Dexter Review and Firefox install! LaserDisc Replacement for arcade games Dragon's Lair - Part 3

[@MrKevinp0]

John, that was extremely cool! It is amazing to see so many dedicated people striving to preserve the arcade experience for future generations! Thank you for sharing! Watching you play that game in it's original cabinet, you would never know that it wasn't playing on an original laserdisc player. So awesome! It's funny though, as I watched you play Firefox, the game play took my right back to a game that I used to throughly enjoy playing on my Colecovision. It was called Subroc. Now obviously the game play wasn't nearly as exciting or smooth (the Coleco version anyway), but the basic idea seems to be the same. Destroy the enemy and their ammunition as they fire at you, or be destroyed yourself. I know, completely unrelated, but it seems to me that game must be rare itself now, because I haven't seen a cabinet version in like forever! Again, that you for all you do, you're awesome and amazing, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise! Stay awesome my brother!

[@neilloughran4437]

Wven though this video is old, love that people are working on keeping these old arcade machines going with alternatives for archaic hardware.

[@mokthemagicman]

Very cool video John. I talked about this product being available for pre-order on our Arcade Hangout podcast few weeks ago. Nice to see it in action and working. This will save a lot of cabinets with broken laser players. Sweet!

[@brado426789]

Great show, John! Lots of super-interesting info! A lot I didn't even know about Dexter. I have 2 Dexters.... one in my Dragon's Lair and Space Ace with Merlin boards and I can say that my experience was plug & play just like in this video. Also, great job Warren!

[@carlopepi]

Wow props to you john followed daphne for years think i brought dexter up when you seen star rider which blew my mind incredible hardware for the time

[@Scythe42]

Must say, really impressed with showing the hardware and how far it came. Looks like just a modern laser disc player replacement where the video just comes off SD card and is served like a laserdisc player does. You can't get closer to the original. This is clearly not emulation in the a classical sense, it is replacement. And with that updated Merlin soon to come it seems a sweet combo.

[@mathesar]

Very interesting video once again, Was cool seeing Firefox up and running and Dexter looks like a winner.

[@RetroGamePlayers]

Wow so cool to see Warren there with you! I have been running Daphne for many years and love it soooo much. What a amazing and excellent job emulating those classic games! I have a couple vids of laserdiscs games on my channel showing Daphne emulation as well as the MAME machine running it all. Great video and a very cool HW product!!

[@Demeterkitty]

Hah! I'm so glad you got Firefox going, and I kinda figured Dexter would be the solution, I know the laserdisc players for this game are notorious for going bad and next to impossible to obtain in working condition. Great to see!

[@Riz2336]

That was awesome to see the game actually running. I would probably still run the game on the actual laserdisc player when that dude finishes it but it would be a good idea to have that laserdisc replacement.

[@mokthemagicman]

BTW John, when you are playing the game and see the gloved hands pulling up on the stick you have to also pull up to avoid hitting the mountain (when playing ground area). Another tip is to concentrate on shooting radar and missiles more than shooting the ships. It conserves fuel and your life to be able to reach the end of the game.

[@theSammyM333]

This is funny I just got my Afterburner working and you posted video of Firefox. Hope you make more gameplay videos of that game when you get your Dexter board or if Franz gets that Laserdisc player working.

[@ChezArcade]

Thanks John for reading my viewer mail! I forgot to mention its 26 games in 1 year...yes, need to slow down and restore, restore, restore! Pretty cool little gadget too!

[@SwainyAtRetroAsylum]

Great to see Fire Fox finally in action John, top stuff!

[@tonebone7053]

Man.. is there anything you can't do with a raspberry pi? Great video, John!!

[@insider1927]

I remember Dragon`s Lair in an arcade at Barry Island - you know from Gavin and Stacey (James Corden Late Late show) - Did you get Gavin and Stacey in the US ? I thought the gameplay was difficult and did n`t see many people get very far on it. The Dexter seems a great piece of kit.

[@wjcarrigan]

Damn! Gary Oldman sure does know his way around Atari Firefox

[@Flanneryshanedward]

new to John's arcade . first thing they notice the wobbly table . second they watch previous classic John's arcade videos. then they stumble upon the John's arcade wobbly table series and realise it's a classic arcade wobbly wobbler that will always have a place in the basement of fun 😊

[@IgnusFast]

+flanneryshaneedward I get that it's a thing, but I actually have a hard time watching these videos because of that stupid table. If he'd just remove the popcorn machine it wouldn't be that bad, but the thing seriously freaks me out. Either the table is just that shitty, or that mans forearms weigh about 100lbs each.

[@UTO0O0B]

Another great vid John! Any plans to mic up your guests?

[@LawmanArcade76]

+RetroNutz Yeah, John definitely needs to use an external mic or a 2nd one AND I would suggest moving that pop corn machine away from the table when there is a guest here ( anyways, im just waiting that it wobbles down from the table )

[@PurpleFoxArcade]

A needed item. Hard to hear guest.

[@tigheklory]

This episode was really great John! loved it! are you only getting one dexter or two?

[@ddpaul22]

I want that Firefox machine so badly.

[@allglorytogod12]

I know you have tried to work on that table but there has to be a fix. I'm wondering if between the weight of the popcorn machine on one side and your constant resting your arms/weight on the other side is just causing that perpetual wobble.

[@rarecoolitems]

I had a Firefox back in the early 80s based of the Clint Eastwood movie

[@darktetsuya]

I'm just waiting for the laserdisc project 'borf' :P (since I noticed the naming conventions are all from the don bluth games) but that's pretty cool! the game actually looks like a fun shooter!!

[@di380]

My only concern is the quality of the video. Laser disk was analog video on a laser medium where as this is digital converted somehow with compression which will not match the original source regardless of how good the capture was.

[@norm4242]

John, I was watching California man the other day, and the actor Sean Astin immediately reminded me of you, has anybody made that comparison before? : )

[@Johnsarcade]

Ha. Yes. Especially when I was younger. I got "Rudy" comments all the time.

[@chrisjordan1913]

John why don't you make a Visual Pinball Table... (saw the old pinball machine in the garage from this video)

[@bryanspocketchange]

John did Warren say when this would be released? I didn't see mach3 listed..I emailed for a promo code for my us vs them. thanks again for your efforts

[@HarryBouman]

Bought the Kill Screens music on iTunes. Love the music!

[@Johnsarcade]

Thanks!

[@voltz15]

You'll have to show us Dragon's Lair once you got that up and running.

[@CameronMcCasland]

Did you ever get you lazer disc player back?

[@yorgle]

I'd love to know how Firefox and its laserdisc player were able to reconstruct a single stream of video from that disc, knowing how players from that era worked. Did the player itself sample in 1 second and then skip to the next segment of that stream at a faster than 1x speed, to make it continuous? Is there any documentation online that explains how the game and its player operated?

[@bitrot42]

+Scott Lawrence It's all analog, so no sampling is going on. One rotation of the disc = one video frame, so to play the video at normal speed, the laser jumps one "track" during the brief vertical blanking interval when no video is being displayed. The Philips player used in Firefox had a unique ability to jump up to 90 tracks during this interval, so it could skip three seconds ahead without any interruption in the video.

[@yorgle]

+wondras Oh wow. Ok. (I was thinking of late 90s Laserdisc players which were capable of doing freezeframes on CLV discs, by digitizing the frame. It never occurred to me that the head could move more than one track/frame at a time... nifty. Thanks!

[@Chudhole]

Maybe lose that popcorn machine with a guest. Coupled with shaking table it was making me bananas.

[@MaxxLegend]

Good vid! Is he Dana Carvey from Wayne's World?! :P

[@kennynott1602]

John have you heard of the game duck hunt? I geew up with it there is a arcade version I was wondering if you could show it off the versus mode of it is great :D

[@kennynott1602]

grew ***

[@1invisibleB]

Yes do a mame would luv that!

[@sonicase]

I'd be cautious when powering down that board... the raspberry pi doesn't like to be turned off instantly, it's a computer and should be shut down in some way. turning it off by flipping a switch or pulling the plug is bad and can corrupt the SD card. there are ways to add a 'shutdown button', i don't know if that board has that but if it doesn't they should add it

[@bitrot42]

+sonicase Normally that's true, but Dexter uses a custom Linux setup that is 100% read-only during normal use. This eliminates problems with SD card wear and corruption. To be a true laserdisc replacement, it has to be able to tolerate random power on/off events, so this was an important design goal. It also 'silently' boots to live video in under 10 seconds... just like a laserdisc player. :)

[@spring79]

Was he nervous? He was shaking like crazy?

[@bitrot42]

+Jacob ,1up, Spring Not really, it was waaaay too much coffee.

[@Egames101]

New video notification pops up. Video loads and I hear that dam music. Why John why

[@allrock1238]

as you Know There are adjustments on the Firefox NTSC Demodulator PCB board that impact and match the color of the laserdisc (now dexter generated) image in relation to the computer generated game image follow the adjustment procedure contained in the "Schematic package supplement to firefox operators manual "Includes adjustment procedures" this board combines the computer generated graphics and laserdisc video "Follow the demodulator adjustment procedure ,, you will have to fix the test switch to access the games color alinment adjustment menus when doing this.. there is mistake in the "Saturation" adjustment procedure in the direction of rotation of the pot. if the monitor displays the computer graphics colors correctly , but the laserdisc colors are wrong ,, this is the likely issue , I will add one thing as a remote possibility but not sure ,, it might be possible there are international versions of firefox that use other video standards like "PAL" instead of NTSC but normally there timing signals are diffrent enough so they would not work in the first place .

[@thxstudio]

Can you get me a Laserdisc replacement for the game "Interstellar" from Funai (1983)?

[@lsu420luv]

great video

[@keiranbowes1979]

Fair enough

[@timothydoom]

RIP franz :(

[@hyzepher]

link to Dexter has a trailing '-' so the link is broken.

[@Johnsarcade]

Fixed. Thanks.

[@hannonm]

FINALLY!!!!!!!!!

[@MrHarney]

FIREFOX wow :)

[@brado426789]

When will someone create reproduction Cliffhanger boards so I can buy a Dexter for that? :) Until then, it has a PC inside. :(

[@keiranbowes1979]

I dont mean to be picky John but the wobble on that table is unbelievably annoying.

[@Johnsarcade]

+keiran bowes It's my thing and I love it. :D

[@delsarcade]

+keiran bowes Check out his previous videos. It used to be worse before he fixed it!

[@goahead2402]

1

[@danjenlilyful]

gosh let the man talk, u keep cutting him off...