This ultra-rare ’90s LaserDisc game console can finally be emulated on a PC

Here in the year 2025, it's not every day that a classic gaming console from the 20th century becomes playable via emulation for the first time. But that's just what happened last week with the release of Ares v146 and its first-of-its-kind support for Mega LD titles designed for the Pioneer LaserActive.

Even retro console superfans would be forgiven for not knowing about the LaserActive, a pricey LaserDisc player released in 1994 alongside swappable hardware modules that could add support for Sega Genesis and NEC TurboGrafx-16 games and controllers. Using those add-ons, you could also play a handful of games specifically designed for the LaserActive format, which combined game data and graphics with up to 60 minutes of full-screen, standard-definition analog video per side.

Mega-LD games (as the Genesis-compatible LaserActive titles were called) were, for the most part, super-sized versions of the types of games you'd find on early CD-ROM console of the era. That means a lot of edutainment titles, branching dungeon crawlers, Dragon's Lair-style animated quick-time event challenges, and rail shooters that overlayed standard Genesis or TG-16 graphics on top of elaborate animated video backgrounds (sometimes complete with filmed actors).

The LaserActive's sky-high prices ($970 for the base unit; $600 for console add-on modules; $120 for LaserDisc games in '90s dollars) and lack of must-have software made it a relative curiosity even among the many game console curiosities of the mid-1990s, with total sales across Japan and the US estimated around 10,000 units. Yet the obscure console has still developed a small cult following of fans who seem to revel in tracking down the hard-to-find hardware and software to play some of the few '90s console games that couldn't be enjoyed via emulation.

“I really don't think it would be very hard to do”

The new emulator, which has finally made the LaserActive accessible to the masses, was a long-time passion project from a coder going by the handle Nemesis. The excellent Read Only Memo newsletter has an excellent interview with Nemesis, who spent over 15 years working on and off to intimately understand the inner workings of the LaserActive and apply that knowledge to an emulator.