info, etc, off if you want to play it properly. I did notice one bug: it's possible to throw yourself out of bounds if you strafe at the same time as turn 180 (i.e. L1 or R1 + L2 or R2). You seem to be able to just walk yourself back into the map again though.

Played a bit of this now, and it's pretty much as I thought. The Playstation version runs better, the 3DO version looks better. The 3DO version is more colourful and it uses LOD textures so that the textures are replaced by low detail ones when they get far from the viewport. I'm not convinced doing that looks great in this case, but perhaps there was a technical reason for it. Whatever the case, this technique appears to be missing in the Playstation version. Also missing in the Playstation version is the seamless loading between stages. There are no obvious load times on the 3DO version so all the stages connect together and feel like one large map. The Playstation version has "now loading" pauses between stages. It's a shame this wasn't released though. I've never understood why they did that with completed disc based games where the manufacturing costs weren't that high. It wasn't like with cartridges where there was a large, up-front, manufacturing cost.

My Japanese FZ-10 has the input voltage (along with Japanese text) printed on the bottom of its case.

Late to the party, but it looks like another 3DO to PS1 port that would have suffered from the Playstation's texture format limitations. AFAIK the 3DO was more flexible in terms of texture/sprite colour formats than the PS1. If I understand things correctly, on the PS1 you had a choice of 16, 256, or 32768 colour textures/sprites. Trouble was that the 3DO could use other colour depths such as 64 colour, necessitating format conversion. The PS1 usually didn't have enough VRAM to allow all textures and sprites to be converted to 256 colour though, so 16 colour had to suffice instead and detail was lost accordingly. The texture and sprite work in virtually every 3DO to PS1 port took a hit even if the games themselves ran better. Hell, even the UI in Psychic Detective on the PS1 looks less colourful than its 3DO equivalent.

What amused me slightly was the disconnect between the meter he used and the way he went about things. Fluke meters aren't cheap, and typically you'd choose one over a much cheaper meter, that might actually have more functionality, because you want one that is safe and reliable. Having the most reliable or expensive meter in the world is going to be of no benefit to you if you're going to ignore what it's telling you (e.g. not a dead short), and have a recklessly cavalier attitude.