We had these in school one year. Of course, it being school means that all of the games available were educational. The school actually let parents rent them for like a month at a time, which is something my parents did. Too bad we couldn’t keep it.
During Covid, I had to sell a childhood treasure: my JVC X’EYE, still complete with original controller and power supply, fully functional.
But the shop owner did right by me, cleaned up my old discs, and we went through them one by one before I left, as he’d never seen one in person, either.
My favorite part is that it was the cheap, knock-off alternative when I was a kid, but now it’s crazy valuable because it was so rare.
I used to watch these game console startup compilations https://youtu.be/Wntf-pM5k2E , and the X’Eye and Wondermega felt like fever dreams like lol imagine booting up a game console on Christmas morning and there’s a dancing X or W with music that feels exactly like staying up past 6AM. I could not believe those existed.
It’s such a crazy throwback. Mine came bundled with Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia and Prize Fighter for Sega CD , I believe. Or maybe I got Prize Fighter separately. Also how I discovered the Spin Doctors song “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong,” because it also had a karaoke feature. And, yes, Christmas morning exactly.
It was a strange time.
There were so many competitors all of a sudden. CD-i, 3DO, Jaguar. Even Commodore had the CD32. Nobody had one, it was all Mega Drives and SNES.
Nobody could seem to decide if CDs were the future or 3D. I guess Sony’s success came out of nowhere but also because they hedged their bets and made the only machine that could really do both. Games like Final Fantasy VII that really made use of both were a pipe dream for other platforms.
Plus they realised that because CDs were cheap to make, budget re-releases could be a thing again. Seeing dozens of great games at £20 a go certainly swayed me from the competition.
One of my favorite fun facts about video game consoles is that both the PlayStation and CD-i exist largely due to Nintendo being an ass to Sony and Phillips while looking for a CD-ROM add-on for the SNES to compete with the Sega CD. After getting the run around, both companies basically said ‘fine fuck it we are making our own consoles with blackjack and hookers…’
Which goes go show, Nintendo have always been assholes and it’s nothing new. Even when they shoot themselves in the foot doing so, they’ll never miss an opportunity.
I knew someone in school that had a CD-i and I was excited to try out the Zelda game… I made a terrible mistake as did the people that made it. It’s probably still a cool collector’s item, but man it was bad.
zod, CD-i is what all true programmers strive for!
My Mom was an artist for a small game developer in Bermuda (of all places…) In the 90s.
Not only did they have one of these in the office, which I would spend a lot of time at after school, but she had one at home as well. So I spent a formidable part of my childhood trying to learn CD-I games.
The two we had at home (I do not know their names and I’ve tried looking them up) were:
Photorealistic Ultraviolent Cyberpunk… It was like an FPS and Point and Click adventure at the same time. Lawnmower Man vibes.
Japanese Feudal Defence Simulator… Another FPS where you would defend a castle from waves of approaching samurai with a Bow.
The controller was a wackadoodle Trackball design and honestly a pain in the ass to use, but superior to my NES which I had (as my only comparison).
We never bought more games as… Well… They weren’t sold on the island.
Edit: I’ve also played the Zelda game at the office, but honestly it was like they tried to make a Mario game using Zelda, and as stated below: it was awful.
This is the kind of story I was hoping to hear in this thread.
Did you enjoy it at the time, or was there a sense of it not being a great console? I know that we were much more forgiving of janky games back then, so it’s hard to look at it fairly from 2025.
Graphically it was superior to anything else I had played (SNES and Genesis were the two available at the time) but it definately lacked polish, even to 8 year old me. The real kicker is that everything about it just looked… Different from what was being pushed by Nintendo and Sega with their consoles.
I also had access to PCs which would play Wolfenstien3D, so I would say the game play was also somewhat superior, but the CDi lacked depth with the games. (Or I was too young to advance in them beyong the first levels due to difficulty)
I also just remembered that there was another game which was incredibly well made… And it was all 90s western cartoon styled about a knight trying to save a princess from a dragon.
I also just remembered that there was another game which was incredibly well made… And it was all 90s western cartoon styled about a knight trying to save a princess from a dragon.
I think you’re talking about Dragon’s Lair– I wouldn’t necessarily call it well made. It was designed as an arcade game to munch through your quarters, so the gameplay felt pretty unfair with very short timing on everything.
That’s the one.
I mean, it was better made than the other games I had access to.
And yes, its Ninja Gaiden levels of difficult.
Is your first game “Burn Cycle”? https://www.mobygames.com/game/3962/burncycle/
or maybe Freedom Fighter? https://www.mobygames.com/game/21664/freedom-fighter/
Burn Cycle! Thank you!
I’ve never really tried searching for the game names. This thread has been great!
Maybe I should set up an emulator and get some nostalgia flowing.
Glad I could help!
I never got through that stupid asteroid field in Burn:Cycle
To think the CD-i, 3DO, and Jaguar were all “next gen” only to have the PlayStation/N64/Saturn (hey it did really well in Japan) absolutely blow their doors off is hilarious in hindsight.
Granted, it was a very uncertain time in gaming. And maybe these high dollar systems weren’t trying to directly compete with the younger market of Nintendo/Sega. What did the mature gamer want? More bits? CD-ROM multimedia adventures? Something you can put on your entertainment center on top of your VCR that isn’t just for the kids? These were all promising directions at one point in time.
Ultimately, the PlayStation and Saturn would come along and refocus on the games themselves, making 64 bit gaming seem irrelevant and essentially killing FMV-based gaming. The arrival of the N64 would solidify this.
It was an interesting time in gaming. Units like the CD-i and 3DO commanded huge sums of money and offered very little back in the way of quality gaming. Some people bought into the hype thinking they were buying into the next generation when the industry took a very different direction.
Hey, thanks for the 3DO shout-out, although I’m not sure it falls into the same category of failure. When my dad was getting his shit together (at least, somewhat together), he got to work with those guys before getting a more stable job. While it’s certainly true about FMV gaming, their demise in particular is attributed more to business practices, like utilizing costly third parties for hardware- ironic since they all seem to do that now.
Many of their games hold up, though there aren’t very many and the only solid IPs got cross platform releases or ports (e.g. Gex) especially after it was clear 3DO was tanking. I think playing Star Control II on 3DO might have defined who I am as a gamer, and I highly recommend playing subsequent rereleases (it was PC only without 3DO!)
I think playing Star Control II on 3DO might have defined who I am as a gamer, and I highly recommend playing subsequent rereleases (it was PC only without 3DO!)
I’m sure you’re aware that the original developers are working on a sequel after all these years!
It’s to be called Free Stars: Children of Infinity, after the series itself was renamed to Free Stars
I forgot the name but I did know about it! Kinda excited, Star Control III didn’t have the same vibe. Hope these posts also encourage someone to check out II, there is a fan remake you can download for free.
Yeah, SC3 was made by different people, and SCO was made by other different people and was a bit of a series reboot.
For Star Control 2, I’d recommend Mega Mod. Tons of graphical updates, QoL features, and is completely free (of course!)
I remember playing a demo unit of a CD-i at Rich’s while my mom shopped (this was back when department stores still had electronics departments). Whatever game they had available on it was so boring that it was only slightly better than following her around looking at clothes. I also remember, at other times in the same place, playing Sonic on Genesis and messing around with MS Paint on a Windows 3.1 PC. Of the three experiences, the CD-i experience was by far the least fun.
I had one of these as a kid. I was pretty young but I remember this being next level for me.
I didn’t play traditional games on it though. They had interactive Arthur books that you could control. It would read out the page with some animations. Then you would use the controller to click around the page and find all the hidden animations. It was pretty awesome as an educational e-reader tool.
Hey don’t hassle the CD-i, it was trying to do something no one had done and probably shoudn’t have.
but it shipped, didn’t it! Looking at you pippin.
but it shipped, didn’t it! Looking at you pippin.
Did you… want to?
There are some gaps in a collection that serve as a show of sanity, not shame.
Wtf? I’ve never even heard of this thing. Might have to look into emulators, for curiosity sake.
You’re better off watching videos. The games are all notoriously bad.
An emulator also isn’t going to give you the experience of dropped inputs that the CDI was known for.
You probably don’t, there is not a single good game on there!
So yeah, Philips was granted usage of Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Peach, Link, Zelda, Impa, and Ganon. One Mario game and two Zelda games were made, and they were so bad they were funny, to the point they were basically the backbone of Internet culture when several people made silly nonsensical remixes of the cutscenes.
Those games were in fact so important to many people’s lives that a spiritual successor, Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore, was a success and even had a limited edition that came with the infamous CD-i “spoon” controller. What an amazing way to play a platformer…
There is also one more Zelda game that is forgotten by just about everyone. As the others were so bad they were funny, this one was so bad it was just bad. Try watching this without getting bored (impossible) https://youtu.be/IqFZ1iVmhIo?si=Aqy6kr2mKySWMw4H
Honestly that Zelda game is my favorite for how absolutely ugly it is. I can’t make heads or tails of what’s going on in it.
What were those devs thinking? No textboxes so deaf people can’t play, there’s one dungeon whose boss cannot be defeated with the weapon found in it (the weapon does NO DAMAGE lmao) and the ending is so bad the whole thing is just BAD
Edit: I keep coming past this thread and I just realized I forgot to include that pausing or unpausing the game takes not one, not two, but THREE SECONDS. And scrolling the screen takes five seconds.
I remember being in a vacation park with my parents. All the bungalows had a CDi player, and you could rent games at the reception. I also remember thinking that all those CDi games were glorified DVD menus…
I also remember thinking that all those CDi games were glorified DVD menus…
DVD menus had built in games with more gameplay than CD-i games lol
Lol. That’s true! There are DVD menu games with higher approval ratings than some CD-I games.
That’s feels like an accurate description.
To be fair, the graphics were a step up from the 8bit (or 16bit?) games I was playing at the time.
Go Apple Pippin!
There you go
I have one. It no longer reads media :(
