Meant to be Seen

Does anyone know if there's any video footage of the old Legend Quest arcade game anywhere? The only clip I can find is on an archived episode of the old UK games show Bad Influence (barely a 10 second clip). Apart from that, there's a single black and white screenshot, and that seems to be it.

I can find footage from Dactyl and the sci-fi based one, but nothing for Legend Quest. I used to play it in Nottingham 20 odd years ago where they had 4 pods linked up, and they used to record footage for you on to VHS, but anything I had recorded went the way of the dodo years back.

With the Rift just around the corner, I'd love to show some friends the state of the first VR that I ever experienced all those years ago.

I've been trying to find videos for all the Virtuality games but didn't find one for Legend Quest. Where did you find it ?

There was a guy here not too long ago that said he had the entire collection of Virtuality games: http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.p ... 606#p93606 . He said something was wrong with the headset. But he may be the one to contact. Maybe he could take footage of the game for us.

Also, did they run on custom hardware? I mean, is there any way to get them working (emulated) on modern computers? I would love to play a game of Dactyl Nightmare on the Rift being that was my first experience with VR.

Fredz - this contains the only clip I can find of Legend Quest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ELNIsjW-1w

The Legend Quest clip (all 10 seconds of it) starts bang on the 10 minute mark of the video, though there's some other footage after that showing Violet Berlin playing Grid Warriors.

cybereality - The Legend Quest machines I played on were basically Amiga 3000s, though in trying to find some Legend Quest info, I read that the Virtuality machines were later upgraded to 486 PCs, though I don't know if previous games were ported over to them. You've probably seen it, but there's some Dactyl Nightmare footage from GamesMaster on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6t69mp0ZhE

Thanks, Fluke. I hadn't seen that video actually.

Somehow it doesn't seem nearly as cool as it did in 1993! Still great, though.

cybereality wrote:Also, did they run on custom hardware? I mean, is there any way to get them working (emulated) on modern computers? I would love to play a game of Dactyl Nightmare on the Rift being that was my first experience with VR.

Unfortunately none of the Virtuality games seem to have been dumped : http://mamedev.emulab.it/undumped/index ... Virtuality
I guess an Amiga emulator would be enough to make them playable, as long as the sensors are emulated.

Fluke wrote:Fredz - this contains the only clip I can find of Legend Quest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ELNIsjW-1w

Thanks !

Fredz wrote:

cybereality wrote:Also, did they run on custom hardware? I mean, is there any way to get them working (emulated) on modern computers? I would love to play a game of Dactyl Nightmare on the Rift being that was my first experience with VR.

Unfortunately none of the Virtuality games seem to have been dumped : http://mamedev.emulab.it/undumped/index ... Virtuality
I guess an Amiga emulator would be enough to make them playable, as long as the sensors are emulated.

Fluke wrote:Fredz - this contains the only clip I can find of Legend Quest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ELNIsjW-1w

Thanks !

I used to operate two 1000SD units for corporate hire and then two 2000SU units and still have the software for both systems although they no longer function I still have one 100SD unit and the parts from the 2000SU.

The hardware was indeed custom as was the software (running in DOS as mentioned) and it was tied very tightly not only to the sensors but other custom components that tied everything together so I'd doubt there's any chance even with an Amiga emulator you'd be able to run the experiences. The custom graphics cards in the 2000 units were very expensive (£3k GBP) and very crude compared to todays cards and the polygon count is very low as you can see in the clip linked to, indeed 3DFX absolutely annihilated their polygon count when they released their powerful but cheap cards in 1996.

You would be hugely disappointed to see Dactyl through a Rift so I'd recommend to leave your memories back in the day where they are still cool.

Really looking forward to seeing what we can do with the Rift when we receive the Dev kit.

Thanks for the infos V8Griff, nice to have someone who had first-hand experience with the Virtuality systems.