Crash 'n Burn Review - The 3DO's First Game

*PHOTOSENSITIVE WARNING*

!!SCREEN FLASHING IN VARIOUS PLACES!!

In 1993, Panasonic released their $700 3DO console with one game. That game, was Crystal Dynamic's, Crash 'n Burn.

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Opening 3D Logo By:
Jan Neves

Opening 2D Animation By:
Kevin Bhall

Episode Notes:

1. This game has known issues. It can hard lock and reboot the system randomly.

2. I remember the Best Buy liquidating its 3DO stock in 1996. Among the games in the bin was the long box Crash n Burn. I passed, forever regretting the choice.

3. Crystal Dynamics went on to create Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver, one of my favorite games.

4. Despite 1993 going poorly, 1994 was a stellar year to be a 3DO owner. It went from nothing to play to so much to play you didn't have enough money to buy it all.

5. There was to be a sequel for this on the M2, which was essentially to be the 3DO 2. That system never found its way to retail as a consumer games console, unfortunately.

6. The Japanese version of this is also cheap and works on American systems.

7. Captured on real hardware via the original S-Video output.

[zachreddy]

To put it another way, this game was only released two years after F-Zero's American SNES release, and one year after Mario Kart. Those games were still considered graphically impressive at the time. There's really no modern frame of reference for how quickly technology and game design advanced in the nineties.

[msd]

Really loved the long draw distance of the tracks in this game. Still looks impressive to me.

[turdhat]

Had a 3do on launch day and I never had a single regret. Loved the system. Even the clunky games had that 3do feel and I just loved it. Return Fire, Star Control 2 and many others still get booted up in this house from time to time.

[daveruda]

Thinking back to this time period makes it seem so exciting. I mean the amount of consoles and home computers was huge. So many choices. The 3d and cd tech was something really special at that point. The future had so much promise for awesome games. You dont see much of that anymore.

[molhoy]

The graphics on this game are fascinating. Unlike MegaRace, which used entirely pre-rendered track graphics (essentially the same as playing FMV with the car sprites and collision overlaid on top), Crash 'n Burn uses true texture-mapped polygons, with the perspective changing correctly in relation to your car's position on the road.

However, in order to achieve (for the time) decent performance in combination with the incredibly long draw distances, the developer came up with an ingenious method of pre-calculating all of the possible positions that your car could appear on the track, then having the 3DO stream these from the CD on the fly. This allowed them to render true polygons with the ability to shift the perspective, but without the need for the 3DO to calculate the perspective in real-time. In short, the polygons are rendered in real-time, but the calculations to determine the perspective are not. This explains why it's not possible to turn the camera around, since introducing this variable would have increased the number of calculations exponentially, making it too difficult to implement.

I read a really interesting article about this years ago, but can't for the life of me find it now, so please forgive me if some of the detail is incorrect as this is all from memory!

[darthv]

It amazez me that this game has never been remade, remastered or rebooted for more modern systems. It is still a blast to play but I cant help imagine what a solid 30fps or even 60fps could do.

[deepblue]

I wanted this console so bad when I first saw it. I'll never forget, I was in Tower Records and when I saw Fifa, Need for Speed and Road Rash and ny jaw just dropped. I knew at that point that I was witnessing the future. In fact I felt the same way when I first saw Virtua Fighter and Battle Arena Toshinden for the first time. I miss those days so much. My mom saw thw price tag on the 3DO and just like that my dreams were crushed. Now as an adult I fortunately have money for these consoles but unfortunately not a lot of time.

[twoheadedthingies]

What I like most about your channel is your enless positivity about even those things that are considered "bad" by most... It's refreshing!

I got my 3DO in 2006, paid £70 for it with nineteen games - it's become one of my Top Five consoles ever since then.

[retrogamesdaniel]

Incredible game of the time. More homesick than him, it was Road & Track: The Need for Speed, the first. It was very good, as was Road Rash 32bit too.

[robertlawrence]

I remember seeing the 3DO in magazines and reading about this game. It blew me away thinking of the possibilities of the system. I never could afford one but in later years, I got a Sega CD. When I finally got a PlayStation, I actually did buy Total Eclipse and Off World Interceptor for it. They were budget titles and decent for the money. Control wasn't too good but they had neat graphics and concepts. It would be awesome if they brought back the Crash 'n Burn in a reimagined remake. It could be cool to have a rocking soundtrack, cars, weapons and crazy character personalities with today's systems.

[Hmbs]

This is actually pretty impressive and something I'd never expected from the 3DO.

[acecarrera]

This game may not age well, but I can tell you this, it had the wow factor that many later games lack.

[goeland]

Is no one gonna talk about the irony behind naming the console's first game "crash and burn"? Ominous innit

[SkyScourgeGod]

I'm really happy that more people are starting to give the 3DO and it's library a second chance at a decent retro gaming life. I bought mine earlier this year and it's been a blast collecting games for it. Even before I bought mine I really believed that the 3DO was better than most people gave it credit for. Not perfect by any stretch, but if you were a 90's kid like me there is something there to appreciate.

As for Crash 'n Burn, even without considering the time and era it came out in, I'd say the game is pretty alright. As you mentioned before it's nothing too special, but it's pretty damn impressive for it's time and has a certain charm that only cheesy 90's games can ever have. There's certainly much better racing games on the 3DO like Need for Speed, Road Rash or even Mega Race, but Crash 'n Burn is still worth a look if you find it for cheap.

[infernal_monkey]

The verticality of the tracks is still impressive, something many other 3D racers that would follow never came close to matching. There's something awesome about seeing a huge hill in the distance.

Crash 'n Burn is a lot of fun with emulation since you can overclock the CPU for a smoother frame rate.

[BenadrylJackson]

I appreciate the historical content you provide here. As you mentioned, games like this are often overlooked and unfairly compared against those that emerged years later.

[brentgranger]

Don't feel bad about missing out on the long box version. I passed on an opportunity to get the Star Fox competition cartridge, and it has become one of my biggest regrets of my childhood.

[Sinn]

I remember this well...I decided to wait for the first new machine that gave me Doom (it's all I cared about). That turned out to be the much cheaper Jaguar and for the most part I enjoyed it. I did get a 3DO with Road Rash roughly 6 months later and man was it pretty neat having both. I had a two TV setup in my bedroom and friends would come over and play the best gaming had to offer for the time. Crash & Burn was a very good game fir its time.

[zackschilling]

I got the 3DO one year for a birthday present, after it dropped in price.

[thomaselers]

I played this to death when it first came out. I feel it was a very ambitious game for its time. (Remember this was released long before Wipeout) I remember playing this, thinking "the future is now". 😂