Next Generation Issue 007 (July 1995)

I like how they stagger the 6-page interviews with the big 10-page history of the companies – doing both from the same console might be boring if you don’t care about 3DO or Jaguar. 

Highlights From this Issue: We start with a 7-page interview with Sam Tramiel, president of Atari. This is the famous interview you may have heard about. “We plan for Jaguar to be here for a long time. We’re working on a Jaguar 2 right now, downstairs, as we speak.” Remember, there would be massive layoffs in Nov 1995, only five months away. Production would cease, and they had 100,000 consoles in inventory that never sold. Lots of great quotes. In News we find out the Saturn stealth launched early on May 11, at $399 and with six games (the first day of E3). It took everybody by surprise, and Sega thought it was a win for them, but the reality is that retailers hated it, because customers didn’t have knowledge it was coming, they didn’t make ANY money on the hardware, and six games was a small selection. We have a look at all current consoles, Hasbro ‘s Home VR was shown but would ultimately be cancelled. Intel shows a chipset “twice as fast as Intel,” and we have the main feature, “3DO: Past, Present, and Future” a 10-page article. Lots of info, with a look at the Top 10 Best 3DO Games so far. The Previews cover WipeOut, Gunner’s Heaven, Destruction Derby, and Krazy Ivan for PS1. We also see Highlander (jaguar cd), Virtua Racing (sat), Ray Force (sat) and a few more.

The Reviews see 5 PS1 games, 3 Saturn games, 7 for 3DO, with other consoles only having 1 or 2 releases. Don’t get too excited, several are imports since the PS and Saturn weren't out yet by time of the reviews. So you have stuff like Cosmic Race (PS1), Crime Crackers (PS1), King’s Field (PS1, but this will be the original one that never made it to the US), Deadalus (sat), Gotha (sat), and Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon S (3do). The 32X gets reviews for Fahrenheit, RBI 95, Zaxxon’s Motherbase 2000, and Slam City with Scotty Pippin. And PC has several like XCOM and BioForge.

They try to make it seem like 3DO was close to making it work, but the reality is that both the Saturn and PlayStation surpassed the installed base of the 3DO by the next year. During the second quarter of 1996 several software supporters for 3DO, including the software division of The 3DO Company themselves, announced they were no longer making games for the system. Console manufacturing would stop by the end of the year.