DiskProject

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Notable & Obscure Systems:

Pioneer LaserDisc: LaserDisc was the first optical disc format marketed to consumers by MCA DiscoVision in 1978. Pioneer Corporation introduced the first consumer player and sold about  9.000 films. The games made for the system were animated videos which were controlled by the player through a series of quick-time events. The animation in Dragon's Lair and Space Ace was created by the legendary Don Bluth Studios. Company founder Don Bluth was a former Disney animator. His strong pedigree speaks for itself. 

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Famicom Disk System: A peripheral for Nintendo's Family Computer home video game console, released only in Japan on February 21, 1986. It uses proprietary floppy disks called "Disk Cards" for cheaper data storage and it adds a new high-fidelity sound channel for supporting Disk System games.

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AMIGA CD 32: Despite all its many flaws, the CD-32 somehow sold well in Europe in Christmas 1993, outselling the Sega Mega-CD. It was, of course, a gigantic flop in the rest of the world. It was too expensive to produce, and its European sales were not enough to save it. In April of 1994, Commodore International declared bankruptcy, causing the CD-32 to be canceled mere months after its launch.

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PC Engine CD: Offers one of the greatest video game libraries in all of gaming, and it's relatively unexplored by the western market. The PC Engine/CD was a massive hit in Japan, but in the US just simply did not catch on. In addition, the PC Engine/CD is a Shut 'Em Up fans dream system. Even if you are not into Shut 'Em Ups, they are worth checking out.

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Sharp X68000: A Japanese personal computer produced between 1987 and 1993. Commonly known as the X68k, it came in a striking double-tower case and was a highly advanced machine for its time. The X68000 was a 16-Bit (later 32-bit with the 68030 CPU) home video game systems, rivaling even the arcade-quality Neo Geo console (later X68000 models helped out in the graphics department and added an eight-channel PCM chip into the mix, yet the latter was mainly an add-on). Capcom made it the prototype and the basis for its SDK unit for its CP System (CPS) arcade board and many of the X68000's releases were Arcade Perfect Ports.

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PC-98: The NEC PC-9801 (which later became the PC-9821) was, loosely speaking, the Japanese equivalent of the IBM Personal Computer, from 1982 until the late 1990s. Like the IBM PC (and Fujitsu's competing FM Towns line), it used Intel 80x86 or equivalent CPUs, and could run versions of MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows, but was otherwise not IBM-compatible. PC98 games are image files, not ROMs. Image files come in 3 different formats: CD images, Floppy disk images, and Hard disk images.

 

NeoGeo CD: The second home console from SNK, released in September 9, 1994, four years after its cartridge-based equivalent. This is the same platform, converted to the cheaper CD format retailing at $49 to $79 per title, compared to the $300+ cartridges. In response to criticism of the Neo Geo CD's long load times, SNK planned to produce a model with a double speed CD-ROM drive for North America, compared to the single speed drive of the Japanese and European models. However, the system missed its planned North American launch date of October 1995, with SNK stating that  their Japanese division had produced an excess number of single speed units and found that modifying these units to double speed was more expensive than they had initially thought, so SNK opted to sell them as they were, postponing production of a double speed model until they had sold off the stock of single speed units. The CDZ was only officially sold in Japan during its production. However, its faster loading times, lack of a "region lock", and the fact that it could play older CD software, made it a popular import item for enthusiasts in both Europe and North America. The NGCD has exclusives titles never released on MVS or AES. 

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