Atari's 1984 laserdisc arcade game - Firefox "V" (pt. 1 of 2)

This is a direct copy of an alternate laserdisc that I archived several years ago, for Atari's Firefox arcade game, labeled "Firefox V". To the untrained eye, the footage on both on this prototype laserdisc and released laserdisc appear to be the same, however they are not. Aside from the frame count, there is a small % of the actual footage that is different - the main differences are the sequences of the planes and the music during the sequences, the course that the models fly is different and in many cases there are additional planes in some parts, and how the score was edited is very different. Plus there is no copyright information, and the directions screen is totally different (missing the pics of the targets).

The ROMs between both versions are different as well - no jet engine sound once the trigger is pulled, a different song at the end (and the way they interface with the LD player seems to be a little different). Many of Clint Eastwood's sound bites are missing. Plus none of the PCB effects like "radiation zone" Heavy fog" are included.

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From Owen Rubin:

I was sent to graduate classes at MIT by Atari to study laser disc technology. I spent two summer sessions at MIT in 77 and 78 (or maybe 78 and 79) in the Architecture Machine Group (later to become the Media Lab), and basically came back to Atari and suggested that we did NOT do any laserdisc games. Bottom line, the technology would not survive the arcade environment, was slow and unreliable, and was very expensive for what you really got out of it. And I was right, but we started several games anyway. One was the turd Firefox. I actually did not make that game, I just did some work on it to help the team out. Another one was Road Runner which was GREAT, and WAS tested in an arcade, and then redesigned to not have the laserdisc because it kept failing. Then we started Battlestar Galactica, for which an early laserdisc was made but not much else, and a preliminary test for Knight Rider, but nothing that was shipped. I also worked on a Golf Simulator game where you actually hit real golf balls at a projection screen and the ball was projected the rest of the way.


The video on the disc is recorded in such a way that playing it back would look like garbage. It is a bunch of still frames that you play out of order so that you can change what you are playing seamlessly. For example, the landing footage is one of 9 to 16 or so frames from different positions as you approach the landing bay. Imaging a 3x3 of 4x4 grid of possible positions you can approach from, with the center being straight on. If you fly straight, the program would display every 9th frame which was the video of flying straight. If you moved right, you would select the proper "frame view" and it would look like you moved in the video to the right, and now play every 9th "right position 1" video frame in order. With this scheme, you could fly in 2 dimensions with the joystick while the game pushed you forward in the third as well, controlled by a throttle.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Atari
• Firefox
• arcade
• laserdisc
• video
• game
• Clint
• Eastwood