I always really enjoyed these things as a kid, not just the ride but was facinated by the machines themselves, this being the one I frequented:


The later machines I'm pretty certain used a digital video system for playback of the ride video but early machines sucha as these: http://dev.selectsimulation.com/venturer-s2-on-major-fec/ I think used a laserdisc based system (most likely a CRV). These versions would have you select one of five approximately 5 minute scenarios, the two I remember most fondly being

and


these movies were also used in the later, larger machines. It seems multiple discs were avaliable with different ride movie combinations with the latest apparentley being made in 2012 according to the afformentioned website.

Smash Factory looks really cool.

I really love these sorts of reals. I used to have a "game system" in the 80s called Action Max and it was basically a light gun that could be used to shoot at targets in videos like this. The same kind of footage you see in Laser arcade games and all those crappy American FMV Sega CD games. They had a haunted house one, a Top Gun ripoff, etc. Sadly it was a VHS only thing.

Yeah I've heard of that system, from what I understand you could cheat by just covering the photodiode on the light gun. These movies certainly have an FMV game look to them, to clarify a bit the S2 machines were 2 person rides where you could choose the movie yourself, some were a bit rougher than others. Here's the contents of one of the discs, there are more on the company's channel:


The CGI ones have aged worse, in fact one was literally just a recording of a video game:

Hey that was really cool. Thanks for sharing! I'm amazed how immersive it is just watching it on a normal screen.

Yes that was very cool indeed.

Thanks for posting it .

Galaxian 3 by Namco is another great such use of laserdisc technology. How many arcade games do you walk into like that? It cost operators $150000 new.

Here's a video someone uploaded showing the video from it's laserdiscs - Galaxian 3 used two LDs playing at once so this is the combined output:


A neat way to get high end CG action in 1990 when there was no chance of doing it real time on anything less than some megabuck mainframe. The game hardware was responsible for generating realtime gameplay that was overlayed on the LD video, which makes it a sort of final evolution of those early 80s LD games like Astron Belt that used that sort of gameplay.

...if only it were actually fun.

Yeah, just like Dragon's Lair etc - only bigger. I guess those big Namco game/rides had the whole rollercoaster thing going for them but the gameplay was just the same old 80s ld game stuff like the aforementioned Astron Belt (early 80s sprite shmup graphics with live action footage from, of all things, the classic Toei Star Wars cash-in Message From Space). The ultimate shooter on rails.

No, this was more than that. Much more interactive that Dragon’s Layer. You point and shoot anywhere you want on the screen, not just waiting for a beep or whatever. I’d way rather play Galaxian 1979 though.

Also Message From Space isn’t half the Star Wars ripoff everyone seems to think it is. We already talked about it here on the forum at one point so I won’t go into it again but I call b******t on that line of thinking pretty much totally.

Note my use of the term "cash in" as opposed to ripoff. I specifically used this term, even though I inferred a high likelihood of an uninformed, knee-jerk, response. Cash in =/= ripoff. Obviously there are no glowing walnuts, silver faced Sonny Chiba in mono-horned motorbike helmets and Hakkenden story in SW. A cash-in is a property that rides the wave of some other property for whatever reason and need have no creative derivation whatsoever to said property other than the broadest themes i.e. the late 70s space boom triggered by SW. Oddly enough, the cash-in phenomena can result in chicken and egg cash in reversals like the 70s anime space boom which also "cashed in" on the success of SW, while shows like Yamato pre-dated SW by years and arguably influenced it. Battlestar Galactica (1970s) was another cash-in - Mormons in space with little other than the use of Dykstraflex motion control in common with SW that rode on the whole SW space boom.

Message from Space would have never been produced without the bux from the SW boom to make the producers green light it. That's what cash-in means. I'm no great SW fan, just pointing out a well known thing I imagined everyone knew by now. Seeing all the sweet SW cash really got the creative juices flowing with everyone from Nishizaki to the Toei studio bosses to Glen Larson et al.

The use of language in important and I call bull on missing what is a singularly important phenomena that lead to interesting shows.

I see what you’re saying. I was assuming you were one of the tool movie reviewers who seems to think that George Lucas invented the space ship.

I agree it was cashing in on the fad.

Cool. SW fanboyism bothers me as well. Bizarre stuff like "preservationists" who would sell an organ for an nth gen Betamax dub to supposedly recover color timing information from it or some such weirdness - some of whom surfaced here for SW LD action for this holy quest. I wish they would sell me the HLD-X0 they bought for one such doomed "preservation". Its...just...a movie, but you would think they were reconstructing the Dead Sea Scrolls.

With Disney hemorrhaging cash from the pandemic losses and potentially selling off SW while they can, maybe SW madness will finally end.

We can but dream!

In the mainstream maybe. But even if Disney had a radioactive diarrhea all over the franchise before keeling over dead on top of it to decompose, it still wouldn't put a dent on the original films' reputation among those hardcore preservationists.

I've noticed some people actually have dropped out of the scene completely, but I'm pretty sure those are in the minority; the rest would sooner just ignore the Disney era and focus on the parts that gave them joy. I certainly do.