SpritesMind.Net

PsychShaman wrote:This is out of my price range, but this is definitely one that should be preserved.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/VERY-RARE-Pione ... 0814358078

Funny you should mention that...

...stay tuned.

Wow, Myst!? That's one MegaLD game I was sure we'd never see surface. I'd love to get that game ripped. Myst is a personal favourite of mine, I'm a big fan of the series. The hardcover books still have a special place on my shelf

Hi,

I haven't yet read the whole thread but Mega LD emulation is something I would to see happening and if somebody isn't already up to the task, I can digitalize LDs (both video and sound).

I have all the stuff needed for and already did that for DVD-unreleased anime features (both LD and VHS, but VHS only when we don't have a LD source).

Cheers.

Hi everybody!

I joined this forum specifically to offer my LD collection for dumping if it is needed.

Here's what I have so far:

US Mega LD:
Hi-Roller Battle
Hyperion
Pyramid Patrol
Rocket Coaster*
Space Berserker*
The Great Pyramid*
Triad Stone

Japanese LD-ROM2:
Angel Mate - coming in the mail

*This game was bought brand new and still shrinkwrapped, so they'll hopefully be a good source.

I also have a bid in for a Japanese Doctor Totoeki Mega LD on eBay right now, so I can offer that one too if I win it (so nobody else bid on it please :p).

In addition to that, I'm in the process of securing a relatively large Japanese collection of another 8 games, 4 each of Mega LDs and LD-ROM2s

We ought to make a combined list of all the games we possess.

Braintrash wrote:Hi,

I haven't yet read the whole thread but Mega LD emulation is something I would to see happening and if somebody isn't already up to the task, I can digitalize LDs (both video and sound).

I have all the stuff needed for and already did that for DVD-unreleased anime features (both LD and VHS, but VHS only when we don't have a LD source).

Cheers.

Bit off topic but do you have any links to the anime you ripped? Just curious....

Sorry if it's been already brought up (it's bee a while since I read through this whole topic), but have you guys contacted that Dave Spicer guy the Daphne dev is talking about in this topic? He might be able to help with dumping these.

Quoting the post:

I am here because I heard that Dave Spicer made a really cool FPGA hack
for the laserdisc player used in Firefox and that he was able to somehow
digitize the Firefox laserdisc's NTSC signal straight from a laserdisc player.

I am interested in learning more about how he did this because myself (and the other Daphne team members) are always looking at ways to improve our laserdisc capturing
skills. Being able to do a "raw" capture is one of our "end game" goals. I
am pretty sure that the MAME guys would be interested in this technique also.

Star Rider is actually one of the reasons I am looking into a more raw method of capturing laserdisc content. It is one of a handful of games which reads its frame number from the VBI section of the video signal, which presents a very interesting problem to be solved. The other games that also do this are Cliff Hanger, Goal to go, MACH 3, and Us vs Them (unless I am forgetting some).

Perhaps the man he's referring to is actually one of you guys, so please forgive me in advance. =P

Ok, I've been ignoring this project way too long. I've taken the opportunity this christmas holidays to pick up where I left off with this system. I've done a lot more hardware testing on the PAC-S1/S10 module and have now reverse-engineered most of the hardware interface for the LaserActive unit. I'll be releasing that information soon, once I get it a little closer to complete. I'm ready to start dumping disks though, so I'm starting a new thread now for loaning disks. If anyone is able and willing to lend MegaLD disks for dumping and ripping, head over to this thread:
viewtopic.php?t=1647

bakudandan wrote:

Braintrash wrote:Hi,

I haven't yet read the whole thread but Mega LD emulation is something I would to see happening and if somebody isn't already up to the task, I can digitalize LDs (both video and sound).

I have all the stuff needed for and already did that for DVD-unreleased anime features (both LD and VHS, but VHS only when we don't have a LD source).

Cheers.

Bit off topic but do you have any links to the anime you ripped? Just curious....

Nope. Gave the discs back along with the rips to the people who loaned me the LD to do this. There wasn't features of interest to me, so I didn't keep anything nor followed what they did of it.

Keep us posted on your progress guys

11 year bump, to say I finally went and did this. I've made a fork of Ares with initial support for MegaLD games, and released a playable rip of Space Berserker. Details up on my site here:
https://techdocs.exodusemulator.com/Con ... #emulation
More work to follow over the coming months, but you can expect the entire back catalog of MegaLD games to be playable soon.

I tested Japan BIOS 1.05 and it hangs when starting, 1.02 seems to work. I'm only getting 30-40 fps. Tried both my internal HDD and external SSD, it didn't seem to affect much besides the initial loading time. I'm running an i7 7700 @ 3Ghz and an Nvidia GPU so my computer should ostensibly be fast enough to run it at full speed.

bakudandan wrote: Sat Aug 09, 2025 12:02 pm I tested Japan BIOS 1.05 and it hangs when starting, 1.02 seems to work. I'm only getting 30-40 fps. Tried both my internal HDD and external SSD, it didn't seem to affect much besides the initial loading time. I'm running an i7 7700 @ 3Ghz and an Nvidia GPU so my computer should ostensibly be fast enough to run it at full speed.

Thanks for the report! I hadn't tested the 1.05 Japanese bios, I'd just been using the 1.04 US bios or the 1.02 Japan bios. I can see the same lockup on my end. I'll dig into it and see what that bios revision is doing that's causing it to lock up.

As for the speed issues, well the biggest bottleneck causing framerate drops in my testing usually comes back to disk IO, but I haven't done extensive testing across platforms. My i7 3770K running from a platter drive gets maybe 30-40fps. My i9-13950HX running from a Samsung 990 Pro SSD gets solid 60fps. Those are my two main datapoints. Maybe try running something like CrystalDiskMark and see if your read IO rates are what you expect?

Ok, I can confirm that the Japan 1.05 LaserActive bios that's floating around out there is a BAD DUMP. There's corruption in the main CPU compressed payload that's scrambling opcodes partway through the data stream. Here's an archive of the original thread where this dump originates from:
https://assemblergames.org/viewtopic.php?t=41554
Given the issues he was having with his programmer to get this dump, it's not surprising there's corruption. We need to get a new dump of this bios.