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The 3DO M2 FZ-21 Prototype Engineering Sample Console...easier to find than PS5 or Series X!

VGEsoterica

Member
All joking aside damn is it hard to find a PS5 or Series X lolol

But it's not often I get to preserve and tear down such a rare piece of console history. Honestly it's on the rarity level of the SNES CD except way less well known because obviously the OG 3DO wasn't the hit that the OG Super Nintendo was. Probably wont be any ridiculous auctions for this unit lol

But as a fun piece of history it's certainly not something you will see every day...except today that is! Because it's come across my desk and I am tearing it all down in an attempt to load a BIOS onto it and resurrect it to a working unit...because right now it's hardware without the SOFTWARE that tells is how to boot and execute games. So I def need to rectify that. Plus it will help in getting more M2 stuff loading in MAME and hopefully soon 3DO M2 arcade games loading onto the large kiosk units with M2 hardware that were used as GM dealerships to preview new car models (a thing that happened)

But it's a piece of gaming history and in this engineering sample variant one of a kind. So that's fun. This is what Sega ALMOST bought to succeed the Saturn before they pulled out of the deal at the last minute in classic Sega style!

 

jigglet

Banned
Wasn’t this the console with the teasers that had Mario’s hat in a pool of blood or something. I vaguely remember seeing this in NextGen magazine.
 

VGEsoterica

Member
I remember these popping up quite frequently on the assembler sales forums.
the Assembler ones were DR-21 drive boxes. Same shape, same color, but only contained a cd-rom and interface board to plug into a dev card in a mac. They sadly didn't contain the console boards itself
 

amc

Member
Man, I love the look of that console. I'm certainly no hater of today's console designs but I really miss the way Sony and the other Japanese companies used to knock it out of the park sometimes. The likes of this, the OG PS1, tons of HI-FI equipment etc etc had such distinct hardware designs. Buttons, I loved buttons too.

Yeah, I ain't swapping my ipad Pro design for a button filled hunk of pure mechanical madness like Panasonic or Sony used to make but some of those designs still look awesome, a bit like this M2.
 
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VGEsoterica

Member
Man, I love the look of that console. I'm certainly no hater of today's console designs but I really miss the way Sony and the other Japanese companies used to knock it out of the park sometimes. The likes of this, the OG PS1, tons of HI-FI equipment etc etc had such distinct hardware designs. Buttons, I loved buttons too.

Yeah, I ain't swapping my ipad Pro design for a button filled hunk of pure mechanical madness like Panasonic or Sony used to make but some of those designs still look awesome, a bit like this M2.
I hear you. Industrial design back in the 90s console wars days was a bit more exciting than what we currently get. Series X is a monolith, Switch is just functional looking with an ugly dock...and the PS5....well it’s certainly “unique”
 

ManaByte

Member
No that was Nuon. Which was called Project X. And Nuon existed.
maybe? I recall something LIKE that. Post a photo if yo find one
T33ZvJX.jpg
 

Drew1440

Member
Man, I love the look of that console. I'm certainly no hater of today's console designs but I really miss the way Sony and the other Japanese companies used to knock it out of the park sometimes. The likes of this, the OG PS1, tons of HI-FI equipment etc etc had such distinct hardware designs. Buttons, I loved buttons too.

Yeah, I ain't swapping my ipad Pro design for a button filled hunk of pure mechanical madness like Panasonic or Sony used to make but some of those designs still look awesome, a bit like this M2.
I miss that era of Japanese electronics, when Hi-Fi separates were the norm. My Yamaha AV receiver kind of reminds me of them in a way.

Nice to see more M2 content, I've only ever seen the black version of the FZ-21. I wonder if this version was distributed to developers to entice them to develop for the M2 platform? seems like some sort of debug/sample unit.
 
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I hear you. Industrial design back in the 90s console wars days was a bit more exciting than what we currently get. Series X is a monolith, Switch is just functional looking with an ugly dock...and the PS5....well it’s certainly “unique”
As soon as u started to have fans in consoles it started to go downhill

hoping the ps5 refresh is half the size of the current console
 

Dr.D00p

Member
getting more M2 stuff loading in MAME

It came as a pleasent surprise to see the M2 powered shooter Tobe Polystars, now getting into actual gameplay the last time I ran it in Mame, It had just been sitting there for years, not even booting.
 

deriks

4-Time GIF/Meme God
I remember a press conference or something showing this. Looked cool as fuck and way better than the first one. Never really believed, but it's a cool piece of history
 
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