Titles like D’s Dinner Table 2 and a few projects from 3DO’s own software development groups had decidedly better geometry than the N64 but without the fuzzy textures. The system was actually a VERY capable for its time. The M2 was also the competition for the original PlayStation, not the PS2 which would have been released 4 years-ish after the M2 had it been on time. With my dedication and extensive research (which involves going to the Assembler forums and reading the M2 thread) a list has been formed of all M2 hardware known to exist, as follows:Ģx 3do m2 complete developer system (includes 3do m2 card, cdrom card, cdrom drive unit, documentry and the software toolkitġx 3do m2 maybe developer maybe early console kit running with software / gamesġx 3do m2 developer system (3do m2 dev cart, cdrom drive unit, documentry and software toolkitĪlso, Matsushita bought the M2 technology from 3DO (which is now defunct), not Panasonic, which is actually one in the same company. That's one smart business decesion.ĭoes it exist? Can you get one? Yes. $100 million and they're making coffee machines. Also it appears that Matsushita incorporated elements of M2 technology into a coffee machine, of all things. A semi complete Demo of D's was also shown at E3 in 1998 (which was later released for the Sega Dreamcast.) The only 'commerical' release of anything containing the M2 chipset was the FZ-35S, which was made as a business multimedia device, the only known software being a 'virtual car show' type thing and a home desgin program released in Japan. Four games made it into Japanese arcades based on it's hardware, Battle Tyrst, Hell night, Total Vice, and Polystars. 3DO today survives as a pretty decent software publisher, but it's highly unlikely they will ever enter the console business again.

But it was good news for the 3DO company, who becasue of the deal became one of the few hardware developers to actually see a profit upon leaving the industry. Rumor is the guy in charge of the deal ended up running a fish cannery in South America.

A lot of very disappointed 3DO nerds commited suicide that day. Imagine Sony canning PS3 a month before release. This was a pretty big shock to the gaming world back then. The screen shots shown back in 1998 were way ahead of anything the machine could have actually produced.ģDO sold the M2 to Matsushita for like $100 million dollars, who then decided not to enter the market with it.

Sadly from day one M2 was pretty much doomed. The idea was to release it as a stand alone and also as some kind of attachment to exsisting 3DO machines. This was to be Panasonic's Playstation killer, the proposed upgrade to the 32 bit 3DO machine. M2 - 3DO's vaporware upgrade (the white one is a development one, the black a consumer one) : There is even more on it too i just found out :

Prototype 3 lost odyssey