> I'd guess the reason why Star Rider uses Manchester data encoded in the LD video > instead of putting that information into the ROMs was space reasons?
Again, I may be totally wrong but from what I understand the original plan was that the game would be able to be updated to have completely different tracks with a new LD and swapping out some ROM's. If that was the case it probably had something to do with that and it's too bad that that never happened!