Mark Plays… Autobahn Tokio (3DO)(J)(1995)

#3DO #Panasonic #Gameplay

Autobahn Tokio released in 1995 on the 3DO platform is a classic polygon based racing game. It was developed by Sanai Enterprise, Sanyei Shobou. It takes place on the famous Tokio Autobahns. When racing you actually encounter regular traffic much like you’ll find in racing games like Need for Speed. It features 4 tracks and 3 different cars. Different racing modes.

It’s far from perfect looking at it with the spoiled gamer eyes of today. It has a slow framerate it suffers from polygon clipping that lets the background bleed through but going to an earlier mindset with different expectations: it still is a fine example of games becoming more elaborate and complex leaving the 2D, bitmap sprite based realm more and more.

It uses real polygons which is a bonus as scaling objects often works a lot better than with a sprite scaler – unless that sprite scaler is sublime like in
many Sega titles.

Now the 3DO and even the Saturn were early adopters of the 3D graphics and I reckon the Playstation nailed it when it came to the fluidity and the framerate it could give the graphics. And it was still a mighty 2D console as well.

If the framerate had been a little smoother this game would actually have been quite amazing, I reckon the 3DO just lacked the oomph or the programming back then was not as optimized as perhaps nowadays could be done on the 3DO. I haven’t found much if any homebrew for the 3DO, I am quite interested to see newer software on this platform.

This game plays like a Japanese Arcade Drifting style racer. The moment I realized that I instantly became somewhat better at the game – you might be able to observe that in the gameplay. It’s funny how the game mechanics do work differently when you have a different expectation and mind-set. Things like that have evolved and ways to configure gameplay and tailor it more and more to the gamer are a thing of beauty.

To me the 3DO is a little bit like the CDi games, some gems but also quite a few poorly executed games. Back in the day I would have been perfectly happy playing this. But we’ve been spoiled by today’s high polygon count ultra-realistic games a little. Still I am always keen on revisiting the old gaming systems that I encountered in all my years of playing video-
games. That’s ever since 1976, starting out with a PONG
clone.

Enjoy the video!

Soundtrack used: On the Knife – by Future Joust
Licensed from Epidemic Sound

My Twitter:
Tweets by LactobacillusP

My Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/LactobacillusPrimeRetroGaming

My Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/lactobacillus_prime

NOTICE:
“Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.”