American Laser Games
American company

American Laser Games was a company based in Albuquerque, New Mexico that created numerous light gun laserdisc video games featuring live action full motion video. Almost all arcade games released by the company were light gun shooters and a number of them also had an Old West theme.
American Laser arcade cabinets included a Sony Lasermax LaserDisc player to stream the video content, and an Amiga 500 computer to overlay on-screen graphics, and to control individual game logic. The computer was fitted with a bespoke interface to utilise the LaserDisc player, an auto-booting ROM board, and a Roctec Genlock.
Later, the company turned toward compact disc technology to release its games. Ports of its arcade titles were released for the Sega CD, CD-i and DOS computers equipped with CD-ROM drives. The company was particularly supportive of the 3DO, not only releasing versions of its games for the console, but also offering a modified version of the 3DO platform as an upgrade kit for existing arcade video game cabinets, supporting compressed video versions of their games at a lower cost. In 1995, American Laser Games released Mazer for the 3DO home market and Orbatak (3DO-powered) for the arcade - their first and only in-house non-Full motion video based games. The company also released a series of light-gun controllers, including the 3DO Game Gun and the PC Gamegun, for home computer use. The latter proved unsuccessful due to its poor accuracy.
The public source identifies “American Laser Games” as american company. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around American, Laser and Games.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1705063. VIAF identifies the subject as 334144783137113435874. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1995.
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This entry incorporates text from “American Laser Games” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.