American Laser Games
In 1990, five years after the birth, boom, and death of the arcade laserdisc craze, a small spin-off company called American Laser Games released Mad Dog McCree, a live-action laserdisc light-gun game.
Mad Dog McCree was based on Robert Grebe’s I.C.A.T. (Institute for Combat Arms and Tactics) system, a police trainer built around an IBM PC, a modified handgun, and a series of pre-recorded scenarios that could be selected at will by the training officer.
From Game Chronicles, here’s how ALG’s laserdisc arcade setup worked:
All nine games were filmed on location in New Mexico and Chicago. Once filming was complete, it was then edited and transferred to laser disc. ALG designed a RAM/ROM software board that could attach to the Amiga 500 computer. This board provided the game software that controlled the Sony LDP-1450 laser disc player. The hardware was the same for all nine games with the exception of the RAM/ROM board and the laser disc. The guns used in all of the games were aluminum casting with a photo-optic diode. When the trigger was pressed, the computer whitened the screen for an instant to allow the diode to detect a particular pixel on the screen. This action registered a “splotch” on the screen for the game player to see. It also told the computer to make the laser disc player scan to the correct scene (either the game player getting shot or the bad guy getting shot).
Moderately successful in the arcades, American Laser Games then looked to the home market, focusing development efforts on Trip Hawkins’ unsuccessful 3DO console, and then the PC market, until a 1999 buyout by Her Interactive (itself an earlier spin-off of ALG).
One year later, Digital Leisure, the current holder of the Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace franchises, acquired the development and licensing rights to the entire American Laser Games catalog. They then published light-gun compatible PC versions of most of the ALG titles — unfortunately, cooperative play was omitted, and all of the Digital Leisure home releases were single player experiences only. That is until this year, with the release of the Mad Dog McCree Gunslinger Pack (featuring Mad Dog McCree, Mad Dog McCree 2: The Lost Gold, and The Last Bounty Hunter) for the Wii. B-movie gaming at it’s finest.
And now here, just for you dear reader, are some of the highlights of the American Laser Games library…
Mad Dog McCree – 1990 (single player only)
The one that started it all. Bad cowboys, shoot them!
Space Pirates – 1992 (single player only)
I am going to buy a light gun just to play this game at home. Laughable low budget sci-fi is a wonderful thing.
Gallagher’s Gallery – 1992 (one or two simultaneous players)
Shoot crap in a grocery store with Gallagher. What?
Crime Patrol – 1993 (one or two simultaneous players)
If you were really good at this game, they’d recruit you into the actual Delta Force. Kinda like The Last Starfighter, but real.
Crime Patrol 2: Drug Wars – 1993 (one or two simultaneous players)
Like NARC, but dumb.
Fast-Draw Showdown – 1994 (single player only)
Another shooting-cowboys game for the thematic end-cap, and as far as I can tell, the only vertical laserdisc game ever made.
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For the next step in the genre’s evolution, be sure to check out IGN Retro’s The Lives and Deaths of the Interactive Movie.
Mad Dog McCree was based on Robert Grebe