Much 3DO About Nothing

I was in the People’s Republic of San Francisco this past weekend for a conference, and during lulls in between meetings I tried to find things to occupy myself without having to brave the titanic crowds gathered around Market Street. Local record stores scratched some of this itch, but the twin Goodwill thrift shops near the beating heart of the city did a much better job.

Going in, my expectations were low. After all, wouldn’t a thrift store in a big, trendy city be picked over like a carcass at a vulture convention? The last time I had gone to a thrift store in an area famed for its flamboyance, the Salvation Army in Chelsea Manhattan, that was just what I had found. Wouldn’t the reuse-happy comrades of the People’s Republic, who slap a 15-cent surcharge on paper bags, have scoured everything of value leaving only racks of Titanic VHS tapes and City of Angels cassettes?

Surprisingly, not so much.

Green with envy?

The Goodwills had racks full to bursting with DVDs, CDs, and quality books that looked like they had never been touched. Perhaps in a city where the idiom for music, movies, and bookery is snooty overpriced independent boutiques, this represents a bit of a blind spot. But the thing that surprised me the most was the sheer quantity of video games and video game consoles.

Look at that lot of original Xbox games; I’ve never seen so many in once place at a time before, especially since the original Xbox is sort of the redheaded stepchild of the line with famously ridiculously huge aesthetics and only partial compatibility with the later 360 (don’t get me started on Microsoft’s naming practices where the third Xbox is called the One).

And yet, in the middle of San Fran, a veritible forest of games for the big black box. Not just sports games either, but titles like Fable, Ninja Gaiden, and Halo 2.

How many obsolete consoles can you pick out of this low-res cellphone picture?

And that’s just the games; one peek under the glass reveals a veritable cornucopia of Xboxery. Look at that line of 360s, the neat stack of original big black boxes! Look at them heaped high with pack-in games and accessories! It’s more akin to a snooty independent video game store than a Goodwill. But the real treasures lurk slightly deeper in:

You know that your video game console is in trouble when it looks like a VCR.

Yes, that is nothing less than a 3DO Interactive Multiplayer system! At a thrift store! The 3DO, for those not in the know, was one of the early CD-ROM-based video game consoles. It, along with the CD-I, tried to make a run against the SNES and Genesis generation in the early 90s. Boasting the possibility for much better graphical quality due to the CD media, they were undone by a combination of high price point ($599, roughly $985 in 2015 dollars) and unbearably awful games that were mostly ports of bad PC “interactive movies” (like Night Trap, Mad Dog McCree, and The Daedalus Encounter).

Sadly, my limited storage space meant that I could not purchase this 3DO. Though you will note that its $95 price tag is in keeping with the 3DO spirit of sky-high price points and almost exactly what the system would sell for on the open market these days. San Francisco’s thrift stores may not be picked-over skeletons, but they know their prices.

Store: Goodwill, San Francisco, CA
Asking Price:
$5 for Xbox games
$95 for 3DO
Bought?: One Xbox game, Fable: The Lost Chapters
Value:
Fable: The Lost Chapters: $11
3DO Interactive Multiplayer: $85-90

The $150 Steel Battalion Game Controller

Just to reiterate, this is a VIDEO GAME CONTROLLER, not the extracted steering panel from an M1A1 Abrams.

When Microsoft first came up with its Xbox game console (not the Xbox One, which is actually the Xbox Three, and will be hereafter referred to exclusively as the Xbone for clarity’s sake) they had an uphill battle to gain market share. As such, they courted a number of exclusives from auteurs, visionaries, and nutcases. Ultimately it was their hijacking of an in-development Macintosh shooter, a little thing called Halo, that got their foot in the door, but there were a lot of other fascinating attempts.

None moreso than Steel Battalion. It was a giant mech game a la Gundam or MechWarrior, but with a twist: it cost $200+ and could only be played with a massive custom controller. And, Microsoft was quick to point out, it could only be played with a massive custom controller on Xbox. As you can see in the image, the controller is a beast. It is every bit as complex as an instrument panel for a real war machine, and it requires a dedicated tabletop. Even the wing pieces don’t come off easily for storage, requiring a screwdriver and a prayer–after all, can you disassemble the control panel for an M1A1 Abrams for easy storage? I think not!

The game made sure to remind you of its hardcore pedigree at every turn, too. You had to run through a whole startup sequence with this thing, and if your mecha–called a vertical tank in the same way that you might call an automobile a horizontal airplane–was too damaged, you’d have to pop that big red button and slam it to eject. And if you failed? The game erased your save files.. The only way it could be made more hardcore is if you had to physically fight someone for a copy.

Actually, that wasn’t too far from the truth. Only a limited number were made (by a company called, of all things, Nude Maker) but they clearly underestimated the market for people willing to buy both an oversized game controller and an oversized Xbox. After the first run sold out, they made another. In response to fanboy howls, the second (but also limited) run had blue buttons instead of green ones. You know, so you could tell if you were hardcore enough to buy a $200 game controller and a console that was mostly empty space inside first instead of being a johnny-come-lately who only bought a $200 game controller and a console that was mostly empty space inside later on.

These things are rare as hens’ teeth, and it’s clear that the good folks at Goodwill had no idea what it was. The controller was actually priced as two separate units: the pedals for $9.99 and the upper control deck for $19.99. $29.99 is absurdity, madness, for something so rare and sought-after; then again, it takes a practiced eye to see it for what it is instead of a deluxe PC controller or a piece of aftermarket military hardware. But it was complete, missing only the little bit of the Xbox cable that was supposed to break when you tripped over it but instead just got lost.

No game disc (and I did look) but really, who cares? The disc is the easy part, and there were only two games ever made that use it: Steel Battalion and the online-only Steel Battalion: Line of Contact, which can now only be played with a system link since its servers are long-since deactivated. That’s right, kids: if there are two people crazy enough to both own game discs, Xboxes, these controllers, and a system link cable, they can duel to the death. Loser forfeits their save data!

Store: Goodwill, Oxford, MS
Asking Price: $29.99
Bought?: Yes
Value: $150