Help Needed - Dumping Pioneer LaserActive discs

[Nemesis1207]

Hi guys, I recently added emulation support for Pioneer LaserActive games to Ares:
https://techdocs.exodusemulator.com/...html#emulation
Right now I'm on the hunt for remaining titles to make backups of, so they can be preserved. I've seen laser-rot for a few new sealed LaserActive games pressed in 1994, so we are in a race against time here before these discs all degrade. Due to the analog nature of Laserdiscs, we also need to rip multiple copies of each game for "stacking" purposes, so that noise and dropouts can be corrected. If anyone here has access to any LaserActive titles, and would be willing to help, please reach out via the #emulation channel on the Domesday86 Discord server. In particular, I'm very interested in securing the US release of Goku, so if you have or know someone who has that title, please get in touch. Thanks!

[Steve W]

I'm happy to know somebody out there is getting LaserActive emulation going. I can't help you with games, when I bought my LaserActive the store had just discontinued the console and sent everything... somewhere. Back to the warehouse? Back to Pioneer? I never found out. I just grabbed the one floor model they had left. I only have two games, Pyramid Patrol and Rocket Coaster, for the Sega LD Pak. And I have no idea where those even are, I haven't seen them in decades.

[SparTonberry]

That USA TurboGrafx PAK has got to be ungodly rare, yes?

I mean, you have a device that was FAR too expensive for most people to afford when it was released, then you have an expansion to enable support for a console that was struggling to sell its base model.

[Aussie2B]

From my understanding, pretty much everything LaserActive is crazy rare and expensive.

I don't own any LaserActive stuff myself, but I too am very happy to hear about efforts to preserve it and its games. What gets me is how the only official English localizations of two J.B. Harold games are locked to the platform. Manhattan Requiem was available in English on mobile, but that's long since been pulled down. There's also a fan translation of Blue Chicago Blues on Saturn, but I think that was translated from Japanese from scratch. I would absolutely hate to see the official localizations lost to time.

[Baloo]

From my understanding, pretty much everything LaserActive is crazy rare and expensive.

I don't own any LaserActive stuff myself, but I too am very happy to hear about efforts to preserve it and its games. What gets me is how the only official English localizations of two J.B. Harold games are locked to the platform. Manhattan Requiem was available in English on mobile, but that's long since been pulled down. There's also a fan translation of Blue Chicago Blues on Saturn, but I think that was translated from Japanese from scratch. I would absolutely hate to see the official localizations lost to time.

If you make a Japanese Switch account, add the account to your Switch, you can purchase and download the same Manhattan Reqiuem game that was on iPhome to your US Switch and change the language to English. However, the English translation of Manhattan Requiem on Switch is absolutely terrible and does not appear directly lifted from the Laseractive version. The Laseractive version from the few clips I have seen also has full voice acting.

Blue Chicago Blues the Saturn fan translation used the Laseractive version as a base to my understanding. But I agree, both games should be preserved so they can be played.