Overview
American Laser Games, founded by Robert Grebe in 1989, was birthed out of a company that made a police training simulator called iCAT. The simulator used an Amiga computer attached to a Laserdisc player to present different FMV target galleries for trainees to fire at using a realistically-weighted gun with a mercury switch for reloading. The technology was adapted for the arcade market, and Crime Patrol features several subtle references to this original training sim, including a basic target gallery at the beginning for practice shots. Later in their life, American Laser Games produced home ports of their games for DOS, CD-i, Sega CD, and 3DO. They enjoyed the 3DO technology so much that some of their late-model arcade units used hardware based on the 3DO instead of the Amiga/Laserdisc combo.
Today, Digital Leisure owns the rights to the American Laser Games back catalog and still produces ports of their games for PCs, DVD players, consoles, and mobile platforms. American Laser Games is also still sort of around. In the mid-nineties, following the production of the home versions of The Last Bounty Hunter and the 3DO game Mazer, they re-branded themselves as Her Interactive and changed focus to creating home titles targeted at a female demographic, staring with McKenzie and Company. They currently produce Nancy Drew titles for a variety of platforms.
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