Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/02/20/vintage-cgi.html
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I like that the green band is perfectly aligned with the notch on the floppy disk. It’s the attention to the little things…
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Star Rider was quite beautiful.
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Extra karma points for bringing us this digital awesomeness by analog VHS.
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How were Laserdisk games played? I remember renting one once so we could watch Cannonball Run (!), but I don’t remember any I/O devices.
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More importantly, is the soundtrack available?
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Here’s the only way I remember it:
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‘SPACE MOTORCYCLES’
FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELT
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According the the Dead Media Archive at NYU (a delightful rabbit-hole, though itself a dead website), it basically used the laserdisc’s ability to skip ahead to other scenes or tracks resulting in choose-your-own-adventure type gameplay:
“The instant-seeking functionality of Laserdiscs allowed developers to create interactive video games for LD players. The most popular LD game was Dragon’s Lair and it used pre-recorded animated scenes to tell a story. A user would use a remote or joystick to command the story to move forward and make decision for the on-screen characters. Gameplay was similar to current RPGs.”
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I’ve never played that game, but it looks to me like the road would have been overlaid with three space-cycle renderings. You, the player, had the middle one and had to opperate a steering wheel to stay in your lane and avoid the other two bikes. That’s my guess. A game like that could make great use of an LD video.
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Aha, so some models did have different control options.
I never used a laserdisc. Did they have menus, and the controller was just for navigating those?
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I don’t remember. My only interaction was the one time we rented one and when I found a torrent of the Japanese Laserdisc copy of Star Wars. Supposedly the only digital transfer version before Lucas started mucking about with it (but after the addition of “Episode IV” in the titles).
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The remote could be used as a crude input device. Keep in mind a control “input” would just switch tracks.
Nope and video was actually analog.
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