ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Laserdisc video game

Okay, so a laserdisc video game is kind of like a movie that you can play. It’s a special type of video game that used a big disc called a laserdisc instead of a cartridge or a CD. The disc looks kind of like a big DVD, but it’s a lot thicker and shinier.

When you put the laserdisc into a special player, the game would start up on a big screen. Lasers inside the player would read the disc and show the game on the screen. But unlike other video games where you control a character moving around on the screen, laserdisc games let you make choices that would affect the story or the outcome of the game.

Think of it like watching a really cool movie where you get to choose what happens next. Sometimes, the game would stop and give you a choice like, “Should the hero go left or right?” and depending on what you picked, the story would go in a different direction.

Laserdisc games could be really fun and exciting, but they were also really expensive and not as popular as other types of video games. But for a little while, they were a really cool way to play games in a whole new way!