A point in time, when companies should have better combined their forces and created a "better CD-I" all together. An open standard. Including Commodore with the CD-TV. I say "CD-I" just because Philips was responsible for the CD-Standards from the start up, so it came to my mind at first 🙂. Thanks for sharing, what a "strange" but beautiful piece of history.
I remember that! My family was in our local Radio Shack (RIP) to buy something else, and the salesman gave us a demo. We didn't buy it, but we seriously considered it, largely on the promise of "more titles to come", I think. I remember thinking that the demo disk was visually impressive (to me, a kid, at the time). I seem to recall that the little owl mascot started out trapped in a birdcage, and you had to pick up the key, put it into a padlock, and release him from the cage, complete with a little animation of the key turning, the lock opening, and the owl flying out. I suppose we're talking sub-Flash-game levels of sophistication here, but since it was pre-Flash by several years, and all we had at home was a 286 AT clone (WITHOUT a CD-ROM drive), it all looked pretty fancy at the time. If I recall correctly, the only reason that we bulked was the price. Had it been $100 (even considering what that means, adjusting for inflation), we probably would have bought it. Granted, we probably would have been quite disappointed! But, we likely would have bought it. Our local Radio Shack salesman was a friendly guy who could really sell things, hehe.
I was one of the poor souls that got the VIS fire sale bundle from Tiger Direct. It was a truly terrible system. The IR controllers were so finicky about their position, especially from across the room. It was sloooow. My friends and I tried every single title that came with it, desperate to wring any fun out of the investment. There was an odd "game" that was basically a virtual tour of a whaling museum that entertained us with its bad voice acting. The only game we ended up actually playing more than twice was Links, which was a passable golf game for the time. Even looking back on it with rose-tinted glasses, it's hard to find much nostalgia in my heart for such a bad system.
I completely understand…the biggest problem for me was speed as everything had really long load times…we cut a ton of just wait time out of this video. At least you didn’t pay the full $700! Thanks for watching!
reminds me of the commodore cdtv and apple pippin which all had standard off-the-shelf hardware and their respective manufacturer's ordinary operating system under the hood. loved links and links 386 back in the days. would've been great on the big crt tv.
I didn't have the actual system, but I did get the free VIS promo tape from Radio Shack on one of my many visits there as a kid. The whole video is incredibly corny, and I remember thinking so even as a kid. It would make great fodder for RiffTrax today.
This is the first time I've ever heard of this and as a kid... I so wanted to get a CD ROM for my Tandy 1000 EX! My dad right told me no and I don't think it would have even worked lol! And at 3:01 that looks a lot like a SATA connector! I know it... Tandy was the best!
Sorry so much to comment on this! The graphics are pretty amazing for the time. That golf game actually has digitized characters which besides a few arcade games this is almost unheard of at the time. Is that 256 colors or possibly 4096?
I agree, it looks pretty good graphically although the load times are extremely slow (we cut a ton of just waiting time from the video). I’d say it’s probably 256 colors based on what I’ve seen so far…thanks so much for watching!
Links Golf definitely had expansion courses. They seem to just be for the Windows version, but hey... that's just the Windows version really. So it may work.
Interesting…I presume they intended the extra courses to be loaded through the Save-It card which begs the question ‘how would you load a file onto that card?’
A point in time, when companies should have better combined their forces and created a "better CD-I" all together. An open standard. Including Commodore with the CD-TV. I say "CD-I" just because Philips was responsible for the CD-Standards from the start up, so it came to my mind at first 🙂.
Thanks for sharing, what a "strange" but beautiful piece of history.
Awesome video, great tech! Thanks for sharing. Brings back memories of when things were simpler yet new and exciting!
I remember that! My family was in our local Radio Shack (RIP) to buy something else, and the salesman gave us a demo. We didn't buy it, but we seriously considered it, largely on the promise of "more titles to come", I think. I remember thinking that the demo disk was visually impressive (to me, a kid, at the time). I seem to recall that the little owl mascot started out trapped in a birdcage, and you had to pick up the key, put it into a padlock, and release him from the cage, complete with a little animation of the key turning, the lock opening, and the owl flying out. I suppose we're talking sub-Flash-game levels of sophistication here, but since it was pre-Flash by several years, and all we had at home was a 286 AT clone (WITHOUT a CD-ROM drive), it all looked pretty fancy at the time.
If I recall correctly, the only reason that we bulked was the price. Had it been $100 (even considering what that means, adjusting for inflation), we probably would have bought it. Granted, we probably would have been quite disappointed! But, we likely would have bought it. Our local Radio Shack salesman was a friendly guy who could really sell things, hehe.
I was one of the poor souls that got the VIS fire sale bundle from Tiger Direct. It was a truly terrible system. The IR controllers were so finicky about their position, especially from across the room. It was sloooow. My friends and I tried every single title that came with it, desperate to wring any fun out of the investment. There was an odd "game" that was basically a virtual tour of a whaling museum that entertained us with its bad voice acting. The only game we ended up actually playing more than twice was Links, which was a passable golf game for the time. Even looking back on it with rose-tinted glasses, it's hard to find much nostalgia in my heart for such a bad system.
I completely understand…the biggest problem for me was speed as everything had really long load times…we cut a ton of just wait time out of this video. At least you didn’t pay the full $700! Thanks for watching!
reminds me of the commodore cdtv and apple pippin which all had standard off-the-shelf hardware and their respective manufacturer's ordinary operating system under the hood.
loved links and links 386 back in the days. would've been great on the big crt tv.
Would love to see the inside of the unit and how it compares with similar consumer tech products.
I didn't have the actual system, but I did get the free VIS promo tape from Radio Shack on one of my many visits there as a kid. The whole video is incredibly corny, and I remember thinking so even as a kid. It would make great fodder for RiffTrax today.
Honestly that’s why I had to include some clips of that promo…it was so bad that I found it very funny! Thanks for watching!
Interesting. I'm sure I saw one on display when I got my Optimus receiver in the early 90s. But, I didn't even know Tiger Direct shut down years ago?
heck yes, love this thing
I haven't thought about tigerdirect in forever lol...
The golf graphics feel like Comanche style voxels.
@9:25 Isn't that Shawn from Barney and Friends?
Aaron, that beard is the sharpest look for you.
Manhole is Myst's prequel... in a way
This is the first time I've ever heard of this and as a kid... I so wanted to get a CD ROM for my Tandy 1000 EX! My dad right told me no and I don't think it would have even worked lol! And at 3:01 that looks a lot like a SATA connector! I know it... Tandy was the best!
Sorry so much to comment on this! The graphics are pretty amazing for the time. That golf game actually has digitized characters which besides a few arcade games this is almost unheard of at the time. Is that 256 colors or possibly 4096?
I agree, it looks pretty good graphically although the load times are extremely slow (we cut a ton of just waiting time from the video). I’d say it’s probably 256 colors based on what I’ve seen so far…thanks so much for watching!
I approve of pro-dragon game content!
Links Golf definitely had expansion courses. They seem to just be for the Windows version, but hey... that's just the Windows version really. So it may work.
Interesting…I presume they intended the extra courses to be loaded through the Save-It card which begs the question ‘how would you load a file onto that card?’
you know how much a cd player cost back in the time.
to me it looks like a Cheaper made budget CDI with a bad 3rd party controller lol
where the hell is my comment? youtube just deleted it?