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The Pioneer LaserActive - Printable Version

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The Pioneer LaserActive - JonathanPonikvar - 10-04-2012 11:17 PM

This isn't so much related to any specific game as it is more of a piece of gaming hardware trivia. Back in the early generations of gaming, there were plenty of off-brand hardware releases that tried to throw their hats into the ring. There were the more well-known ones, like the 3DO and the Philips CD-i, both of which tried to do their own thing with their own game lineups... and then there was the Pioneer LaserActive, which said "My OWN games? Screw THAT!!"

An obscure piece of hardware, the LaserActive was an oddity. Released in 1993, it not only played exclusive Laserdisc-based games (yes: LASERDISC games), but also was compatible with both Sega Genesis AND TurboGrafx 16 games, and even had controllers for both systems. Just let that sink in for a second and then imagine if the Wii U was compatible with the 360 and PS3 libraries.

Interestingly enough, Sega actually licensed the compatibility for the Genesis/Sega CD titles. Nintendo may have let those awful Zelda CDi games come to be, but Sega went a step further and just let a third-party console play their games outright. Bizarre, considering the fact that the system cost almost 6 times as much as a Genesis.

Priced at almost $1K (plus about $600 extra for each additional system) it was a complete commercial failure, dying after one year. Every kid who owned one was the most popular rich kid on the block.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_LaserActive