Halcyon
In the 1980’s arcades where booming with a new form of gaming. Interactive games that streamed data off of
laser discs (The precursor to the DVD) were growing quite popular.
RDI Systems Inc was a manufacturer of laser disc games. In 1984, they decided to take a crack at the home console market. The result was the first home laserdisc video game system. The Halcyon was named after the “Hal” computer from the movie “2001: Space Odyssey”. It was a standard Laserdisc player similar to the Pioneer LaserActive. The player
could read double-sided discs that allowed a whole lot more footage than its coin-op arcade counterparts. This may have been the first instance of a home game being of better quality than the coin-op.
It also came with a keyboard, 2 games (Thayers Quest and NFL Football), and a unique voice headset which allowed the player to use voice commands instead of keystrokes. The system is capable of recognizing 1000 words, and can also be programmed with more.
So what happened? Well for starters this remarkable machine retailed for $2000+ USD. Consumers were simply unwilling to pay that much money for a simple home experience. Also by the late 80’s the popularity of laser interactive gaming began to dwindle. The rise and fall of the videogame market was quite painful to retailers. RDI Systems soon filed for bankruptcy like so many other companies at this time.
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