SegaScope 3-D Glasses – Peripherals

Active-shutter LCD 3D glasses, on an 8-bit console, in 1987 — the same technology living rooms would rediscover twenty-three years later, running at half the frame rate and supporting eight games.

Sega released the SegaScope 3-D Glasses in 1987 across all three of its major markets — Japan, North America and Europe — for around $50. The technology was not a gimmick in the red-and-blue anaglyph sense. These were genuine active-shutter LCD glasses: each lens darkens and clears in rapid alternation, synchronised to the display, so that each eye sees only the frames intended for it and the brain fuses them into depth. It is the same alternate-frame-sequencing principle that the 3D television industry would market heavily around 2010. The cost was frame rate. Because the display has to alternate between two eye views, the effective refresh available to each eye is halved — typically leaving games running at around 30 frames per second. On a Master System, that is a meaningful sacrifice. And the library never materialised: eight games supported the glasses, several of them 3D reworkings of existing hits like Out Run, Zaxxon and Missile Defense, produced chiefly to give the accessory something to run. It flopped comprehensively. But it is a genuinely remarkable artefact — a piece of consumer stereoscopic hardware, using the correct underlying technique, shipped to three continents for an 8-bit console, more than two decades before the mainstream tried the same thing and also failed.

Key Facts:

Released in 1987 in Japan, North America and Europe at roughly $50
Used genuine active-shutter LCD lenses with alternate frame sequencing, not anaglyph colour filtering
The technique halves the frame rate available to each eye, typically leaving games at about 30 fps
Only eight Master System games ever supported it, several being 3D versions of existing titles
The same shutter-glasses principle underpinned the 3D television push of around 2010

Verdict: Technically legitimate and commercially hopeless — Sega shipped a correct implementation of active-shutter stereoscopy in 1987, and proved only that the eight-game library, halved frame rate and $50 price were as fatal then as the format would prove to be twenty years later.