LASER is an emulator for arcade games using the Intel 8080 microprocessor. The name is an acronym that stands for Little Arcade System Emulator Releases. In the earliest versions of the emulator, the name stood for Lopantu's Arcade Emulator Releases, but this was changed when Mickey McMurray changed his nickname from Lopantu to Bender, and later to MetaFox. The emulator was based on the Space Invaders emulator SinVader by Mike Green, but it later became almost unrecognizable from its predecessor, thanks in large part to the project's co-administrator, Steven Harris. The emulator was rewritten to use a driver system, similar to those used in larger arcade emulators such as MAME and Raine, by Steven in version 0.18. The emulator originally used the Allegro game programming library, but it was rewritten to use the game programming library, SDL, by Steven Harris in version 1.0 Revision 1. The emulator has simulations of arcade games, which MAME does not allow. The two simulations in the emulator are of Atari's Pong (which is simulated in various unofficial builds of MAME), and Pong Doubles, which is not simulated in any other emulator. The emulator has received many ports in the past, many of which are now superseded by Laser-SDL, due to the cross-platform nature of SDL.
Superseded source ports
| Platforms | Latest release | First release | Notes | Site |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BeOS | 0.9 | 0.9 | Ported by Domenico Dato | |
| Linux | 0.9 | 0.9 | Ported by Domenico Dato | |
| Windows | 0.9 | 0.9 | Ported by ATani | [1] |
| Sega Dreamcast | 0.13 r1 | 0.13 r1 | Ported by Steven Harris |
There was also a port by Domenico Dato to the Compaq iPAQ, but the binaries to that release are no longer available on the internet.
