Laser Grand Prix: A Lost Media Mystery

[lemmyk2008]

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.

 

[Mikonos11]

I have one picture of Laser Grand Prix (TAITO) in my collection:

Cheers!

 

[Fantazia2]

Assuming youve already found this page on the Dragons Lair Project.

http://www.dragons-lair-project.com/games/pages/lgp.asp

 

[Alpha1]

I have the laserdisc.

 

[giantkeeling]

Laser Grand Prix was in one of the arcades on the seafront at Great Yarmouth when it was first released. I thought it was amazing at the time, and i played it a lot during my week long holiday there. I thought the attract mode was really cool too.

 

[Fantazia2]

I have the laserdisc.

It needs dumping/capturing for Mame, someone started putting the hardware into it a long time ago

 

[lemmyk2008]

I have the laserdisc.

Wow! This is an amazing find! As far as I know, the reason italiandoh's dump of the ROM won't function in Daphne or any other emulator is because it lacks the proper disc data, which as far as I know is nonexistent on the Web without annoying watermarks, compression, etc. In addition to this, in order for the game to run, you need something called a "framefile", which in simple terms is a .txt file that includes the code that tells the game which parts of the disc to play. The thing is, to create this file, you need the frame numbers, which can only be known with the actual disc. This is a huge lead, as as far as I know, you are the first person I have contacted who actually owns the disc. Is there any way I could obtain this relic? Thank you so much!!!
lemmyk20082022-08-01 18:19:53

 

[lemmyk2008]

Do you own the cabinet, or just have the image? I'm just curious.

 

[Fantazia2]

The frame file you refer to is something related to the daphne emulator and is only strictly required if the video is split into multiple files, if the capture is just in a single file there is only a single entry in it pointing to that file, also after just checking my NAS I have a version of daphne that has the video capture for laser grand prix and a frame file, but for some reason it's listed as GP world which is a Sega driving game so not sure what has happened there, will have to have a proper check when back on PC and see if it runs, but I have confirmed the the video file matches clips of laser grand prix from YouTube.

This won't work with mame though as from playing with the recently added CHD for Hologram Time Traveler and attempting to de-interlace the video in it to look better on an LCD screen Ive found that it needs some data information in the top of the picture to be intact and unaltered for the emulator to work, I ended up having to crop the video down to just the screen image and then deinterlacing that and they overlaying it ontop of the original video to keep the data intact and create a new CHD.

 

[Fantazia2]

Ive uploaded it to YouTube, there is some compression artefacting on a few of the scenes as I had to combine the M2V and Ogg file together into an AVI to upload and uncompressed it was going to be a bit big to upload.
Actual footage doesnt start until the 1:00min mark in the video.

Ive also uploaded to my google drive if you want a copy of the original files.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1tGQJzey6RqAFDEgNZnZ7OcE0wy5L1r58?usp=sharing


Fantazia22022-08-13 13:44:24

 

[lemmyk2008]

Thanks for the rip! As far as I know, this is the first instance online of it in both decent quality and without watermarks. I'm also working on dumping some of the graphics from the .bin files.

 

[Fantazia2]

Shame it's only the video and doesn't have the full frame Information including the video blanking data with the Manchester codes from the laserdisc so can't be used with Mame, only suitable for use in Daphne if they ever add it.

As part of the domesday project a few years ago a new standard for capturing the data from laserdisc was put together and the mamedevs were supposed to be getting access to it to capture Laserdisc better so it may be that it will appear for mame at some point in the near future, the first of these, Sega Hologram Time Traveler was added in the April 1st 2022 release using this new technique for capturing the Laserdisc.

 

[lemmyk2008]

I have some good news though:
As Alpha1 previously mentioned, he has the disc. He is offering to sell me it, and I'll buy it if the price isn't too outrageous. I'm sure with the actual disc, I will be able to figure out the frame numbers and Manchester codes.

 

[lemmyk2008]

...

 

[Bods]

The Laser Grand Prix in the Picture was for sale on ebay years back, year or 2 after i started buying machines

I bid on it myself hoping i would win it, it didnt have the original game inside anymore, been converted to something else, was strangw though because the driving game i looked up and only on MSX so not sure if they got mixed up not and I forget which it was now

Anyway I got outbid, wasnt expecting it to sell for much because of sitdown at time most didnt have space and without original boards etc, i bid around 130-150 area, think i was 2nd highest, i didn't have any sitdown games at time so thought it would be cool but glad i didnt win it now

So years later when i bought road blasters upright from a big Dragon's Lair Collector. He had bought quite a few DL from USA one Being the Original Don Bluth owned iirc, cant think of his name now, memory gets worse, was talking to him amd i mentioned bidding on Laser Grand prix and it turns out he bought it for someone he knew in USA so i had no chance of winning it, guy it went too had all the insides though so at least it was getting restored, just a shame these rare cabs left UK like the Firefox Cockpit

The machine was in, oh was it Mablethorpe, some where like that anyway, wish i had screenshot all these things
Forget if there was any other photos of it, should still have them if there was.

Isn't there also another game like flight or space on in same shape cab, cool looking cab though

 

[Bods]

Jason Finn (finny) he was Motorbike guy wasnt he

He would know where it went and may get info on them

Just looked up Msx game Rally as that rang a bell

World Rally/Hyper Rally but i remember at the time when searching at the time the only game was MSX unless it had Hyper Crash Arcade in it, i'll look on Computer later see if any more picsBods2022-08-26 15:42:07

 

[lemmyk2008]

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[lemmyk2008]

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[lemmyk2008]

Another update:
I was messing around with the game ROM and video files in Daphne, and although I sadly wasn't able to get the game to run properly (it doesn't seem to be supported fully, rendering the game technically still lost), I was able to get what seems to be the game's demo running, albeit without the laserdisc video part (I attempted to run it with that, but it only came up with a blank screen). With this, we can get a glimpse into some of the game's computer-generated graphics, such as the font and "INSERT COINS" text, now in color. I tried inserting coins and other inputs, but again, the game doesn't seem to have that implemented yet. If Fantazia71 is right, the fact that the video captures were included in his directory and that I was able to get it to run this far in the first place makes it seem they were going to implement it quite a while ago, but just kind of gave up halfway through. How strange. Anyways, here is what I was able to uncover:

 

[Bods]

Good Work, would love to see this game running