There used to be a secondhand games shop in Chicago, named People Play Games. One day I walked in, and Hotel Mario was on a shelf right next to The Joy of Sex. They denied it was a true sequel, but I'm still not sure.
Man, growing up, I remember wanting a CD-i so bad. As it turns out, the best part of the CD-i were their infomercials, sadly. Just think if the CD-i actually was successful... Nintendo would have inadvertently spawned two competitors.
same here. those informercials and nintendo properties on it had child-me wanting one BAD. later on, my brother got obsessed with the 3do and tried to talk me into selling the snes to buy one. so glad i didn't agree
@@soundred1254 I do think of any of the failed systems / game companies that we saw in this era, 3DO / Panasonic had the best chance of entering into the big boy ring of console developers. 2 million sales might be abysmal, but that still means the 3DO sold as much as the Sega CD, and they still were able to beat many other companies who were directly competing, like Atari with the Jaguar and Sega with the 32x. Or maybe this is all my bias for the 3DO, idk
Are you talking about the Tetris Effect vinyl set? That has teh music from teh CD-i version of tetris on it? If So I may have to buy it, I've seen it at my local record store but it was kind of expensive.
The really funny thing about The Flowers of Robert Mapplethorpe is that if they'd included Mapplethorpe's other photography, the game would've certainly gotten an Adults Only rating. At least the game would've been more interesting that way.
The CD-i does digital video exceptionally well, which I think is a testament to both Philips' technological prowess back then and their entirely shortsighted focus on selling it as a multimedia player. Later on in its life, they heavily marketed it as a gaming machine (with Phil Hartman of all people in the TV commercials), but by then it was way too late and those who knew about it (I saw a CD-i kiosk regularly as a kid when my mom would go to Sears and I'd wander off in the electronics section, only to be mesmerized by the Sega CD sitting right next to it) knew that its library was mostly non-gaming junk, and the games that were available were not even second-rate. As it was, the CD-i was a couple years late to market, and I think like the 3DO (which also was mostly marketed at first as a multimedia machine), the concept was just a bit too far ahead of its time. The hardware definitely has some limitations, but it could have been a competent 16-bit competitor, had Philips had any marketing cachet and more importantly, good games. The CD-i desperately needed quality third-party support, since they didn't have killer titles like Sega and NIntendo did. Having said that, it's hard to see how even under the best circumstances it could have ever significantly competed with the SNES and Genesis. It was too expensive and couldn't really offer enough from a gameplay perspective over the competition to warrant a purchase. Philips made a valiant attempt to keep the system alive, and there are a handful of games that are, at the very least, curiosities that might tempt at least one play-through. My favorite game is Burn:Cycle, which luckily saw a PC release which is what I owned back then (I still would like to try playing the CD-i version some day). It's got a rather Johnny Mnemonic cyberpunk vibe to it that I totally love, and the acting isn't even that bad. It's one of the better examples of FMV integration in games, especially for the time, even if the gameplay still ends up being a bit on the shallow end. I'd probably buy a CD-i for Burn:Cycle alone (for the right price). And that's what I think the CD-i ends up being: a curiosity of a console that you buy for maybe 4 or 5 peculiar games that you like in spite of their flaws (Thunder in Paradise, anyone?). It's like the 3DO, but with older technology and a far more limited and mediocre library. Still, it has its diehard fans (just ask Yahel) and it will always have a cult following.
The soundtrack for Tetris for the CDI changed my life. It's the best vaporwave album I've ever heard - years before it's creation. Absolutely fantastic, super dank. Happy to see it mentioned.
I have a soft spot for my CDi 210, 450 and 470. I also pretty much have all the games, mods and accessories. I also fixed my time keeper chips on all of them. Ace 😎
@@jay1185 I wouldn't have liked it back then, either. There's zero interactivity in the game, the puzzles don't make any sense, and the FMV clips are annoying and repetitive. There's no spooky atmosphere to the game whatsoever. The best (and simultaneously most annoying) thing about the game is Stauf. 7th Guest is a prime example of a game that takes individual game elements from various games and puts them together, only to fail at making them into a cohesive whole. It doesn't execute any of the particular game elements well at all. What grates me the most is it's often categorized as an adventure game, which it most certainly is not. It's a puzzle game at best.
The Phillips CDi had PHENOMENAL graphics and sound capabilities for the time period. It's a shame it didn't get any quality software. I'm sure a talented developer could have really made this hardware pop. Remember, this was in the league of the Genesis and SNES.
While the CDI had vastly more processing power, system memory, vram, available colors, and other technical advantages from being both newer and in a higher pricing class, it was not designed to be a videogame console primarily, and as such, didn't have proprietary graphics modes specific to scrolling layers of graphics and sprites like an SNES, Genesis, or arcade hardware. Look how shitty and choppy that Zelda game looks. Early 90s MS-DOS games had this disadvantage as well. Programmers had to write software to draw sprites and scroll backgrounds in painstakingly slow fashion where consoles with 1/10th or less power handle with ease.
The CD-I was such an.....interesting system. It's like it didn't exist in our reality, it seems like so many other devices that I confuse it with them.
Nice CD-i overview! One note, and it's super minor, but worth pointing out: the CD-i release of The Joy of Sex did not have any ESRB rating. Note that the screenshot you provided was of the cover of the Macintosh computer version. The CD-i release pre-dated ESRB ratings. Other than that, thanks for continuing to show the CD-i some love!
i tried emulating the CD-i, after several attempts i got it running through MAME of all things. That was years ago and i was told that there was ONE developer working on CD-i emulation in MAME and he was the only one actively working on it, period. Which means you need the roms in CHD format, not in .cue + .bin like you would get from a REDUMP set. I think either Sound or Videos was completely missing, some specific module was completely un-emulated and un-documented anyway (i think it was sound), but i managed to walk through a few Zelda levels... and that was all that i bothered to do.
So it's all led up to this, it is amazing how much has been collected for this video. Considering the fact that (at least in Europe) is hard to come by most of the consoles, games and accessories covered in this video, especially the genuine games and without burning your wallet. And the fact that some of the games were burned, shows how rare and hard to get these games are. It is a shame that not as many people will experience playing games on the CD-I, compared to it's competitors and contemporaries of the time due to it's rareness and value.
I remember a couple of decently interesting games on the CD-i, Namely Laser Lords and Mutant Rampage Bodyslam, I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few other hidden ""gems"" on the CD-i just waiting to be found honestly.
Good old times. In 1994-1995 I worked on CD-I productions for Philips at the first Interactive agency in The Netherlands. This was just before internet was a “thing”. Fun fact: When the CD-I for 2 Unlimited was made the two singers / artists where not on speaking terms anymore with each other and that is why they where recorded separately. We made many other CD-I’s, Philips paid well :)
My friend had a CD-I back in the day. My mind was blown by the animation and voice clips in Link. I thought the game was pretty amazing. Granted, up till then I had only played NES and SNES games.
also try escape from cyber city. It was a game that actually used the video so it would be specific to cdi. Altho if it was ever ported To MAME it might be better there
Gotta say, I really love these videos of yours covering obscure systems like the CD-i. It was your videos on it that convinced me to get a 3DO, keep it up and you might convince me to cop a refurbished CD-i.
Took me a bit that he was 0utting the video into the Rick and morty clip because as he had said it would fit right into the interdementional channel concept.
Thanks for shedding some light into this machine! There are surely not many other videos like this out there, and none of them has shown the beauty of some games you showcased here... I am tempted to try them out some day!
the CDi was a very competent CD player, it performed extremely well compared to a ton of mid range to high end CD players at that time making it a very good deal and the very last CDi produced, the CDi-740 is one of the best CD players of the entire decade with it's advanced features and high build quality (very rare model, rarely ever comes up for sale).
The Philips CD-I was released before I started high school, but it gained notoriety during my high school years. I have a lot of nostalgia for this console and really enjoyed it back then. When I revisit some of the games now, I often think, "What was I thinking?" Yet, I still absolutely love it.
I'm shocked that emulation of the CD-i is so difficult. It's not an overly complicated machine. The 68000 used in it is fairly weak - there was a couple of years delay between designing the hardware and actually getting production started, and the new models of the 68000 had gotten a higher clock speed by that point but they didn't integrate that into the design. I have a 450 model, with the bad disc eject issue, along with a bunch of accessories I'd picked up here and there. I do have the Apprentice along with Hotel Mario and the two Link games (which are those "demonstration only - not for sale" kind). I picked it up just for the novelty of it. Back when I really hunted thrift stores like crazy I'd find software for it but there weren't a lot of games in the mix. There just wasn't a market for that kind of multimedia machine. Instead of spending $300 for something that's sort of computer-like, most people would rather spend $1200 to get an actual computer. You could always look into the Memorex VIS next. It was a consolised 286 PC sold through Radio Shack stores, so it sold like garbage. But at least it'd be easier to emulate.
I think part of is because there's simply a lack of interest in emulating it. The PSVita has a similar problem, it's not an overly complex system (definitely easier to work with than, say, the PS3). Until recently, there wasn't an Xbox emulator despite every other 6th gen system (including the Wii which is about as powerful) having one.
@@calzonemaniacsvideocorner0804 the Xbox is probably an excellent point of comparison. In theory it's not a hard system to emulate, but there's not much software that makes it worth the time or effort. The Xbox is slightly better served than the CDi in that regard, but a lot of the exclusives - particularly the "heavy hitters" like Halo, were natively on PC.
I think the main part of the problem is lack of doccumentation. A 68k is easy to emulate sure, but what the graphics? Obviously people have worked around it since Mame has at least some support, but I can't imagine it was trivial. Another sticking point will be the Digital Video Cartridge. Good luck finding documentation on that.
Wow you answered a life long nagging memory question I had been living with. When I was a kid in the early 90s I had played a video game console at a block buster that was on display. It was that Tetris you showed! I have been wondering what console it was for years. I had assumed it was an early playstation or maybe a sega saturn version of Tetris but when I would look through their library of games nothing like it I could fine. I remember just being so mesmerized by the music and background scenery. I can't thank you enough! Not knowing what version of Tetris and what console I had played that on has bugged me my whole life. I was really young (like 7-9?) so I couldn't remember or probably didn't even know at the time what console it was. This kind of makes me want to get a CD-i so I can get it. I hadn't actively looked for what version of Tetris it was in probably a decade but its always been a memory that has stuck with me.
Tetris does go with mellow music -- look to Tetris Effect on PS4. Zenith reminds me of some games on C64 and Amiga that also involve controlling a forward-moving, bouncing ball.
At 9:24, the "Super Exploding Pizza II" logo is a direct parody/reference to Super Street Fighter II, specifically the box art. With that and the Room/Doom parody, I'd be curious if the other games also had title screens that were parodies of popular contemporary games.
Answer: Yes. And that's why it's worthy of historical archiving and preservation for future generations... No one sets out to make a crap games console. The missteps on the CD-I journey are worthy of discussion and note. Might even make a great film lol. All the best.
@@darthkai8242 It's one of the few 'devices' I'd happily let slide unacknowledged into history. The 'sole' thing anybody would want to use it for is to play VideoCDs (not anything CDI specific) - and there were so many other devices that could do this (and as VideoCd was mainly an asian piracy standard, nobody was buying that CDI to play them)
The funny thing is that you're right. It's always the trash that ends up being the rarest. Since no one really cared about the console, there isn't as much documentation for it, nor great ways to get the system running again (that battery shit looks horrifying). And since it was a commercial failure, any console or media for it is going to be increasingly rare.
@@darthkai8242 i agree 👍. the cdi was marketed to rich people. It was more expensive than a Neo Geo iirc. At store I seen it at they had a huge area set up an the golf game was on. It wasn't a store with childrens toys. It might have been the long gone *Service Merchandise* It was a cd player in times when A. People knew what CDs were an B. times when they may be very expensive.
I know I'm commenting on an old vid, but I feel most compelled to mention: DAMN GOOD JOB ON THIS VID, SIR!!! This is the best video practical-summary of the CD-i console and many of its products. I used to work in a Philips semiconductor fab once upon a time, and I understand why the CD-i was a promising system turned mediocre ultimately by incompetence within the company. But that is beside the point. Thank you so much for this vid!
Cdi was my first system actually lol. I have alot of childhood memories with it. I feel it had alot of potential for its time if they focused more on gaming
It has that 90s optimism oozing out of it. Play any CD-I game, even a bad one, and it's like the present day, with all its cynicism just vanishes. It's a real time capsule.
Your CD of Zelda's Adventure didn't work because it was burned at an incorrect speed. CD-i will read burned CDs with no throuble only if you burn them on slower speeds, the lower, the better. I had to get myself a very old CD drive that could burn CDs at speed 2.
Oh my god, I've seen the Mutant Rampage cutscenes before, but I never thought about how they sound exactly like an interdimensional cable clip from Rick and Morty. That edit had me in stitches.
My family bought a CD-I back in the day. We didn't have a whole lot of worthwhile software, but the ones I remember us having the most fun with were that pinball game, which after watching this, has not aged well visually, and a word puzzle game called Text Tiles. We had a big track ball controller that looks like it had been designed by Fisher Price. I still have the system, most of the software, the funky track ball controller, AND THE ORIGINAL RECEIPT FROM WHEN WE PURCHASED THE DAMN THING!! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME?!
10:40 You were not wrong. During the video game explosion of the early 90's a lot of companies wanted to jump on the bandwagon cuz it seemed like easy money. Most of them had no idea how to actually make video games. The good side of the coin is that we actually got a lot of innovation and cool new ideas and some software and hardware advancements out of that ignorance. The bad news is we also got tons of garbage hardware and software. Many of them thought you could just hire a random programmer fresh out of college and they would do whatever you wanted. Eventually some managers realized you needed different kinds of coders as well as artists and other talent. Thats why there was a sharp increase in the number of tech startups during that time period, and why so many of them disappeared after a short while. You used to be able to get catalogs thru mail order and find hundreds if not thousands of new and crappy games, many of them made by one person businesses. Some guys actually made out alright and would either start or join proper software companies. And of course piracy and intellectual theft were very common back then. A lot of people referred to it as the Wild West era of computing.
Nobody ever mentions that you can use a simple backup cable to save your save games to a PC. You also don't need to dremmel out the battery, just wire up a new battery to the pins.
An idea: port LZDoom to CD-i, with an utility application which enables the user to burn a custom LZDoom CD with specified maps and mods :) that would be pretty cool
My granddad had pinbal and van Goch on the CDI. In the pinbal game we got the bal stuck between two of those bouncy things which had resulted in a high score if not for the required reset.
Zenith reminds me of that one unreleased Virtual Boy game about the bouncing ball. Bound High. Looks like at least one variation of that idea saw the light of day. That makes me happy.
You say that CD-i emulation is still difficult, but I remember running some games on MAME, and they ran quite good. That was around 2-3 years ago. I even remember having to convert the ISOs to CHDs so I could boot them up properly. I know that running things on MAME isn't the easiest thing, but it worked well enough for me to play both Zeldas and Hotel Mario. The only thing it lacks is, of course, the Digital Video Cartridge, but that's only a matter of time and resources.
1991: Phillips CD-I releases 1995: US patent laws change to allow for a max term of 20 years provided the patent owner keep up with payments 1998: CD-I discontinued 2006: Wii releases 2012: Wii-U releases 2014: Phillips sues Nintendo for patent infringement and wins This timeline is so absurd. Not only did they wait for 8 years to sue, but they expected the courts to believe they paid upkeep on a patent they weren't doing anything with for 16 years. And on top of that, 2012 let alone 2014 is more than 20 years after 1991. Surely this would've been way past the statute of limitation. This is some patent troll shit.
1:58 This is the same way the Sega CD Model 2 works. I really like it, it's nice to just set the disc in and pick it up instead of snapping it down and popping it off. That said, I did break the wobbly thing on top once and it was a pain in the neck to repair.
I remember CDi being in the Library at our elementary when it came out. A lot of the kids wanted to use it, but I thought it was stupid and a poor way to spend my library time while waiting to get home and play actual video games. Though I have to say, Jetsons and Flintstones were still an everyday cartoon in the 90s. They played just as often as Bugs, Roadrunner, etc. The new cartoons didn't have reruns clogging up the airwaves yet, so the majority of what we saw as kids throughout the day were those older cartoons. They were still considered relevant.
It's maybe a bit more secured by the 3 spring-loaded ball bearings in the spindle, but the disc tray in the PS3 Super Slim works pretty much the same way. It's pretty universal that it's the last cost reduction to an optical drive, saves you a motor. On the plus side it's more reliable in the long term because of one less part that can break, its' why so many 1st generation Sega CDs are dead but the 2nd generation ones with the spring loaded lid are still going.
The cdi is so bad!! I love it!! The 7th guest wasn't bad and dragons lair was ok My mum got me mine from the car boot and I couldn't believe Mario and zelda was available on it I was scratching my head at the time
For 25 years I looked for the game Burn Cycle without knowing it's name, what the weird controller I played on was. If it was even real or just some fever dream... Then I figured out why I couldn't find it. IT's a CD-i game that got a really bad PC port in 1996. On a very unpopular console that made games that look like the games on computers in disney movies from the late 90's.
I had a CD-I back in the 90’s. Cost me $550. I got it so I could play Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace. Then I also came to love Kingdom. I liked the fact that not many had the system and it was like a secret. Ha. The games weren’t always good but I had a lot of fun. I did enjoy Zelda’s Adventure.
The game you mentioned, Zenith, is clearly a "child" of the game Wizball (1987 various computer systems) and another title which I just can't for the life of me remember now the title. Where you have a "ball" running in 3D track (think of Space Harrier without the flying, the shooting, the aliens, the humans, etc, or think of Klax in terms of how the game looks) where there are gaps and special tiles etc. Good view, thank you for sharing.
I remember seeing a late night infomercial on CD-i and thinking to myself it looked kinda interesting. About a month later it was DEAD. Seems making the infomercial was the last ditch effort to sell more units. Glad I didn't take the bait!
I haven't watched your content in a while but I did enjoy this video as well as the other CD-i ones, they're well made and I liked that in this video covers these games in a relaxed tone. I still don't necessarily agree with your opinion on Hotel Mario but it is what it is, I suppose. Have you ever considered covering the Mario's Wacky Worlds prototype by chance? Granted, I don't know how much content could be made out of it, but it would be neat to hear what you think of it. Also I feel I should mention that CD-i emulation isn't too bad when it comes to certain versions of MAME (version .216 is the one I use). It is a bit of a complicated setup process, trying to find all the necessary .chd files, putting them in the right folders and all, but I've had more success with using that as opposed to standalone CD-i emulators. The Nintendo games I tried through it all played swimmingly.
We had a demo unit at the video store I used to work at, for a short while we rented out PC/Mac CD ROMs as well as some 3DO and CDi titles, not many though. Most of the gaming shelves were taken up by SNES, Genesis and PC titles. I remember being impressed by the full motion video available on the unit, but then my boss told me how much the thing cost. I was like - yup, no thanks. Amongst my peer group at the time, that was the general consensus, and I imagine most of the rest of the market as well
To start I was a CDi owner when it was on the market, I had the 220(?) you showed that looked like an old VCR/CD player, and the controller it had was no spoon, more like a modern thinner remote but with a N64 like stick at the top, it worked fine for a lot of stuff. But, as you pointed out, there were choices, never had the genesis ripoff, I had that gravis pad, because I had that pad for PC and was comfy with it, it works excellently. I had probably a dozen games for the thing, the DVR module too, while not having the Joy of Sex being a teen, I did get away with Voyeur which was amusing. I want one, I've made that clear again, but the timekeeper is a huge fear, and as you pointed out from AtariAge there with Catpix, I'm in that thread too discussing as such. I'd love to own one, but the how...the prices are sickening, and I can't dremel that chip to pop another coin cell inside there as I'm too afraid given the cost I'd wreck it. I'm kind of wondering which model would even be good for a US version where the loss of that battery would be the least damning. Back in the day I had Link Faces of Evil and Hotel Mario, both are great games. But there was also to me the definitive version of Lords of the Rising Sun too I liked a lot. Mutant Rampage Body Slam was a nice mutation nation/final fight style clone I put good time into. Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, Escape from CyberCity were painfully hard but solidly done(at least the first two.) At least some of the stuff I had like Lil Divil, Chaos Control, and Burn Cycle did hit the PC/DOS format. Some stuff I already had on PC like Flashback I never bothered. Shame about how the whole Nintendo licensing croaked in the end. Sony were filthy cheats trying to scam Nintendo into making their drive but contracting all licensing fees to go to them and nothing to Nintendo. CD could have taken over earlier where Nintendo bled cash as a third party licensee to their own hardware add-on, gee...no wonder that died. I just wish addle brained Yamauchi at the time had died off or retired a decade sooner as had they stayed with Philips it could have made for an amazing period. Having what SNES could do with the added capabilities of streaming/playing CD/VCD the CDi did would have been amazing, a huge step over SegaCD which would have been an embarrassment to Sega who at the time already were floundering in overpriced addons with low attach rates.
I have a guilty pleasure in liking most old HB cartoons. I had NO idea there was a Flintstones/Jetsons point and click game on the CDi. Now I feel like I have to play it.
Flashback totally reminds me of Another World for the Amiga (I think it also had a SNES port). And a quick look at Wikipedia tells me: Yep, it's from the same studio.
im remember commercials for this when i was a kid and wanted one so bad. cd-i, compact disc interactive. we had an american pirate sattelite and infomercials would come on late at night for this
I own one back in the days. I loved my genesis and later Saturn, but playing the 7th guest, burn cycle and lost eden on the cdi was great as a 12 year old. Ahh the memories.
At the time laserdisc wasnt the joke it is today. School districts were using them but they were just too expensive for the average consumer. It wasnt a 'bad' idea attempting to bring something like that to the masses. It just couldnt compete with the mass production of home computers and the market evaporated.
@@FrameRater nothing specific you said. I just meant the CDi gets laughed at for being a failure but there was an opening in the market at the time for home media. The failed laserdisc left an opportunity for a home multimedia device like the CDi. Home computers hadnt swarmed the market quite yet so the CDi was an attractive option. Obviously it didnt work out.
i'd like to see internet demonstrated (or at least simulated) on the more advanced CD-i consoles. i know one of them even had printer support, even online shopping. just interesting to see how a cd-i was attempting to make the PC experience into a TV console experience. for $400-800, it really wasn't a bad price considering PCs at the time ran between $1500-2800. the CD-i was just badly designed and could have been so much more. liken it to someone buying an xbox one S and using it for doc/web/print (yes it can do all this) for about $250 vs a $1200 desktop from best buy (sadly the days of DIY for under $300 are over).
Some of the FMV games could have so little content that with the compression they used back then there was only enough room for 5 to 10 minutes of actual gameplay. I just went back and checked a video of Escape From Cyber City and if you take out the cut scenes, the menu at the start, and the ending "video" you are only left with around 4.5 minutes of actual interaction. Burn Cycle is widely regarded as one of the best if not THE best game and even including the cut scenes you are done in well under 2 hours. That was a 50 dollar game for a system that cost 700 dollars in 1991. Adjusted for inflation it is far and away the most expensive system ever released. Just imagine how much people would be screaming at the top of their lungs now if they bought a brand new game for the most expensive system on the market and they were done with it in like an hour and a half with zero replayability. Any controllers that you might actually want to use were sold separately otherwise you were stuck with one of the least ergonomic controllers ever made. And most people have forgotten that awful controller was IR as well so your gameplay was interrupted by anything getting in the way, or certain lightbulbs, or too much sunlight coming in a window. This was a company that up until this had mostly made audio gear and TVs so when it game time to design the controller that shipped with the CDI initially they just took an existing AV remote design and stuck a thumbstick at the top and gave it a few extra buttons.
Interesting 👍😊 It's the same for the Game Boy Advance. It may look like a "simple" portable Snes. But actually is WAY more than that "technically speaking" 😉
Still have my CD-i 220 from back in the day. If you used it as a multimedia device it was great. Playing Music CD's, video-CD's and playing games while connected to a good sound setup was excellent and quite revolutionary at the time here. Still games weren't great but I still have fond memories of Dragons Lair and Burn:Cycle.
The CDI, 3DO and Sega CD sucked because the library of games were mostly lame and for the time they were GROSSLY over-priced for what they were worth to any consumer. They were low budget junk games and pure gimmick.
When it was brand new a local department store had some demo machines running in the media section. As a teen I always went there to play the CD-i golf game which was quite nice. They marketed it at adults with encyclopedias and games for grown ups. the golf game was amazing with full speech after each stroke and good graphics and decent game play. It was better than Links 386 for the PC as a game, although the links game was a better simulator.
Yep, that was my memory, remeber visiting my cousin, he bragged his friends had a cdi with this golf game, it was impressive but I remeber him being the only person I ever met that owned one. Me and my buddies had 3do and jaguar. But it had a long life as it was a bomb they kept changing mkting on and was out like 8 yrs
It was never intended as a pure games console. Used for CD+G, photo viewing and so on. The fact it had games was an bonus. If the internet has been around and fast back then it would have been a streaming box as well.
I have a lot of CD-i games since we got them for free through my dad's job when I was little. We actually enjoyed the CD-i so much that when it stopped working we bought another (refurbished) one. The games I remember playing most were probably Crayon Factory and The Wacky World of Miniature Golf with Eugene Levy. We probably didn't even play most of the games since we have so many.
I worked at Philips for a while in the mid nineties, and their corporate structure was not set up for creativity and nimble reaction to new technologies and markets. I know for a fact that Philips could have been the first with a portable MP3 player on the market. But the entire consumer electronics department was organized very top-down and only the highest ranks were allowed to have any "ideas".
For the short period i owned one, and also the time period (90s), i remember the weekend of watching a movie on disc 'Alive', and thinking it was amazing, then playing 7th Guest, Burn Cycle and Cannon Fodder. That for me, even though it was short lived, was one of the best gaming weekends i had, because the experience was so different.
Framerater: the timekeeper battery is the Achilles heel for the CDI Me: how hard could replacing a coin battery be? Framerater: to remove the battery you'll need a dremel Me: whaaaaa
I see people cutting away at the chip to replace the battery and this works but seems wrong. If you can solder or know someone who does just solder a socket in place and buy a new chip. With a socket you can easily replace the chip again if needed. I have always been curious if a mod could be done to allow using interchangeable chips mounted on boards. They timekeeper is still sold and last time I bought one it was like 8 bucks. There is a chip shortage so maybe they have went up. Still seems the better option.
CDi's lack of hardware MPEG codecs as standard might have been its Achilles Heel. The PS2's defining feature was its DVD player. The abundance of Video CDs would have enhanced the value proposition in the days before ubiquitous and cheap DVD players, which ironically, were the first off the shelf method to play Video CD (MPEG-1 video)
7th guest, Dragon's lair, Space Ace were my favorite games to play on this system, it was nice to play those games again after not seeing them for years in the arcade
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There used to be a secondhand games shop in Chicago, named People Play Games. One day I walked in, and Hotel Mario was on a shelf right next to The Joy of Sex. They denied it was a true sequel, but I'm still not sure.
The Joy of Sex is a sequel to Hotel Mario? That makes so much sense
OHH i remember People Play Games, so sad i never got the chance to go inside there
Finally, all my questions have answers! The sequel really explains a lot
Mario teaching people how to lay pipe lmao
It's based on Nintendo's love hotels.
Man, growing up, I remember wanting a CD-i so bad. As it turns out, the best part of the CD-i were their infomercials, sadly. Just think if the CD-i actually was successful... Nintendo would have inadvertently spawned two competitors.
same here. those informercials and nintendo properties on it had child-me wanting one BAD. later on, my brother got obsessed with the 3do and tried to talk me into selling the snes to buy one. so glad i didn't agree
Imagine a world where Phillips, Sega, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo were all at each other's throats
@@mangleman25 that would be cool. Imagine all the exclusives Sega and Phillips would have today. Heck even add on the 3DO and see what they would do.
@@soundred1254 I do think of any of the failed systems / game companies that we saw in this era, 3DO / Panasonic had the best chance of entering into the big boy ring of console developers. 2 million sales might be abysmal, but that still means the 3DO sold as much as the Sega CD, and they still were able to beat many other companies who were directly competing, like Atari with the Jaguar and Sega with the 32x.
Or maybe this is all my bias for the 3DO, idk
@@mangleman25 really if the 3DO was just done better and they didn’t make as many mistakes as they did then the 3DO would have been successful.
Tetris got a licensed vinyl soundtrack in 2019. Fully endorsed by the composer. It’s fantastic proto-chill wave .
I regularly listen to it on RUclips. Definitely one of the best game soundtracks period.
Holy crap that’s awesome
Makes me think of 90s workout or infomercial music.
Are you talking about the Tetris Effect vinyl set? That has teh music from teh CD-i version of tetris on it? If So I may have to buy it, I've seen it at my local record store but it was kind of expensive.
Mmwjheeehb
The really funny thing about The Flowers of Robert Mapplethorpe is that if they'd included Mapplethorpe's other photography, the game would've certainly gotten an Adults Only rating. At least the game would've been more interesting that way.
What was it called? "Robert Mapplethorpe's sadomasochism"?
The CD-i does digital video exceptionally well, which I think is a testament to both Philips' technological prowess back then and their entirely shortsighted focus on selling it as a multimedia player. Later on in its life, they heavily marketed it as a gaming machine (with Phil Hartman of all people in the TV commercials), but by then it was way too late and those who knew about it (I saw a CD-i kiosk regularly as a kid when my mom would go to Sears and I'd wander off in the electronics section, only to be mesmerized by the Sega CD sitting right next to it) knew that its library was mostly non-gaming junk, and the games that were available were not even second-rate.
As it was, the CD-i was a couple years late to market, and I think like the 3DO (which also was mostly marketed at first as a multimedia machine), the concept was just a bit too far ahead of its time. The hardware definitely has some limitations, but it could have been a competent 16-bit competitor, had Philips had any marketing cachet and more importantly, good games. The CD-i desperately needed quality third-party support, since they didn't have killer titles like Sega and NIntendo did.
Having said that, it's hard to see how even under the best circumstances it could have ever significantly competed with the SNES and Genesis. It was too expensive and couldn't really offer enough from a gameplay perspective over the competition to warrant a purchase. Philips made a valiant attempt to keep the system alive, and there are a handful of games that are, at the very least, curiosities that might tempt at least one play-through. My favorite game is Burn:Cycle, which luckily saw a PC release which is what I owned back then (I still would like to try playing the CD-i version some day). It's got a rather Johnny Mnemonic cyberpunk vibe to it that I totally love, and the acting isn't even that bad. It's one of the better examples of FMV integration in games, especially for the time, even if the gameplay still ends up being a bit on the shallow end. I'd probably buy a CD-i for Burn:Cycle alone (for the right price).
And that's what I think the CD-i ends up being: a curiosity of a console that you buy for maybe 4 or 5 peculiar games that you like in spite of their flaws (Thunder in Paradise, anyone?). It's like the 3DO, but with older technology and a far more limited and mediocre library. Still, it has its diehard fans (just ask Yahel) and it will always have a cult following.
The soundtrack for Tetris for the CDI changed my life. It's the best vaporwave album I've ever heard - years before it's creation. Absolutely fantastic, super dank. Happy to see it mentioned.
I have a soft spot for my CDi 210, 450 and 470. I also pretty much have all the games, mods and accessories. I also fixed my time keeper chips on all of them. Ace 😎
I thought Ace hung out with the seventh doctor
Did you like Escape From Cyber city?
that arcade game is what drew me to it the most
I am surprised you didn't showcase The 7th. Guest. It actually got better music than the PC release.
I love 7th guest on PC. I did not know it came out on the CD-I!! 😲
7th Guest is a terrible "game." I made the mistake of buying into the hype and getting it off of GOG. I don't understand why people like it so much.
@@rars0n The puzzle designs, the soundtrack and the corny 90's FMV aesthetic.
@@rars0n I guess you had to be there for the original CD-ROM era experience.
@@jay1185 I wouldn't have liked it back then, either. There's zero interactivity in the game, the puzzles don't make any sense, and the FMV clips are annoying and repetitive. There's no spooky atmosphere to the game whatsoever. The best (and simultaneously most annoying) thing about the game is Stauf.
7th Guest is a prime example of a game that takes individual game elements from various games and puts them together, only to fail at making them into a cohesive whole. It doesn't execute any of the particular game elements well at all. What grates me the most is it's often categorized as an adventure game, which it most certainly is not. It's a puzzle game at best.
The Phillips CDi had PHENOMENAL graphics and sound capabilities for the time period. It's a shame it didn't get any quality software. I'm sure a talented developer could have really made this hardware pop. Remember, this was in the league of the Genesis and SNES.
While the CDI had vastly more processing power, system memory, vram, available colors, and other technical advantages from being both newer and in a higher pricing class, it was not designed to be a videogame console primarily, and as such, didn't have proprietary graphics modes specific to scrolling layers of graphics and sprites like an SNES, Genesis, or arcade hardware. Look how shitty and choppy that Zelda game looks. Early 90s MS-DOS games had this disadvantage as well. Programmers had to write software to draw sprites and scroll backgrounds in painstakingly slow fashion where consoles with 1/10th or less power handle with ease.
they actually probably could've made a good game on it. they wanted to make mario world 2 (again).
Was always hoping for a sequel called "The OTHER Pictures of Robert Mapplethorpe" 😉
Robert Mapplethorpes pictures of your mom
Dang I wasn't the only one to comment on that
You must be a BDSM fan.
Nothing else like a good bullwhip sticking out of someone's butthole.
Possibly pictures from the time he was around, likely mountainscapes, gardens, and pretty scenery.
The CD-I was such an.....interesting system. It's like it didn't exist in our reality, it seems like so many other devices that I confuse it with them.
Nice CD-i overview! One note, and it's super minor, but worth pointing out: the CD-i release of The Joy of Sex did not have any ESRB rating. Note that the screenshot you provided was of the cover of the Macintosh computer version. The CD-i release pre-dated ESRB ratings. Other than that, thanks for continuing to show the CD-i some love!
i tried emulating the CD-i, after several attempts i got it running through MAME of all things.
That was years ago and i was told that there was ONE developer working on CD-i emulation in MAME and he was the only one actively working on it, period.
Which means you need the roms in CHD format, not in .cue + .bin like you would get from a REDUMP set.
I think either Sound or Videos was completely missing, some specific module was completely un-emulated and un-documented anyway (i think it was sound), but i managed to walk through a few Zelda levels... and that was all that i bothered to do.
So it's all led up to this, it is amazing how much has been collected for this video. Considering the fact that (at least in Europe) is hard to come by most of the consoles, games and accessories covered in this video, especially the genuine games and without burning your wallet. And the fact that some of the games were burned, shows how rare and hard to get these games are. It is a shame that not as many people will experience playing games on the CD-I, compared to it's competitors and contemporaries of the time due to it's rareness and value.
Really? I've had 3 in 10 years (Sweden) and I imagine Netherlands being a good place to look too
Honestly in American they aren't easy either since that Watch Battery they have, and because not too many bought them, and even less took care of them
I remember a couple of decently interesting games on the CD-i, Namely Laser Lords and Mutant Rampage Bodyslam, I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few other hidden ""gems"" on the CD-i just waiting to be found honestly.
You seem familiar. Do I know you from somewhere?
@@AmaroqStarwind I'm not sure, The only Amaroq that I recall is a character in "No Evil" by Betsy Lee...
I found an old CDI controller in a garagebox. As a 2000-baby who grew up with the ps2, I had no idea what it was, so thanks for the video!
Very cool
Good old times. In 1994-1995 I worked on CD-I productions for Philips at the first Interactive agency in The Netherlands. This was just before internet was a “thing”. Fun fact: When the CD-I for 2 Unlimited was made the two singers / artists where not on speaking terms anymore with each other and that is why they where recorded separately. We made many other CD-I’s, Philips paid well :)
One of my friends knows people who worked on the Zelda games. They are Russian.
My friend had a CD-I back in the day. My mind was blown by the animation and voice clips in Link. I thought the game was pretty amazing. Granted, up till then I had only played NES and SNES games.
this video was so worth waiting for. I just knew the CDI had to have something good on it
@RazorBackX PSP has a bunch of good stuff on it that's still exclusive to it to this day
also try escape from cyber city. It was a game that actually used the video so it would be specific to cdi. Altho if it was ever ported To MAME it might be better there
That "The Ultimate Showdown" reference was amazing.
I hadn't heard that in like 15 years, I completely forgot it existed, so immediately went to watch it
Gotta say, I really love these videos of yours covering obscure systems like the CD-i. It was your videos on it that convinced me to get a 3DO, keep it up and you might convince me to cop a refurbished CD-i.
The CD-i is the unholiest grail of any videogame collection.
@@arturocevallossoto5203 That would be the Game-Com. Not the CD-i
Wow! That Flintstones game really makes me want to try out a CD-I!
That Mutant Rampage opening got me bursting out laughing as soon as I heard "radically altered the gene pool" with the image of the bird baby.
Took me a bit that he was 0utting the video into the Rick and morty clip because as he had said it would fit right into the interdementional channel concept.
The Chinese continued to use CD-I as a movie format wayyyyy after it failed everywhere else. Hell, they may STILL be using it.
Surprised you didn't bring up the surprisingly lewd easter eggs in Apprentice, really unexpected for a cutesy platformer from the mid 90s
best thing about the CD-I.. we get to see Phil Hartman in one more commercial.
I’m glad I got to do the intro for a really awesome video
15:42 that line was a true test of my maturity
LOL
Thanks for shedding some light into this machine! There are surely not many other videos like this out there, and none of them has shown the beauty of some games you showcased here... I am tempted to try them out some day!
the CDi was a very competent CD player, it performed extremely well compared to a ton of mid range to high end CD players at that time making it a very good deal and the very last CDi produced, the CDi-740 is one of the best CD players of the entire decade with it's advanced features and high build quality (very rare model, rarely ever comes up for sale).
The Philips CD-I was released before I started high school, but it gained notoriety during my high school years. I have a lot of nostalgia for this console and really enjoyed it back then. When I revisit some of the games now, I often think, "What was I thinking?" Yet, I still absolutely love it.
The music in Tetris for the CD-i is incredible. I really wish there was a remastered soundtrack from the original source material.
Oh man, that bit about Interdimensional Cable cracked me up. The edit was perfect!
I'm shocked that emulation of the CD-i is so difficult. It's not an overly complicated machine. The 68000 used in it is fairly weak - there was a couple of years delay between designing the hardware and actually getting production started, and the new models of the 68000 had gotten a higher clock speed by that point but they didn't integrate that into the design.
I have a 450 model, with the bad disc eject issue, along with a bunch of accessories I'd picked up here and there. I do have the Apprentice along with Hotel Mario and the two Link games (which are those "demonstration only - not for sale" kind). I picked it up just for the novelty of it. Back when I really hunted thrift stores like crazy I'd find software for it but there weren't a lot of games in the mix. There just wasn't a market for that kind of multimedia machine. Instead of spending $300 for something that's sort of computer-like, most people would rather spend $1200 to get an actual computer.
You could always look into the Memorex VIS next. It was a consolised 286 PC sold through Radio Shack stores, so it sold like garbage. But at least it'd be easier to emulate.
iirc it's a 68010.
I think part of is because there's simply a lack of interest in emulating it. The PSVita has a similar problem, it's not an overly complex system (definitely easier to work with than, say, the PS3). Until recently, there wasn't an Xbox emulator despite every other 6th gen system (including the Wii which is about as powerful) having one.
@@calzonemaniacsvideocorner0804 the Xbox is probably an excellent point of comparison.
In theory it's not a hard system to emulate, but there's not much software that makes it worth the time or effort. The Xbox is slightly better served than the CDi in that regard, but a lot of the exclusives - particularly the "heavy hitters" like Halo, were natively on PC.
I think the main part of the problem is lack of doccumentation.
A 68k is easy to emulate sure, but what the graphics? Obviously people have worked around it since Mame has at least some support, but I can't imagine it was trivial. Another sticking point will be the Digital Video Cartridge. Good luck finding documentation on that.
Wow, people thought the Atari Jaguar had a bad game library.
Wow you answered a life long nagging memory question I had been living with. When I was a kid in the early 90s I had played a video game console at a block buster that was on display. It was that Tetris you showed! I have been wondering what console it was for years. I had assumed it was an early playstation or maybe a sega saturn version of Tetris but when I would look through their library of games nothing like it I could fine. I remember just being so mesmerized by the music and background scenery. I can't thank you enough! Not knowing what version of Tetris and what console I had played that on has bugged me my whole life. I was really young (like 7-9?) so I couldn't remember or probably didn't even know at the time what console it was. This kind of makes me want to get a CD-i so I can get it. I hadn't actively looked for what version of Tetris it was in probably a decade but its always been a memory that has stuck with me.
Tetris does go with mellow music -- look to Tetris Effect on PS4. Zenith reminds me of some games on C64 and Amiga that also involve controlling a forward-moving, bouncing ball.
At 9:24, the "Super Exploding Pizza II" logo is a direct parody/reference to Super Street Fighter II, specifically the box art. With that and the Room/Doom parody, I'd be curious if the other games also had title screens that were parodies of popular contemporary games.
Answer: Yes. And that's why it's worthy of historical archiving and preservation for future generations... No one sets out to make a crap games console. The missteps on the CD-I journey are worthy of discussion and note. Might even make a great film lol. All the best.
@@darthkai8242 That’s not the ONLY reason!
@@darthkai8242 It's one of the few 'devices' I'd happily let slide unacknowledged into history.
The 'sole' thing anybody would want to use it for is to play VideoCDs (not anything CDI specific) - and there were so many other devices that could do this (and as VideoCd was mainly an asian piracy standard, nobody was buying that CDI to play them)
The funny thing is that you're right. It's always the trash that ends up being the rarest. Since no one really cared about the console, there isn't as much documentation for it, nor great ways to get the system running again (that battery shit looks horrifying). And since it was a commercial failure, any console or media for it is going to be increasingly rare.
escape from cyber city alone was worth playing if you found it used considering how much you would spend at the arcade on it.
@@darthkai8242 i agree 👍. the cdi was marketed to rich people. It was more expensive than a Neo Geo iirc. At store I seen it at they had a huge area set up an the golf game was on. It wasn't a store with childrens toys. It might have been the long gone *Service Merchandise*
It was a cd player in times when A. People knew what CDs were an B. times when they may be very expensive.
My grandma had the cdi and i hope its still somewhere in her loft
I know I'm commenting on an old vid, but I feel most compelled to mention:
DAMN GOOD JOB ON THIS VID, SIR!!!
This is the best video practical-summary of the CD-i console and many of its products. I used to work in a Philips semiconductor fab once upon a time, and I understand why the CD-i was a promising system turned mediocre ultimately by incompetence within the company. But that is beside the point. Thank you so much for this vid!
Cdi was my first system actually lol. I have alot of childhood memories with it. I feel it had alot of potential for its time if they focused more on gaming
I've always had a fascination with this thing. It's quintessentially 90's.
It has that 90s optimism oozing out of it. Play any CD-I game, even a bad one, and it's like the present day, with all its cynicism just vanishes. It's a real time capsule.
Your CD of Zelda's Adventure didn't work because it was burned at an incorrect speed. CD-i will read burned CDs with no throuble only if you burn them on slower speeds, the lower, the better. I had to get myself a very old CD drive that could burn CDs at speed 2.
Oh my god, I've seen the Mutant Rampage cutscenes before, but I never thought about how they sound exactly like an interdimensional cable clip from Rick and Morty. That edit had me in stitches.
My family bought a CD-I back in the day. We didn't have a whole lot of worthwhile software, but the ones I remember us having the most fun with were that pinball game, which after watching this, has not aged well visually, and a word puzzle game called Text Tiles. We had a big track ball controller that looks like it had been designed by Fisher Price. I still have the system, most of the software, the funky track ball controller, AND THE ORIGINAL RECEIPT FROM WHEN WE PURCHASED THE DAMN THING!! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME?!
Missed out the giant multi coloured Roller Controller. Always used that in my local electronic shop playing the games.
15:42 "There's more Balls than just your own... Or u can play with Blue Balls" That sounds terrible & I am so immature Lmao
Emulated this system on my steamdeck. Its cool
10:40
You were not wrong. During the video game explosion of the early 90's a lot of companies wanted to jump on the bandwagon cuz it seemed like easy money. Most of them had no idea how to actually make video games. The good side of the coin is that we actually got a lot of innovation and cool new ideas and some software and hardware advancements out of that ignorance. The bad news is we also got tons of garbage hardware and software. Many of them thought you could just hire a random programmer fresh out of college and they would do whatever you wanted. Eventually some managers realized you needed different kinds of coders as well as artists and other talent. Thats why there was a sharp increase in the number of tech startups during that time period, and why so many of them disappeared after a short while.
You used to be able to get catalogs thru mail order and find hundreds if not thousands of new and crappy games, many of them made by one person businesses. Some guys actually made out alright and would either start or join proper software companies. And of course piracy and intellectual theft were very common back then. A lot of people referred to it as the Wild West era of computing.
Even tho the CD-I Games are a flop. The infamous Memes and YTPs had sparked the internet has we know it today
Nobody ever mentions that you can use a simple backup cable to save your save games to a PC.
You also don't need to dremmel out the battery, just wire up a new battery to the pins.
An idea: port LZDoom to CD-i, with an utility application which enables the user to burn a custom LZDoom CD with specified maps and mods :) that would be pretty cool
My granddad had pinbal and van Goch on the CDI.
In the pinbal game we got the bal stuck between two of those bouncy things which had resulted in a high score if not for the required reset.
No Burn Cycle?
Zenith reminds me of that one unreleased Virtual Boy game about the bouncing ball. Bound High. Looks like at least one variation of that idea saw the light of day. That makes me happy.
You say that CD-i emulation is still difficult, but I remember running some games on MAME, and they ran quite good. That was around 2-3 years ago. I even remember having to convert the ISOs to CHDs so I could boot them up properly.
I know that running things on MAME isn't the easiest thing, but it worked well enough for me to play both Zeldas and Hotel Mario.
The only thing it lacks is, of course, the Digital Video Cartridge, but that's only a matter of time and resources.
1991: Phillips CD-I releases
1995: US patent laws change to allow for a max term of 20 years provided the patent owner keep up with payments
1998: CD-I discontinued
2006: Wii releases
2012: Wii-U releases
2014: Phillips sues Nintendo for patent infringement and wins
This timeline is so absurd. Not only did they wait for 8 years to sue, but they expected the courts to believe they paid upkeep on a patent they weren't doing anything with for 16 years. And on top of that, 2012 let alone 2014 is more than 20 years after 1991. Surely this would've been way past the statute of limitation. This is some patent troll shit.
The CD-I Tetris OST is one of my favorite chill video game soundtracks of all time. It's great stuff!
1:58 This is the same way the Sega CD Model 2 works. I really like it, it's nice to just set the disc in and pick it up instead of snapping it down and popping it off. That said, I did break the wobbly thing on top once and it was a pain in the neck to repair.
I remember CDi being in the Library at our elementary when it came out. A lot of the kids wanted to use it, but I thought it was stupid and a poor way to spend my library time while waiting to get home and play actual video games. Though I have to say, Jetsons and Flintstones were still an everyday cartoon in the 90s. They played just as often as Bugs, Roadrunner, etc. The new cartoons didn't have reruns clogging up the airwaves yet, so the majority of what we saw as kids throughout the day were those older cartoons. They were still considered relevant.
It's maybe a bit more secured by the 3 spring-loaded ball bearings in the spindle, but the disc tray in the PS3 Super Slim works pretty much the same way. It's pretty universal that it's the last cost reduction to an optical drive, saves you a motor. On the plus side it's more reliable in the long term because of one less part that can break, its' why so many 1st generation Sega CDs are dead but the 2nd generation ones with the spring loaded lid are still going.
The cdi is so bad!! I love it!!
The 7th guest wasn't bad and dragons lair was ok
My mum got me mine from the car boot and I couldn't believe Mario and zelda was available on it I was scratching my head at the time
"I'm here today to find out if there's more than meets the CD-eye"
Me: God Dammit I'm done
if you're looking in the comments for the shorter version : *yes, it was that bad*
For 25 years I looked for the game Burn Cycle without knowing it's name, what the weird controller I played on was. If it was even real or just some fever dream... Then I figured out why I couldn't find it. IT's a CD-i game that got a really bad PC port in 1996. On a very unpopular console that made games that look like the games on computers in disney movies from the late 90's.
2:22 - You’re a Level 42 fan?? I now love this channel even more. ❤
Nice video. Had a CDI growing up and loved it. No Surf City? That was a fantastic game.
I had a CD-I back in the 90’s. Cost me $550. I got it so I could play Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace. Then I also came to love Kingdom. I liked the fact that not many had the system and it was like a secret. Ha. The games weren’t always good but I had a lot of fun. I did enjoy Zelda’s Adventure.
The game you mentioned, Zenith, is clearly a "child" of the game Wizball (1987 various computer systems) and another title which I just can't for the life of me remember now the title. Where you have a "ball" running in 3D track (think of Space Harrier without the flying, the shooting, the aliens, the humans, etc, or think of Klax in terms of how the game looks) where there are gaps and special tiles etc.
Good view, thank you for sharing.
I remember seeing a late night infomercial on CD-i and thinking to myself it looked kinda interesting. About a month later it was DEAD. Seems making the infomercial was the last ditch effort to sell more units. Glad I didn't take the bait!
I haven't watched your content in a while but I did enjoy this video as well as the other CD-i ones, they're well made and I liked that in this video covers these games in a relaxed tone.
I still don't necessarily agree with your opinion on Hotel Mario but it is what it is, I suppose. Have you ever considered covering the Mario's Wacky Worlds prototype by chance? Granted, I don't know how much content could be made out of it, but it would be neat to hear what you think of it.
Also I feel I should mention that CD-i emulation isn't too bad when it comes to certain versions of MAME (version .216 is the one I use). It is a bit of a complicated setup process, trying to find all the necessary .chd files, putting them in the right folders and all, but I've had more success with using that as opposed to standalone CD-i emulators. The Nintendo games I tried through it all played swimmingly.
Every Phillips product I ever bought broke... Quickly. From radios to TV's to Christmas lights. I'm surprised this thing even turns on.
We had a demo unit at the video store I used to work at, for a short while we rented out PC/Mac CD ROMs as well as some 3DO and CDi titles, not many though. Most of the gaming shelves were taken up by SNES, Genesis and PC titles. I remember being impressed by the full motion video available on the unit, but then my boss told me how much the thing cost. I was like - yup, no thanks. Amongst my peer group at the time, that was the general consensus, and I imagine most of the rest of the market as well
To start I was a CDi owner when it was on the market, I had the 220(?) you showed that looked like an old VCR/CD player, and the controller it had was no spoon, more like a modern thinner remote but with a N64 like stick at the top, it worked fine for a lot of stuff. But, as you pointed out, there were choices, never had the genesis ripoff, I had that gravis pad, because I had that pad for PC and was comfy with it, it works excellently. I had probably a dozen games for the thing, the DVR module too, while not having the Joy of Sex being a teen, I did get away with Voyeur which was amusing. I want one, I've made that clear again, but the timekeeper is a huge fear, and as you pointed out from AtariAge there with Catpix, I'm in that thread too discussing as such.
I'd love to own one, but the how...the prices are sickening, and I can't dremel that chip to pop another coin cell inside there as I'm too afraid given the cost I'd wreck it. I'm kind of wondering which model would even be good for a US version where the loss of that battery would be the least damning. Back in the day I had Link Faces of Evil and Hotel Mario, both are great games. But there was also to me the definitive version of Lords of the Rising Sun too I liked a lot. Mutant Rampage Body Slam was a nice mutation nation/final fight style clone I put good time into. Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, Escape from CyberCity were painfully hard but solidly done(at least the first two.) At least some of the stuff I had like Lil Divil, Chaos Control, and Burn Cycle did hit the PC/DOS format. Some stuff I already had on PC like Flashback I never bothered.
Shame about how the whole Nintendo licensing croaked in the end. Sony were filthy cheats trying to scam Nintendo into making their drive but contracting all licensing fees to go to them and nothing to Nintendo. CD could have taken over earlier where Nintendo bled cash as a third party licensee to their own hardware add-on, gee...no wonder that died. I just wish addle brained Yamauchi at the time had died off or retired a decade sooner as had they stayed with Philips it could have made for an amazing period. Having what SNES could do with the added capabilities of streaming/playing CD/VCD the CDi did would have been amazing, a huge step over SegaCD which would have been an embarrassment to Sega who at the time already were floundering in overpriced addons with low attach rates.
Sony cheated SEGA as well. STOLE they're hardware right from under their noses.
I have a guilty pleasure in liking most old HB cartoons. I had NO idea there was a Flintstones/Jetsons point and click game on the CDi. Now I feel like I have to play it.
Flashback totally reminds me of Another World for the Amiga (I think it also had a SNES port).
And a quick look at Wikipedia tells me: Yep, it's from the same studio.
im remember commercials for this when i was a kid and wanted one so bad. cd-i, compact disc interactive. we had an american pirate sattelite and infomercials would come on late at night for this
I own one back in the days. I loved my genesis and later Saturn, but playing the 7th guest, burn cycle and lost eden on the cdi was great as a 12 year old. Ahh the memories.
At the time laserdisc wasnt the joke it is today. School districts were using them but they were just too expensive for the average consumer. It wasnt a 'bad' idea attempting to bring something like that to the masses. It just couldnt compete with the mass production of home computers and the market evaporated.
I don't recall mentioning laserdisc in the video, is this a response to something I said?
@@FrameRater nothing specific you said. I just meant the CDi gets laughed at for being a failure but there was an opening in the market at the time for home media. The failed laserdisc left an opportunity for a home multimedia device like the CDi. Home computers hadnt swarmed the market quite yet so the CDi was an attractive option.
Obviously it didnt work out.
@@OzymandiasWasRight Hmm no, the home computers had already exhausted their run (late '80s) when the CD-i entered the market (early '90s)
i'd like to see internet demonstrated (or at least simulated) on the more advanced CD-i consoles. i know one of them even had printer support, even online shopping. just interesting to see how a cd-i was attempting to make the PC experience into a TV console experience. for $400-800, it really wasn't a bad price considering PCs at the time ran between $1500-2800. the CD-i was just badly designed and could have been so much more. liken it to someone buying an xbox one S and using it for doc/web/print (yes it can do all this) for about $250 vs a $1200 desktop from best buy (sadly the days of DIY for under $300 are over).
I love how often I hear the door opening sound from original Doom in other places.
Some of the FMV games could have so little content that with the compression they used back then there was only enough room for 5 to 10 minutes of actual gameplay. I just went back and checked a video of Escape From Cyber City and if you take out the cut scenes, the menu at the start, and the ending "video" you are only left with around 4.5 minutes of actual interaction. Burn Cycle is widely regarded as one of the best if not THE best game and even including the cut scenes you are done in well under 2 hours. That was a 50 dollar game for a system that cost 700 dollars in 1991. Adjusted for inflation it is far and away the most expensive system ever released. Just imagine how much people would be screaming at the top of their lungs now if they bought a brand new game for the most expensive system on the market and they were done with it in like an hour and a half with zero replayability.
Any controllers that you might actually want to use were sold separately otherwise you were stuck with one of the least ergonomic controllers ever made. And most people have forgotten that awful controller was IR as well so your gameplay was interrupted by anything getting in the way, or certain lightbulbs, or too much sunlight coming in a window. This was a company that up until this had mostly made audio gear and TVs so when it game time to design the controller that shipped with the CDI initially they just took an existing AV remote design and stuck a thumbstick at the top and gave it a few extra buttons.
Interesting 👍😊
It's the same for the Game Boy Advance.
It may look like a "simple" portable Snes.
But actually is WAY more than that "technically speaking" 😉
CDi is less, if you don’t consider the video/JPEG decompression parts.
But at least it got a better CPU, just like in Genesis/Megadrive.
Yeah but the difference is
The Gba is actually a good system
The cdi is garbadge
Still have my CD-i 220 from back in the day. If you used it as a multimedia device it was great. Playing Music CD's, video-CD's and playing games while connected to a good sound setup was excellent and quite revolutionary at the time here. Still games weren't great but I still have fond memories of Dragons Lair and Burn:Cycle.
The CDI, 3DO and Sega CD sucked because the library of games were mostly lame and for the time they were GROSSLY over-priced for what they were worth to any consumer. They were low budget junk games and pure gimmick.
Been looking forward to the Mutant Rampage Body Slam entry ever since you announced you got a CD-i.
I usually describe the CD-i as sort of like a computer but in the form of a console.
Yes I did too the encyclopaedia for it made it like a computer and I watched films on it and game.
the rick n morty intergalactic tv joke had me legit laughing aloud, well done!
When it was brand new a local department store had some demo machines running in the media section. As a teen I always went there to play the CD-i golf game which was quite nice. They marketed it at adults with encyclopedias and games for grown ups. the golf game was amazing with full speech after each stroke and good graphics and decent game play. It was better than Links 386 for the PC as a game, although the links game was a better simulator.
Yep, that was my memory, remeber visiting my cousin, he bragged his friends had a cdi with this golf game, it was impressive but I remeber him being the only person I ever met that owned one. Me and my buddies had 3do and jaguar.
But it had a long life as it was a bomb they kept changing mkting on and was out like 8 yrs
It was never intended as a pure games console. Used for CD+G, photo viewing and so on. The fact it had games was an bonus. If the internet has been around and fast back then it would have been a streaming box as well.
I have a lot of CD-i games since we got them for free through my dad's job when I was little. We actually enjoyed the CD-i so much that when it stopped working we bought another (refurbished) one. The games I remember playing most were probably Crayon Factory and The Wacky World of Miniature Golf with Eugene Levy. We probably didn't even play most of the games since we have so many.
I worked at Philips for a while in the mid nineties, and their corporate structure was not set up for creativity and nimble reaction to new technologies and markets.
I know for a fact that Philips could have been the first with a portable MP3 player on the market.
But the entire consumer electronics department was organized very top-down and only the highest ranks were allowed to have any "ideas".
For the short period i owned one, and also the time period (90s), i remember the weekend of watching a movie on disc 'Alive', and thinking it was amazing, then playing 7th Guest, Burn Cycle and Cannon Fodder.
That for me, even though it was short lived, was one of the best gaming weekends i had, because the experience was so different.
I had one it was all new playing interactive video loved it but when I got a PlayStation 1 that made me realise the gameplay that was missing.
Framerater: the timekeeper battery is the Achilles heel for the CDI
Me: how hard could replacing a coin battery be?
Framerater: to remove the battery you'll need a dremel
Me: whaaaaa
I see people cutting away at the chip to replace the battery and this works but seems wrong. If you can solder or know someone who does just solder a socket in place and buy a new chip. With a socket you can easily replace the chip again if needed. I have always been curious if a mod could be done to allow using interchangeable chips mounted on boards. They timekeeper is still sold and last time I bought one it was like 8 bucks. There is a chip shortage so maybe they have went up. Still seems the better option.
CDi's lack of hardware MPEG codecs as standard might have been its Achilles Heel. The PS2's defining feature was its DVD player. The abundance of Video CDs would have enhanced the value proposition in the days before ubiquitous and cheap DVD players, which ironically, were the first off the shelf method to play Video CD (MPEG-1 video)
18:56 This looks like a game that would have been a blast in the Amiga and would have received an obscure Russian ZX Spectrum clone in the '90s.
7th guest, Dragon's lair, Space Ace were my favorite games to play on this system, it was nice to play those games again after not seeing them for years in the arcade