LASERDISC STUFF:

So I discovered Daphne, which is an emulator for various laserdisc games such as Dragon's Lair and Astron Belt. One day I happened upon 2 Pioneer LD-V8000's (excellent players - oringinally retailed for thousands of dollars each) at the local university surplus. I picked both of them up for $15 bucks each. They work perfectly. What a deal! The players have composite out only, which could present a problem if I ever decide to use them with a real arcade monitor.

Anyway, I created an interface cable, as per the instructions on the Daphne website, and now my computer can control the LD player using a serial port. Next I ordered the Dragon's Lair reproduction disc - I wanted the real experience but didn't want to pay an arm and a leg for an older used disc. Plus this new one is limited edition and has bonus footage, just waiting for the roms to come out to support it. It's pricey, but worth it just as a collectors item alone. This could be the very last LD run ever made - the factory shut down I heard and they were the last in the world who pressed LD's.

My goal is to one day build a dedicated reproduction Dragon's Lair cab. Maybe a Space Ace cabinet, too, since I have 2 LD players.

The way Daphne is set-up, you can use Mpeg's and Ogg video streams to play LD on your computer, you don't really need the discs themselves. However, for this 2-player cab that I built for someone else, I will just use daphne and mpegs - he wasn't really into LD games anyways (*gasp!*)  I picked up the 3-pack of DVD-Roms of Dragon's lair 1 and 2 and Space Ace from Digital Leisure.

Daphne also can run an authentic Dragon's Lair scoreboard from the parallel port - these games didn't have any on-screen score display, just game footage. So instead of buying one, I made one. It took a good evening soldering all the joints, but it was worth it! This site was helpful in getting started on it. This homebrew scoreboard will be integrated into a future project.\

Anyways, some of you might be like, "Why all this stuff about LD games?" Well, because I started getting all this stuff before I decided to build a 2-player cab for someone else, and I think it's all interesting stuff.

I haven't taken pics yet since it's not part of this current project.