Pioneer LaserActive

Lightning · Post by **Lightning** » Sun Jul 25, 2010 5:06 am

I was reading up on video game consoles, more specifically, older video game consoles, and I stumbled across this:

The Pioneer LaserActive, often considered to be a failure. It only had about 40 games released for it. The thing could play games for other consoles too, it could play NEC games and Sega games. So you might be wondering, how could something as awesome as that fail? Well, I believe the primary reason was it's price ($969 in 1993 dollars, that is exactly equal to $1,474.66 in 2010 dollars). And each game had a cost of about $120 in 1993 dollars ($182.62 in 2010 dollars). Also note that in order to play games for other consoles, you would have to buy a peripheral, and the peripherals were often priced higher than the base console that the peripheral was for.

You can read up about the Pioneer LaserActive here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_LaserActive

Post by **3DO Experience** » Sun Jul 25, 2010 8:31 am

Yes we were talking about that here. And the cost was $1,000 even, plus another $600 for the add-on witch was NOT optional, I know because I have one. The price was really $1,600 back then so that's about $2,350 today. But the LD games were not as expensive as $120, can't believe everything on wiki there are buffoons editing and re-editing all the time. Those wrong numbers are from the Sept 13th press release, the prices were changed before it went to market in October. I know wiki says it was released Sept 13th but it was actually Oct 1st, when one person puts the right data in four others put in what is the popular opinion.

Vance · Post by **Vance** » Sun Jul 25, 2010 8:31 am

My friend the former Working Designs staffer clued me in to the existence of this and at least one other such system a couple of months ago.

Advert with Devo looking like dork Klingons and Ray Charles looking like Ray Charles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ4vpZde ... re=related

Did you ever clue in to the wonderful world of the Halcyon? A never-released LD console that was set to release only FMV games... kind of gives me the butt chills. Here's a demo of The Spectre Files... I don't know if you have temporary Halloween shops in the UK, or Halloween, but most of these costumes are recognizable from such shops:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3GqQmYdjHc

Note the wonderful music and lyrics that change in rhythm and sometimes feel the need to cram five thoughts into a single section. It's not like they were working with much, I guess.

Tangentially, said friend worked at Cyclone for a stretch and had some not-nice things to say about 3DO. Then again, he tends to dispel with the pleasantries quickly if you're not on his level.

Post by **3DO Experience** » Sun Jul 25, 2010 8:51 am

OMG! Everything was fine but the headpieces they were wearing! What the hell, really?

Oh and that SPECTRE FILES... it looks sooooooooo bad. I wanna play it right now!

Vance · Post by **Vance** » Sun Jul 25, 2010 9:44 am

The game was never completed, but apparently all the video was shot. Somebody claims to have the whole hour and a half of footage, but is looking for the original script so he can put it together on a DVD. So far he hasn't released any of the footage, as far as I know.

Lightning · Post by **Lightning** » Sun Jul 25, 2010 4:24 pm

Vance wrote:The game was never completed, but apparently all the video was shot. Somebody claims to have the whole hour and a half of footage, but is looking for the original script so he can put it together on a DVD. So far he hasn't released any of the footage, as far as I know.

Well hopefully he does, it almost looks interesting.

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Sun Jul 25, 2010 5:51 pm

I have a LaserActive! It was probably my most indulgent of retro game purchases (I have a soft spot for obscure hardware). There are a few decent games for it, but they're pretty expensive still. I want Rocket Coaster, but don't really want to pay $100+ for it...

Anyhow, it's a cool novelty and conversation piece, but not very practical. I just wish the TurboGrafx adapter was cheaper so that I could retire my failing TurboDuo.

Plissken · Post by **Plissken** » Tue Aug 03, 2010 12:38 pm

Does anyone know if there is a project for writing an emulator for it and for dumping games? There are some japanese adventure games that got a english (subbed) release, like JB Harold's Blue Chicago Blues, only on this console.

NikeX · Post by **NikeX** » Tue Aug 03, 2010 11:56 pm

3DO Experience wrote:OMG! Everything was fine but the headpieces they were wearing! What the hell, really?
(...)

NikeX · Post by **NikeX** » Tue Aug 03, 2010 11:59 pm

A Pioneer LaserActive player with a turbo Grafx module:

http://cgi.ebay.de/LASERACTIVE-CLD-A100 ... 4a9f9edd61