🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 💿 Laser discs, initially introduced in 1978 as Disco Vision, were envisioned to replace both videotapes and cassettes but faced challenges like high production costs and the inability to record. 🎮 Laser discs were explored for gaming, with arcade hits like Dragon's Lair prompting interest in home systems that could play laser disc-based games. 💰 The Pioneer LaserActive, released in 1993, was a notable console that could play its own games as well as Sega Mega Drive and TurboGrafx-16 titles via special packs, but its high cost hindered its success. 💻 The Pioneer LD-ROM2, an add-on for the MSX computer, allowed users to play laser disc-based games but faced limited success due to high prices and a small library of compatible titles. 🕹️ Adventures in Videoland, a game written for the Apple II computer, required a specific setup with a Pioneer VP-1000 laser disc player and a copy of the movie "Rollercoaster" to play, showcasing early experimentation with laser disc gaming. 🛠️ Atari's experiments with laser disc gaming included canceled arcade games like Battlestar Galactica and Roadrunner, as well as plans for a laser disc add-on for the Atari 7800 console, which never materialized due to corporate restructuring. 🎥 The RDI Halcyon, an ambitious laser disc-based console, was in development in the early 1980s but faced setbacks like the withdrawal of its laser disc player supplier and lack of investor confidence, leading to its cancellation. 📉 Despite the potential of laser disc gaming, high costs, technological limitations, and market factors contributed to the failure of various laser disc consoles and add-ons in the gaming industry. Made with HARPA AI
I loved dragons lair and space ace so much that I bought an Amiga £500 and a laser disc player which was another £500 just to play these two games. A German company called software corner reprinted the laser discs and made their own software to play the games. Oh and I also had to buy a new TV because my original TV wasn't NTSC 3.58 compatible 🙄
Computer just needs to act as controller for ld, and joystick input. I am guessing even an Atari 8 bit could be used to control a dragons lair ld player.
Also the Lasersdisc movies were on both sides so the old machines you had to flip the giant disc over half way through a film, another reason it didn’t catch on. Amazing how tech has Changed so fast, all that detail on a giant laserdisc and computer chips and now able to be stored on a tiny tiny memory card smaller than a 1p piece! I’ve got the Arcade1up Dragons Lair which mimics the original game, not a disc in sight!
8:52 Oh wow, I had that player. It was a hand-me-down from a relative who upgraded. Absolute beast of a machine. But yeah, on the topic, Astron's Belt really deserves to be better known. A lot of people think Dragon's Lair was the first laserdisc arcade game. But not only did Astron's Belt come first, it made better use of the format. It was a shmup where the backgrounds were streamed from the disc - but hitboxes were drawn onto the screen based on the video, so the video elements were interactive. There was actual gameplay, compared to the proto-QTEs of Dragon's Lair and its knockoffs.
Roller Coaster was actually filmed at our "local" theme park here in Virginia, 'King's Dominion' - even though the park has changed dramatically since the 70's, a lot of the places where scenes were filmed is still VERY recognizable today! very cool to see that mentioned on a youtube video ... about laser disc consoles ... from the UK, lol :) (greetings from Richmond, VA USA!)
So you seem to confirm that a few copies of the Halcyon have been sold! And with games (well there were two that had been developed)! Thayer's Quest was finally able to land on a home console a little later, Philips CDi, renamed Kingdom: the Far Reaches. Thank you for this incredible video!
In the mid 2000s the research I did indicated that there was a game, an "enhanced" football experience, up to 2 other games in some kind of early form. There was some guy on the pe-engine forum who had some pictures of one. Have I held one or seen one in person, no. The chance of the Halcyon is at least much more likely than the existence of Bigfoot.
It seems the 1980s were bombarded with countless amounts of "money pits", not least of which were in the gaming market. And it's mind-blowing how interesting most of the endeavors were.
Wonderful video! Informative and interesting. I had no idea so many systems were in development. Laserdisc technology was one of those things that I knew were beyond the reach of my family to afford so I enjoyed just reading about laserdiscs in magazines and seeing the players displayed behind glass in electronics stores.
Thanks for covering laserdisc games. When I went to arcades in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s, I played dragons lair, space axe, astron belt, mad dog mcree, crime patrol and space pirates. There is a torrent you can find someplace that has all the American laser disc games and a emulator, ready to go.
Special Thanks Dragon Lair for this Episode on Laser Discs and consoles, thoroughly it was very well researched and put together. Truly mazing how This all springs back a lot of hopefull memories, memories we got very close to attaining but never got to ever owning one either. One thing I highly commend about the laser disc format is it was truly inspiring Technology, A soft Visual Glow, sharp sound, well Ahead of its time in animation, Sound and graphics (even before the Amiga 1000 Came out in Australia in December 1985). I devoted a lot of time reading up and buying magazines about this technology, one thing which amazes me is the non-afordability on this technology which was out of reach for the ordinary person (or even student), those prices seemed so over fetched and so overrated barely anyone had the liking or the sack of money to afford such a system since it comprised of several units and special adapters to put together etc. How on earth did companiies like Sanyo, Pioneer, Marantz or Atari think the consumer was liable to spend that much money on such a luxury item, what were they remotley thinking, which audience did tthey have in mind ? closest I got to ever playing laser disk Machines were back in the arcade parlour Days and in some computer shops. Their are one's I never come across or heard of, seemed like demo units or prototypes gone bad. I remember we still had Our VCR and Vic-20 (most affordable back then), but always wished our household could afford such a vast array of technology. Seemed like we were just stuck with the humble VCR and Commodore machine, Even Apple was far reach.
I remember about twenty years ago me and my mate were working in a car museum hanging a grid ceiling and for some reason they had a big stack of laser discs on a shelf in a back room (I have no idea why because as I said it was a car museum?) anyway we were throwing them at each other like frisbees because we were bored and my mate caught one and it sliced the palm of his hand right open!! We had to say he’d slipped with a stanly knife so we didn’t get into trouble for throwing precious history pieces around!! we didn’t do much messing around after that 😂
When I first got my 7800 back in ‘86 (maybe ‘87) I was surprised to see the expansion port on the side. My friend informed me that that it was supposed to be for a laserdisc add-on which blew my mind. A few years went by and I realized that it was not to be.
I have about 300 laser disc movies, unfortunately last year my storage locker was broken into and my 4 laserdisc players were stolen, also all my tools.
The Halcyon was technically impressive...and wildly impractical for a home console. It might have had a sliver of a chance if they'd pivoted to an arcade system, but that's just idle speculation. Who knows...
I really suspect that I briefly saw one Pioneer Laser Disc being imported in a video rental store I used to go mid-1990s. I got impressed with the huge sizes of the Laser Disc, but I never suspected that the machine itself could be a console too... And, so, I wonder if there would be a chance for a "Laser Disc Revival" in our present days... Would it be as much expensive as it was in the past...? What if the real time of the format was not 30 or 40 years ago, but... NOW? Anyway, that's a pretty informative video and enlightening as ever...!
Bulky,expensive,prone to faults with very little user interaction....had my experiences with Space Ace and Dragon's Lair at the arcades in the 80s . Imho laserdisc 🤮
Well, there probably couldn't be a revival in the original physical media. Laserdiscs turned out to be very prone to disc rot and there's now a real problem with discs becoming glitchy and/or unreadable. (That said, there is something very vaporwave about the look of a rotted laserdisc being played.)
I remember the hype about holographic arcade games and how they were going to be the next evolution in the arcade industry. They were going to provide hi-def, 3-D, full motion video graphics and revolutionize the video game industry. The concept died on the vine after one machine was produced (by Sega IIRC). Thanks for another great review video my friend, good stuff! 👍
I have a Pioneer LaserActive. The only electronics shop in my area that sold them put a couple floor display models in their "scratch and dent" area for $200 each. I waited for my next paycheck, scraped enough money together, and grabbed the only one left. Then I went to the area where the LaserActive games were, but they were all gone. They'd apparently shipped off their unsold games and stuff the week before. The shop went out of business a year or two later, and at the big sale they had the Sega LD pak in a torn up box... for $5. Never found the PC Engine LD pak. Eventually I found copies of Pyramid Patrol and Rocket Coaster, but that's it. Never found any other games. The moment I had a machine to play them on, all the laserdisc games vanished off the face of the Earth. I've come across LaserActive games at gaming conventions, unfortunately they were copies of Pyramid Patrol and Rocket Coaster. Sigh.
My local arcade got a brand new Astron Belt when it was released and I got quite good at it but the disc player became faulty after just 4 or 5 months and it went out and never came back
I actually had a laserdisc player and still have hundreds of movies. I live in a rural area, with no broadcast TV at all in the 80s and 90s, so it made sense to have a big movie collection. In the late 90s I had a dragon's lair/space ace supergun i made myself. Changing the rom chips was always fun and it took a little effort to match up a rom set to my space ace disc after I got a non matching set. I had a dragon's lair 2 and time gal both with no roms and time gal probably needs a whole other motheboard. If you run out of ideas, you could do a video on the laserdisc games on cd based game consoles like the pc-fx, cdi, 3do. JB Harold is on the following systems: NEC PC-88[1] JP: August 1986 NEC PC-98[1] JP: 1986 Fujitsu FM-7[1] JP: 1986 Sharp X1[1] JP: 1986 MSX[2] JP: 1988 Sharp X68000 JP: 1988 Famicom JP: June 30, 1989 MS-DOS[1] NA: 1989 TurboGrafx-CD[1] JP: 1990 NA: 1991 Windows[1] JP: 1996 Nintendo DS JP: February 21, 2008 iOS[3] February 15, 2011 Nintendo Switch[4] JP: August 10, 2017 Also for PC-FX but Wikipedia doesn't seem to know this.
I remember being on holiday at Butlins aged 10 or 11. I was usually given a pound or two to spend in the arcade while my parents were having a few drinks in the entertainment bar. I never dreamed of spending 50p on playing Dragon's Lair when most other games were 10p or 20p and lasted longer. We would all crowd round and watch though, when someone else (usually a young adult who could afford it) had a try.
@@thelairdslair They did a good job of getting decent machines in their arcades. Another one I remember watching a lot but not playing was the Space Harrier cabinet that moved with the gameplay.
Wow very nice video, we had a laser disc unit, the big hit back then was the movie flash dance, and I dont understand why everyone is so hard on the Atari 5200, for its time, it was the best pac man video game remake you could get, my God now I feel old, we have come a long way in games and movies on media.
I am a great fan of the Laseractive... but by most successful... only 10,000 machines were made, and more than 1/3 of them were sold at a discount... the games were for sale in Pioneer's 1996 US catalog for $9.99 (even the ones we today consider rare), and machines/games were available online to purchase until about 2002, when the stock officially ran out.
The halcyon is the most interesting laserdisc game console console because it also used voice recognition and it came with a headset to communicate with that system,but it would,ve been indeed not successful at all due it’s high price, only those rich ones could,ve efford one,it’s still interesting that a few ones and a few games did make it out trough the door nontheless😁
I don't (personally) think the size or lack of record was a large factor for the failure of Lazer Discs. People were still using LP records, also 12inch, and CD's/DVD's were excepted without the ability to record initially. I think it was the cost, VCR's were expensive when first released but LD's were just too expensive.
It's very interesting technology. I can see how this was a stepping stone towards higher capacity storage medias and infinitly more powerful systems, computers, and consoles. Excellent video.
I'd love a sega laseractive for the collection but the prices are of course out of this world, and I doubt anyone can package one well enough to survive transit from the US or Japan in their no doubt fragile states.
Well, I´m familiar with those 8-Bit Homecomputers, an I like to watch you uploads from time to time. And everytime I see and hear you intro, showing that dragons lair screen, the sound seeems to me to be pokey-wise, esp. the lower tunes are sound-a-likes to those, the arari 8-Bit (XL/XE) use to produce. May that be by any chance the right guess at all?
I think you missed one. The BBC micro had one. I've not seen one in person, only on a video. The Domesday book (a version created in the 80's on the BBC computer) something I remember being a part of when I was at primary school.
I didn't miss it, I just didn't include it, mainly because there are no games on Laser Disc for the BBC, which is why I used the term console. There's also something very similar to the BBC Micro one for Apple II GS in America. There another comment talking about that, I remember using it at school too.
15:09 "RCA Laserdisc player" really? Did RCA make Laserdisc players? I thought in early 80s RCA was totally committed to their CED "Capacitance Electronic Disc" system, and Laserdisc was the rival format. It was the failure of CED that really killed the RCA company.
@@thelairdslairokay I’m confused. Are you saying that RCA had an advertisement for a laser disc (lower case, ignoring branding changes going on with disco 🪩 vision etc) player? About a mile from my house is a shop that sells shades. Window shades. I guess their thing is that they can find or make anything you want? IDK since the last time I was in that building was mid 1980s when it was originally housing a then concept- home video rentals! They had it all! VHS and Betamax and CED and that shiny thing we came to know as LaserDisc (R). 😊 You could get a player through them as well. We went with a basic RCA SelectaVision CED player. Probably was the cheapest option that’s why. Wikipedia’s entry for “SelectaVision” doesn’t mention laser. But I can tell you that the advertisement shows a player much like ours albeit with “features”. Ours had an RF connector for TV hookup (no “rca” jacks on our RCA for stereo system hookup or composite video). We had “stop” AND play”. Okay I kid - there was basic FF and back but it was slow. And I can’t recall if the picture went out while doing it. No pause no chapter skip nor red LED showing time/chapter or whatever is on the front panel in the advertisement. But as was common, the “video disc” came in a hard shell jacket as pictured and the player was front loading and on the right (always AFAIK) was the tell-take lever for OFF , PLAY , and LOAD | UNLOAD. And on top towards the back left corner, notice there is a little plain plastic cover breaking up that awesome (not!) faux wood grain finish. That leads to the stylus cartridge since you’ll need to replace that eventually. I just never brought it back to the kitchen. Sorry.
Okay that’s creepy. That last line (which I won’t edit out for posterity) was me talking to wife as I posted but I knew I heard the voice dictation sound and was like “why??” … must’ve accidentally touched it. Dang! I look stupid now. Oh wait, that’s normal. I +1’d my bafoonery
I don't know what you mean or what your getting at? DiscoVision was the original name for Laser Disc, RCA made Laser Disc/DiscoVision players and I showed an advert for one in the video.
I bet someone did a digital backup of these already so that they don't get lost to time when the Laserdisc Rot sets in, eventually destroying all LD media.
Would I have bought into one of these systems back in the day? Maybe. I was a big LaserDisc fan and still own my old discs. But for the money a "standard" console was a much better investment. That said, I do still own the discs for Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, and Cliffhanger.
@@thelairdslairWhat I meant to say was there were quite some CDi videocd titles 'in the vein of' these Laserdisc games. (English is not my primary language so I didn't word it the way I wanted; sorry).
I've heard this too -- it was the original plan, given that CEDs and their hardware wouldn't have been QUITE as eye-watering in consumer cost, but the CED format (which was an RCA project, I will note) had already failed and was in the process of being discontinued while the Halcyon was still being developed. The move to Laserdisc, while logistically nonsensical in price for most consumers, seemed sort of to be the only sensible way to salvage some semblance of the project (although it didn't really).
Since both CED and LD are playback-only media anyway, it does make you wonder if some sort of VHS or Beta-based version of the Halcyon could have done any better. The access time to cue specific footage (if even possible?) probably would be pretty bad though.
Eh? This isn't a gameplay video, it's a documentary and all the images that appear on the screen are important for the story, the gameplay is just background. I think you totally missed the point here!
I never heard of these. Other than the 7800. But I can’t remember in 1984 what details I read about it in Electronic Games magazine. I do recall seeing a screen shot of Desert Falcon which got me interested. So in 1986 when the 7800 finally started shipping broadly, I got one - mostly out of curiosity.. I had by then an 800XL and friends had C64’s - we’d moved on to home computer gaming (neither my friends nor I were NES kids but in high school one did get a TurboGrafx16). So last year or so I opened a box (summon sound of Link opening a treasure chest) that’d been sitting around a few years and in it was a used 7800 and joysticks and games I bought from an auction but never got around to opening up?!? The 7800 has the expansion port!!! 👍
That clip of the Dragon’s Lair attract mode … that still sends shiver up and down my spine. Especially in the autumn of 1988 when I saw an Amiga playing that. No LaserDisc involved. Just digitized and on a floppy disk. By the end of October I made my first online purchase as such. I had a GEnie and Delphi account (online systems like CompuServ but cheaper) and a modem and in a classified ad on one of those on the Amiga forums and somebody within driving distance was selling an Amiga 1000. Mine! Great savings over the new price and even the new. A500 model yet it was all my $ (broke teenager). I wasn’t even old enough to drive so the seller came to me! Take that, Craig’s List!!😂 So maybe I never had the chance to spend $2000+ for the ability to play Dragon’s Lair at home on LaserDisc but I think the Amiga route was more practical.
I always found the arcade games incredibly boring back in the day. I rember playing 2600 after i owned a CPC 464 i hated it but i really liked the colecovision
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:
💿 Laser discs, initially introduced in 1978 as Disco Vision, were envisioned to replace both videotapes and cassettes but faced challenges like high production costs and the inability to record.
🎮 Laser discs were explored for gaming, with arcade hits like Dragon's Lair prompting interest in home systems that could play laser disc-based games.
💰 The Pioneer LaserActive, released in 1993, was a notable console that could play its own games as well as Sega Mega Drive and TurboGrafx-16 titles via special packs, but its high cost hindered its success.
💻 The Pioneer LD-ROM2, an add-on for the MSX computer, allowed users to play laser disc-based games but faced limited success due to high prices and a small library of compatible titles.
🕹️ Adventures in Videoland, a game written for the Apple II computer, required a specific setup with a Pioneer VP-1000 laser disc player and a copy of the movie "Rollercoaster" to play, showcasing early experimentation with laser disc gaming.
🛠️ Atari's experiments with laser disc gaming included canceled arcade games like Battlestar Galactica and Roadrunner, as well as plans for a laser disc add-on for the Atari 7800 console, which never materialized due to corporate restructuring.
🎥 The RDI Halcyon, an ambitious laser disc-based console, was in development in the early 1980s but faced setbacks like the withdrawal of its laser disc player supplier and lack of investor confidence, leading to its cancellation.
📉 Despite the potential of laser disc gaming, high costs, technological limitations, and market factors contributed to the failure of various laser disc consoles and add-ons in the gaming industry.
Made with HARPA AI
Very good!
Such a unique and "played one, played em all" format.
I loved dragons lair and space ace so much that I bought an Amiga £500 and a laser disc player which was another £500 just to play these two games. A German company called software corner reprinted the laser discs and made their own software to play the games. Oh and I also had to buy a new TV because my original TV wasn't NTSC 3.58 compatible 🙄
I remember that because it was also advertised for the Atari ST, which is what I had.
I played on the Amiga too but on floppies didn’t know could play on laser disk or i might have bought one
That’s awesome, never knew the Amiga could play a LD.
Computer just needs to act as controller for ld, and joystick input. I am guessing even an Atari 8 bit could be used to control a dragons lair ld player.
Also the Lasersdisc movies were on both sides so the old machines you had to flip the giant disc over half way through a film, another reason it didn’t catch on.
Amazing how tech has Changed so fast, all that detail on a giant laserdisc and computer chips and now able to be stored on a tiny tiny memory card smaller than a 1p piece! I’ve got the Arcade1up Dragons Lair which mimics the original game, not a disc in sight!
Great video 👍 ive always wondered if my Grandma has her laserdisc in the loft, its the only time i ever saw one in the UK as a kid
8:52 Oh wow, I had that player. It was a hand-me-down from a relative who upgraded. Absolute beast of a machine.
But yeah, on the topic, Astron's Belt really deserves to be better known. A lot of people think Dragon's Lair was the first laserdisc arcade game. But not only did Astron's Belt come first, it made better use of the format. It was a shmup where the backgrounds were streamed from the disc - but hitboxes were drawn onto the screen based on the video, so the video elements were interactive. There was actual gameplay, compared to the proto-QTEs of Dragon's Lair and its knockoffs.
Great work covering laserdisc games and its history!
This was/is a very interesting piece of media history, and all kinds of players are just awesome!
Roller Coaster was actually filmed at our "local" theme park here in Virginia, 'King's Dominion' - even though the park has changed dramatically since the 70's, a lot of the places where scenes were filmed is still VERY recognizable today! very cool to see that mentioned on a youtube video ... about laser disc consoles ... from the UK, lol :) (greetings from Richmond, VA USA!)
Very cool!
So you seem to confirm that a few copies of the Halcyon have been sold! And with games (well there were two that had been developed)! Thayer's Quest was finally able to land on a home console a little later, Philips CDi, renamed Kingdom: the Far Reaches. Thank you for this incredible video!
Yes, I have the CD-i version 😎
In the mid 2000s the research I did indicated that there was a game, an "enhanced" football experience, up to 2 other games in some kind of early form. There was some guy on the pe-engine forum who had some pictures of one. Have I held one or seen one in person, no. The chance of the Halcyon is at least much more likely than the existence of Bigfoot.
It seems the 1980s were bombarded with countless amounts of "money pits", not least of which were in the gaming market. And it's mind-blowing how interesting most of the endeavors were.
What people dont realize is laserdisc was a completely analog format
Wonderful video! Informative and interesting. I had no idea so many systems were in development. Laserdisc technology was one of those things that I knew were beyond the reach of my family to afford so I enjoyed just reading about laserdiscs in magazines and seeing the players displayed behind glass in electronics stores.
Thanks for covering laserdisc games. When I went to arcades in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s, I played dragons lair, space axe, astron belt, mad dog mcree, crime patrol and space pirates.
There is a torrent you can find someplace that has all the American laser disc games and a emulator, ready to go.
Special Thanks Dragon Lair for this Episode on Laser Discs and consoles, thoroughly it was very well researched and put together. Truly mazing how This all springs back a lot of hopefull memories, memories we got very close to attaining but never got to ever owning one either. One thing I highly commend about the laser disc format is it was truly inspiring Technology, A soft Visual Glow, sharp sound, well Ahead of its time in animation, Sound and graphics (even before the Amiga 1000 Came out in Australia in December 1985). I devoted a lot of time reading up and buying magazines about this technology, one thing which amazes me is the non-afordability on this technology which was out of reach for the ordinary person (or even student), those prices seemed so over fetched and so overrated barely anyone had the liking or the sack of money to afford such a system since it comprised of several units and special adapters to put together etc. How on earth did companiies like Sanyo, Pioneer, Marantz or Atari think the consumer was liable to spend that much money on such a luxury item, what were they remotley thinking, which audience did tthey have in mind ? closest I got to ever playing laser disk Machines were back in the arcade parlour Days and in some computer shops. Their are one's I never come across or heard of, seemed like demo units or prototypes gone bad. I remember we still had Our VCR and Vic-20 (most affordable back then), but always wished our household could afford such a vast array of technology. Seemed like we were just stuck with the humble VCR and Commodore machine, Even Apple was far reach.
There were many successful laser disc concoles in THE GOOD TIMELINE, sadly we live on the bad one.
This comment just decreased my IQ.
I remember about twenty years ago me and my mate were working in a car museum hanging a grid ceiling and for some reason they had a big stack of laser discs on a shelf in a back room (I have no idea why because as I said it was a car museum?) anyway we were throwing them at each other like frisbees because we were bored and my mate caught one and it sliced the palm of his hand right open!! We had to say he’d slipped with a stanly knife so we didn’t get into trouble for throwing precious history pieces around!! we didn’t do much messing around after that 😂
Haha, oh dear!
Got my cuppa with some dunking bourbon and custard creams for a good mid morning stroll through the ages.
It is a good day for this
Great video to wake up too! Would love to see an amazing facts video on the Halcyon!
"hElLo StEw..." 😅
So well researched. Well done sir
When I first got my 7800 back in ‘86 (maybe ‘87) I was surprised to see the expansion port on the side. My friend informed me that that it was supposed to be for a laserdisc add-on which blew my mind. A few years went by and I realized that it was not to be.
This takes me way back what a blast from the past 😅
That Apple II setup is dumbfounding. All of that expensive hardware for a free type in BASIC text adventure.
It struck me as being more of a proof-of-concept / "hey lookit this neat hack I did" than a serious attempt at making a game.
I love LaserDisc. I still collect movies for that format
I have about 300 laser disc movies, unfortunately last year my storage locker was broken into and my 4 laserdisc players were stolen, also all my tools.
@@marcellachine5718 awww no way! Discs are safe tho right?
The Halcyon was technically impressive...and wildly impractical for a home console. It might have had a sliver of a chance if they'd pivoted to an arcade system, but that's just idle speculation. Who knows...
I really suspect that I briefly saw one Pioneer Laser Disc being imported in a video rental store I used to go mid-1990s. I got impressed with the huge sizes of the Laser Disc, but I never suspected that the machine itself could be a console too...
And, so, I wonder if there would be a chance for a "Laser Disc Revival" in our present days... Would it be as much expensive as it was in the past...? What if the real time of the format was not 30 or 40 years ago, but... NOW?
Anyway, that's a pretty informative video and enlightening as ever...!
Bulky,expensive,prone to faults with very little user interaction....had my experiences with Space Ace and Dragon's Lair at the arcades in the 80s .
Imho laserdisc 🤮
Well, there probably couldn't be a revival in the original physical media. Laserdiscs turned out to be very prone to disc rot and there's now a real problem with discs becoming glitchy and/or unreadable.
(That said, there is something very vaporwave about the look of a rotted laserdisc being played.)
Great stuff here my man! Cheers bro!
Well I never! This is the first I ever heard of the 7800's Laserdisc functionality.
If you want to know more watch the video linked in the comments as that goes into more detail.
I remember the hype about holographic arcade games and how they were going to be the next evolution in the arcade industry. They were going to provide hi-def, 3-D, full motion video graphics and revolutionize the video game industry. The concept died on the vine after one machine was produced (by Sega IIRC). Thanks for another great review video my friend, good stuff! 👍
Time Traveller, looked amazing but was pretty poor to play.
I have a Pioneer LaserActive. The only electronics shop in my area that sold them put a couple floor display models in their "scratch and dent" area for $200 each. I waited for my next paycheck, scraped enough money together, and grabbed the only one left. Then I went to the area where the LaserActive games were, but they were all gone. They'd apparently shipped off their unsold games and stuff the week before. The shop went out of business a year or two later, and at the big sale they had the Sega LD pak in a torn up box... for $5. Never found the PC Engine LD pak. Eventually I found copies of Pyramid Patrol and Rocket Coaster, but that's it. Never found any other games. The moment I had a machine to play them on, all the laserdisc games vanished off the face of the Earth. I've come across LaserActive games at gaming conventions, unfortunately they were copies of Pyramid Patrol and Rocket Coaster. Sigh.
My main laser disc memories came of BBC Micros and the updated domesday book!
Yes! We had that at our school!
What's the domesday book?
Great video as usual.I owned a laserdisc player with a plugin Genesis and Turbo grafix 16 module,they could be swapped out
My local arcade got a brand new Astron Belt when it was released and I got quite good at it but the disc player became faulty after just 4 or 5 months and it went out and never came back
I actually had a laserdisc player and still have hundreds of movies. I live in a rural area, with no broadcast TV at all in the 80s and 90s, so it made sense to have a big movie collection. In the late 90s I had a dragon's lair/space ace supergun i made myself. Changing the rom chips was always fun and it took a little effort to match up a rom set to my space ace disc after I got a non matching set. I had a dragon's lair 2 and time gal both with no roms and time gal probably needs a whole other motheboard.
If you run out of ideas, you could do a video on the laserdisc games on cd based game consoles like the pc-fx, cdi, 3do. JB Harold is on the following systems:
NEC PC-88[1]
JP: August 1986
NEC PC-98[1]
JP: 1986
Fujitsu FM-7[1]
JP: 1986
Sharp X1[1]
JP: 1986
MSX[2]
JP: 1988
Sharp X68000
JP: 1988
Famicom
JP: June 30, 1989
MS-DOS[1]
NA: 1989
TurboGrafx-CD[1]
JP: 1990
NA: 1991
Windows[1]
JP: 1996
Nintendo DS
JP: February 21, 2008
iOS[3]
February 15, 2011
Nintendo Switch[4]
JP: August 10, 2017
Also for PC-FX but Wikipedia doesn't seem to know this.
Damn, you are a workaholic!
It's surprising that everyone didn't just make $200 consoles, since that was all that ever made it.
I remember being on holiday at Butlins aged 10 or 11. I was usually given a pound or two to spend in the arcade while my parents were having a few drinks in the entertainment bar. I never dreamed of spending 50p on playing Dragon's Lair when most other games were 10p or 20p and lasted longer. We would all crowd round and watch though, when someone else (usually a young adult who could afford it) had a try.
Many of my happiest arcade memories are from our holidays at various Butlins around the country.
@@thelairdslair They did a good job of getting decent machines in their arcades. Another one I remember watching a lot but not playing was the Space Harrier cabinet that moved with the gameplay.
I think Mike Nesmith of the Monkees was an advocate for the laserdisc, especially where music videos were concerned.
Was he a believer?
Wow very nice video, we had a laser disc unit, the big hit back then was the movie flash dance, and I dont understand why everyone is so hard on the Atari 5200, for its time, it was the best pac man video game remake you could get, my God now I feel old, we have come a long way in games and movies on media.
I am a great fan of the Laseractive... but by most successful... only 10,000 machines were made, and more than 1/3 of them were sold at a discount... the games were for sale in Pioneer's 1996 US catalog for $9.99 (even the ones we today consider rare), and machines/games were available online to purchase until about 2002, when the stock officially ran out.
Makes me wish I'd got one when they were cheap!
The halcyon is the most interesting laserdisc game console console because it also used voice recognition and it came with a headset to communicate with that system,but it would,ve been indeed not successful at all due it’s high price, only those rich ones could,ve efford one,it’s still interesting that a few ones and a few games did make it out trough the door nontheless😁
I don't (personally) think the size or lack of record was a large factor for the failure of Lazer Discs. People were still using LP records, also 12inch, and CD's/DVD's were excepted without the ability to record initially. I think it was the cost, VCR's were expensive when first released but LD's were just too expensive.
It's very interesting technology. I can see how this was a stepping stone towards higher capacity storage medias and infinitly more powerful systems, computers, and consoles. Excellent video.
i thought, you technically could use Action Max console for laser discs instead of VHS, but sadly there was no such discs made for it
I'd love a sega laseractive for the collection but the prices are of course out of this world, and I doubt anyone can package one well enough to survive transit from the US or Japan in their no doubt fragile states.
It was sold in the UK, I used to know somebody who had a UK one. It was famously featured in C&VG magazine too, I showed this briefly in the video.
Excellent
Well, I´m familiar with those 8-Bit Homecomputers, an I like to watch you uploads from time to time. And everytime I see and hear you intro, showing that dragons lair screen, the sound seeems to me to be pokey-wise, esp. the lower tunes are sound-a-likes to those, the arari 8-Bit (XL/XE) use to produce. May that be by any chance the right guess at all?
Nope, the sound is the intro to STUN Runner on the Atari Lynx.
@@thelairdslair Thx! This colsole uses the same frequencer the pokey chip of the xl/xe does - bur your vids are fun to watch für "elderly peolple"...
I think you missed one. The BBC micro had one.
I've not seen one in person, only on a video. The Domesday book (a version created in the 80's on the BBC computer) something I remember being a part of when I was at primary school.
I didn't miss it, I just didn't include it, mainly because there are no games on Laser Disc for the BBC, which is why I used the term console. There's also something very similar to the BBC Micro one for Apple II GS in America.
There another comment talking about that, I remember using it at school too.
I'm not disappointed at all that the games didn't do better. It was an idea that deserved to die.
15:09 "RCA Laserdisc player" really? Did RCA make Laserdisc players? I thought in early 80s RCA was totally committed to their CED "Capacitance Electronic Disc" system, and Laserdisc was the rival format. It was the failure of CED that really killed the RCA company.
Yep, they did for a while, I showed an advert for one on the screen.
@@thelairdslairokay I’m confused. Are you saying that RCA had an advertisement for a laser disc (lower case, ignoring branding changes going on with disco 🪩 vision etc) player?
About a mile from my house is a shop that sells shades. Window shades. I guess their thing is that they can find or make anything you want? IDK since the last time I was in that building was mid 1980s when it was originally housing a then concept- home video rentals!
They had it all! VHS and Betamax and CED and that shiny thing we came to know as LaserDisc (R). 😊 You could get a player through them as well.
We went with a basic RCA SelectaVision CED player. Probably was the cheapest option that’s why. Wikipedia’s entry for “SelectaVision” doesn’t mention laser. But I can tell you that the advertisement shows a player much like ours albeit with “features”. Ours had an RF connector for TV hookup (no “rca” jacks on our RCA for stereo system hookup or composite video). We had “stop” AND play”. Okay I kid - there was basic FF and back but it was slow. And I can’t recall if the picture went out while doing it. No pause no chapter skip nor red LED showing time/chapter or whatever is on the front panel in the advertisement. But as was common, the “video disc” came in a hard shell jacket as pictured and the player was front loading and on the right (always AFAIK) was the tell-take lever for OFF , PLAY , and LOAD | UNLOAD. And on top towards the back left corner, notice there is a little plain plastic cover breaking up that awesome (not!) faux wood grain finish. That leads to the stylus cartridge since you’ll need to replace that eventually.
I just never brought it back to the kitchen. Sorry.
Okay that’s creepy. That last line (which I won’t edit out for posterity) was me talking to wife as I posted but I knew I heard the voice dictation sound and was like “why??” … must’ve accidentally touched it. Dang! I look stupid now. Oh wait, that’s normal. I +1’d my bafoonery
I don't know what you mean or what your getting at? DiscoVision was the original name for Laser Disc, RCA made Laser Disc/DiscoVision players and I showed an advert for one in the video.
I bet someone did a digital backup of these already so that they don't get lost to time when the Laserdisc Rot sets in, eventually destroying all LD media.
Laser Rot destroys all rare LaserDisc releases.
15:10 - The chip shown is actually a Z8000 :)
Would I have bought into one of these systems back in the day? Maybe. I was a big LaserDisc fan and still own my old discs. But for the money a "standard" console was a much better investment. That said, I do still own the discs for Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, and Cliffhanger.
Am I crazy or is that Alan Kalter (Letterman’s announcer) doing the voiceover of the commercial at 3:17
No idea who that is LOL! I will leave to the Americans to answer!
Yes it is actually, I was a Letterman Fan.
The games don't look bad at all. I wish I could play them now
A german company manufactured some Laserdisc games in the 90, to play on computer like Amiga, Atari ST and C64.
Yes, other people have talked about that in the comments.
Eventually one could say the Philips CDi had some 'success' in the 90s. I've got here Mad Dog McCree which is very similar to these laserdisc games.
Well, yeah, but that was CD not Laser Disc. I guess you could say CDs did everything a Laser Disc could but fixed all the faults.
@@thelairdslairWhat I meant to say was there were quite some CDi videocd titles 'in the vein of' these Laserdisc games. (English is not my primary language so I didn't word it the way I wanted; sorry).
Yes, lots of the old Laser Disc games were ported to the CD-i and the Mega CD too for that matter.
Yeah, laserdisc was analogue format, cd, cd-I etc were the start of the digital formats
welcome stunrunner!
The RDI Halcyon was originally supposed to use RCA CED instead of Laserdiscs?
According to all the history it says a Laser Disc player produced by RCA, can't tell you more than that.
I've heard this too -- it was the original plan, given that CEDs and their hardware wouldn't have been QUITE as eye-watering in consumer cost, but the CED format (which was an RCA project, I will note) had already failed and was in the process of being discontinued while the Halcyon was still being developed. The move to Laserdisc, while logistically nonsensical in price for most consumers, seemed sort of to be the only sensible way to salvage some semblance of the project (although it didn't really).
Since both CED and LD are playback-only media anyway, it does make you wonder if some sort of VHS or Beta-based version of the Halcyon could have done any better. The access time to cue specific footage (if even possible?) probably would be pretty bad though.
$6000. Hell, can we buy two of those Mom? Lol. Failure awaits.
I know I'll be laughed at but what does the title of your videos say? "Welcome Sun Runner" 😂?
Welcome STUN Runner, taken from the Atari Lynx port of the famous arcade game.
@@thelairdslair I was close! I am sure I heard it before but has no clue where. Each week i see your videos it continued to stump me
Is t there like 2 known halcyons on the planet. Its like the amico, theres nit enough machines for software
Please dont paste the ads over the running graphics; we miss the very subject of the video (watching all those laserdisc games footage)
Eh? This isn't a gameplay video, it's a documentary and all the images that appear on the screen are important for the story, the gameplay is just background. I think you totally missed the point here!
There is a copy or the NFL game going for over 300 British pounds in ebay
thx.
13:22 Wait. What game is this exactly?
Cops by Atari Games
Best laserdisc game?
For me? Probably Cobra Command, although I enjoyed Who Shot Johnny Rock too.
I remember who shot Johnny rock, had (have) it on the Sega (Mega) Cd remember it being impossible haha.
Dragons lair 2.
I never heard of these. Other than the 7800. But I can’t remember in 1984 what details I read about it in Electronic Games magazine. I do recall seeing a screen shot of Desert Falcon which got me interested. So in 1986 when the 7800 finally started shipping broadly, I got one - mostly out of curiosity.. I had by then an 800XL and friends had C64’s - we’d moved on to home computer gaming (neither my friends nor I were NES kids but in high school one did get a TurboGrafx16).
So last year or so I opened a box (summon sound of Link opening a treasure chest) that’d been sitting around a few years and in it was a used 7800 and joysticks and games I bought from an auction but never got around to opening up?!? The 7800 has the expansion port!!! 👍
That clip of the Dragon’s Lair attract mode … that still sends shiver up and down my spine. Especially in the autumn of 1988 when I saw an Amiga playing that. No LaserDisc involved. Just digitized and on a floppy disk.
By the end of October I made my first online purchase as such. I had a GEnie and Delphi account (online systems like CompuServ but cheaper) and a modem and in a classified ad on one of those on the Amiga forums and somebody within driving distance was selling an Amiga 1000. Mine! Great savings over the new price and even the new. A500 model yet it was all my $ (broke teenager). I wasn’t even old enough to drive so the seller came to me! Take that, Craig’s List!!😂
So maybe I never had the chance to spend $2000+ for the ability to play Dragon’s Lair at home on LaserDisc but I think the Amiga route was more practical.
13:54 Misspelling
Nah, it's an Easter Egg 😉
I always found the arcade games incredibly boring back in the day. I rember playing 2600 after i owned a CPC 464 i hated it but i really liked the colecovision
WTF! 😲😲😲😲
Are you talking about 70s arcade games like the ones with no single player mode?
My dad told me he used to play dragons lair on laser disc and I never believed him because he was a compulsive lot but holy shit it was real