Holy WOW! Halcylon Auction

[Rev. Rob]

http://cgi.ebay.com/Halcyon-Interactive-Di...1QQcmdZViewItem

 

I wish I had thousands of dollars to blow!

[Lord Thag]

Wow, those don't grow on trees.

[swlovinist]

A true holy grail system. Gosh it has everything. I see this one going over 2K.

[jboypacman]

You dont see thoses everyday.

[Tempest]

There's actually some debate as to whether or not these actually went into production or not. People have speculated that only a handful of units were made (assembled by hand) for investors in the company. I suppose Rick Dyer would know for sure.

 

Tempest

[BydoEmpire]

Wow, cool to see one surface. I think there's a RetroGaming Radio interview with Rick Dyer, but I don't remember the details - it was from one of the earlier seasons.

[iwan-iwanowitsch-goratschin]

First time that I see this system.....

[DragonmasterDan]

There's actually some debate as to whether or not these actually went into production or not. People have speculated that only a handful of units were made (assembled by hand) for investors in the company. I suppose Rick Dyer would know for sure.

 

Tempest

 

I thought they put up a display at an electronics store in Southern California to assure investors it was in production but didn't actually sell any units (or something like that)?

[Student Driver]

There's actually some debate as to whether or not these actually went into production or not. People have speculated that only a handful of units were made (assembled by hand) for investors in the company. I suppose Rick Dyer would know for sure.

 

Tempest

 

I thought they put up a display at an electronics store in Southern California to assure investors it was in production but didn't actually sell any units (or something like that)?

 

I know at least RDI Halcyon branded laserdisc players made it out there-- I've got one, and they were absurdly common a few years ago. At the time I bought it, I was told that RDI was liquidating the (still useful) players to recoup their investments in the failed test-marketing of the full Halcyon system. Combined with the plurality of Halcyon game discs out there, and the fact that at least a few complete systems are out there in the hands of non-RDI-folks (such as laserdisc collectors), I'd feel safe in claiming that the Halcyon system (as a whole) was at least test marketed to the general public

[98PaceCar]

There's actually some debate as to whether or not these actually went into production or not. People have speculated that only a handful of units were made (assembled by hand) for investors in the company. I suppose Rick Dyer would know for sure.

 

Tempest

 

My particular unit has eproms on the main board and not masked roms. I know that doesn't mean a whole lot, but I would think that if it were mass produced in any capacity, they would not have used eproms. The board does appear to be what would be a final version would look like (nicely masked and everything). I never pulled the board to see if it was hand soldered or done by machine though.

 

If it was released, it wasn't tested very well. There are a number of glaring bugs in the football game. Not sure about Thayer's, but I assume it was in better shape due to being an arcade release as well.

[Tempest]

If it was released, it wasn't tested very well. There are a number of glaring bugs in the football game. Not sure about Thayer's, but I assume it was in better shape due to being an arcade release as well.

 

Do tell! There is so little info on the Halcyon I'd like to know more.

 

BTW what happens at the end of the home version of Thayers Quest? I've heard that the arcade version asks you to flip the disc over (which is impossible), does the home version at least have a "To be continued" screen?

 

Tempest

[98PaceCar]

Do tell! There is so little info on the Halcyon I'd like to know more.

 

BTW what happens at the end of the home version of Thayers Quest? I've heard that the arcade version asks you to flip the disc over (which is impossible), does the home version at least have a "To be continued" screen?

 

Tempest

 

The biggest (and funniest) is that even though the game features the Chargers and the Raiders, the online status that shows who has the ball will occassionally read Cowboys or Redskins. I'm guessing they were working on that one next or something. There's also a LOT of repeated plays, but I think that's more a function of the way the game is designed rather than an actual bug.

 

As for Thayer's, I've never actually played it long enough to get to the 'end', but it does have video footage on the flipside so it appears that it will continue. I'm going to try to come up with a way to capture the video out and post it somewhere. I saw your request in the other post and a few others have asked for the same. I've just never been quite sure how to do it.

 

I had posted some info on this when I first got a hold of it, but it's over on DP. I'll post a link, but if that's frowned upon feel free to edit it out or let me know it's not ok and I will remove the link.

 

Halcyon Info

[Tempest]

The biggest (and funniest) is that even though the game features the Chargers and the Raiders, the online status that shows who has the ball will occassionally read Cowboys or Redskins. I'm guessing they were working on that one next or something.

 

Yes I read somewhere that Cowboys vs Redskins was indeed the next Football title planned. Oops...

 

Tempest

[bojay1997]

There's actually some debate as to whether or not these actually went into production or not. People have speculated that only a handful of units were made (assembled by hand) for investors in the company. I suppose Rick Dyer would know for sure.

 

Tempest

 

I thought they put up a display at an electronics store in Southern California to assure investors it was in production but didn't actually sell any units (or something like that)?

 

I know at least RDI Halcyon branded laserdisc players made it out there-- I've got one, and they were absurdly common a few years ago. At the time I bought it, I was told that RDI was liquidating the (still useful) players to recoup their investments in the failed test-marketing of the full Halcyon system. Combined with the plurality of Halcyon game discs out there, and the fact that at least a few complete systems are out there in the hands of non-RDI-folks (such as laserdisc collectors), I'd feel safe in claiming that the Halcyon system (as a whole) was at least test marketed to the general public

 

RDI was liquidated at the request of its creditors in 1986. There were hundreds of RDI branded Pioneer LD700 players that were sold in lots at auction in San Diego at that time. In fact, Pioneer required a minimum order of 1,000 players and according to the documents I have, at least 750 were sold at auction. Pioneer did the rebadging to the LD-700s using the art RDI provided and also custom printed a version of the standard LD700 box that was big enough to hold the entire system including the computer and laserdisc portion. Quite a few of them were purchased by a Laserdisc player repair shop in northern San Diego County and he sold them as standard LD-700s. Others ended up on Ebay or sold at swap meets by individual purchasers years down the road. I still have not gone through all of the RDI documents I own, but my general sense is that they hand produced maybe 10 complete systems and used a couple for the trade show display at CES in 1985 (I believe I own these two units) and the remaining units were either used to test the system or shipped to the 5-6 individual investors (including Quinn Martin) who made significant ($100K+) investments in the company. I have seen absolutely no evidence that the system was ever sold or demonstrated at anything resembling retail. Certain parts were obviously produced in some quantity (keyboards, bezels for the system, cartridge stickers, overlays, etc...), but others like the headset and cables, as well as the cartridge casings were pretty standard parts that they just bought from electronics dealers in San Diego. Even the manuals were just printed at a local print shop in small quantities. In short, the system was never released in my opinion and is certainly the rarest non-prototype classic system I know of.

[DragonmasterDan]

There's actually some debate as to whether or not these actually went into production or not. People have speculated that only a handful of units were made (assembled by hand) for investors in the company. I suppose Rick Dyer would know for sure.

 

Tempest

 

I thought they put up a display at an electronics store in Southern California to assure investors it was in production but didn't actually sell any units (or something like that)?

 

I know at least RDI Halcyon branded laserdisc players made it out there-- I've got one, and they were absurdly common a few years ago. At the time I bought it, I was told that RDI was liquidating the (still useful) players to recoup their investments in the failed test-marketing of the full Halcyon system. Combined with the plurality of Halcyon game discs out there, and the fact that at least a few complete systems are out there in the hands of non-RDI-folks (such as laserdisc collectors), I'd feel safe in claiming that the Halcyon system (as a whole) was at least test marketed to the general public

 

RDI was liquidated at the request of its creditors in 1986. There were hundreds of RDI branded Pioneer LD700 players that were sold in lots at auction in San Diego at that time. In fact, Pioneer required a minimum order of 1,000 players and according to the documents I have, at least 750 were sold at auction. Pioneer did the rebadging to the LD-700s using the art RDI provided and also custom printed a version of the standard LD700 box that was big enough to hold the entire system including the computer and laserdisc portion. Quite a few of them were purchased by a Laserdisc player repair shop in northern San Diego County and he sold them as standard LD-700s. Others ended up on Ebay or sold at swap meets by individual purchasers years down the road. I still have not gone through all of the RDI documents I own, but my general sense is that they hand produced maybe 10 complete systems and used a couple for the trade show display at CES in 1985 (I believe I own these two units) and the remaining units were either used to test the system or shipped to the 5-6 individual investors (including Quinn Martin) who made significant ($100K+) investments in the company. I have seen absolutely no evidence that the system was ever sold or demonstrated at anything resembling retail. Certain parts were obviously produced in some quantity (keyboards, bezels for the system, cartridge stickers, overlays, etc...), but others like the headset and cables, as well as the cartridge casings were pretty standard parts that they just bought from electronics dealers in San Diego. Even the manuals were just printed at a local print shop in small quantities. In short, the system was never released in my opinion and is certainly the rarest non-prototype classic system I know of.

 

Were you the guy who bought all the old RDI information. I vaguely remember you posting on the DLP forums years ago about it.

[Numan]

I missed the auction.

 

Such asleep at the wheelaments.

[bojay1997]

There's actually some debate as to whether or not these actually went into production or not. People have speculated that only a handful of units were made (assembled by hand) for investors in the company. I suppose Rick Dyer would know for sure.

 

Tempest

 

I thought they put up a display at an electronics store in Southern California to assure investors it was in production but didn't actually sell any units (or something like that)?

 

I know at least RDI Halcyon branded laserdisc players made it out there-- I've got one, and they were absurdly common a few years ago. At the time I bought it, I was told that RDI was liquidating the (still useful) players to recoup their investments in the failed test-marketing of the full Halcyon system. Combined with the plurality of Halcyon game discs out there, and the fact that at least a few complete systems are out there in the hands of non-RDI-folks (such as laserdisc collectors), I'd feel safe in claiming that the Halcyon system (as a whole) was at least test marketed to the general public

 

RDI was liquidated at the request of its creditors in 1986. There were hundreds of RDI branded Pioneer LD700 players that were sold in lots at auction in San Diego at that time. In fact, Pioneer required a minimum order of 1,000 players and according to the documents I have, at least 750 were sold at auction. Pioneer did the rebadging to the LD-700s using the art RDI provided and also custom printed a version of the standard LD700 box that was big enough to hold the entire system including the computer and laserdisc portion. Quite a few of them were purchased by a Laserdisc player repair shop in northern San Diego County and he sold them as standard LD-700s. Others ended up on Ebay or sold at swap meets by individual purchasers years down the road. I still have not gone through all of the RDI documents I own, but my general sense is that they hand produced maybe 10 complete systems and used a couple for the trade show display at CES in 1985 (I believe I own these two units) and the remaining units were either used to test the system or shipped to the 5-6 individual investors (including Quinn Martin) who made significant ($100K+) investments in the company. I have seen absolutely no evidence that the system was ever sold or demonstrated at anything resembling retail. Certain parts were obviously produced in some quantity (keyboards, bezels for the system, cartridge stickers, overlays, etc...), but others like the headset and cables, as well as the cartridge casings were pretty standard parts that they just bought from electronics dealers in San Diego. Even the manuals were just printed at a local print shop in small quantities. In short, the system was never released in my opinion and is certainly the rarest non-prototype classic system I know of.

 

Were you the guy who bought all the old RDI information. I vaguely remember you posting on the DLP forums years ago about it.

 

Yes. I own roughly 25 large boxes of documents, original art, scripts, computer code, prototype discs, 1" and 3/4" masters, 35mm film masters, magnetic tapes and pretty much everything that was left over after RDI shut down. The remaining parts for the Thayer's Quest arcade machines and the aforementioned laserdisc players, as well as office furniture and other general assets were liquidated separately from what is included in the collection I obtained.

[DragonmasterDan]

There's actually some debate as to whether or not these actually went into production or not. People have speculated that only a handful of units were made (assembled by hand) for investors in the company. I suppose Rick Dyer would know for sure.

 

Tempest

 

I thought they put up a display at an electronics store in Southern California to assure investors it was in production but didn't actually sell any units (or something like that)?

 

I know at least RDI Halcyon branded laserdisc players made it out there-- I've got one, and they were absurdly common a few years ago. At the time I bought it, I was told that RDI was liquidating the (still useful) players to recoup their investments in the failed test-marketing of the full Halcyon system. Combined with the plurality of Halcyon game discs out there, and the fact that at least a few complete systems are out there in the hands of non-RDI-folks (such as laserdisc collectors), I'd feel safe in claiming that the Halcyon system (as a whole) was at least test marketed to the general public

 

RDI was liquidated at the request of its creditors in 1986. There were hundreds of RDI branded Pioneer LD700 players that were sold in lots at auction in San Diego at that time. In fact, Pioneer required a minimum order of 1,000 players and according to the documents I have, at least 750 were sold at auction. Pioneer did the rebadging to the LD-700s using the art RDI provided and also custom printed a version of the standard LD700 box that was big enough to hold the entire system including the computer and laserdisc portion. Quite a few of them were purchased by a Laserdisc player repair shop in northern San Diego County and he sold them as standard LD-700s. Others ended up on Ebay or sold at swap meets by individual purchasers years down the road. I still have not gone through all of the RDI documents I own, but my general sense is that they hand produced maybe 10 complete systems and used a couple for the trade show display at CES in 1985 (I believe I own these two units) and the remaining units were either used to test the system or shipped to the 5-6 individual investors (including Quinn Martin) who made significant ($100K+) investments in the company. I have seen absolutely no evidence that the system was ever sold or demonstrated at anything resembling retail. Certain parts were obviously produced in some quantity (keyboards, bezels for the system, cartridge stickers, overlays, etc...), but others like the headset and cables, as well as the cartridge casings were pretty standard parts that they just bought from electronics dealers in San Diego. Even the manuals were just printed at a local print shop in small quantities. In short, the system was never released in my opinion and is certainly the rarest non-prototype classic system I know of.

 

Were you the guy who bought all the old RDI information. I vaguely remember you posting on the DLP forums years ago about it.

 

Yes. I own roughly 25 large boxes of documents, original art, scripts, computer code, prototype discs, 1" and 3/4" masters, 35mm film masters, magnetic tapes and pretty much everything that was left over after RDI shut down. The remaining parts for the Thayer's Quest arcade machines and the aforementioned laserdisc players, as well as office furniture and other general assets were liquidated separately from what is included in the collection I obtained.

 

Yeah, I remember you posting about some of this on the DLP forums 3-4 years ago.

[Student Driver]

RDI was liquidated at the request of its creditors in 1986. There were hundreds of RDI branded Pioneer LD700 players that were sold in lots at auction in San Diego at that time. In fact, Pioneer required a minimum order of 1,000 players and according to the documents I have, at least 750 were sold at auction. Pioneer did the rebadging to the LD-700s using the art RDI provided and also custom printed a version of the standard LD700 box that was big enough to hold the entire system including the computer and laserdisc portion. Quite a few of them were purchased by a Laserdisc player repair shop in northern San Diego County and he sold them as standard LD-700s. Others ended up on Ebay or sold at swap meets by individual purchasers years down the road. I still have not gone through all of the RDI documents I own, but my general sense is that they hand produced maybe 10 complete systems and used a couple for the trade show display at CES in 1985 (I believe I own these two units) and the remaining units were either used to test the system or shipped to the 5-6 individual investors (including Quinn Martin) who made significant ($100K+) investments in the company. I have seen absolutely no evidence that the system was ever sold or demonstrated at anything resembling retail. Certain parts were obviously produced in some quantity (keyboards, bezels for the system, cartridge stickers, overlays, etc...), but others like the headset and cables, as well as the cartridge casings were pretty standard parts that they just bought from electronics dealers in San Diego. Even the manuals were just printed at a local print shop in small quantities. In short, the system was never released in my opinion and is certainly the rarest non-prototype classic system I know of.

 

Thanks for the info!

 

Considering the relatively small number of laserdisc enthusiasts at the time I picked my player up in the mid-90s, having ~750 to 1000 RDI-badged players out there explains its ubiquity. That was at a point where a disc selling 1000 copies was a big hit.

 

So, iff'n you have access to RDI paperwork, do you have insight on earlier stuff Rick Dyer worked on? In 1982, he designed (w/ AMS, whomever/whatever that might be) plug and play joysticks for Entex, but precious little info on them exists beyond a promo flyer issued by Entex; dunno if RDI was set up after this point, but can't hurt to ask.

[bojay1997]

RDI was liquidated at the request of its creditors in 1986. There were hundreds of RDI branded Pioneer LD700 players that were sold in lots at auction in San Diego at that time. In fact, Pioneer required a minimum order of 1,000 players and according to the documents I have, at least 750 were sold at auction. Pioneer did the rebadging to the LD-700s using the art RDI provided and also custom printed a version of the standard LD700 box that was big enough to hold the entire system including the computer and laserdisc portion. Quite a few of them were purchased by a Laserdisc player repair shop in northern San Diego County and he sold them as standard LD-700s. Others ended up on Ebay or sold at swap meets by individual purchasers years down the road. I still have not gone through all of the RDI documents I own, but my general sense is that they hand produced maybe 10 complete systems and used a couple for the trade show display at CES in 1985 (I believe I own these two units) and the remaining units were either used to test the system or shipped to the 5-6 individual investors (including Quinn Martin) who made significant ($100K+) investments in the company. I have seen absolutely no evidence that the system was ever sold or demonstrated at anything resembling retail. Certain parts were obviously produced in some quantity (keyboards, bezels for the system, cartridge stickers, overlays, etc...), but others like the headset and cables, as well as the cartridge casings were pretty standard parts that they just bought from electronics dealers in San Diego. Even the manuals were just printed at a local print shop in small quantities. In short, the system was never released in my opinion and is certainly the rarest non-prototype classic system I know of.

 

Thanks for the info!

 

Considering the relatively small number of laserdisc enthusiasts at the time I picked my player up in the mid-90s, having ~750 to 1000 RDI-badged players out there explains its ubiquity. That was at a point where a disc selling 1000 copies was a big hit.

 

So, iff'n you have access to RDI paperwork, do you have insight on earlier stuff Rick Dyer worked on? In 1982, he designed (w/ AMS, whomever/whatever that might be) plug and play joysticks for Entex, but precious little info on them exists beyond a promo flyer issued by Entex; dunno if RDI was set up after this point, but can't hurt to ask.

 

I was a big laserdisc fan myself and the last figures I saw from Pioneer were something like 2 million laserdisc player owners in the United States at the point they decided to stop production. How many of them were active at the end is a whole other issue.

 

I do have quite a bit of the AMS paperwork, including a lot of color sketches of handheld games and design proposals that were sent out to various toy companies for stand alone video game products. AMS also did the design of a very early version of what eventually became Halcyon that was called the Fantasy Machine. I have a finished sales brochure and prototype sketches for that device, as well as rejection letters from Milton-Bradley among others complaining that it was too expensive or too complex to make a good mass market consumer electronics device. I can shoot some digital photos, but all of the AMS design stuff is in really odd sizes that don't lend themselves well to a scanner.

[Rev. Rob]

Do tell! There is so little info on the Halcyon I'd like to know more.

 

BTW what happens at the end of the home version of Thayers Quest? I've heard that the arcade version asks you to flip the disc over (which is impossible), does the home version at least have a "To be continued" screen?

 

Tempest

 

The biggest (and funniest) is that even though the game features the Chargers and the Raiders, the online status that shows who has the ball will occassionally read Cowboys or Redskins. I'm guessing they were working on that one next or something. There's also a LOT of repeated plays, but I think that's more a function of the way the game is designed rather than an actual bug.

 

As for Thayer's, I've never actually played it long enough to get to the 'end', but it does have video footage on the flipside so it appears that it will continue. I'm going to try to come up with a way to capture the video out and post it somewhere. I saw your request in the other post and a few others have asked for the same. I've just never been quite sure how to do it.

 

I had posted some info on this when I first got a hold of it, but it's over on DP. I'll post a link, but if that's frowned upon feel free to edit it out or let me know it's not ok and I will remove the link.

 

Halcyon Info

 

 

I hate you for owning one of these!

 

That said, can you please send me some scans/images of the game boxes, please?

[Student Driver]

I was a big laserdisc fan myself and the last figures I saw from Pioneer were something like 2 million laserdisc player owners in the United States at the point they decided to stop production. How many of them were active at the end is a whole other issue.

 

I do have quite a bit of the AMS paperwork, including a lot of color sketches of handheld games and design proposals that were sent out to various toy companies for stand alone video game products. AMS also did the design of a very early version of what eventually became Halcyon that was called the Fantasy Machine. I have a finished sales brochure and prototype sketches for that device, as well as rejection letters from Milton-Bradley among others complaining that it was too expensive or too complex to make a good mass market consumer electronics device. I can shoot some digital photos, but all of the AMS design stuff is in really odd sizes that don't lend themselves well to a scanner.

 

Going into LD collector geek mode:

 

I've seen the 2 million figure myself-- I think that was actually the estimated peak penetration of household markets by 1996 or 1997 (and it included every player manufactured from the 70s on, including nearly useless analog-audio-only players)-- but the early adoption of DVD by the LD crowd in 1996 caused the market to quickly contract. By ~2000, when US software production ceased, movies were seeing releases of only 250 copies, and most announced titles were canceled for lack of pre-orders. Non-collectors dumped their collections and players onto the market en masse, which was the reason I found the Halcyon player so easy to find. There may have only been 750 made, but at that point, there were perhaps 1000 LD collectors at most of note in the US, and few were interested in rebadged non-digital single-side players... so there was still a surplus of players for the supporting market. It was a great time for me!

 

Anyway, that AMS documentation would be great to see eventually. No pressure on you to scan or photograph it, but that info would be great for sites for handheld collectors.

[carmel_andrews]

According to thd rolenta book 'pheonix' a small amount of them were 'test marketed' in calif. At an r.r.p of 2k usd

 

r.r.p= recommended retail price