What's Your Favorite Laserdisc Arcade Game?

Metropolis

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This thread is for discussing Laserdisc arcade games. Which ones do you have in your collection? How many have you played? What are your favorites?

Here's a list of every Laserdisc arcade game:

Astron Belt
Atomic Castle
Attack of the Zolgear
Badlands
Bega's Battle
Captain Zapp
Casino Strip
Cliff Hanger
Cobra Command
COPS
Crime Patrol
Crime Patrol 2: Drug Wars
Cube Quest
Dragon's Lair
Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp
Eon and the Time Tunnel
Esh's Aurunmilla
Fast Draw Showdown
Fire Fox
Freedom Fighter
Galaxy Ranger
Gallagher's Gallery
Goal to Go
Gold Medal with Bruce Jenner
GP World
Interstellar Laser Fantasy
Laser Grand Prix
Last Bounty Hunter, The
M.A.C.H. 3
Mad Dog McCree
Mad Dog II: The Lost Gold
Marbella Vice
NFL Football (CED SelectaVision Videodisc)
Ninja Hayate
Platoon
Project Dragoon
Quarterhorse
Road Blaster
Space Ace
Space Pirates
Star Rider
Street Viper
Super Don Quixote
Thayer's Quest
Tierres Salvajes
Time Gal
Time Traveler
Top Gear
Us vs. Them
Who Shot Johnny Rock?
Zorton Brothers

As you can see, the Laserdisc arcade game is very diverse and goes far beyond just Dragon's Lair and Space Ace. Some of these games are "hit-the-button-at-the-right-time"-type games, some of them use Laserdisc graphics for overlays, some of them use special cabinets and hardware, and some of them try to bring the RPG to the arcade. Overall, this is a fascinating subject, and I'd love to be able to play these games some day.
 
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i played Dragon's Lair, Cliff Hanger, Astron Belt, and Us VS. Them when i was at the Funspot this summer (i think all their working lasers,) and the only one i thought didn't suck was Us. VS Them. i had forgotten how much i dislike DL and the "press the button at the right time" game play, which of course includes CH. it was almost impossible to hit anything in AB as the control implementation just seemed sloppy. at least with UVT, while similar in game play, i could get the hang of aiming and managed to do ok after a game or two.

as has been discussed several times, Time Traveler is complete ass with a cool presentation.

i know i played Firefox as a kid and i can recall doing it multiple times so it's probably at least decent.
 
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I remember playing a laser disk jet game. I don't remember if it was FireFox or Mach 3. It was one of the few LD games that I've played that didn't suck.

Well, that and Star Rider, but one that has a sentimental place because some of my code is in there ... :D.

ken
 
Dragon's Lair. I can still remember hearing it's attraction narration blaring in the game room of this little sandwich shop called Hoagie's in my home town. Given I was a big D&D nerd at the time, I was instantly hooked. So many quarters in that machine...
 
Dragon's Lair. I can still remember hearing it's attraction narration blaring in the game room of this little sandwich shop called Hoagie's in my home town. Given I was a big D&D nerd at the time, I was instantly hooked. So many quarters in that machine...
The only memory I have of Laserdisc games comes from when I was little and asked for this horrible Dragon's Lair/Dragon's Lair II/Space Ace PC box set thing from Toys 'R Us. Upon actually trying to play the thing, we were convinced it didn't work and brought it back. XD
 
not to sound blasphemous, but is there a multi-set up for this yet?

I guess I never got into laserdiscs - might be fun to try some. Is there a mame-like version, or can you run these in mame (I'm lazy).
 
can you run these in mame (I'm lazy).
You can technically run some of them in MAME, but it's a pain in the ass and it's very difficult to get it working. As for me, I could never even get the Neo-Geo bios to work, let alone Laserdiscs.
 
Atomic Castle and Eon and the Time Tunnel were the same game... and neither of them were ever released. Eon and the Time Tunnel was kinda like the test version of Atomic Castle. I'm pretty sure Captain Zapp was never released either.

As for which ones are my favorite. I really like the animation style of Don Bluth / Disney so Dragon's Lair and Space Ace were my favorites. I do like the game play of Thayer's Quest too. TQ is one of those games that you either love or hate. I happen to love it. Others were pretty cool like Cube Quest, Cliff Hanger, Goal To Go, and Super Don Quix-ote.

Some of the worst ones IMO were Interstellar, Star Rider, Street Viper and a few others.

Some really cool uses of the laser disc player were in games like Freedom Fighter and an unreleased one called Road Runner, which showed up a CAX a few years ago. (yes... the System 1 Road Runner was originally going to be a laser disc game) Too bad they changed it. The laser disc version of this game was really cool!

Anyway... just my opinions.
 
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Atomic Castle and Eon and the Time Tunnel were the same game... and neither of them were ever released. Eon and the Time Tunnel was kinda like the test version of Atomic Castle. I'm pretty sure Captain Zapp was never released either.
Atomic Castle was released in 1983. It's unknown whether Eon was released or not. Captain Zapp was released in both Japan and North America.

Sources: http://www.klov.com, http://www.allgame.com, and http://www.arcadeflyers.com
 
You can technically run some of them in MAME, but it's a pain in the ass and it's very difficult to get it working. As for me, I could never even get the Neo-Geo bios to work, let alone Laserdiscs.

Mame couldn't be easier to run the LD games. I have a Mame rig and run both it and Daphne for my LD fix. However, if you're going to run Mame LD games, make sure to buy the biggest hard drive you can afford. Mame uses an incredibly large image file instead of Daphne, which uses a reasonably sized one. (albeit with some slight image degradation - but still excellent)

I wouldn't bother laying out the coin for dedicated LD games, replay on just about all of them is sucktastic. I mainly loaded them all up to just have them.
 
Mame couldn't be easier to run the LD games. I have a Mame rig and run both it and Daphne for my LD fix. However, if you're going to run Mame LD games, make sure to buy the biggest hard drive you can afford. Mame uses an incredibly large image file instead of Daphne, which uses a reasonably sized one. (albeit with some slight image degradation - but still excellent)

I wouldn't bother laying out the coin for dedicated LD games, replay on just about all of them is sucktastic. I mainly loaded them all up to just have them.
How do you run LD games on MAME?

MAME is a pain in the ass in general. I download the master ROM for Street Fighter II and it doesn't work. I download the Neo-Geo bios ROM and it doesn't work. I download the Playchoice bios ROM and it doesn't work. I download assorted LD games and they don't work.
 
You have the wrong ROM version then. You have to have the same Mame program version as the ROM. Once everything is matched, it's completely easy. Install Mame (which isn't even an install; it just unzips the files into a directory)

Copy the ROM image to the Roms directory from above.

Done.

Run Mame.exe. Choose game, press <tab> to configure controls. All set!
 
You have the wrong ROM version then. You have to have the same Mame program version as the ROM. Once everything is matched, it's completely easy. Install Mame (which isn't even an install; it just unzips the files into a directory)

Copy the ROM image to the Roms directory from above.

Done.

Run Mame.exe. Choose game, press <tab> to configure controls. All set!
I have two different versions of MAME, and the games I mentioned don't work on either. :(
 
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