Laser Lords

Game: Laser Lords (1992)

A program built only for Laser Lords, Spinnaker’s adventure for the Philips CD-i, that runs it natively on Windows, macOS, Linux (Steam Deck included), and homebrew Nintendo Switch, with no CD-i emulator or BIOS. The game’s original 68000 code runs unchanged on an embedded CPU core (Musashi), and the CD-i operating system (CD-RTOS / OS-9), the CD file manager, the MCD212 video chip, and the ADPCM audio are reimplemented. It is a preview: the intro, walking, conversations, sound, and saves match the real CD-i, checked against MAME running the original ROM, and every planet has been visited, but the game hasn’t been tested extensively yet; it has been played on macOS and on the Switch, and the Windows and Linux builds pass the tests but haven’t been tried on real machines. It adds cutscene skipping, cropping of the black bands, sharp or smooth scaling, a slower pace for the planets, and a fix for the color noise during warp transitions. Preview version 0.8.1 came out on October 24. All 8 of its commits list Claude as a co-author.

You needYour own image of the Laser Lords disc, as a MAME CHD (.chd) or as a .cue and .bin made with chdman extractcd; the CD-i BIOS isn’t needed. 64-bit Windows 10 or 11, macOS 11 or later (Intel or Apple silicon), x86-64 Linux, or a Switch with custom firmware and the Homebrew Menu.

How it gets to PC

Game-specific engine

Console

Other platform

Original studio

Spinnaker Software

Year

1992

Author

RandyVie