3DO Accessories & Mods
Creative Labs 3DO Blaster
Launched in 1994 at $399 (around £300) , Creative Labs were granted a 3DO license to build a PC expansion card . They built a limited run of these expensive 3DO blaster ISA boards for Win 3.1 PC. This required the user to have a spare 16 BIT ISA slot, a SoundBlaster Pro card and a CR-563 CD-ROM installed. Very rare and very expensive.
3DO Mouse FZ-JM1
The 3DO Mouse FZ-JM1 supported Crime Patrol, Cyberdillo, Drug Wars, Kingdom: The Far Reaches, Lemmings, Mad Dog II, Myst, Policenauts, Shanghai: Triple-Threat, Space Pirates, The Last Bounty Hunter, World Cup Golf and Zhadnost. This mouse is also now supported on the the HomeBrew version of REAL Tempest.
3DO CH Flight stick Pro
CH Flightstick Pro joystick which supported: Blade Force, Killing Time, The Need for Speed, Phoenix 3, PO’ed, Return Fire, Shock Wave 2, Shock Wave: Operation JumpGate, Flying Nightmares, Star Fighter, Star Wars: Rebel Assault, Super Wing Commander, Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger and VR Stalker
Video CD adapter
Video CD cards . These came in 2 variants- one for the FZ-1 and one for FZ-10. The FZ-FV1 and FZ-FV10 allowed playback of the soon to be defunct Video CD MPEG 1 format. No games I’m aware of made extra use of this add-on to offer an enhanced version of FMV playback.
3DO Digital Stick controller
The Panasonic FZ-JS1 digital controller was only sold in Japan and allowed connections to other 3DO controllers for daisy chaining , as well as having auto fire and turbo button options.
CAPCOM Soldier JoyPad
Quite a strange looking joypad but pretty comfortable to hold. Capcom released this 6 button Street Fighter joypad in conjunction with StreetFighter II Turbo game, to help players suffering with the original 3DO joypad and having difficulty pulling off streetfighter moves.
3DO Memory Unit
Memory card FZ-EM256: This was a TDK 128k static RAM card and expanded the 3DO’s 32kb of NVRAM to let customers store more game save states. Came with a memory management CD and sold only in Japan.
3DO ODE by Fixel
Recently I had my FZ-1 console modded by Neil at https://8bitplus.co.uk/ to rip out the CD Drive and replace it with a circuit board developed by Fixel. There is also a front housing available that fits into the gap made by the missing CD drive and lets you add/remove your micro SD card easily.
The interface is good and the conversion has so far worked flawlessly. It is really fast booting up games and so convenient having all the games on one card.
I do still love collecting the long boxes but for ease of play this conversion is fantastic. Fixel also sells a external unit that attaches to the back of the console, if you need to retain your CD drive.
I loaded the instruction manual and the current Boot.iso here.
Fixel’s website is here.
