The CD-I actually had a pretty decent golf game. (not the Eugene Levy one in the article) It also has that cool Todd Rundgren interactive disc with all the samples. We used to spend alot of time coming up with some cool jams using his samples. Other then that, the unit was prety crappy.

Remember how to run a webserver? No? Don't ask 1UP.

I always wanted to try the 3 Zelda games for Cd-i. I know the roms are out there.. but i'm not sure if they hey the emulation for them yet.

I still have one of these back in my parents place. the golf game was the only thing worth playing, and it was painfully slow.

sadly, no idea why I originally bought it.

Wow. I knew the system was lame, but this sounds PROFOUNDLY lame.

The story may be an ugly one, but you'll find yourself with a new appreciation of modern consoles after hearing of the blunders Philips made with its first -- and last -- voyage into the gaming industry.

It's apparent that the writer of this article isn't old enough to remember previous Philips/Magnavox gaming ventures...

Having recalled the long infomercials for the CDi (wherein the guy is asking a CD Rom for the meaning of life) I had to take a look at the article. The most interesting part is the Sony / Nintendo information.

CD-I was pretty ass, but Burn:Cycle was a pretty good game for the system, IMO.

I used to sell these pieces of crap. I think in that two years I sold maybe 4. And that was because I was an evil salesman and wanted extra $$ as they were a spiff that month.

I hope hell has a water cooler.

I remember hearing about how expensive the CDi was when I was a kid, but this says it was just $400. That really isn't much at all, but then again, we were poor....

Back in the day, I actually wanted the system. Insanely enough, I even considered paying $700 (?) asking price.
But then again, I was buying every game system that existed (Genesis, TurboDuo, SNES)

Heh, I want to check out the Zelda game too. I just need something to laugh at.

/Now happy with X-Box 360
//I still have my Supergrafx. Im NEVER selling that!

My girlfriend (wife now) and I played 7th Guest for HOURS on this thing. The Jurassic Park game blew chunks on it though.

I remember one time when they had a 3DO out for rental and the CD-i. The 3D0 was awesome, especially for Need for Speed and Star Control: Ur Quan Masters.

Oh yeah, apparantly SC:UQM is freeware now to download. Cool.

I never even heard of this CDi! Considering video games were my life blood growing up, I'm surprised there is still an obscure system I never knew about.

I enjoyed my CD-i quite a bit, I wish I hadn't gotten rid of it. That, the 3DO, and my Dragon's Lair arcade game are probably the three games/systems from my collection I regret letting go of the most.

Now I'm bummed. Thanks.

tekneex: Oh yeah, apparantly SC:UQM is freeware now to download. Cool.

Yep. The opensource project is based on the 3D0 version, so you get all the voices and stuff that weren't in the earlier PC release.

If memory servers me correctly the controller for CDI was horrible. It was something like a DVD remote with a tiny analoge stick in the middle of it.

I still have a CD-I. haven't touched it in years, but I've still got it.

they were the first around to have a wireless controller! Granted, it was annoying.

and I enjoyed many of the games that it came with. a lot were strategy based, instead of live action stuff, though.

We had a CDi when I was little. Most of the games were disappointing, but some adventure games (fe. Inca) were kinda cool. The Hotel Mario game was enjoyable too. Can't remember if we got past the final boss though.

Yes. Yes I do. Actually sold them for a while.

Wow, I remember watching those infomercials.

oh and Hotel Mario was pretty sweet.

Meh, can't play my Vectrex games on it.

/didn't actually have either

As a die-hard obssessed fan of the Legend of Zelda series, please, let us never speak of the unofficial CD-I Zelda games ever again. Doing so will bring about the penalty of torture.

I worked at a Radio Shack when they had their version of this thing. I sold not one, but two of them.

I was the only person in the district that sold any. I'd feel bad, but both were to people too cheap to buy their kids real computers.

I wonder if the kids grew up either to be IRS auditors, or mass murderers.

TheSilverOne




Nyah-Nyah-Neener-Neener-Neeners!!

Anyone besides myself get their hands on the free promo video tape offered by Philips at the time? It was not encourging enough for me to purchase one at the time, and I'm fairly sure I just recorded an episode of 120 Minutes over it.

Glad to see a nice little memoir to this POS. Imagine - if this thing would have taken off, we would have never spent all those long hours playing our CD32's.

I still have a dust-gathering 3D0 with a goodly collection of games. Some of the games still have pretty good playability even today. Though the load time on a single-speed CD-ROM is rather painful.

FMV was pretty novel, so overkill FMV intros/cutscenes certainly were a big theme on many titles.

Those initial 32-bit CD consoles were a few years ahead of their time. Surround sound games, S-Video hookups a little "advanced" for 16-bit 1995. Also somewhat expensive consoles. I picked most of my stuff up in the waning days when the stores were dumping titles for $5...

The chaining concept on controllers was rather novel with 3DO. Very few games where you could have 8 players on at the same time (FIFA, '96 Olympic Summer games).

I used to sell these too. While some of the technology was kinda neat, the system was pretty lame. Ugh, I get a headache just thinking about being in that damn audio/video department for hours on end.

Espertron

Awww that's it. I'm going all Master Sword on your ass now...

I still have mine. And I remember how hard it was to find games for it. And impossible to find good games.

Back when this was out I went to see a female friend at her place of work during an "open house" type gathering. We're standing there chatting and this creepy guy comes up and says to her, "I think of you every time I play with my seedy eye."

After the exchange, she explained that she had gone to the guy's house and helped hook up his Philips CDi system.

I was disapointed not to have been witness to a potential sexual harrassment lawsuit...

We had one when I was a kid, I thought it was pretty cool, albeit mostly useless. This was back before we had Internet access, so I spent hours going through the various multimedia rich encyclopedia programs and such. The Smithsonian one they had was actually a pretty amazing experience, but it really showed what the system was capable of and where its limitations stood.

Gaming on the machine was an utter nightmare. I don't know if they had controllers that were more conducive to fun, but the damned remote control thing and the roller controller were atrocious. That said, the port of Defender of the Crown was amazing.

Also, this game kicked ass.

CDi might have been the biggest dissapointment of my life. The controllers for that just sucked making what would possibly have been decent games impossible to play that well. Though I did have a cool Anime futuristic shooter game that was increadibly difficult.

West_Side_Charlie: Meh, can't play my Vectrex games on it.

/didn't actually have either

I have a vectrex and about 12games for it. It really was pretty cool for it's time.

Burn:Cycle rocked too. We sold those things in our store for a while. HUGE failure.

mykie

What is that? An Odyssey II? The pic is a little blurry.

thegoodbubba: This one?



I'll never forget the grandfather handing the gun to the kid and saying "This'll blow the lips off a cockroach."

I'm stunned that there are people who are unaware of the CD-i. I assume these people have forgotten the Mattel Aquarius as well.

MrToast

I bought an Aquarius at a yard sale for $5 many years back and it still sits in my basement. Right alongside my TI computer. And my Commodore 64. Although I actually cherish the 64.

I loved Burn:Cycle. I just wish I could find a decent port of the game now. The best part of that game was the soundtrack that came with the game; all that backround early-techno-type music. Good times.

Whoa, Sard's article got farked. That's pretty cool.

I have Thunder in Paradise for the CD-i. We have more games, but I'll be damned if I can remember what they are. The CD-i itself sits on our gaming setup, tucked away, not even plugged in.

Submitter, the word anyway is singular.

/Rarely do I play grammar police, but that one really bugs me.

Shostie

Yes, the Odyssey2 system, by Magnavox, released after Philips purchased them in 1974.

So technically, it's a Philips product.

/Pick Axe Pete FTW!

Do they still have "CD+G" out there?

iwillrefuse: i didn't think they sold the cd32 in the USA?

This guy has 4 clips of the Zelda CD-i games up on YouTube

They're a whole new world of bad. Bad voice-acting, poorly done, hyperactive animation, stupid plotting, ridiculous gameplay, the works.

Well, the backgrounds are OK. So that's something

Four Weddings and a Funeral was on a VideoCD format? Wow, that format sure as heck didn't catch on.

Interesting to bring up that format in the light of the Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD battle.

//dead formats of mainstream media(music, movies,etc) is always cool to me