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, as well as karaoke LDs. Why even count it as a separate console, then? Because the same modules also allowed it to run LD-based games, mostly straight ports of interactive movie arcades like Time Gal and Road Avenger, with much better video quality than their CD-based ports.

What's interesting about the Laseractive is the video encoder for is different from the ones you'd find in a Sega Genesis or a TurboGrafx-16. This results in MUCH better video over composite than playing games from the actual console. So while you cannot connect it via S-Video, it is probably the best composite video you'll get out of your classic games.

There was a major downside to it, though: the core unit alone cost $970, the game modules went for $600 each, and the karaoke one was $350. Now do the math, account for inflation, and imagine yourself paying $4000 for a game console... which, surprisingly, still does not make this the most expensive console ever, that'd be the Halcyon.

The majority of these games consist of sprites pasted on full FMV movie backgrounds to simulate very high quality graphics. This resulted in a ridiculous amount of sub-par "crosshair over movie" shooting games that aren't worth playing at all. Other games include interactive movie games which were ported from very old japanese laserdisc and arcade games, Educational titles, and strip Mahjong/"Photographer" adult games. 90% of the library is garbage unfortunately, but there are a few entertaining titles that many people missed out on. At this time it is impossible to emulate laserdisc games and it will likely always be that way. Luckily, most of the titles I will be adding here have variants on other consoles that you can emulate. I will try to add that information into each description so you'll be able to play it.