Laser Grand Prix: A Lost Media Mystery

[luis quinto1981]

So for reference this is the result with my own MP4 (720x480, 29.970 de-interlaced)

Still has other problems but looks a lot better.

I didnt know you aré good at this!

 

[luis quinto1981]

Made the seconds star rider emulator after jepalza

 

[amoroboshi116]

I didnt know you aré good at this!

512.3 MB file on MEGA

mega.nz

Here's the video you requested (offset is -17, 29.97 fps), all I did was de-interlace the M2V rip that's available with Shuttle Encoder and compressed it more than I would have liked. I tried a version with a larger bitrate and it stuttered like crazy. The black bar at the bottom is how the disc was mastered and the video should be left alone, if you look at photos of the cabinet you will see there is actually a black piece covering up the bottom of the monitor, maybe a leftover from when it was on Star Rider hardware. From what I can tell the PCB video layer needs to be shifted down and to the right a little for the hitboxes and overlay sprites to line up proper.


I also synced up the audio to the video in the MP4 as best as I could, but with the awful drop outs its hard to tell how much it pops with frame skips. That's all from me on this for now, tbh as much as the game running is cool the AI aspect I really do feel ehhhhh about.

 

[luis quinto1981]

https://luissexto.itch.io/dahpne-disc-net published a ld game like free netflix + cablebox + multigame combo
AND theres all my emulators with daphne ones cloned

 

[luis quinto1981]

demo video of the games that you can play

 

[luis quinto1981]

demo video of the games that you can play

AND theres More also Will adding alg games

 

[TerminalInternet]

Interstellar Zangus NES Sprites style all done.
After nearly few weekdays been in and out of production design.

 

[LardyAmbiguous]

I bought it from him a while back, but I have to figure out how to rip it for use with MAME.

Any new updates? (yes, I did make an account just to ask this, this topic is fascinating)

 

[lemmyk2008]

Any new updates? (yes, I did make an account just to ask this, this topic is fascinating)

Now that I think about it, there's a "retro"-type arcade (not a modern kiddie casino) near my house that has a couple laserdisc games running on Dexter boards. I won't name the place out of fear of doxing myself, but they might know a thing or two about how the intricacies of laserdisc tech.

(Also, I've looked at what's been going on since I abandoned this thread, it seems pretty neat! Nice to know I'm not the only guy on Planet Earth with a hyperfixation on laserdisc games )

 

[luis quinto1981]

zangus emulation fixed by someone
play it here:

Game Jolt - Share your creations

gamejolt.com

 

[luis quinto1981]

lgp new emulation attempt

 

[luis quinto1981]

https://gamejolt.com/games/for-my-real-friends/1102106 lgp Is now completely playable as the game of the network catalog

 

[luis quinto1981]

Hello UKVAC Forum Members, After extensive research, I think that I can safely conclude that Taito's 1983 laserdisc racing "classic" Laser Grand Prix is currently a piece of lost media. As far as I know, no playable dumps of this game exist online, and there are not any media depicting gameplay footage besides 2 laserdisc rips on YouTube (both with annoying watermarks) and a few low-quality photographs from a few magazines and the promo flyers. I have also found two newspaper reviews that interestingly have 2 pretty contrasting opinions. Because of this and the surreal, bizarre imagery the game features as seen in the laserdisc rips, I would really find it fascinating to be able to play this obscure footnote in arcade history. Sadly, it seems to have been overshadowed by its older brother, Sega GP World, which has been properly archived. Another aspect of this game that motivates me to find and archive it is the fact that the "Fantastic Race" segment of the game features a track very similar to what would later be seen in Nintendo's Mario Kart series with the iconic Rainbow Road, despite coming out nearly a decade earlier before its debut in 1992 on SNES. This same segment has also been used in one of the first vaporwave videos titled "nobody here", created by the famous Oneohtrix Point Never. Because of this, I feel that not only would finding this be a win for laserdisc enthusiasts and arcade junkies, but also a win for Mario Kart fans and vaporwave listeners. So, if anyone wants to help on my quest to recover this illusive piece of software, feel free to reply. Any assistance would mean the world to me. P.S. I have also emailed Taito about this matter a few weeks ago, but they are yet to respond.

https://mega.nz/file/6xwWRYSY#5nVCgslnnxES6oLS8sqKbjUYJ7fgh7jbwaItCYu2dPM theres the video you asking for

 

[lemmyk2008]

Here's some emulation issues I found while testing it out:
1. The game graphics seem to be a bit too high up on the screen (possibly around 16-24 pixels); the "CREDIT #" text isn't positioned at the bottom, you can easily see the cut-off bottom of the drag race car, and the rival cars seemingly float above the track in the Grand Prix races.
2. The video freezes and cuts to the crash animation before it can fully display the results screen with the beep-boop sounds. The game overlay also seems to show up prematurely.
3. The in-game sound for the drag race car continues throughout the game, even after the Drag Race has ended.
4. The palettes for the HUD and car positions are bugged; the white is either rendered as transparent or dark gray. The cars themselves (notably the green one) may suffer from a similar issue, assuming the inexplicably transparent sides aren't a mistake on the developers' part.
5. Unless one of the DIP switches has some kind of invincibility mode, neither crashing or running out of time ends the game.
6. Maybe I'm just playing the game wrong, but even when I'm in high gear, the car moves fairly slow and doesn't come anywhere near the goal within the time limit.

EDIT: A seventh issue: The game's flyers and in-game graphics ("WITHIN 120 SEC, RUN THE WHOLE COURSE") suggest there should be a "Trial Race" segment before you go into the Grand Prix races. Instead of having a laserdisc title card like the others, the "TRIAL RACE" and the aforementioned "RUN THE WHOLE COURSE" graphics would be overlaid on top of the car placement screen before the countdown begins. Your performance in this section supposedly determines your position at the start of the Grand Prix race. I've attached a mockup of what it should probably look like.

No hard feelings, I just want to help make the playing experience as smooth as possible :3

 

[John Bennett]

Is this entirely A.I. generated?
If so, is there actually any readable source code from it that you can understand and improve upon?

 

[luis quinto1981]

Is this entirely A.I. generated?
If so, is there actually any readable source code from it that you can understand and improve upon?

GitHub - luisanotherquinto-collab/pydaphne-source: alll emulated games of the gamejolt page

alll emulated games of the gamejolt page. Contribute to luisanotherquinto-collab/pydaphne-source development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[John Bennett]

Yes, I was aware of that, it was more that if this is the source for Laser Grand Prix, are you able to understand it to improve it?

pydaphne-source/src/lgp.js at main · luisanotherquinto-collab/pydaphne-source

alll emulated games of the gamejolt page. Contribute to luisanotherquinto-collab/pydaphne-source development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

I'll admit I don't know any Javascript, but that looks very difficult to understand.

 

[John Bennett]

I suppose some comments and a bit of reformatting and it could look like a conventional emulation driver.

 

[LardyAmbiguous]

Now that I think about it, there's a "retro"-type arcade (not a modern kiddie casino) near my house that has a couple laserdisc games running on Dexter boards. I won't name the place out of fear of doxing myself, but they might know a thing or two about how the intricacies of laserdisc tech.

Please do us all a favour and go bother them (nicely ofc) and keep us updated. I really want to ride that illusive rainbow road as god intended, well, as close as it can be at least.

https://gamejolt.com/games/for-my-real-friends/1102106 lgp Is now completely playable as the game of the network catalog

Interesting, were you able to work out the original code or is this just like you guessing how it's suppose to go or is it like a mix of the two? Also, no offence, but I wouldn’t exactly call completely playable, I couldn’t figure out how to lose plus a bunch of other things. Cool that I'm still able to "play" it tho.

 

[luis quinto1981]

Please do us all a favour and go bother them (nicely ofc) and keep us updated. I really want to ride that illusive rainbow road as god intended, well, as close as it can be at least.

Interesting, were you able to work out the original code or is this just like you guessing how it's suppose to go or is it like a mix of the two? Also, no offence, but I wouldn’t exactly call completely playable, I couldn’t figure out how to lose plus a bunch of other things. Cool that I'm still able to "play" it tho.

Mix of the two