Wow. This may be one of the most intense reverse-engineering (and honestly, engineering) efforts I've ever seen for an emulator project before. Capturing the raw LD image to this degree, being able to play it in reverse, etc -- absolutely brilliant. Truly fantastic work.
puilp0502 · 56m ago
Top in my list of "insane engineering done by emulator people" is still Dolphin's ubershader; but still, I thank that there are people like the author that dedicate exorbitant time into preserving endangered medium.
angus-prune · 22m ago
What a great write up of a fascinating story.
I'm constantly impressed at the writing coming out of the emulation world. I can't think of any other technical niche that produces such consistently approachable writing about such esoteric technical subjects.
I don't understand hardware, I barely program. I don't even use emulators. Yet I will always read write ups like this and from the dolphin blog and elsewhere which give me a great understanding of reverse engineering, the community nuances, and the hacks and shortcuts that made the games possible on the limited hardware available at the time.
Tor3 · 2h ago
This: "Pioneer's cost-cutting inside the LaserDisc player caused other parts to break:"
Far far back in time when I did hi-fi repairs and similar work, Pioneer stood out with a nice look from outside, and cost-cutting low quality work inside. Not something I liked working on.
jonhohle · 9m ago
Pioneer provided fixes to some things, but for such a niche system there is virtually no way to get them now.
These are actually a pleasure to work on, but their rarity makes everything a bit more stressful.
sgarland · 2h ago
TIL that a. This system existed b. The author’s need for emulation is what drove ld-decode to support extraction of VBI from Laserdiscs.
I and the handful of other weirdos capturing Laserdiscs thank you!
sandos · 15m ago
I never knew laserdisc was analog! Wow.
Podrod · 37m ago
I'm a bit of a Sega fan boy but never heard of the Mega LD before now! What a weird and fascinating bit of video gaming history, and a good read too.
Kudos to Nemesis for his hard work in preserving a bit of niche history.
doublerabbit · 1h ago
The typical 90's add-ons are what made the 90's special for me.
While a nuisance to store like the N64 rumble pack, the dreamcast memory card. It felt like upgraded solidity of the device.
Cthulhu_ · 1h ago
I never had any of these back then, and I keep wondering what it would have been like to be all-in on these ecosystems. Especially Nintendo; gameboys with link cables, N64s with controller add-ons to insert your GB cartridges into, Super Nintendos with cartridges that add 3D hardware to your system, etc.
Closest thing is that a friend of mine had a NES and a cartridge with 365 games on it (in a menu with snails crawling towards each other), two controllers and the gun.
komali2 · 20m ago
It was even crazier in Japan and to this day I don't quite understand how their 90s- era "videogame sent over television" and "videogame sent over ancient cell network" features and dongles worked. I'm trying to remember the names of these features exactly but can't, I just know that it was like, the NES or SNES you could "download" games onto somehow from a TV signal, and then the GB or perhaps GBA had something similar if you connected your console to your phone.
The original rumble packs you plugged in were more powerful and they moved more weight, if I recall correctly compared to modern controllers. Would be cool to make a jacket or bodysuit + headset today you can wear that rumbles in the part of the body you got shot in
I worked on a project that made a vest with controller vibration motors in it connected to a microcontroller. That microcontroller was connected by a serial -> USB converter and was controllable by the computer it was attached to.
Sadly, it wasn't for gaming. It was part of a study into the limitations of how much information humans can absorb at once, with the haptic feedback being tested as yet another input when there was a lot of auditory and visual input. I joked they should just use smell, but I don't think they wanted to subject the undergrad research subjects to weird smells.
I'm constantly impressed at the writing coming out of the emulation world. I can't think of any other technical niche that produces such consistently approachable writing about such esoteric technical subjects.
I don't understand hardware, I barely program. I don't even use emulators. Yet I will always read write ups like this and from the dolphin blog and elsewhere which give me a great understanding of reverse engineering, the community nuances, and the hacks and shortcuts that made the games possible on the limited hardware available at the time.
Far far back in time when I did hi-fi repairs and similar work, Pioneer stood out with a nice look from outside, and cost-cutting low quality work inside. Not something I liked working on.
A few years ago I made a support to avoid board sag - https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5993459
These are actually a pleasure to work on, but their rarity makes everything a bit more stressful.
I and the handful of other weirdos capturing Laserdiscs thank you!
Kudos to Nemesis for his hard work in preserving a bit of niche history.
While a nuisance to store like the N64 rumble pack, the dreamcast memory card. It felt like upgraded solidity of the device.
Closest thing is that a friend of mine had a NES and a cartridge with 365 games on it (in a menu with snails crawling towards each other), two controllers and the gun.
Sadly, it wasn't for gaming. It was part of a study into the limitations of how much information humans can absorb at once, with the haptic feedback being tested as yet another input when there was a lot of auditory and visual input. I joked they should just use smell, but I don't think they wanted to subject the undergrad research subjects to weird smells.