I had a Pioneer LaserActive years back, but sadly sold it when funds were low. I very much regret it now. An interesting point, when Coleco got the Dragons Lair license, the original intention was to add a laserdisc module to it.
There's a somewhat obscure game series following the private investigator J.B. Harold, that has entries on this console. While the first entry Murder Club was brought to the west for MS-DOS and Turbografx CD, two other titles were brought west exclusively on the Laseractive at the time. Those were Manhattan Requiem and Blue Chicago Blues. While Manhattan Requiem seems to have received a worldwide re-release for iOS, Android, Windows, and Macintosh; Blue Chicago Blues remains exclusive to the Laseractive for its western release. This is also interesting, as there were live action scenes filmed with Western actors that are clearly dubbed over in all Japanese language cutscenes. There seems to be evidence that I cannot confirm of the Windows release being bilingual, but it appears only to be released in Japan. And for sake of reference for the other titles in the series: Kiss of Murder was originally an expansion to Manhattan Requiem, but has also been released as a stand-alone title, as well as bundled together with the main game. I currently see no evidence of a western release. The other missing title, DC Connection, has absolutely zero releases outside of Japan, and no re-release in modern day.
I dreamt of having one of these back in the day! The modules for the genesis and tg16 in addition to being a top Tier LD player…21-12 Time Attack, indeed!
i can imagine being in a midwestern cocaine dealers sprawling ranch house in 1987, sitting on a leather couch inside of a grand room with recessed floors, as the host finishes a line of peruvian flake off a tiny mirror laying atop his entertainment center, turns on the tv and says to me, "Du YoU LikE LaSeR DiSk"? as the drip hits the back of my throat, a mutter "IS THAT THE TURBO GRAPHIX 16 MODULE"?
I believe that you said said something along the lines of there only being a small range of Karaoke LaserDiscs. In the U.S. there are 991 currently known Karaoke titles on LD. 2,461 known worldwide. More are still being found. In fact, I added one to the LaserDisc Database less than a week ago. Currently there are over 62,000 known LD releases worldwide, with more being added to the lddb every day or so. I own 5 LD players, one of which is a Karaoke model (Pioneer CLD-D505).
I wish someone would code an emulator to get all the games working to add into the "laserdisc" family to make it more interesting. There are people doing this but not for this particular system. The other Pioneer laserdisc emulators are, to say the least, uninspiring and the ones that are worth playing can be goofy at times.
I have no idea what these guys were thinking. A laserdisc system ten times more expensive than everything else that doesn't include the only laserdisc game that anyone's ever heard of? Every game on the system plays exactly the same and has literally zero replay value? It requires you to buy miniature versions of other game systems to actually play games, and these modules cost more than the originals? And the video quality, while very nice compared to CD systems of the time, was bottlenecked by the native resolutions of the PC engine and Genesis, nearly halving the quality of normal laserdisc playback? Sign me up!
Somehow the M4 simulator fits inbetween those worlds as well. It was actively tagged via a 386/486 PC and translated to movement. Would be interesting to combine the two obscurities.
Sega did what nintendon’t because nintendo was so exclusive in their business,sega at the other hand was waaay more open in doing business with other companies to shere their stuff with😁
Really interesting video. Made me realise I dodged a bullet by going for the Philips CDi with the Digital Video Adaptor, Game Controller, IR Remote and as I remember a voucher that was redeemable for ten free games/movies all for £399 GBP. My mate had a laser disc player and even though the film's looked better than Video CDs, they weren't three times better. You could pick up Video CDs for £16-£20 whereas he was paying £40-£70 for his Laser Discs :-) Thanks for sharing and keep up the great work!
Still a cool system, not having Dragon's Lair was deffo a big misstep! I had one in the 2000s and to be fair Triad Stone was the best example of a Dragons Lair style game I ever played, it's great.
I'm trying to find the price of an LD player in 1993 - I don't recall them ever getting below 1k. But that 'was' nearly 30 years ago so I'd welcome a fact-check.
I found quite a few old catalogues and adverts and stuff when I was researching this video. I'm still away and so can't check on my PC right now, but IIRC they started at about $800. So yeah, very expensive indeed.
