American Laser Games

American Laser Games was a company based in Albuquerque, New Mexico that created numerous light gun laserdisc video games featuring live action full motion video. Almost all arcade games released by the company were light gun shooters and a number of them also had an Old West theme.

American Laser arcade cabinets included a Sony Lasermax LaserDisc player to stream the video content, and an Amiga 500 computer to overlay on-screen graphics, and to control individual game logic. The computer was fitted with a bespoke interface to utilise the LaserDisc player, an auto-booting ROM board, and a Roctec Genlock.

Later, the company turned toward compact disc technology to release its games. Ports of its arcade titles were released for the Sega CD, CD-i and DOS computers equipped with CD-ROM drives. The company was particularly supportive of the 3DO, not only releasing versions of its games for the console, but also offering a modified version of the 3DO platform as an upgrade kit for existing arcade video game cabinets, supporting compressed video versions of their games at a lower cost. In 1995, American Laser Games released Mazer for the 3DO home market and Orbatak (3DO-powered) for the arcade - their first and only in-house non-Full motion video based games. The company also released a series of light-gun controllers, including the 3DO Game Gun and the PC Gamegun, for home computer use. The latter proved unsuccessful due to its poor accuracy.