LaserActive



"Interactive entertainment."

There have been many failed consoles. There have been many overpriced consoles. There have been many failed, overpriced consoles. But unless you are in the tiny niche of interactive movie freaks, it is hard to imagine a system with a worse bang for the buck than Pioneer's short-lived LaserActive.

By itself, it is just a LaserDisc movie player (and a very barebones one, not even S-Video output). But with the help of optional modules, it would run Mega Drive, Mega-CD, TurboGrafx-16 and TurboGrafx CD games. Why even count it as a separate console, then? Because the same modules also allowed it to run LD-based games. These were mostly straight ports of interactive movie arcades like Time Gal and Road Avenger, with much better video quality than their CD-based ports, along with several "crosshair over movie" rail shooters, some educational titles, and even strip mahjong/"photographer" adult games.

(As an upside, the LaserActive's video encoder is much better than the ones in a Sega Genesis or a TurboGrafx-16; so while it's still not quite S-Video quality, it sports better video over composite than the original systems.)

The major problem with the LaserActive was the price tag: the core unit alone cost $970, and the game modules went for $600 each. Now do the math, account for inflation, and imagine yourself paying $3500 for a game system (and that's not counting the modules for karaoke, computer interface, and 3D goggles). Most expensive console ever? Surprisingly, no, that'd be the Halcyon.