Interstellar: Laser Fantasy Arcade

You are Frald Rancer and control a space ship which must journey from your home planet to outer space to defeat enemy invaders. Once all the enemies are defeated then return home.
The game moves in a forward direction where the screen objects move towards and down to the player. Approaching enemy ships are small, in the distance, and become larger and move faster as they approach the player. The player controls a fighter at the bottom of the screen, which can only move from side to side.
Shots can be fired at a diagonal, as well as straight, by twisting the joystick from side to side. At certain stages, ground targets will appear and can be destroyed by using the "Burn" button. The laser disc generated backgrounds are largely non-interactive during game play. They form the backgrounds on which the game is played on.
Scenes do work in with the backgrounds, however that is the extent. Some backgrounds appear as they should have elements of interactively, however, were not used in the release of the game.
These include scenes where the player is going through an asteroid field and asteroids fly towards the player. Another scene is in the crystal caverns, where there are many obstacles which could have been made to be avoided. These are only two of many scenes which could have had interactive elements.
The game starts with the player in Frald Rancer's home city, then taking off into outer space via a fly-by of the city.
The backgrounds are very Sci-Fi and are fantasy themed. They are very interesting, more so than the game.
The music from the laser disc also complements the laser disc video very well and makes up for the sometimes annoying, computer generated sounds.
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[@InsertCoinArcade]

Interstellar: Laser Fantasy is laserdisc shoot 'em up designed by Gakken and manufactured by Funai for arcades in December 1983. The sit-down cabinet used four amplified audio channels using two-way speakers.
Two sets of front, two sets of rear and a large woofer under the seat. The audio channels were front, rear left, rear right and the woofer. The game board had a stereo audio output as well as the stereo from the laser disc player.
The stand-up cabinet only used two speakers in a stereo set-up. The control panel was illuminated and had interesting futuristic designs. The trigger joystick control moved in a left and right direction as well as a right and left twist movement flap control.
The buttons had corresponding lights on the control panel. They would light when the button was depressed and enabled to function, in the part of the game being played. The seat was cushioned and the cabinet had the appearance of a DX version, for its time. Cabinet dimensions, height 1680mm, Depth 2055mm, width 730mm, and the weight was 200kg.
The monitor was made by Funai, who also made televisions back in 1983 and at least until 1987, if not to this day. The game was designed by Gakken and manufactured by Funai. The laser disc was pressed by Pioneer and was a single sided, metalbacked laser disc. Pioneer No. F2560J6.
The problem with determining the name of this game is that the name of the game is made like a graphical logo. On the PCB ROMs and disc label, where it would have been too hard to reproduce the namelogo from the LD disc, they wrote Interstellar. There is also no Laser Fantasy in the name. That would have came from the writing under the control panel upright, attraction panel under the name sitdown or manual where Laser Fantasy was written. It was never mentioned in the game.

[@hardlucknate6769]

This was seen the game show starcade along with rock n rope dig dug Stargate and major havoc

[@JamesEmirzianWaldementer]

9:58 Cheerful from the audience beaten the game loops.

[@plateshutoverlock]

I'm wondering if the light columns and the asteroids were supposed to have collision data, probably in the form of 'invisible sprite enemies' timed to what is seen in the LD video but this got dropped because of time constraints during development. It looks like those columns and asteroids were intended to be more than just background graphics.

[@JamesEmirzianWaldementer]

Thanks for noted researching development of Interstellar arcade game.

[@mikedski9698]

Awesome.

[@蒼海藤沢]

FUNAI RIP

[@polasboek]

Would buy this for Switch ❤

[@FUGP72]

This is a perfect example of why laser disc games failed in the arcades. Aside from the few successes like Dragon's Lair and Space Ace, they were all VERY primitive (like 1979) gameplay with just some silly background that offered nothing to the gameplay. No one was going to pay an extra quarter to play games far less advanced (and fun...and challenging) than pretty much ANY other game in the arcade by that point just because of the background.