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After our release of a Missile Defense 3-D Prototype last year, we stumbled on more good stuff...

The February 1987 issue of "Computer Entertainer" a trade publication made available to retailers and purchasers in the US introduced the 3-D Glasses:

"Games in 3D
Another new peripheral, the 3D Imager with glasses, was shown in a darkened room with WALLBALL-3D (a racquetball game) and 3D GUNNER (a space shooting game for the use with the Light Phaser). The futuristic, goggle-like glasses come with an interface unit with plugs into the Master System Power Base. (A $65 package, 3D Imager with Glasses and WALLBALL-3D, was announced at CES. Two weeks later, however, WALLBALL-3D was scraped due to lukewarm response from show-goers. As of presstime, the 3D Imager witrh Glasses as to be sold by itself for $50, with 3D games set to retail at $40 each.). The 3D glasses employ liquid crystal technology which can make either lens instantly opaque. Using special game software which alternately displays slightly different pictures for the left and the right eyes, the glasses block out one eye at a time in synchrony with the software. The picture on the TV screen appears to vibrate when viewed without the glasses (an easy way to make yourself quite dizzy), but snaps into an illusion of 3D reality when the glasses allow each each to see only its special image. Viewed in a completely darkened room, the way Sega showed the glasses and games, the effect is quite good and suffers only the barest minimum of flicker."

This has been discussed in https://www.smspower.org/forums/15531 and other places however we generally discussed WALLBALL-3D mostly, and assumed 3D GUNNER was an early name for Missile Defense 3-D... we were wrong!

Introducing 3D Gunner for the Master System, an unreleased early prototype we managed to acquired recently.

The game is a 32 kilobyte ROM so as you can imagine it is a very simple piece of software and predate the more full fledged Missile Defense 3-D. Althought we couldn't get confirmation of it, we can imagine this was maybe programmed by Mark Cerny who also programmed Shooting Gallery and Missile Defense 3-D (and worked on things such as Marble Madness and the PS4 console).

The games requires both 3-D Glasses and Light Phaser and may be usable in all setups. What more, there was a bug in recent Meka build which prevented 32 KB from accessing 3-D Glasses registers...

For an ideal experience, you can use MEKA 2019-12-13 which is released today. Otherwise if you use an older version of MEKA you will need to this line in your meka.nam file:

SMS 56dcb2d4 9FA930C396F93600 3D Gunner [Proto]/EMU_MAPPER=0/EMU_INPUTS=LIGHTPHASER/EMU_3D

Please note that MEKA 2019-12-13 will give you a largely more confortable Light Phaser emulation experience for the game.

It may or not work in other emulators, and of course should work on a real system should you be equipped with a Light Phaser, a pair of 3-D Glasses and a CRT screen :)

Enjoy!

Bonus midly related beautiful scan of early 3-D Glasses prototypes:

ComputerEntertainer-198702-Extract-01.JPG (100.21 KB)

WedLikeYouToSeeThingsOurWay-560px.jpg (82.38 KB)

3D Gunner Cart 01.jpg (154.2 KB)

3D Gunner Cart 02.jpg (230.21 KB)

This message will auto destruct itself someday.

3d_gunner-proto-sms.zip (14.09 KB)

That large image just wrecked the layout of the front page.
(a huge blank space until scrolling to the end of the links section on the right)

Man it’s crazy that we still find new stuff more than 30 years later !
Great pickup !

2D mode and no-flashing patches here:

https://www.smspower.org/Hacks/3DGunner-SMS-2D

Great work Bock! Looking forward to playing this

Great finding! Thanks for sharing.

The background has a real depth sensation, it is truly beautiful, and the sound is really good.

Game is a little too short, it becomes too hard very quickly.

Anyway, it was great to experience it in a real setup!

Wow, great find!

I wonder why SEGA cancelled it.

It's just a demo, and it's finished (not 100% polished of course, and so many hacks possible...).

Revo wrote

It's just a demo, and it's finished (not 100% polished of course, and so many hacks possible...).

Does this mean it's possible to really finish the game or does it stop somewhere?

It took me some time, but I tested on real computer and here it is

thanks a lot

56C0C544-1078-4A6B-8778-9B009ABC2E3B.jpeg (1.46 MB)

3D gunner cartridge

Author	Message
Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8710 Location: Paris, France	Unreleased '3D Gunner' for Master System Posted: Fri Dec 13, 2019 2:14 pm Last edited by Bock on Fri Dec 13, 2019 2:15 pm; edited 1 time in total
	After our release of a Missile Defense 3-D Prototype last year, we stumbled on more good stuff... The February 1987 issue of "Computer Entertainer" a trade publication made available to retailers and purchasers in the US introduced the 3-D Glasses: "Games in 3D Another new peripheral, the 3D Imager with glasses, was shown in a darkened room with WALLBALL-3D (a racquetball game) and 3D GUNNER (a space shooting game for the use with the Light Phaser). The futuristic, goggle-like glasses come with an interface unit with plugs into the Master System Power Base. (A $65 package, 3D Imager with Glasses and WALLBALL-3D, was announced at CES. Two weeks later, however, WALLBALL-3D was scraped due to lukewarm response from show-goers. As of presstime, the 3D Imager witrh Glasses as to be sold by itself for $50, with 3D games set to retail at $40 each.). The 3D glasses employ liquid crystal technology which can make either lens instantly opaque. Using special game software which alternately displays slightly different pictures for the left and the right eyes, the glasses block out one eye at a time in synchrony with the software. The picture on the TV screen appears to vibrate when viewed without the glasses (an easy way to make yourself quite dizzy), but snaps into an illusion of 3D reality when the glasses allow each each to see only its special image. Viewed in a completely darkened room, the way Sega showed the glasses and games, the effect is quite good and suffers only the barest minimum of flicker." This has been discussed in https://www.smspower.org/forums/15531 and other places however we generally discussed WALLBALL-3D mostly, and assumed 3D GUNNER was an early name for Missile Defense 3-D... we were wrong! Introducing 3D Gunner for the Master System, an unreleased early prototype we managed to acquired recently. The game is a 32 kilobyte ROM so as you can imagine it is a very simple piece of software and predate the more full fledged Missile Defense 3-D. Althought we couldn't get confirmation of it, we can imagine this was maybe programmed by Mark Cerny who also programmed Shooting Gallery and Missile Defense 3-D (and worked on things such as Marble Madness and the PS4 console). The games requires both 3-D Glasses and Light Phaser and may be usable in all setups. What more, there was a bug in recent Meka build which prevented 32 KB from accessing 3-D Glasses registers... For an ideal experience, you can use MEKA 2019-12-13 which is released today. Otherwise if you use an older version of MEKA you will need to this line in your meka.nam file: SMS 56dcb2d4 9FA930C396F93600 3D Gunner [Proto]/EMU_MAPPER=0/EMU_INPUTS=LIGHTPHASER/EMU_3D Please note that MEKA 2019-12-13 will give you a largely more confortable Light Phaser emulation experience for the game. It may or not work in other emulators, and of course should work on a real system should you be equipped with a Light Phaser, a pair of 3-D Glasses and a CRT screen :) Enjoy! Bonus midly related beautiful scan of early 3-D Glasses prototypes: ComputerEntertainer-198702-Extract-01.JPG (100.21 KB) WedLikeYouToSeeThingsOurWay-560px.jpg (82.38 KB) 3D Gunner Cart 01.jpg (154.2 KB) 3D Gunner Cart 02.jpg (230.21 KB)

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8710 Location: Paris, France	Downloads Posted: Fri Dec 13, 2019 2:14 pm
	This message will auto destruct itself someday. 3d_gunner-proto-sms.zip (14.09 KB)

KingMike Joined: 14 Oct 2008 Posts: 533	Posted: Sun Dec 15, 2019 5:51 pm
KingMike Joined: 14 Oct 2008 Posts: 533	That large image just wrecked the layout of the front page. (a huge blank space until scrolling to the end of the links section on the right)

Kenneth Joined: 20 Dec 2004 Posts: 749 Location: Lyon, France	Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2019 8:42 pm
	Man it’s crazy that we still find new stuff more than 30 years later ! Great pickup !

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14991 Location: London	Posted: Sat Dec 21, 2019 12:00 am
	2D mode and no-flashing patches here: https://www.smspower.org/Hacks/3DGunner-SMS-2D

darthsylly Joined: 19 Oct 2010 Posts: 31	Posted: Sun Dec 22, 2019 1:48 pm
darthsylly Joined: 19 Oct 2010 Posts: 31	Great work Bock! Looking forward to playing this

dplc81 Joined: 20 Apr 2011 Posts: 33	Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2019 12:38 am
dplc81 Joined: 20 Apr 2011 Posts: 33	Great finding! Thanks for sharing. The background has a real depth sensation, it is truly beautiful, and the sound is really good. Game is a little too short, it becomes too hard very quickly. Anyway, it was great to experience it in a real setup!

Greg2600 Joined: 08 Apr 2011 Posts: 29	Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2020 6:45 am
Greg2600 Joined: 08 Apr 2011 Posts: 29	Wow, great find!

PrOfUnD Darkness Joined: 29 Jun 1999 Posts: 389 Location: Brazil	Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2020 10:24 pm
	I wonder why SEGA cancelled it.

Revo Guest	Posted: Sat Jan 18, 2020 2:59 am
Revo Guest	It's just a demo, and it's finished (not 100% polished of course, and so many hacks possible...).

alcoatjez Joined: 11 Apr 2020 Posts: 3 Location: Netherlands	Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2020 9:50 am
	Revo wrote It's just a demo, and it's finished (not 100% polished of course, and so many hacks possible...). Does this mean it's possible to really finish the game or does it stop somewhere?

Asisluque Joined: 13 Jul 2018 Posts: 17	Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2020 7:43 pm
Asisluque Joined: 13 Jul 2018 Posts: 17	It took me some time, but I tested on real computer and here it is thanks a lot 56C0C544-1078-4A6B-8778-9B009ABC2E3B.jpeg (1.46 MB) 3D gunner cartridge

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