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Thayer's Quest

 
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cedmagic
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Joined: 11 May 2004
Posts: 335
Location: Portland, Oregon

PostPosted: Sun Apr 03, 2016 6:01 am    Post subject: Thayer's Quest Reply with quote

This is one CED title for which I thought no copies exist, but a disc labeled "For Employee Home Use Only" has emerged. Thayer's Quest was an arcade video game similar to Dragon's Lair that ultimately used a LaserDisc to deliver full-motion video in 1984/85. RDI Video Systems had planned to release a VideoDisc home version of their Halcyon console, but RCA's exit from CED meant that only the LaserDisc version made it past the development stage. And the company went bankrupt, so only about a dozen of the $2500 LaserDisc home systems are known to exist. The console was sophisticated for the time, with voice recognition and a synthesized voice. The March 26, 1985 broadcast of the "Computer Chronicles" goes over the system in detail. Note that this was about a year after RCA announced the discontinuation of CED, so the player seen playing WarGames during the first few minutes is a prop to explain that CED may be gone, but LaserDisc lives on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3VPfmOldGQ



Though the Halcyon console was never marketed, RDI was successful in getting Thayer's Quest in arcades as a cabinet conversion for Dragon's Lair. This cabinet was unusual for the time, as it featured a membrane keyboard. In later years variants of Thayer's Quest were marketed for CD-ROM and DVD home use.



Playing the CED on a SJT400 is interesting, as the disc has frequent menu stops corresponding to the custom programming needed to make the game work. The stops are generally a few seconds long to get a good freeze-frame during playback.

--Tom Howe
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SelectaVision420



Joined: 25 Mar 2012
Posts: 1424
Location: Hartford

PostPosted: Sun Apr 03, 2016 7:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

wow Shocked thats um, quite the find! how did you come across it, just searching and searching, or did someone find it and didnt know what it was?
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kitchensynch



Joined: 24 Feb 2013
Posts: 1087

PostPosted: Sun Apr 03, 2016 11:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

To some millennials this looks boring and archaic but to those of us well into our 40s, 50s and such the 1980s were the 60s again where technology was concerned.

During the 1960s many of the things we take for granted in computers and technology were thought up or realized...

    GUI
    Mouse
    Stylus/Pen
    Whiteboard
    Conferencing


NETWORKING/ARPANET (today's internet, including early protocols)

During the 1980s technologies developed in the sixties for computing and 1970s for entertainment merged (after some delays caused mainly by lags in supporting technologies and technical issues) and we had the foundations of our modern infrastructures emerging in their most basic forms.

    Optical (laser-read) video and audio disc formats
    CED of course
    VHS and Beta videotape
    COMPUTERS


Oh, and having a self-driving Pontiac Trans Am that talked and did stunts, solved crimes wasn't too bad either. Knight Rider was more or less the 1980s version of those 1960s Japanese cartoons with a father and son in rocket packs and a huge flying robot fighting evil, when you think about it.

The Computer Chronicles show was a great blend, not so uber-geek that it went ZING! over your head and it informed you while entertaining you and making you curious and wanting to experience some of these things. It was one of the best uses of public television in it's history (along with Austin City Limits, Sesame Street and in-depth journalism).

If we had an talk about where technology is going today we'd probably realize that it's mostly the refinement and continuation of the last 50 years, in some much more complex forms.
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Jesse Skeen



Joined: 28 May 2004
Posts: 575
Location: Sacramento, CA

PostPosted: Sun Apr 03, 2016 11:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

There was supposed to be a CED add-on for ColecoVision too that never happened, it was also for home versions of laserdisc arcade games but they chose CED because it was cheaper. I wonder if any prototype discs for that exist?

It would have had an arcade-perfect version of Dragon's Lair, I have the laserdisc used in that game and all of it is on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znO_m00s8II
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kitchensynch



Joined: 24 Feb 2013
Posts: 1087

PostPosted: Sun Apr 03, 2016 11:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

As I understand it many of the patents related to CD burning would not be filed until 2-5 years later, and at first adding a CD read-only was an undertaking (from my experiences with a Gateway 286, there was a card added to do it) and 'burning' would not become mainstream and somewhat affordable until the late 1990s...burn errors were far more problematic then as well which would hinder it's common usage for a while as people got used to not only the technology but the lesser quality of blank discs as time went by.
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