Before Siri, Alexa, and Cortana … there was Hal.
Everyone knows what happened to HAL. I'd rather not talk about it.
“Visit worlds which were only dreams before Halcyon. Like nothing you've experienced ... ever.”
This is the story of the voice-controlled console that never was, and the dreams that
fueled its short life and early demise.
Or, to put it another way:
“This is a story about greed.
About unbridled ambition, and power lust, and the disaster resulting from those faults.”
Let’s go back to the early 1980s.
Home consoles were in their third generation.
The industry had crested and crashed, with arcade business dropping by half, and home
console production retreating to Japan.
By 1985, a once billion-dollar industry was worth just 100 million dollars.
That same year, Nintendo would bring the NES to North America and kick off a slow resurgence
of home consoles.
But by that time, Halcyon would already be gone.
At RDI Video Systems in Carlsbad, California, a man named Rick Dyer wanted to change the
home console industry forever.
He was making a voice-activated console called Halcyon, or Hal for short — yes, after that HAL.
"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."
“It’s like a living entity more than it is a machine.
It also has what we call an artificial intelligence, which is the machine’s ability to learn.
It knows what your strengths and weaknesses are.”
Hal had two components: a laserdisc player and a computer.
Laserdisc games — like the infamous Dragon’s Lair, another Dyer creation — were limited
in gameplay but looked a lot more stylish than the 8-bit games that were typical of the era.
"It's inhuman."
Hal had two games: Thayer’s Quest, a fantasy adventure game that was animated like Dragon’s Lair,
and a live-action NFL Football game.
But what really set Hal apart wasn’t its games — it was its revolutionary use of
voice controls.
“Maybe he’s what a computer should’ve been.
All along.
Something that anybody can use, because anybody can talk.”
"One."
"Speak consistently, Stewart."
"One."
*inaudible*
"Two."
"Sorry, Hal." "You want me to unplug you, so you can—"
"Yeah, sure, I think we've gotten that point across."
Hal could learn up to 200 words.
It would also form a relationship with the user by learning their name and making conversation.
“The computer will say, “John, did you just go to get a snack?”
"Well, I would appreciate it in the future if you would excuse yourself before walking off on me."
But it wasn’t enough for Hal to just talk to players.
It needed to be able to DO things for them, too.
“The ability for Halcyon to control the audio/video system, open and close the doors
— it has a calendar/clock built in —
So you’re saying this is the tip of the iceberg —”
It was Alexa, three decades before that smart speaker would hit the market
In the 1980s, this was the stuff of science fiction.
But if anyone could do it, it was Rick Dyer.
The new home video system that Rick and Jan Dyer have banked everything on will be shipped from here.
And if test marketing is any indication, what they will have is your basic phenomenal success.”
Dyer was the president of RDI Video Systems, a company that had already seen huge success
with the 1983 release of Dragon’s Lair.
Dragon’s Lair changed perceptions of what a video game could be.
Rick Dyer’s name was synonymous with forward-thinking.
With the future.
And Hal was poised to be at the forefront of it all.
So … what went wrong?
“My wife and I, as you can probably guess, are gambling everything we own on this so
… it’s kind of scary, but that’s the sort of thing that makes you want to succeed.”
At the time, there was nothing quite like Hal on the market.
Which meant its success would be impossible to predict.
But one thing was certain: it was expensive.
Halcyon was supposed to retail for $2,500.
That’s equivalent to about $5,758.99 today – way more than most consumers were willing
to pay.
By contrast, the NES — which was released in America less than a year after HAL was
set to hit market — retailed for a mere $90.
But it wasn’t just expensive for consumers.
It was also expensive to produce, because its games required both laserdiscs and cartridges.
Investors may initially have been swayed by the dream of selling the console of the future.
But faced with the ugly reality of a costly console and low consumer demand, investors
bailed.
Hal never made it to retail.
The company went bankrupt.
It’s estimated that only a handful of the original Halcyon prototypes still exist today,
all in the homes of private collectors.
Hal may never have achieved the success that Dyer dreamt of.
But it did, in some indirect way, forecast the future.
Thirty-three years later, we have computer-controlled homes, consoles that know us by name, and
phones that talk back to us.
“Good evening, Hal.”
“What do you want, Rick?”
“Good evening, Siri.”
"Good night."
"It's 10:21 a.m., by the way."
Maybe we've gone too far.