Darius Gaiden Laserdisc

Steve X2

I eventually got around to taking a digital copy of this fairly rare Darius Gaiden Laserdisc today. Those of you who've been around here for a while know I'm a big fan of the series.
I wont go into too much technical detail as it'd bore most people, but it was a real pain to get this done in reasonable quality. Laserdiscs are composite/analogue in nature and interlaced to make it even more fun! So getting this in HD without a load of video noise and artefacts was a bit of a task. It still has some video noise, but to remove it completely would take away from what it is(an analogue interlaced laserdisc).

Anyway, the quality might not look great to some, but a lot of effort went into getting this to where it is right now
If you look on YouTube you'll find another rip someone did for comparison.

In the YouTube description I've linked to a Google Drive link with the clean files(not touched by YouTube encoding)
There are two files, the re-encoded version that was used to upload to YouTube(11GB) and the version I've stored for myself that was edited and encoded from the raw capture files(26GB).
The LaserDisc was captured to raw uncompressed video to give me more options in post, that was 1.83TB in size. I have not shared that :0)


This is a proper mad Japanese thing and worth a watch!

Retr0gamer

Can you do anything about the awful bang of fish off that video capture?

In all seriousness it's awesome that you've backed this up and put such a focus on the quality. Thanks!

Also framerate looks really smooth. Is that a laserdisc thing?

Steve X2

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Can you do anything about the awful bang of fish off that video capture?

In all seriousness it's awesome that you've backed this up and put such a focus on the quality. Thanks!

Also framerate looks really smooth. Is that a laserdisc thing?

Well the original framerate for this one is 29.97fps. But that's interlaced and looks great(and smooth) on my Sony BVM, but sh1te on most modern displays, so it needs deinterlacing. The trick is a double frame rate deinterlace process to retain the detail and smoothness(mostly to retain the detail).
But to answer your question, it looks as smooth on the original laserdisc on a crt as it does now in 60fps on modern displays.

This Laserdisc is mastered quite poorly(the game sequences in particular), so that added a lot of problems along the way.

CiDeRmAn

Damn you Steve,
Just as I had other things to do I installed DariusBurst CS on my PS5, I bought it ages ago on PS4.
And, boom, there went the last 30 minutes..
And the next...

Doge

Is it essentially a long play of the game with some mad story bits in between gameplay?

Who'd have known that years later longplay videos would have been all the rage on the internet, a bit before its time this.

Steve X2

Doge wrote: »

Is it essentially a long play of the game with some mad story bits in between gameplay?

Who'd have known that years later longplay videos would have been all the rage on the internet, a bit before its time this.

It's called a superplay rather than longplay. But yes they're very similar things.
This one as you say is just a weird movie/story wrapped around the gameplay.

I have a couple of other laserdisc superplays I encoded today(Darius II and Starblade). Those are pure gameplay without the mad story.
I'm not sure if I'll upload them to YouTube as they're not super interesting and they did an even worse job mastering the Laserdiscs.

Steve X2

It's not worth its own post, so I'll stick it on here.
I did upload that StarBlade LaserDisc encoding to YouTube.

I cleaned up the artwork a bit for those that might want it(I know there's at least 1 person who also likes this game:)). I'll probably get this artwork professionally printed somewhere and stick it up in the office. I've always liked it for some reason.

Artwork:
With LaserDisc logo.
https://i.imgur.com/UC1FuJ6.jpg

Without.
https://i.imgur.com/ZW90BYS.jpg

Preview:

CiDeRmAn

Oh yes, I do love Starblade!
Thanks Steve!

Gradius

I remember playing starblade in the arcade, quite impressive at the time.

That Darius "story" is prime Japanese weirdness, just great

Inviere

Starblade in the arcade, in the full sit-in cab, was a serious arcade experience. The bass would shake your ribs, the graphics were amazing, the cockpit was immersive....twas a proper arcade experience. I still have a soft spot for the game itself too

CiDeRmAn

Inviere wrote: »

Starblade in the arcade, in the full sit-in cab, was a serious arcade experience. The bass would shake your ribs, the graphics were amazing, the cockpit was immersive....twas a proper arcade experience. I still have a soft spot for the game itself too

Big old subwoofer in the cockpit will do that, which Starblade had.
The screen was very impressive too, and the controller hefty.
When I went to Dr. Quirky's it was my goto game

Steve X2

I remember the weird screen that made everything look huge. Turns out it was a curved mirror(i should have known that).

Inviere

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Big old subwoofer in the cockpit will do that, which Starblade had.
The screen was very impressive too, and the controller hefty.
When I went to Dr. Quirky's it was my goto game

That's where I played it too. Was right down the back iirc

Steve X2 wrote: »

I remember the weird screen that made everything look huge. Turns out it was a curved mirror(i should have known that).

Cheers Steve, will save that & enjoy it later!

BuckoA51

You should check this out if archiving/preserving laserdiscs is your thing - https://www.retrorgb.com/domesday-duplicator-now-preserving-laseractive-games.html

Steve X2

BuckoA51 wrote: »

You should check this out if archiving/preserving laserdiscs is your thing - https://www.retrorgb.com/domesday-duplicator-now-preserving-laseractive-games.html

I've been following the Doomsday 86 thing for a while. Very interesting, but definitely more than I've willing to invest in this sort of thing(time and money), for now at least.