History Of The Pioneer Laser Active - Laser Disc System Review and Retrospective
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- Опубліковано 24 лис 2018
- #PioneerLaserActive #SegaMegaCD #RetroGaming
Today Top Hat Gaming Man tells the story of the Pioneer Laser Active.
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@TopHatGamingMan
A man in a top hat, with a dashing moustache or a highly distinguished beard, reviews rare video games in his massive collection. Appreciate the finer things in life! Top Hat Gaming Man travels around the globe, playing the best games for the handhelds around the world. The best games are like fine wines and only get better with age. Today, Top Hat Gaming Man tells the story of the Pioneer Laser Active.
Footage Sources
Rocket Coaster - TheNewFakk - • Rocket Coaster for Pio...
Hyperion - LAPProject - • Hyperion (LaserActive ...
Hi Roller Battler - Taylor Pinson - • Video
Vajra - LAPProject - • Vajra (LaserActive LD-...
TimeGal - ItalianDoh - • Time Gal (LaserActive)...
Road Avenger - Space Dandy - • Video
Pyramid Patrol - Laser Active Guy - • Video
Galaxy Ranger - Old Classic Retro Gaming - • Galaxy Ranger (1983 Se...
Additional Laser Disc Footage - Paul Kepner - • Playing a Star Wars La... - Ігри
the Pioneer Laser Active is such a satisfying "console" to own, but as you say, get ready to have deep pockets, it's not the cheapest to collect for, Excellent fact finding Light Child.
Blessings to you
@@TopHatGamingManChannel I heard the Laseractive version of Time Gal is one of the most expensive video games of all time, regularly selling for over 1000 dollars on Ebay.
gotta love the pee shee engine
and pee shee engine shee dee
I prefer the Turboo Grafx Shixteeeen.
You freaking beat me to it.
I'm totally jealous of that PC Engine LD Pak. I have a LaserActive (bought the floor display model for $200 when it was discontinued) and the Genesis/Mega LD Pak ($5 in a damaged box from the same place) but for the longest time I only ever had Pyramid Patrol. Eventually in the late '90s I ordered Rocket Coaster from an online shop. I've never seen any other games outside of a gaming convention, and the two titles that were for sale were... Pyramid Patrol and Rocket Coaster. Sigh. At least it got me into the laserdisc scene back then, so many movies that were visually better than VHS.
I saw one of these in a high-end audio store once, circa 1993. I don't remember what it cost, but I can comfortably say that it was way out of my price range.
Mega CD was +£300 in some places like Dixons, Curries, etc. 3DO also.
The first wave of CD-based games was pretty grim. The Mega CD had awful loading times any footage taken from movies was of abysmal quality. The Mega CD version of The Terminator was especially bad. Not the actual game, I thought that was good, but the load times and the movie footage was very bad.
It's funny how only a year or two later that the PSX & Saturn really utilised CDs much better than earlier consoles, and the price for those consoles was much more consumer-friendly, well maybe not at launch but the prices did become reasonable eventually.
Laserdisc was doomed from the start in my opinion. The discs were too expensive and were very fragile and just weren't worth the money for what you were getting.
And it is probably even more out of your price range now then when you orginally saw it in that store.
@@vidlink Funnily enough, a boxed Mega CD in good condition goes on eBay for roughly £300 these days, but certain games have become ridiculously expensive, especially Snatcher.
When it comes to SEGA CD, I'll just emulate them on my Raspberry Pi.
@@msbae I use Fusion on my PC for Sega games and PicoDrive on my PSP. Never used Pi to this day.
What the Hell is a PeeShee Engine Shee-Dee??
shhhh or you might awaken the PeeShee police.
I had a case of discovision. A trip to the optometrist cleared it up. :)
You should talk about the JVC X'Eye, which is a 2--in-1 Sega CD/Sega Mega CD/Sega Genesis/Sega Mega Drive console.
Amazing review of a long forgotten system which was far advanced for its time to this day it's still a huge achievement.....truly wish I had one
Pioneer had a thing for Laserdisc and computer gaming fusion all the way back to the early-mid eighties with their Laserdisc add-on for the MSX computers, which allowed such Laserdisc arcade games as Astron Belt to be played on the MSX.
There is also a 4th one, the PAC-PC1 that connects it to a computer and comes with an advanced remote control.
Gotta love that Time Gal thumbnail.
Great video as always mate, blessing to you brother LightChild. PS The Laser Disc version of Time Gal is awesome.
I remember seeing one of these at a friend's house. It was only used for movies.
another great vid THGM always informative
when the spindle motor died on my LA unit, I decided to sell it to someone who said they could fix it. I'm okay with not having one anymore. It was a pretty elite club to be in, even more so than the neo geo club. sold it for $300 when I initially bought it for $50 with the sega pac some 20 years prior.
With this system's name, I think that there should be a connection with American Laser Games, who made quite a number a FMV games, but since it wasn't covered in this video, there you have it - another possible topic to explore and discuss. :)
What a console! Great video.
The best system with advanced audio upgrades only allowed to Pioneer!! It is twice the volume and the audio quality is twice or four times in certain rooms!! Plus, it plays 3 Game Systems games!!
His family were millionaires, so I can see how it was not available to everyone!!
Wow Top Hat Gaming Man!!
You got the good stuff when it comes to home console gaming.
Amazing research this is a brilliant video. Thank you
The surface mount capacitor is in those pack cartridges for the PC engine and Sega Genesis are starting to go bad and are leaking over the boards so you might want to have them cleaned up and replaced soon, if he has not done it.
1:07 this triggers my iPhone’s “Hey Siri”.
A true oddity of gaming. I can imagine at the time this had a huge "wooooow" effect tho
I actually bought one of these back around 94. There was an electronic store going out of business and liquidating everything, they had one new in box for $300 which was a lot but I remembered its original price was closer to $2k so I took the plunge. It took me a while to find a module for Sega or Nec games so I mostly used it as a laserdisc player.
This thing is pretty neat. If I ever start collecting systems this would be on my list of must haves.
Sewer Shark is great! haha well the later levels give me the fear with the moles but Id love to see that cleaned up.
😮 Wow! I want a Laser Active!
As a side note, one of Sega's most famous LD games, Astron Belt, makes me wonder if they ever paid Paramount for the rights to use that brief clip at the beginning of the Enterprise (from Star Trek: The Motion Picture) going into warp.
I've said it before, but this is one of my holy grail in game collecting, as I just love the look of the system, and all that it can do.
Yaaaay! Pyramid Patrol!
Love the hat,plz tell its history and experiences
Makes collecting AES games seem affordable
PEE-SHEE Engine... 😅
Why the very specific lisp?
subliminalvibes Brits are weird
Sean Connery does the same. I never knew if it was just a thing he did or other Scottish people do it as well
British people don't speak proper english very well. Look it up, the accent the english have now is only a few hundred years old. The only people that speak true English without an accent are people that have the "news speak" way of speaking English like people in the Midwest of America.
This is one of those systems its next to impossible to emulate. Glad to see a video on this beast, I have owned mine now for almost 5 years and its an absolute blast to play laserdisc movies. The games on the other hand, meh. Games like Don Quixote and Triad Stone are worth a look but I don't think its worth the asking price especially nowadays.
What a hunk of hardware geez man
the girl in the thumbnail is Reika from Time Gal..........I have had a thing for her since my days as a gamer in the Sega CD!!!
Welcome back Light Child..i mean Top Hat
Sure the laser active vision from pioneer did had to buy a tons of license in order to make such amezing monster, but this monster surely has it’s high cult state among fans!!!
Hey look, it's Top Hat Guru Monk :D
Really nice your such a good guy ..man something i did not know about.. thats hard to do..
i got one of these and have about 10 games so far. it is really interesting. The games pretty much feel like cdi games but the fact that you can play genesis, sega cd, and all the turbografx stuff is awesome
Wow! Being a fan of Time Gal and Roaf Avenger I'd give my girlfriend's right arm for the Laser Active versions!
I have two LaserActive units (one was bought as a backup unit in case the first ever breaks), along with all three modules (PACs), and I have every laserdisc game released EXCEPT for Time Gal. I collected all of this after the big video game crash years ago, and was extremely lucky, otherwise I would never have afforded the collection. However, I really want Time Gal, but copies of that laserdisc are being offered at around $1,000.00!!! I almost had a heart attack when I saw that. I can’t imagine paying that for a single laserdisc. So, sadly, my collection has to stay incomplete. I do have Time Gal on Sega CD which plays fine on the LaserActive, just not as smoothly and crisp as the laserdisc version. And by the way, the Karaoke PAC is really very well made, based on the “pro quality” Japanese karaoke systems, and works with full sized pro microphones. It is still one of the lower priced PACs available if you can find it, and the karaoke laserdiscs are plentiful on eBay, so I recommend it to anyone getting the system. Thanks for such a great episode on this still-fun and rare system. Loved it!
Wow! That is so cool. I remember seeing that back in the day but since it wasn’t available in the states (I don’t believe) I forgot about it. I have hundreds of laser discs and no way to play them currently. Sure would be nice to find one of those units!!
Wrong, I played it at my friends house in South Florida in the 1990s!!!
I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I have a nostalgic hardon for interactive FMV games like Road Avenger and Time Gal. The Sega CD had a bunch of them, but unfortunately most of the games have much better versions on other consoles. I remember wanted a Sega CD solely because Dragon's Lair was released on it. It's a terrible version, but at the time having a home console version of one of the most beautiful (still to this day) arcade games was a dream come true...except my mom never bought me a Sega CD, so my dream never came true. :(
I came here for the thumbnail.
When this came out, the IBM PC gaming was largely caught up to, or ahead of this system already. Also the issue with laser discs is they stored their video in analogue, while the sound was stored digitally. Which is why the laser disc games were all FMV. Had the video tracks been digital, this thing might have flattened other console competition. Instead it took another 2 console generations and the introduction of DVDs to show the potential of high data capacity(more than a gigabyte) disc media.
In short, as I am just about to nod off: I'm amazed by this system. Yes, way too pricey even in the day, but wow. I remember a few arcade machines, specifically the action simulator rides, that had similar graphical quality. Maybe they ran on the same format or were made by the same company? Hard to know atm... But thanks a bunch for making this exposé on the system Top Hat Gaming Man.
I have 2 Laserdisc players but not the CLD-A100. Are there any games that can be played on just a regular Laserdisc player?
My uncle had one of these he loved it
Oooo...love the look of the Laser Active, but so expensive for the full package its beyond normal collecting :) Nice video though Light Child
Neat.
I remember seeing this monster with its $1000 price tag at EB Games back in the day, shrugging and saying "I'll wait for their 3DO to come out, and save a few hundred."
Great video on a really unique machine. Any chance you might showcase the Laseractive title I Will: The Story of London? :)
To bad it did not take off well, looks like it's been one of the best of the era.
That's the thing about it "PLA, you can play On-Rail Shooters, QTE games, Karaoke, and On-Rail Shooters.". ^_^ It certainly was a no brainer to do FMV on LD since it looked good while MegaCD had more versatile gaming hardware it wasn't well suited to FMV without specialized approaches that actually perfected after that platform on PCs for many years beyond the console craze of FMV.
I believe this console was only composite video?!
Am currently trying to trade for one of these systems. Am reeeeeally hoping it works out as i've been wanting one of these for ages!
Being a Sega nerd I always wanted one of those. But like you mentioned the price just wasn't worth it. Funny part is it opened the door to laserdisc collecting/obsession. There's so many hidden gem movies and the music on those discs are incredible.
Thing is I never understood why a lot of these kinds of games didn't realise "Chaos Control" had a very clever optical illusion that made the game feel way more immersive. When u shot an enemy they were covered by smoke. Yeh it's just a cheap way to cover the video as it continues to play out BUT it felt satisfying. U felt like ud destroyed them. Tricked the mind with slight of hand so didnt feel as much like u were shooting at a FMV video.
Okay, also, WTF is with that karaoke lyric at 6:04? "When the rebel took a little child bride"? WHUT?
Pioneer Laser Active Mini
i will forever pronounce it the Pee Shee Engine :D
Somebody likes hyper dimension neptunia
Were all the laser active games on rails or some not? I am trying to figure out how gaming on it actually works but can't find a video showing how ging on it was like. I can only find videos of on screen game play recorded but no video showing how person actually played it.
LaserActive allowed for a dual frame video portion... it interweaved 480i into 2 streams of 1 hour each (or 108,000 frames).... so on games like Blue Chicago Blues, it had in excess of 3 1/2 hours of video (double sided). It has an analog audio track, which some games put in mono English on one side, Japanese on the other... in addition to all this, it had about 540 megs of digital data (similar to CD data), which could be divided up into game data or additional digital audio. As the format was being exploited in later games (term loosely, aka 1 year after launch)... Ghost Rush and Don Quixote used short video clips sequentially to simulate walking Strait, Left,Right or turn around into environments.... it used digital sound effects onto of this for 'walking barefoot' or 'walking with a horse (horse trops)... and Midi music (similar to what the Genesis could do) for soundtracks. It could also do games as complex as Myst (I actually had the prototype for a couple of years)... so it would play exactly the same as the Playstation for instance. LaserActive excelled at video with graphic overlays (from Genesis or NEC).. had ability to darken/filter video, still frame screens, multiple audio tracks/multiple languages, sound clips, sound effects, plus the capability to do sprites or graphics equal to what the Sega CD could (ontop of running video/audio). The 3d0 has more computing power, but LaserActive 'could have' better video and audio and much longer running time of that type of content. It also could have been upgraded to include gaming systems like the 3d0, Phillips Cdi, Playstation or Sega Saturn, but it died off too early... the modules would have been expensive but 'it could' technically be done without much difficulty.... The Pioneer people in the 1990's were very smart engineers.
@@Have.An.AmicoDay interesting thanks for explaining. I don't completely understand how Myst would work but I appreciate the detailed reply!!!🙌
Myst is a simple game... pretty much its a static screen, (one frame)... with a genesis sound effect in the background... a wind noise or a page turning. Most of the transitions involved a short animation, aka walking forward/to the side ect, which involved only 6 to 10 frames... before ending up at another static screen. When a book played, it primarily is only a voice talking (with static sounds), which is easily taken care of by digital audio (aka the CD music portion of the disk). Any video clip is easily taken care of by LaserDisc video. The main problem with why it wasn't released because the start and stop portion of the disk, aka 6 to 10 frames... were too short a period of time, so by the time the command was sent to stop the laserdisc movie (only 6 frames), the laser would ;sometimes; already by far past that... and start playing other 'video frames' of other parts of the game... but anyway that was the speculated answer... I think most of the bugs were worked out on later prototypes, and the game was canceled because the system was discontinued before MYST could launch... aka be finished programming. I was very fortunate to look at the 110 Prototype in a regular LD player and its an absolute mess trying to watch it sequentially like a movie... so much work was done, so many scenes and sound effects all crammed together, it would give most people a seizure... no doubt it was maxing out LD's capabilities. @R133
@@Have.An.AmicoDay I must be thinking of a different myst game because the one I know if 3D and free roam.
Myst was remade to be fully 3D about 10 years ago, but the earlier versions (LaserActive/SegaCD) Mysts were based upon the McIntosh 1.0 version... those were basically static screens with short animation transitions. Very archaic compared to the fully movable worlds of today, but back in 1993 Myst was just about the first of its kind and highly praised. @@DCMAKER133
Old man who is a kid at hart reporting for duty 🙃
If only Nintendo and Sony was able to make something like this but we all know what happened in the end with that deal - CD-I and Playstation.
big fan of the system but
unfortunatly laser disc was
never popular in australia
over shadowed by vhs and
then dvd
A game device for kids 3 years old and below!!!
Ish there also a pee-he engine?
:)
Is it 32 bit or 16 bit.
This makes the JVC X-eye look like a joke
Sean Connery here. can you review my Pee-She engine, that would be schooper.
doom to fail , pioneer opened a showroom close to trocadero london around 1993 for a short period of time, think it cost 1000 pound, u could have picked up an imported laser disc player & console way below that price , the games for that time i would say its crap ... just for hoarders & collector now
LOL PEEESH SHEEE Engine
...Pee-Shee Engine?
Can you pronounce "PC Engine" for us one more time...? lmao
He saying pee shee engine because that's how you say it in Japanese ぴーし sorry can't write katakana on my phone
1 St
Holy crap! A "first" comment that was actually first!
yay i won
You got any better thumbnails besides thots?
Nope
Wow, the hurt right-wing feelings are strong with you, over boobs. Nice meme term the alt-right uses on twitter, made it easy to see what side you're on.
Those are Anime ladies you swine, and there's nothing better for thumbnails, or for anything else.
Haytch pee shee dee youchewb
Anything even remotely cool is expensive, huh?
Well, if ya don't mind me I think I'll be saving my money for a decade and pillaging eBay!
Pee Scheeeee Engine LOL
The word is PC not p she
Pee She And Jean 😆😂
oh my GOd ! I hate FMV games... They are boring and VERY repetitive !
I guess we have alll our own "bad taste".....
Looked great (for the time), played like crap. Imo
Pee-she engine? Wtf?
I cringe every time he says it
Come on mate Pee She Engine, i get your trying to do the whole say it like the Japanese say it thing, it's really cringe though...
got bored midway
Stop pee sheeing around
Nice click bait kk
Your old content was better
I know, I have not got the time at the moment to put the level of depth in I have in the past. My son was born five weeks ago.
@@TopHatGamingManChannel Respect to that!
Thank you so much for answering back!
@@TopHatGamingManChannel Congratulations! All the best.
To be honest, there's not that much to say about the Pioneer Laser Active.
I don't see whats wrong with this or any other of his more recent videos. You can tell he put a lot of work and thought into them. Informative and overall well done content.