Development Tools/Software
Emulation
| Name | Creator | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Ares MegaLD POC 2025-07-28 GitHub Repo |
Ares Team +MegaLD support by Nemesis |
An unofficial fork of Ares with functioning MegaLD emulation support, serving as a reference implementation for following work by others. This emulator was built from extensive reverse-engineering of the register interface of the Pioneer PD6103A IC using the MegaLDRegEditor program below on real hardware, and most aspects of the hardware are emulated fully and correctly at this time. This is the first LaserActive emulator capable of booting and running games, although bugs will exist and more features remain to be implemented. Notes: -Required bios files are included. Select them in Ares under Settings->Firmware. -Define your input keys under Settings->Input by selecting “Mega LD” from the combobox. -Load games under Load->Sega->Mega LD. -It is strongly recommended to run games off a solid-state drive. -The emulator may currently appear to hang for an extended period of time when first loading a game file. Please be patient and it should resume. -Any reasonably modern mid to high end PC should achieve full framerates during gameplay, however due to the unoptimized, initial nature of this release, system requirements are likely higher now than they will be in later builds. |
| Space Berserker (U) - PEASU1003 (28GB torrent) |
Playable archive of Space Berserker with full analog audio+video as well as digital content. Do not extract, do not recompress. Load directly in Ares. Note that this is an experimental playable rip for use on the Ares POC build above, and is not final either in terms of format or quality. Video quality improvements will come in later builds. |
Original Tools
| Name | Creator | Description |
|---|---|---|
| PAC-PC1 Program Editor | Pioneer |
Community Tools
| Name | Creator | Description |
|---|---|---|
| DumpMegaLD | Nemesis | A Mode 1 MegaCD ROM with source, capable of initializing the Laserdisc hardware from the PAC-S1/S10 device, and performing a rip of the digital content of a MegaLD/LDROM2 disc over the second controller port. Full raw sector data and subcode extraction supported. This is obsolete with full RF capture and decoding techniques. |
| MegaLDRegEditor | Nemesis | A Mode 1 MegaCD ROM with source, capable of initializing the Laserdisc hardware from the PAC-S1/S10 device, and allowing full interactive reading/writing to the PD6103A IC register block, which is what bridges the MegaCD hardware in the PAC-S1/S10 with the LaserActive system. The presence of this chip and the features it provides is the only thing that makes the PAC-S1/S10 meaningfully different from a standalone Mega Drive with a MegaCD attached. |
| LDBIOS.INC | Nemesis | Reverse-engineered BIOS routine entry points for the MegaLD bios on the PAC-S1/S10, in the same format and style as the CDBIOS.INC file from the official MegaCD SDK, however this is not an official file provided by Sega. In addition to the BIOS routines, the header contains detailed notes on efforts to reverse-engineer the functionality of the PD6103A IC register block. The information contained in this document is sufficient to make an attempt at emulating the LaserActive hardware, using a working MegaCD emulator as a base. This file would enable the development of custom MegaLD titles, as well as assist with the reverse-engineering of the LaserActive bios and LaserActive games. Note that this file is currently out of date. Updated notes with new and corrected information can be found in source comments within the Ares fork listed above. |