The 1993 Pioneer LaserActive certainly ranks high on the list of obscure video games. It was an odd duck; it used both a LaserDisc for data storage and provided compatibility with a range of existing video game consoles. Due to the rarity and complexity of this system, emulating it has proven to be a challenge. The Ares emulator version 146 is the first to officially add support for the LaserActive. You’d expect getting to that point to be a wild journey. It was, and [Read Only Memo] documented the author’s ([Nemesis]) quest to emulate the odd little machine.

The LaserActive had a brief lifespan, being discontinued in 1996 after about 10,000 units sold. Its gimmick was that in addition to playing regular LaserDiscs and CDs, it could also use expansion modules (called PACs) to support games for other consoles, including the Sega Genesis and the NEC TurboGrafx-16. You could also get PACs for karaoke or to connect to a computer.

By itself, that doesn’t seem too complex, but its LaserDisc-ROM (LD-ROM) format was tough. The Mega LD variation also presented a challenge. The LD-ROMs stored entire games (up to 540 MB) that were unique to the LaserActive. Finding a way to reliably dump the data stored on these LD-ROMs was a major issue. Not to mention figuring out how the PAC communicates with the rest of the LaserActive system. Then there’s the unique port of Myst to the LaserActive, which isn’t a digital game so much as an interactive analog video experience, which made capturing it a complete nightmare.

With that complete, another part of gaming history has finally been preserved and kept playable. Sure, we have plenty of Game Boy emulators. Even tiny computers now are powerful enough to do a good job emulating the systems of yesterday.