CD-I have any good games?

[erehwon]

I picked up a Philips CD-I from a garage sale with some games $5. It works but you have to manually pull out the tray to put disks in. Unfortunately, the games it came with are mostly educational. I was wondering if there were any games worth keeping it for?

[JSoup]

Dragon's Lair and Myst aren't horrible, but you'll find more capable ports elsewhere.
Sadly, the things that shine the brightest on the CD-I are the exceptionally bad ones, such as the Unholy Triforce (Link: The Faces of Evil, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon and Zelda's Adventure) and Hotel Mario.

[Hawksmoor]

I picked up a Philips CD-I from a garage sale with some games $5. It works but you have to manually pull out the tray to put disks in. Unfortunately, the games it came with are mostly educational. I was wondering if there were any games worth keeping it for?

http://forum.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?4909-Top-25-Philips-CD-i-Games

[goldenband]

I don't have any personal experience with the system, but I've enjoyed HalfBlindGamer's CD-i reviews:

http://www.youtube.com/user/HalfBlindGamer

He doesn't sugarcoat or act like the CD-i is a hidden gem, but his reviews make the system look pretty plausible -- not great, but plausible -- and have made me want to get one at some point. The CD-i supposedly has the best FMV quality of all the pre-PlayStation consoles, and several reviewers claim that multiplatform FMV games often look best on the CD-i, so if you like FMV games, there's that.

I've played several of the CD-i games named in the "Top 25" thread on other systems. I liked Kingdom: The Far Reaches and Kingdom II: Shadoan, which I played on 3DO and Macintosh respectively. I don't think there's any other console port of Kingdom II.

[T2KFreeker]

BURN!cycle

That will be all.

[Jorpho]

The Apprentice is the big one that keeps coming up, but it's hardly worth keeping the system around for that.

[Tanooki]

I owned one of them back in the day and I know of some fun stuff, well was then can't say for now though.

Mutant Rampage Bodyslam (final fight like brawler)
Dragon's Lair 1 and 2, also Space Ace -- great conversions
Lords of the Rising Sun -- excellent shogun/samurai/ninja assassin/siege game
Link Faces of Evil -- Yeah I know it's reviled, I actually finished it, just skip the hideous animated sequences
Hotel Mario -- Think Elevator Action meets Super Mario World/Mario Bros
Tetris is there, self explanatory, and pre-hold block
Voyeur -- Spy on a home, figure out a mystery
Litil Divil -- Odd game, action based and yet not look it up, it was ok
Escape from Cyber City -- Dragon's Lair type twitch game, hard, uses anime sequences of Galaxy Express 999
Chaos Control -- Rail shooter, blast targets with a crosshair

I know the conversion of Mad Dog Mcgree and The 7th Guest is on there and it's fine, also heard Zelda's Adventure (top down zelda action game) is decent.

[erehwon]

Okay. It sounds like there isn't much that would interest me. I guess the only question is if I want to try and fix the drive problem before I sell it. I'm not sure if I want to take the effort opening it up.

[tom]

CDi wasn't a gaming console, it did a good job for playing games.

http://i357.photobucket.com/albums/oo12/Alison123456789/cdifromretrogamesmag_zps3bcbd128.jpg

[Gameguy]

At least they successfully got the system designed for their target market. Apparently nobody.

[Jorpho]

They probably fared better than the Tandy VIS, but then I reckon Philips made a much better marketing attempt.

Is that an issue of Retro Gamer?

[Tanooki]

I'm not sure what you'll read below was more employee butthurt, reality, or likely a strong mix of both.

As I said I had one of these and a pile of a dozen games for it back in the day. Around that time I was getting EGM magazine along with Nintendo Power. I remember EGM had for a time sucked up to this thing how great it was and went on about it monthly in stories covering games and really highlighting the few strong points. Anyway after awhile things started to go bad, and I saw it pulled from Montgomery Ward and a few other spots, only Sears still had it. I found a phone number on a phamphlet at the store there and called them when I got home. I flatly asked the guy on the phone what's up with all the bad press and why the system can't be found anywhere and this is what I got told. The phone rep didn't sound very happy and said that basically the video game print media sand bagged them at EGM. It appears and I have no idea if this was normal tactics of the then gaming media giant, but they gave a list of demands to Philips to get continued positive coverage which was that each reviewer would get a system, a game, a controller, and spare controllers and accessories to test everything out. As it wasn't really a gaming system, just did it too, Philips told them no, they'd get the system they had, the remote it came with, controller (Gravis knockoff), any other accessories as needed and A copy of the game since their stuff wasn't multiplayer. EGM got pissed when they were denied and after that point once the cycle to public hit with the magazine every piece they did was negative. Negative stories how it was an underpowered poor console, that it had nothing to offer, the games rated from mediocre to garbage, and all the ratings were worse than other publications that covered it and eventually they just dropped it entirely. It appears that media got back to various buyers(retail) and they cancelled and pulled future orders and developers bailed on them too from the US side of things so they basically got blackballed. Over in Europe it lived on fine for a few more years and got some decent games, movies and other media on it but it died out eventually everywhere. I know EGM was full of crap, they loved to play games and screw companies with their shady coverage so I know this isn't beyond them in behavior but I can't help to think while it's true, it was not one sided.

[Arkanoid_Katamari]

I never played one, don't own one, but I slept with a girl once who raved about the CD-I she had as a kid, when I told her I was into retro games. Strange, shes the only one I've ever met whose even heard of a CD-I. From what I've heard, Space Ace is supposedly good on CD-I.

[Rickstilwell1]

I like Mutant Rampage: Bodyslam which is similar to Final Fight and Streets of Rage, except very long. I also enjoy the port of Tetris even though you can't slow the blocks down once you start a speedy drop.

[Tanooki]

The stuff I listed was basically the games I had plus a few extras. I did have Space Ace and it's right on the nose with the arcade, fantastic conversion.

[Bojay1997]

CDi wasn't a gaming console, it did a good job for playing games.

http://i357.photobucket.com/albums/oo12/Alison123456789/cdifromretrogamesmag_zps3bcbd128.jpg

While someone from Phillips may have said that to the person quoted in the article, Phillips spent a significant amount of money developing games for the CD-i and certainly made it a big part of the marketing push. They released game pads for the system and took out ads in major US gaming magazines. I recall being at a local department store in San Diego where Phillips had a massive display set up for a few years and the entire display was covered with game titles and the demo discs they had on all the machines were game titles. The local CompUSA had a similar display and they were bundling one of the Zelda CD-i games with the 450 unit for a while. As such, it's not really accurate to say it wasn't a gaming console.

[Tanooki]

I lived at the time in northern san diego county and I remember both those stores and those displays. Philips pushed it as an all in one thing up front, but when the edutainment was clearly awful and vcd wasn't going anywhere against the grumblings of the new DVD market and the overly established VHS they went and relied on games.

[celerystalker]

It kind of depends on how strange your taste is. Games like Inca and Kether are more like some of the experimental PC games that were coming out at the time and don't have easy comparisons. Lords of the Rising Sun is more or less a feudal Japan take on Defender of the Crown if you like that one. I really loved Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon and Link: Faces of Evil. Their gameplay is better than the internet would have you believe, and for me they really took me back to the Valiant Comics Zelda series. If you have fond memories of that time with the Zelda cartoon on Fridays and the Nintendo Cereal System, they are worth playing. For most of its library, though, think early '90s PC gaming instead of console games.

[erehwon]

Thanks for all the info. I ended up selling it. I just wasn't going to play it.

[Rickstilwell1]

Hey at least other people got to do a bit of learning from each other on the topic.

[FrankSerpico]

Did anyone else have a Best (not Best Buy, just Best) department store in their area? I remember them pushing the CD-i like crazy in the mid '90s, they were the only place I can remember that had a playable CD-i kiosk right out in front of their gaming section next to the SNES and Genesis.

[Jive3D]

12345

[jammajup]

I never owned one although `The 7th Guest` is a game that seems to get mentioned a lot on that rare occasion i read a discussion.

[Jorpho]

The 7th Guest was released on a whole bunch of different consoles, though, and now that it's playable in ScummVM (http://www.scummvm.org) you could probably run it just about anywhere, especially since the game data is available on GOG.com. No need to keep a CD-i around for that.

[Arkanoid_Katamari]

If it wasn't meant to be a gaming system, wat was it supposed to be? A cd player? I'm not following wat Philips wanted it to be...

[Tanooki]

No they pitched it as a multimedia system for education, movies, music, and games too. It mostly was designed for all but games, but when people demanded them they made what they could with the limited hardware and limited it was considering what they pulled off. Some of the most basic stuff you'd see on a SNES game like Mutant Rampage Bodyslam which was a Final Fight knockoff had load times all over and it was just a flat 2D brawler. The system was at its best with flowing video scenes and static images.

[Oldskool]

I actually love my CDi. I had it on display at the Video Game Arcade at this years CGE in Las Vegas.

If you like Dragon's Lair and Space Ace the quality is truly impressive - I would even suffice to say that the FMV is just as good as PS1 or 3DO. They are just great conversions. Hotel Mario is a decent game to play.. everyone just wants to jump on the bashing bandwagon. I mean - it's not great, but it's not bad either. I say try it yourself before basing an opinion on everyone else's.

I do have the Zelda games and from the couple minutes that I've played them.. I can safely say that I don't think they are very good. Burn Cycle seemed pretty cool but I need to spend more time on it.

But like mentioned - it's really an FMV powerhouse especially with the video module upgrade (which was included in later models) and for the time it was quite impressive. I remember being blown away by the graphics.

I say, if you run across one for cheap - go for it. Mine was a Goodwill find.

Cheerios

[Arkanoid_Katamari]

I actually love my CDi. I had it on display at the Video Game Arcade at this years CGE in Las Vegas.

If you like Dragon's Lair and Space Ace the quality is truly impressive - I would even suffice to say that the FMV is just as good as PS1 or 3DO. They are just great conversions. Hotel Mario is a decent game to play.. everyone just wants to jump on the bashing bandwagon. I mean - it's not great, but it's not bad either. I say try it yourself before basing an opinion on everyone else's.

I do have the Zelda games and from the couple minutes that I've played them.. I can safely say that I don't think they are very good. Burn Cycle seemed pretty cool but I need to spend more time on it.

But like mentioned - it's really an FMV powerhouse especially with the video module upgrade (which was included in later models) and for the time it was quite impressive. I remember being blown away by the graphics.

I say, if you run across one for cheap - go for it. Mine was a Goodwill find.

Cheerios

Yea I don't listen to the hype. I've never played one so how can I really judge it? I have been on the lookout for one at a Goodwill, tho, if I find one for $10 cuz they thought it was a cd player. A store I go to had one, they wanted $200 for it, and they have about 30 games for it, one being the Flowers of Robert Mabelthorp hahaha. But $200??? And are they really gonna sell those games? The only person who'd buy them is probably whoever buys the system, cuz I'm willing to bet there's not another CDi in a 25 mile radius of that place.

I can tell it was not designed to be a game console, so I think its unfair to really judge it cuz it doesn't have a library as good as the Playstation has. It's a product of the SNES cd add-on deal gone awry, Philips probably just had other plans.

Also, I haven't played Dragon's Lair or Space Ace, but Don Bluth is an amazing artist and I always loved his movies as a kid, and the art style always stood out to me in particular. He did An American Tale, All Dogs Go To Heaven, The Secret of Nimh, all great cartoon movies.

[Jorpho]

If you like Dragon's Lair and Space Ace the quality is truly impressive - I would even suffice to say that the FMV is just as good as PS1 or 3DO. They are just great conversions.But you can buy the super-dooper HD version on Steam these days, assuming you can't find the Blu-Ray or modern console versions.

[Tanooki]

I played with a CDI for the first time in over 15~ years last March, someone put one on display at the Louisville Arcade Expo and they had Link Faces of Evil in it. I still could play it, it's not easy but it's fun, and yes the horribly acted cartoon parts that pop up are as awful as they seem but they also did when it was new. The system for what it was was fine, not excellent but it's good, just only good at certain things since it wasn't designed as a game box so some genres work and some others just don't at all. If you go into it knowing what's there and if the games are stuff that'll interest you, if you go in using the gravis wannabe pad and not that sketchy remote control it came with it's worth the experience if you can bag the stuff cheap. It just gets dumped on because it's easy to pick on and ignore the facts around the thing.

[redfoot12]

My former roommate bought a CD-I last spring for close to $300. I didn't understand what the hell he was doing. His only response was "It had the best version of 7th Guest back in the day". I guess if he's happy paying $350 for the best version of 7th Guest, more power to him...

[Oldskool]

$300? Is he insane? I mean - I like mine and everything but it's nowhere worth near that amount - even on eBay. Unless it came with a ton of games then I guess I just don't understand or it was brand new/sealed in the box.

Should I dare say how much mine was? OK... It's a boxed Magnavox "console" version with the upgraded video module, all the hookups and one gamepad for .. $29.99 at Goodwill.