Inky Posted January 5, 2017 Share Posted January 5, 2017 (edited) I'm using the word craze ironically.Anyway, I recall hearing that Coleco was interested in creating a laserdisc for the Colecovision, and Atari had an expansion interface on the 7800, primarily for a laserdisc add-on.. Have any prototypes for either device, or at the very least technical documents ever surfaced?Was Mattel interested in jumping on the bandwagon with the Intellivision? Edited January 5, 2017 by Inky Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gabriel Posted January 5, 2017 Share Posted January 5, 2017 About the best I can imagine them being back then is a laserdisc player with input ports for the game system, and acting as a pass through to the TV. I imagine it working something like a 32X. The laserdisc player sends video to the TV, the game system can provide some kind of overlay graphics, and the system can also act as sort of remote issuing commands for what track to play. That's what laserdisc games were back then. They were FMV games which skipped tracks every so often (Dragon's Lair) or FMV with computer graphics overlaid to provide the game (MACH 3). I simply can't see the laserdisc being a storage medium for the 7800 or Colecovision to use within their own capabilities. It's ludicrous overkill. I think there was a "prototype" of the Colecovision laserdisc, but knowing how Coleco did things it was probably just a painted block of wood. However, I do recall seeing some site that had a sort of schematic of how the Coleco laserdisc was supposed to work. Maybe if Warner had done a laserdisc player, leveraged their movie catalog, and then offerred product synergy with Atari, it could have worked. Imagine a Road Warrior laserdisc game in 1983. You could either use the disc to watch the movie, or use the Atari to play it like a game. But there clearly wasn't that kind of vision at the time. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
godslabrat Posted January 5, 2017 Share Posted January 5, 2017 I think there was a "prototype" of the Colecovision laserdisc, but knowing how Coleco did things it was probably just a painted block of wood. My, how things have changed. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr_me Posted January 5, 2017 Share Posted January 5, 2017 I remember when Dragons Lair came out, there was a bit of hype around it. Laserdisc games were inreresting but I didn't think anyone thought the games themselves were any good. I've heard alot about the next generation Intellivisions but nothing involving laserdiscs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted January 5, 2017 Share Posted January 5, 2017 (edited) I don't think Mattel had any ideas about laserdisc. In 1983 they were just getting ready to introduce the Intellivision III: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/242701-discovered-a-brochure-in-my-fathers-stuff/page-1 Incidentally, looking at that link 30 seconds ago was the first time I had ever seen that console. I knew it must have existed because the Blue Sky Rangers web site has had the press release about it up for many years (and it talks about actual design features of the system, so it was obvious it was done), but I'd just never seen the actual system itself. I missed that thread when it first came up - I don't think I was visiting the site very often. Mattel were probably too preoccupied to be worrying about LD at the time. Edited January 5, 2017 by spacecadet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
enoofu Posted January 5, 2017 Share Posted January 5, 2017 I'm using the word craze ironically. Anyway, I recall hearing that Coleco was interested in creating a laserdisc for the Colecovision, and Atari had an expansion interface on the 7800, primarily for a laserdisc add-on.. Have any prototypes for either device, or at the very least technical documents ever surfaced? Was Mattel interested in jumping on the bandwagon with the Intellivision? Wasn't laser disks it was suppose to be ColecoVision CED player which ran CED Videodisc's 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spacecadet Posted January 6, 2017 Share Posted January 6, 2017 (edited) Wasn't laser disks it was suppose to be ColecoVision CED player which ran CED Videodisc's Ha, even better. According to someone else here, this did exist in real life and is in the possession of a former Coleco executive's son: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/201581-opinion-most-valuable-colecovision-item-out-there-in/?p=2580155 Everyone just calls this a "player", though, I'm not sure if it was really going to have games or just play movies. btw, for anyone who doesn't know what CED is, it's much worse than LD: There's a thrift store near me that's had two CED players on sale for like 6 months, no takers. I thought about it until I watched that Techmoan video. Edited January 6, 2017 by spacecadet 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr_me Posted January 6, 2017 Share Posted January 6, 2017 I don't think Mattel had any ideas about laserdisc. In 1983 they were just getting ready to introduce the Intellivision III: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/242701-discovered-a-brochure-in-my-fathers-stuff/page-1 Incidentally, looking at that link 30 seconds ago was the first time I had ever seen that console. I knew it must have existed because the Blue Sky Rangers web site has had the press release about it up for many years (and it talks about actual design features of the system, so it was obvious it was done), but I'd just never seen the actual system itself. I missed that thread when it first came up - I don't think I was visiting the site very often. Mattel were probably too preoccupied to be worrying about LD at the time. That Intellivision III in the brochure is only a mockup. The Intellivision III only existed in wirewrap form in the labs. It was killed in mid 1983 before Mattel Electronics shutdown all hardware development later that year. In an Infoworld 1983 dec 12 magazine article it is mentioned coleco signed rights for a home version of Dragons Lair videogame for 1984. There was doubts if a videodisc technology would be used because it was way too expensive, according to the article. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted January 6, 2017 Share Posted January 6, 2017 Everyone wanted to bring the high technology of the arcade home in an affordable way. So much of Sega CD, Turbo CD, and early PC multimedia was sooooo bad! Everyone was falling over one another to fill up the "huge" 650MB of a CD-ROM with stuff, and compressed video was a fast way to do it. We should be grateful the old Coleco and Mattel systems didn't bring some dinosaur laserdisc thing to market for $2000 in 1980s bucks. Cute writeup of the era http://www.filfre.net/tag/dragons-lair/ Dragon's Lair has been on more formats than it really deserves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon's_Lair_(1983_video_game)#Home_versions 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Black_Tiger Posted January 6, 2017 Share Posted January 6, 2017 Is the LaserActive the only console with a laserdisc format? The Mega-LD and LD-ROM2 games have a custom low quality fmv and aren't just streaming laserdisc footage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gabriel Posted January 6, 2017 Share Posted January 6, 2017 (edited) My, how things have changed. I bet that Coleco Chameleon weighs the same as a duck and also floats in water. Edited January 6, 2017 by Gabriel 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Usotsuki Posted January 6, 2017 Share Posted January 6, 2017 Didn't an MSX model exist with laserdisc support, that was capable of loading code from the audio track? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gabriel Posted January 7, 2017 Share Posted January 7, 2017 (edited) I don't know how I forgot to mention it and how no one else thought to mention it, but there is the little oddity of the Halcyon .https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halcyon_(console) http://www.videogameconsolelibrary.com/pg80-rdi.htm#page=reviews Edited January 7, 2017 by Gabriel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrMaddog Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 Didn't an MSX model exist with laserdisc support, that was capable of loading code from the audio track? Yeah, it was the Pioneer Palcom PX-7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inky Posted January 9, 2017 Author Share Posted January 9, 2017 Dragon's Lair has been on more formats than it really deserves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon's_Lair_(1983_video_game)#Home_versions I agree, but the Coleco ADAM version was pretty damn good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 I agree, but the Coleco ADAM version was pretty damn good. Fair enough! Personally, I think the Gameboy Color version is something special. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inky Posted January 9, 2017 Author Share Posted January 9, 2017 Fair enough! Personally, I think the Gameboy Color version is something special. I just looked at a walkthrough. Impressive. Too bad the gameplay is the same. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 I bet that Coleco Chameleon weighs the same as a duck and also floats in water. It certainly has good booancy. Just by looking at it you'll see it floats downstream quite well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 There are controllers for the Apple II that manage laserdisc players. They make no illusion that their purpose is a real controller and designed to access educational video material in a classroom environment. No gaming stuff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CatPix Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 Everyone wanted to bring the high technology of the arcade home in an affordable way. So much of Sega CD, Turbo CD, and early PC multimedia was sooooo bad! Everyone was falling over one another to fill up the "huge" 650MB of a CD-ROM with stuff, and compressed video was a fast way to do it. We should be grateful the old Coleco and Mattel systems didn't bring some dinosaur laserdisc thing to market for $2000 in 1980s bucks. The PC-Engine/Turbo CD had "extensive cutscenes" but they were anime style sprites, not video. If I recall right, the interface of the PC-Engine CD is simply too narrow to stream FMV, so the PC-Engine saw no major FMV craze (I' coudl say saw no, but there HAS to be an experimental shoddy FMV game on the PC-Engine). In fact, early CD games on the PC-Engine CD are of very decent quality, because unlike Sega, NEC wanted to give good reasons for the (Japanese) buyers to acquire the CD-ROM attachment. Less good game came later when the price of CD dropped and there was a larger base of PC-Engine CD installed, so third parties companies came and dropped games on CD. On the other hand, the Japan-Only PCFX console totally took the way of the FMV craze, and had little to no graphics capabilities in neither 2D or 3D, a sort of CD-i. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Black_Tiger Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 (edited) The PC-Engine/Turbo CD had "extensive cutscenes" but they were anime style sprites, not video. If I recall right, the interface of the PC-Engine CD is simply too narrow to stream FMV, so the PC-Engine saw no major FMV craze (I' coudl say saw no, but there HAS to be an experimental shoddy FMV game on the PC-Engine). In fact, early CD games on the PC-Engine CD are of very decent quality, because unlike Sega, NEC wanted to give good reasons for the (Japanese) buyers to acquire the CD-ROM attachment. Less good game came later when the price of CD dropped and there was a larger base of PC-Engine CD installed, so third parties companies came and dropped games on CD. On the other hand, the Japan-Only PCFX console totally took the way of the FMV craze, and had little to no graphics capabilities in neither 2D or 3D, a sort of CD-i. The PC Engine can do great fmv for the time, but there wasn't a market for it until next gen consoles were already emerging. Gulliver Boy is a JRPG with (Hudson's HuVideo) fmv for all of the cinemas. It runs at the same framerate as OVA, the window is almost full letterboxed "widescreen" sized and it pushes 100 colors. Galaxy Fraulein Yuna also has a bonus disc with nice 4:3 HuVideo. The Arcade Card format had the potential to do even more, but all it got was the ship fly-by in Sapphire. The Sherlock games' fmv actually did a hell of a lot, even though it wasn't programmed well enough to stay in sync with the audio. They used the 512 pixels-wide resolution, so the window looks small on screen. If you were to rearrange the sane number of tiles for a similar shaped window in 256 pixel resolution, it would have been very large. Also, devs weren't falling over one another to fill up the space of a CD-ROM, which also weren't even close to 650MB back then. Redbook audio takes up a full CD worth of space, so they had to leave room for streaming adpcm for things like voice acting. Most cart games during that generation were <1MB - 3MB, so a massive game would be lucky to take up even 1% of disc space for non-audio data. Edited January 11, 2017 by Black_Tiger Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CatPix Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 Most PC-Engine games mix the use of red book audio and chiptunes too, either because of space concern and/or because most video games companies weren't ready to hire musicians to play real tunes, even if there are some masterpieces here and there. But thanks for the infos. I never tried Sherlock since I prefer such games on PC for the ease of using a mouse... I haven't managed yet to get the PC-Engine mouse. I can't play JRPG since they would be in Japanese AND I don't like the JRPG alot I should find out the source that stated that the PC-Engien couldn't do FMV and point those games out too. Man, so much false info on the Internet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tanooki Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 Fair enough! Personally, I think the Gameboy Color version is something special. You got that right. I was going to bring that one up but you got there first. I knew some guys at the company back then as I had a couple friends working for Digital Eclipse. I don't recall most the conversation but they were very proud of themselves knocking that laserdisc game down to 2bit color, only losing 8 steps from the Smithy challenge area, and just shaving down the death sequences to fit it into that 4MB cartridge space. It's stunning how much they pulled off and no matter how much I loathe the game because I can never remember the moves, I still keep it around just for the hell of it. The tutorial mode makes it a bit fun since it throws up indicators for the random stages it will run before stopping. Might as well throw the MSU chip for the SNES in here, someone converted that whole Road Buster FMV game to the SNES which is insane. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonBane Posted January 11, 2017 Share Posted January 11, 2017 (edited) I'm using the word craze ironically. I don't know why you would be, since it's a legitimate use of the word. In the wake of the huge success of Dragon's Lair, every major arcade game maker was scrambling to create their own laserdisc games, in spite of the fact that they were actually pretty crap as games. I knew some guys at the company back then as I had a couple friends working for Digital Eclipse. I don't recall most the conversation but they were very proud of themselves knocking that laserdisc game down to 2bit color More like 4-bit color. 2-bit would only be 4 colors total, and every scene clearly has more than that. Edited January 11, 2017 by ZylonBane 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inky Posted January 11, 2017 Author Share Posted January 11, 2017 I bet that Coleco Chameleon weighs the same as a duck and also floats in water. Can you build a bridge out of it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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