Game Over: Pioneer LaserActive

📰 New article from Retro Handhelds

Game Over: Pioneer LaserActive

https://retrohandhelds.gg/game-over-pioneer-laseractive/

If you thought $500 for a PS5 was steep, buckle up—1993 had LaserActive, a machine that looked like a microwave married to a NASA control panel and charged $1,000 just to turn it on. No games. Just… potential.

To play Genesis or TurboGrafx games? Add a $600 “PAC.” Want VR? Good luck—no one remembers what it did, but we assume it gave users motion sickness and existential dread. The whole setup? $2,000 in 1993 dollars. That’s like buying a Lamborghini to drive to the grocery store… while wearing a space helmet.

The library? Mostly clunky FMV “interactive movies”—think Hi-Roller Casino with live-action actors and the emotional depth of a PowerPoint. A few gems like Road Blaster looked gorgeous on LaserDisc, but they were buried under piles of slow, expensive video experiments. Why buy this when a Genesis cost less than your monthly coffee habit?

By 1996, it was dead. DVDs rose. PlayStation crushed it. And LaserDiscs? Forgotten relics in a dusty attic.

Today, the LaserActive is retro collecting’s final boss: rare, ridiculous, and wildly impractical. A monument to ambition… before someone asked, “Wait, why not just buy a console?”

Still, we kinda love it. 🎮💸